Read the first chapter of The Keys of Persephone
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Lane could never seem to get the landing right no matter how many times she jumped between worlds. After falling through the air, through the darkness that separated nothingness from somethingness, she hit the cold ground and landed hard on her back.
A string of curses flew from her mouth as she pushed herself up.
The unfamiliar street swallowed her. The sun here was too bright, the air too hot, reminding her just how different this world was. And yet, there was something about it that kept pulling her back—even when she didn’t want to come.
At least no one had seen her fall on her ass this time.
The houses on either side of her became clear as her head stopped spinning. She couldn’t tell where they had been sent on this assignment—not that they were supposed to know. And that was fine with her. But, of course, she tried to figure it out anyway. The town was full of color and sound, the opposite in every way of The Academy. Townhomes of every color surrounded her: yellow, red, green, black, as if each was a living thing with its own personality. The alley was empty, but cars honked in the distance as a bright red double-decker bus passed her on the street. She still wasn’t used to it. She tried to think of the details Tripp had taught her, in secret, about Life. Red bus, small houses, signs all in English—she supposed they might be in England, or maybe in a smaller city in the US.
“There you are.” Tripp’s gruff voice called from behind her. As she stood, she rubbed the gravel in her palms against her pants, trying to erase the evidence of her fall.
She wouldn’t hear the end of it if her classmates noticed, that was for sure.
Tripp and Perry walked toward her down the narrow brick path, fresh and unbothered by the jump between worlds. Neither of them fell when they Blinked. Or if they did, they never admitted it to their younger, less adept friend.
Tripp adjusted his backpack on his shoulders, his hand covered in scribbles of tattoos.
“Thought you might have gotten lost.” He grinned. “I was worried you would be up a tree again.”
She crossed her arms as he rubbed the top of her hair. The more Tripp teased her, the more she wanted to punch him.
“I was only in a tree because I was very inconveniently chased by a pack of ghost wolves, and you know it.” She pointed a finger at him. “And this time I landed closer than either of you. You both know what that means. Pay up. An ampere each, both of you.”
Perry raised an eyebrow, her expression saying, You’d better be joking.
“I’m sure The Academy will be so impressed by your progress,” Tripp teased. “No wolves this time, at least.”
Tripp snorted as he handed his ampere to Lane, the coin shining in the blinding daylight sun. Lane held out her other hand to Perry.
“Don’t think I don’t see the gravel all over your pants.” Perry turned away. “We can talk when you can actually Blink properly.” Perry pulled up the sleeve of her jacket. “Can we please just get this over with before time runs out? I have another class after this.”
Their uniforms were simple—protective jackets, dark pants, mission backpacks. The first priority of their uniforms was utility. The second was to blend in. The third was protection, which must have been some kind of sick joke.
The dead were not particularly easy to kill.
Most people expected peace in death. Some expected there to be nothing at all. Lane didn’t know what she’d expected when she was alive, but it was certainly not this. She doubted that anyone ever expected to spend their afterlife at a school for ghosts, taking classes in death magic and going on assignments to retrieve escaped ghosts.
“We only have an hour.” Perry pointed across the road. “We better split up. Remember what The Academy says—negotiation comes first. Force is only to be used as a last resort.”
The sharp stare Perry gave her said it all. Lane held up her hands, as if she was being falsely accused. Which she wasn’t.
“Victor already went through the mission details. He doesn’t like being shown up.” Tripp looked up at the sun. “And it can’t be any worse than our last run.”
“Oh yeah.” Lane sucked on her teeth. “The wraith. That was rough.”
“Or the shadow wolves before that.”
Perry pressed a finger between her eyebrows as if she might banish their presence like a migraine. Her sleeve was folded up to the elbow, exposing the thin, bracelet-like tattoo that encircled her wrist, identical to the ones they all wore. Their obols, branding them as students of The Magistrate Academy.
“Do you two ever listen to anything? This ghost is dangerous. He was a witch.” Her voice was flat. “He could have escaped and gone straight to Haven Hall.”
