Knight of the Black Rose (43 page)

"Like Lucy said, he hasn't been around when all of this stuff happened," Will told her.

"Oh, remember back before Christmas," Troy told her. "That pop quiz that we had to do. Well, those questions had to do with what Lucy had been looking into about those dead plants,"

Selena looked confused. "I don't get it. Is he behind it...or did he think that some of the students were behind it?"

"Maybe he was trying to figure out if he could pull any of the students into helping him," Lucy suggested. "He could have told them, that the project was for extra grades or something, and they wouldn't know. It isn't as though you can find this stuff in normal books,"

"But one of our own teachers doing this...it's kind of hard to believe," Selena said as they turned onto the corridor of the teachers offices.

"You can still turn back, we won't hold it against you." Will told her.

"You can always do look out with me, that way you don't have to go into the office," Alex suggested.

Selena nodded. "I guess I can do that,"

They walked a little further in silence looking for his door, but they had also gone quiet in case any of the teachers were still about not wanting to draw too much attention to themselves, considering that they weren't really supposed to be here but out with the rest of the school watching the match, that was if it hadn't been cancelled with what had just happened. They went past several doors until they finally stopped outside of his office, knocking on his door to check if he was inside, but there wasn't an answer so Troy tried the door.

"It's locked," Troy told them.

Selena pulled out her wand, making him quickly move out of her way. "Apertus!"

The door unlocked and then swung open, the boys looked back at her impressed as Lucy went in first.

"How did you do that?" Alex asked her.

"Open...it's simple, but it works," Selena told him as Troy and Will followed Lucy inside.

The office was quite dark, with the curtains pulled close and the lights not coming on as they went inside, but they could still make out the outline of what was there with the light from the corridor coming in through the open door. His desk was neatly organised with a couple of piles of papers to one side and nothing on the other, along the walls were shelves of books and jars with things inside of them, some of them moving and then on the top shelves were metal boxes; he didn't have any furniture unlike Loring, just the desk and shelves.

"So what do you think we're looking for?" Troy asked.

"I have no idea," Will admitted.

"Anything to say that he's up to something that he shouldn't be," Lucy told them as she ran a finger along the spine of the books.

"Do eyes count?" Troy asked pointing to several jars full of different types of eyes.

Lucy turned around, not sure how to answer that.

"Is it legal to use them?" Will asked unsure.

"I don't know," Lucy admitted finally.

"Well it should be," Troy said as he carried on looking.

They carried on looking around his office for another ten minutes, but there wasn't really anything out of place, except for a few strange ingredient parts; but if he was hiding something it wasn't in here, not that they had been expecting him to have whatever it was on show, but they were at least hoping to find something useful.

"Well there's nothing here, so we'll have to check the school out," Will told them.

"The school...you do know how much harder that's going to be right?" Troy reminded him.

"I know..." Will said uncertainly. "But we still have to check it out. We'll have to do it next weekend, while everyone's busy here again with another match, we'll go to school and have a look around,"

"And if we're caught over there?" Troy asked.

"We'll have to come up with a plan of what to tell them," Lucy told him as she walked over to the door, a little disappointed that they didn't find anything useful, but they still didn't even know if it was him who was behind it all yet.

"So did you find anything?" Selena asked as they came out.

"Eyes, fingers, pixie wings," Troy told her.

"That's sick," Alex said.

"We don't think that they're illegal though," Will told him as he closed the door behind himself, and it locked automatically. "He won't know that someone's been in his office will he?"

They all looked at each other, as though no one had thought about this properly, or perhaps they had but didn't really want to say anything.

"Well...as long as you put everything back in the right place, it should be alright," Selena told them and then added. "I think there's a spell you can use on lock doors to see if people have gotten into them, but he wouldn't use one...unless he had something to hide and it's not as though he would know that it was us,"

"What if he had camera's in there?" Troy asked looking up and down the corridor nervously, like he was expecting Jevidah himself to jump out at them.

"How do you even know about something like that?" Alex asked.

"My dad has one in his study," Selena told them.

"Okay, all of your dads are crazy...having these secret rooms that no one can go in, really," Alex said shaking his head as he walked away with the others following him, disappointed that they hadn't found anything.

Chapter Twenty-Four

...Everything was kind of blurry and dark, as Will walked along a stone corridor that he didn't recognise, there were a couple of torches here and there, but not many to light his way properly. He looked around as he carried on walking, as though he couldn't stop, like he wasn't in control of his body but just watching what was going on around him. His hair was lose down his back and he was wearing a lose fitted white tunic and trousers that looked more like a skirt, with the amount of fabric that was used, but he seemed alright in walking in it.

Will walked on for a while down this corridor that didn't seem to change or end, until finally he saw something up ahead but it moved too quickly to properly make out, so he quicken his pace hoping to catch up to it; but there wasn't anything. Then suddenly to his right a door appeared and opened, he turned almost automatically looking into the empty room, except for a young woman dressed in old fashioned noble clothes.

He tried to step closer, wanting to know what was going on and who she was, since he had never meant her before; but he couldn't move, only stand there and watch.