Lane’s typical sarcastic retort died in her throat. She was used to Perry keeping them in line, but even Tripp wouldn’t play around when it came to witches. She’d heard stories of witches and their violence, of the way they used their living magic to torture, to prey on others. There were not many of them left, but that only made the leftovers even more radical. Especially those at Haven Hall.
Lane had never met a witch, but even she knew to be afraid. Still, she placed her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Don’t be too worried, Per. If they thought he knew anyone at Haven Hall, they wouldn’t have sent us. They would have sent someone better.”
Tripp snorted.
Ignoring her, Perry flicked her wrist for them to spread out. “I’m just saying, be careful.”
They turned in three different directions. She always went left. Tripp always went right. And Perry, always determined, moved straight ahead.
It was just like any other assignment, any other test. But Lane couldn’t help but look over her shoulder, watching Perry walk away.
“What’s the worst that could happen? We’re already dead.”
She passed a group of students, laughing in their school uniforms as the bell chimed in the distance. Humans were not supposed to be able to see ghosts, but they still took every precaution. It still surprised Lane that they were even corporeal enough to bleed, to breathe, while being dead. Some called it being undead. The Academy picked a very select few students who could retain their corporeal form with the help of death magic. It was purely selfish, of course—how else would they be able to fight and capture their targets? And, of course, it kept the students in line. If you were kicked out of The Academy, you lost the ability to retain a physical form, relegated to eternity as a purposeless, drifting ghost. Or worse, a shade.
Lane wasn’t about to let that happen because of some witch, that was for sure.
She passed another row of houses, the spaces between them closing in until they touched, the street becoming more dilapidated as she went on. The gardens were overgrown and unattended, but beautiful. Creeping vine crawled across cold stone like spiderwebs. It reminded her of The Academy and its ghost-filled woods. The town was almost as empty, almost as abandoned.
Sometimes it seemed like there were so few differences between dead and alive.
Had she lived someplace like this when she was alive? Each trip to Life was a needle pulling at the invisible thread of who she had been. It was better, she thought, that their memories were removed when they joined the school. She knew exactly how fast she would unravel if she did remember.
But she couldn’t think about that now. She needed to focus. The time limits they were under were strict.
Her boots echoed in the empty streets as she paced a perimeter around the houses. It was mid-afternoon, and there was laughter in the distance. She imagined the ringing of a school bell, the rustle of uniform skirts as the students hurried back inside for class from the courtyard. She could almost see their faces, smiling, sticky, red from playing in the sun. That’s what she imagined a normal school to be like. The Magistrate Academy. . . was not. She didn’t imagine that Haven Hall was either, based on what she’d heard. The Academy might have been a shadowed place, full of whispers and the wisps, but Haven Hall was a dark place for even darker magic.
Lane shuddered. And then she felt it. The call of living magic. It drifted toward her, enticing like a lover’s kiss. Butterflies danced across her insides as the honey warm glow of it sank into her skin like sunshine. The air around her became tighter, full of the pulse of electricity that radiated from the magic.
She spat on the ground and shook her limbs as if spiders crawled against her skin.
Disgusting.
Living magic was a manipulative force. It knew what it wanted, and it wasn’t afraid to take it—by whatever means necessary. It always felt like a deception to her, as if the magic itself was made of lies.
She stomped toward the magic, frowning as she tried to shake the feeling, even as she got closer to it.
Perry stood in front of a dilapidated house, staring at its broken-down roof with her arms crossed tightly across her small chest. With broken windows and an overgrown yard, it looked like no one had lived in the shack for decades. But the energy around the house sizzled.
Her hairs stood on end.
“What’s wrong with you?” Perry asked. She must have noticed Lane’s nauseated look.
“Nothing,” Lane said. She averted her eyes from Perry’s gaze and back to the house.
The girl turned away from her, indifferent. Lane exhaled. That was a close call.
She wasn’t supposed to be able to feel the magic of the living, being dead and all. When she had first realized, she’d asked around The Academy, as gently as she could. She’d gone to Victor, who knew everything, and he’d just looked at her. The dead couldn’t touch living magic. It was lost to them. And the witches who played with living magic weren’t able to use the magic of the dead, although they’d tried for centuries to capture it and put an end to death for once and for all.
Lane didn’t hate them for the thought. But because of The Academy, she knew better. There was no way to end death. Not without ending everything else with it.
“Any run-ins with humans?” Perry asked as Tripp arrived behind them, his slow jog coming to a stop.
Tripp raised his pierced eyebrow at her. “We are human, you know.”
“Not anymore.”
Lane snorted. In a lot of ways, being students at The Academy made them almost indistinguishable from the living.
Until you tried to touch them. Lane could touch Perry and Tripp—but if a living, breathing person were to walk by the shack, she would walk right through them. They wouldn’t even see her.
Still, Victor always made them report if they saw humans. They could never be too careful, not with the witches and Haven Hall up to their tricks.
All three of them jumped as something slammed against the front of the house. Shadows passed by the windows, flickering as if someone was pacing angrily, just out of sight.
“He’s getting stronger,” Tripp said.
Lane watched the shadows inside the house as another object hit the wall with a crash. The ghosts at The Academy could move things too, but this was different. Violent.
“Let’s get started. Guard duty?” Perry asked.
Tripp smirked as he planted himself at the gate. Lane rolled her eyes. She didn’t know why Perry bothered to ask. Tripp was just as good at shirking their school responsibilities as he was at partying.
Perry met her eyes and Lane nodded, slowly following her classmate toward the front door. It opened with a shrieking creak, as if the wood would fall apart beneath Perry’s touch. Perry didn’t look back as she stepped into the darkness of the house, leaving Lane outside, alone.
With a heavy exhale, she stepped inside.
The room was pure darkness as her eyes adjusted. The shack seemed to be barely standing, held together by the humid air and pure will. It was small, one room in the style of the early century when most families slept in one bed. Rotting floorboards led to a decaying, empty kitchen and a set of stairs climbed to a second-floor loft. Abandoned furniture littered the floor: a small dining table, two broken chairs, an oven toppled over on its side.
There was no sign of the ghost, but Lane could still feel him. The warmth of his magic brought beads of sweat between her eyes.
Lane paused as Perry walked toward the stairs. The room was full of this ghost’s power—but not the kind he was supposed to have.
“Wait, Per—” Lane grabbed at her friend’s sleeve.
Perry stopped, scowling at her, one combat boot already on the broken stairs.
“If he’s a witch—he can’t use Vis anymore, right?”
The word felt like a curse in her mouth. Vis. In the old language, it meant the force behind living magic—the kind that ghosts like them weren’t supposed to have. The kind that Lane could feel coating her skin like paint.
“Not that I know of. Unless the professors are right and the witches are coming for us,” Perry snorted. “They aren’t supposed to be able to, no. We’ll be fine.”
Perry pointed up toward the loft, moving to climb the stairs. Her footsteps were light but left deep prints in the grime-covered floor.
Lane nodded, following. She couldn’t tell Perry about the magic. And Perry was probably right. It was fine. This was nothing new.
A crack split through the floor. Floorboards snapped toward them, splinters flying.
Perry hurried up the stairs, jumping over the crack. She held out her hand and made a motion for Lane to be quiet. She rolled her eyes in response.
At the top of the stairs, the familiar smell of uncontrolled magic crackled. Power radiated through the air in blurred lines, like the horizon on a summer day.
Lane crouched as she reached the landing. The entire second floor was one room, barely large enough to be called a bedroom. And it was completely empty.
“Anyone home?”
Another violent tremor rocked through the house, turning the floor beneath their feet to water and sending cracks up the walls. She fell to her knees, gripping the ground with tense fingers to keep upright. Perry landed beside her with infuriating ease.