The woman reached out her hand, taking something from someone that he couldn't see, that perhaps could have been invisible; but he did see what she took. It was a flower, but not just any flower; it was a black rose, just like the one that had been left in his room. She smiled slightly as she looked down at it as though she was pleased to receive it, but her face quickly changed to pain as she pricked her finger on one of the thorns.

He watched in horror as her hand started to turn black as she tried to shake lose the flower but she couldn't let go of it, the blackness moved up her arm over her skin and even her clothes; she looked as though she was trying to scream out but nothing came out of her mouth. The blackness reached her torso, moving quicker as it spread across of her, consuming all of her and her body becoming more rigid like she was turning to stone. It seemed like it was leaving her face to the end, she was still trying to scream even though no sound was coming out, the blackness moved up her neck and then over her face locking it in place, then finally rushing down her back...

Will screamed as he woke with a start, looking around his room; he shouted again as he leaped out of his bed stumbling over his covers trying to get away from it, as quickly as he could. His door burst open and the lights came on as Troy and Alex ran in with their wands in hand, looking around the room, but all they saw was Will.

"Are you alright?" Troy asked uncertainly.

Will pointed at his bed. "There's another one,"

"Another what?" Alex asked as he walked over to see what had scared him so much, but Will stopped him before he could get close enough. "What?"

"Will, what happened?" Troy asked him.

"I had this really creepy dream...a woman was killed..." Will told them. "It was the black rose...it drained the life out of her, turning her into a kind of stature,"

Alex looked around smirking before he turned back to him. "Well you don't have any in your room,"

"There's another black rose on my bed," Will told him annoyed that he was making fun of him, when this was so serious. "The rose did it,"

"Okay..." Alex said taking a step back. "So it's the plant,"

"You do know that we all touched it right?" Troy said scowling. "Nothing happened to us,"

Will looked at him and then back at the rose on his bed. "The woman prinked her finger...then this black thing started to consume her,"

"Maybe it was just a bad dream," Troy suggested, but he didn't seem wholly convinced himself. "They never said in the papers that the people had been turned into statues, or that there were any black roses about,"

Will thought about this because he knew that Troy had a point, but he just felt as though he was missing something that he couldn't put his finger; not that he was going to pick up that rose with his bare hands again after that dream, he wasn't going to take any chances. He went over to his school bag and rooted around inside of it, looking for his gloves; he pulled them out and put them on before he walked over to his bed and carefully picked it up, making sure that he didn't even catch his glove on it. He carried it over to his desk and then dropped it on it; he stepped back and looked down at it wondering how something so innocent looking could be so deadly.

"So we're not even going to touch this one?" Troy asked before he yawned and rubbed his eyes.

"Are you staying in here the rest of the night?" Alex asked him.

Will looked at them both and then at the rose on his desk, wondering if it would be alright; the other one hadn't done anything to him and hopefully it was just a bad dream with everything that had been going on.

Will had told Lucy what had happened, and was somewhat pleased that she seemed just as concerned as he had been to find another one, especially after the dream as well. Troy and Alex were still convinced that they were just over reacting, but that hadn't stopped Lucy from finding every news article that had printed anything about these attacks; she had managed to get them all on a data port so they wouldn't look out of place looking through stacks of old newspapers in the common room full of students.

"You know I thought it was exciting doing all of this to start with...but with these things really happening in the school now, don't you think we should just leave it to the teachers?" Alex suggested.

"They haven't got a clue either," Lucy reminded him.

Will looked up suddenly. "He has a point, I don't mean about giving up. But the attacks and sightings at the school. That's weird right, why would it be here of all places?"

"I guess, since the attacks took place in the cities where there's more people," Lucy said thoughtfully. "It is kind of strange that it would come here, and to just this school...unless other schools have been affected but they're doing the same and covering it up,"

"Thinking about it like that, it is weird," Troy agreed. "Unless Jevidah is involved...but still, what would he want with the school?"

"Maybe they're hiding something here, that he wants?" Alex suggested.

"Who's hiding what here?" Selena asked as she sat down with Libby, but they didn't answer her.

"Are you still working on that, after you were told to stop?" Libby asked them shocked that they would go against the teachers.

"You don't have to," Troy told her.

"It's so annoying...all we have is more questions," Will said frustrated as he flicked through the screens, not finding anything useful.

"I know this is a weird question, but I've been kind of wondering...what's happening to all of that energy?" Troy asked making them look at him; he scowled thinking that he had asked something stupid. "See, I thought it was a stupid question, I shouldn’t have bothered,"

"Actually that's a good question," Selena said surprised, and he just stared at her.

"It is actually...I can't believe that we didn't think of it sooner," Lucy said. "Energy can be transferred or drained from another. The plants and animals could have been tests before they moved onto people. Will, does it say if they were highly magical creatures or plants?"

"What about Holly and Helen's cat? That wasn't powerful, it was just a cat." Libby said not liking where this was going.

Lucy hesitated, not wanting to say anything that she wasn't supposed to. "Cats can hold powers, they tend to be part of magical families,"