“We know you’re here.” Perry pulled a pouch of bone dust from her belt.
A shadow whirled in the far corner of the loft.
“What did you do to me?”
The ghost stepped out of the shadows, his gray form eerily thin. A chill traveled across Lane’s skin. Like the ghosts at home, his outline flickered, the shadows around him moving and defying the rules of light. But unlike the ghosts Lane knew, his eyes were completely black, staring at her like twin voids.
Something was not right.
His voice was metal scraping the floor. “They said it wouldn’t hurt—”
Whatever had once been a ghost was no longer there. His body seemed trapped between corporeal and shadow—half in this world, half in the other. His form snapped back and forth between black shadow and silver wisp, and in between, he stopped looking like a man at all.
Lane had no idea what that meant.
“It hurts.”
It seemed like he was reliving something, maybe replaying a memory from his life. His eyes were hollow and vacant.
“Look, there isn’t an easy way to say this.” Lane cleared her throat. “You’re dead. We’re dead. So whoever hurt you. . . they’re probably long gone. And they can’t hurt you anymore.”
At least death promised that, if nothing else.
“Who are you?” The words stretched for too long, his mouth gaping into a black oval. “I thought. . .”
He reached, fingers turning to black wisps.
Perry emptied the pouch of bone dust into her hand. They needed to get him back to After Life.
“Something is wrong with him,” Lane hissed.
Perry glared back, You think?
An unearthly wail erupted from his throat as his stare landed on her. His mouth stretched from ear to ear, sucking the air from the room.
Her breath was yanked from her lungs. Clawing at her neck, Lane gasped for breath, thinking over and over that she didn’t need to breathe—she was dead. But it certainly felt like she did. Her lungs ached against her ribs, threatening to collapse.
Perry crawled across the floor, the veins in her neck popping as she dusted ground bone onto the floor. They needed to create a bone circle around him, trap him inside.
Lane’s head pulsed from the lack of oxygen. They were going to run out of air before Perry finished.
They needed more time.
Lane pushed through the pain in her lungs and rushed to her feet, launching herself at the ghost. As her foot connected with his chest, his energy blasted outward into the wall. Whatever was wrong with him, it hadn’t affected her ability to hit him, at least.
He tilted his head back with a groan. Behind him, the window exploded. Shattered glass flew across the room like arrows. Air from the outside rushed into the room and Lane collapsed, gasping.
Perry cried out, a gravelly groan that sent Lane’s heart racing. She shot around at the sound.
A piece of glass jutted out from Perry’s leg at a harsh angle, ripped through the muscle of her thigh. Lane watched Perry as she gritted her teeth, falling to her knees. She clutched at the wound with desperate fingers. The bone dust fell to the ground, sticky with blood.
Without thinking, Lane rushed toward her, reaching for the wound. There was too much blood. Too much for a small shard. Too much for a dead girl. They could be injured when they were in Life on missions, as part of the trade for traveling between Life and Death. But this?
Perry tried to speak, but only the sound of wet blood came out.
Too late, Lane realized what she’d done. The ghost’s attention followed Lane’s line of sight to Perry—and the previously unnoticed bone circle she was trapping him in.
The black voids of his eyes blazed. He erupted with a thunderous wail, his outline flipping violently between wisps of smoke and shadow.
Like lightning, he shot through the wall.
Before Lane could get to her feet, he was gone, screeching as he disappeared into the night.
Perry groaned, struggling to stand. She ripped the glass from her flesh, dropping it to the ground in a pool of her own blood. On missions, they were slightly more corporeal than in After Life—but only just. Just enough to breathe, for their hearts to beat. Just enough to bleed.
Lane stared at the window, shattered glass surrounding it like a starburst.
She could let him go. She could go back to The Academy, get Perry back safely so she could heal, and get another team of students to finish the mission. She should drop it, and definitely not try to get revenge for hurting her friend.
But was she going to?
Absolutely not.
“Lane, don’t you dare.” Perry reached out.
It was too late. She jumped out the window.
Lane smacked against the ground, knees screaming as she tried to land gracefully.
“Good thing I have so much practice falling,” she muttered.
Tripp watched, eyebrows raised, as she ran after the ghost.
She was going to find him, and figure out what was going on with his magic, before the mission ended.
Her boots thundered on the pavement as she ran, eyes trained on the black smoke that the ghost had left in his wake. She followed him as he flew around corners, down alleys. Following him through the streets, she narrowly avoided a crowd of people, hoping she hadn’t gotten too close. She didn’t need another reason for Eurydice to hate her.
A forest, not unlike the one that surrounded The Academy, filled her vision. It was a large city park, filled with trees as far as the eye could see, she realized.
As if laughing at her, the ghost’s form disappeared into the leaves, hidden among the dark foliage. The sun hung high in the sky, casting shadows everywhere. In the distance, there was a footpath, where people walked, pushing strollers. But the ghost had disappeared into the untamed thicket, far away from the living.
She called out as she slowed to a halt, searching the branches for his outline as she stepped onto the soft, warm grass.
“I know how you feel,” Lane said. “Believe me. I know you just want your life back. I know, better than most.”
It wasn’t a lie. Lane didn’t want anything as much as she wanted to be alive again. Not a ghost, or whatever in-between version of ghost and undead she became on these test missions. She wanted to be alive. And that was what The Magistrate Academy promised, after all. Not everyone could be a student there. Only those who might one day be able to return. And when she graduated, that was exactly what she would get.
She wanted it so badly she could feel it down into the roots of her teeth.
That promise was everything.
A roaring cry filled the air, full of betrayal and pain. Her ears rang. She spun on her heel toward the noise as a whirling, blurred shape rushed toward her, knocking her off her feet. Her skull hit the ground with a heavy smack, blurring her vision.
Everything turned black.
She was in the woods. Her woods. White trees, their trunks turned and bent like broken bones. The branches hung around her, some naked, some with the dead foliage of winter. Somehow, she was standing, her feet crunching against the white, dried grass.
The forest surrounding The Magistrate Academy was as silent as secrets and filled with more than trees. It housed the dying breaths of the forgotten, the spirits and ghosts of those who could only wander. She walked between them, ducking under the branches that reached for her like hands. Like everything, the air was gray. A thick, wintery fog laid over her, over the trees, over After Life.
The spirits followed her, clinging to her. They circled around her, their gray forms floating.
“Hello,” she called to them, even though she didn’t know their names. But she could swear she saw them smile. One drifted forward, her white hair in wisps as she reached toward Lane, brushing translucent fingers against her face like she meant to cup her cheek. The gray-white of her form glowed against the brown of Lane’s skin, making it seem even darker.
“They like you,” Victor said from behind her. Had he been there the entire time? She didn’t remember.
“I’m the only one who talks to them,” Lane chided. “If you came out here, they’d like you too.”
He stepped into view, his inky-black hair hanging in his eyes. He tucked a piece behind the gold frame of his glasses.
“You should be in class.”
“And you should be teaching,” Lane said. “I just wanted to make sure they’re okay.”
“You don’t want them to be forgotten.”
The air around them grew colder as they drifted away. Lane waved them a sad goodbye as their shadowed forms disappeared into the black of the distance.
“Of course I don’t,” she said. “No one deserves to be forgotten.”
“Is that why you asked me to meet you here?” Victor asked, taking a step back. “You aren’t going to graduate for years. But if it means so much to you, I promise I will keep checking on them. At least they’re quiet company.”
Lane shook her head. “No. I needed to talk to you—away.”
Her eyes traveled behind him to the cold outline of the school, its stone walls and turrets glowering down at her.
Victor stepped toward her expectantly.
Lane inhaled. The foggy scent of After Life filled her lungs, and she wished the ghosts hadn’t left. Being near them gave her a kind of strength.
“Victor,” she said. “I’m remembering things. Who I was. Who I am.”
Lane awoke with a start, her hands grabbing at the too-green grass. Her vision filled with spots as she looked up. The sun hung lower in the sky, settling the city in a dusky glow.
She spat onto the grass, her tongue thick and metallic.
It had happened again. She’d blacked out. Where was Tripp? Where was Perry?
She tried to remember what had happened in the time she was knocked out—it must have been hours. But she could only find pieces, fragments of images. She recalled The Academy, and Victor. But that was nothing new. Was it a memory? Like a dream, it drifted away from her the more she tried to remember.
How many blank spots did she have now? She’d lost count. She hadn’t told Victor—nor had she told him that she thought she was somehow seeing pieces of her memories when they happened. She wasn’t sure if she could.
She pushed herself up and stumbled toward the small clearing of trees. Thick, unnatural smoke billowed toward her as she ducked under the brush, the clouds dense and hotter than steam. Small, tiny cracks of lightning shot through the smoke, as if she’d walked into a storm.
Sulfur filled her nose, mixing with the smell of wet grass. It was strange and familiar, and not entirely unpleasant.
She stepped hesitantly into the tendrils, searching with her hands outstretched. The fog singed at her eyes as it began to clear, revealing her hands, the air, and then the dirt beneath her feet.
A smoldering pile of dark gray ash sat alone in the middle of the grove, smoke floating away from it in lazy circles.
She looked around, confused, the smoke and fog blurring her vision. And then she saw him.
The outline of the ghost moved toward her, but he was no longer flickering. His form had turned black.
He opened his mouth, but no words came out. Lane took a step back, stumbling away from him, from the void that was his face. The pile of ash sat at her feet, smoldering.
The ghost motioned at her, his arms moving. He pointed at her, at the pile of ash.
“You’re trying to talk to me,” she said. But he kept motioning. Her face scrunched in confusion, but she followed his arm movements as he frantically pointed toward the pile of ash.
She crawled toward it, reaching into the sandy texture. Grit and grime burrowed itself under her fingernails as she dug through it, the ghost hovering over her.
She clawed until her fingers hit something hard and cold. She yanked it from the smoldering ash, trying to hand it to the ghost.
But his form was flickering again—his face frozen in a scream.
With a flash of darkness, he exploded, filling the grove like the night itself. She was surrounded, submerged in his form, struggling to breathe as the ink of him sunk against her skin.
In the blink of the moment, the darkness disappeared, as if sucked back into itself. The sun glared in her eyes, its sudden appearance too bright.
He was gone.
Some people thought there was nothing worse than death. Some days she might have agreed with them, trapped in After Life. But they were wrong.
Dying when you were already dead was worse.
When you met your final death, you were obliterated. The last remnants of you, of your ghost, disappeared, and your soul died, until there was nothing left at all. The final end.
Lane crawled backwards across the ground, knowing what was coming.
With a scream, a dark shadow shot out from the pile of ash.
The shade screamed as it rocketed into the sky. Lane braced herself, waiting for it to turn back and come for her—but it shot past her and into the horizon.
She turned and dry-heaved onto the grass.
The ghost had turned into a shade.
What had he been trying to tell her?
Lane turned, searching the grass for the object. She must have dropped it as she’d scurried away from him.
Laying in the grass was a key. Old-fashioned, the handle thick, long, the kind they made for antique iron locks. It was the color of pure ivory, some pieces of it stained yellow. She picked it up, twisting it in her fingers as she brought it closer to her face.
Teeth, human teeth, jutted out where the locking ridges should have been. It was made entirely of bone.
“Lane!” Tripp was yelling at her in the distance. “We’re over time! Blink back!”
Looking up, she saw him running toward her in the distance, pointing at his obol. Perry wasn’t far behind.
She closed her eyes, grabbing her wrist and holding the key tight with her other hand, but before she could push herself back, something pulled her away.
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