The Secret of Spellshadow Manor 3

feel like a long time since he had first met her. Back then, he had thought he might have feelings for the cute French exchange student whom he had followed blindly into a spooky old house. How times had changed; he certainly didn’t see Natalie in any sort of romantic way now, leaving his path clear to consider other girls, and yet he found it difficult to put the affection he felt for Ellabell into words. With everything else that had been going on around them, he had been too distracted to really think about romance in a serious way. And yet, here was Jari, throwing him under the bus in front of the one girl he thought he might actually like.
He wondered if she was, in fact, waiting for him to put those feelings into words, as she continued to look at him strangely. Even Jari seemed to want him to say something.
Alex cleared his throat. “You just scare them away, Jari,” he said, knowing how lame it sounded as Jari visibly winced.
Ellabell, however, showed nothing on her face. If she had been waiting for him to say something, she gave nothing away. It was only her sparkling blue eyes that showed the merest hint of disappointment, but Alex wasn’t sure if that was him reading too much into it. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to say something to her—he just didn’t have the right words.
“Right, well, I’m off to bed,” announced Ellabell, with a forced brightness in her voice, as she got to her feet. “Goodnight, boys.”
“Goodnight,” they chorused. Alex watched her retreat back into the shadow of the cottage. For a brief second, she paused in the doorway, as if about to turn back around, but the moment passed and she disappeared into the darkness without another word. Whatever it was Ellabell might have wanted to say, she must have thought better of it.
“You blew it, man,” murmured Jari, patting Alex on the back.
I know, Alex thought. I know.

Chapter 7
The next day, the sun rose to reveal another warm, beautiful morning. For once, Alex had actually slept, despite thoughts of Ellabell racing through his mind as he had lain down to sleep. He and Jari had stayed up a while longer, enjoying the pleasant warmth of the evening as they finished off their supper, until exhaustion had finally claimed Alex.
Rested and refreshed, he awoke to find that Aamir had deteriorated in the night. The slick sheen of sweat had returned to his forehead, his face screwed up in a permanent expression of agony. His body twisted and turned in all manner of unnatural positions beneath the exertions of the curse within him. Jari hadn’t left his side, trickling water into his mouth every couple of minutes so he wouldn’t be thirsty.
Seeing the decline of his friend, who had seemed much better the previous day, Alex decided he was going to try and find an infirmary or a pharmacy or something of that ilk within the villa itself, if he could find a way into the building in broad daylight. He was about to leave the cottage when Ellabell called him back.
“You need to eat something,” she insisted, handing him more bread and a handful of dried apricots.
He took them gladly, eating quickly. “Thanks,” he murmured, hoping she had forgotten the awkwardness of the night before.
“I’d like to come with you, if you don’t mind,” said Natalie, picking up some apricots of her own.
“Me too,” Ellabell added.
Alex shook his head. “I have to do this alone. Too many people will arouse suspicion,” he explained. Not for the first time, Ellabell seemed disappointed by his response. Natalie too.
“Nobody will notice us,” insisted Natalie.
“We’re pretty useful—you should know that by now,” Ellabell chipped in.
Alex nodded. “You are both two of the strongest mages I know, but I have to do this alone. There are guards along the walls, and one person might slip past them in broad daylight, but three is too many. Plus, if there are magical barriers and things inside the villa, some of them may not even affect me, but they’ll affect you. I just want to go and test the waters a bit.”
The two girls frowned at him, making their displeasure known, but he was certain things would be simpler if only he went. If there were barriers and magic obstacles within Stillwater House, as there were in Spellshadow Manor, he knew he stood a greater chance of avoiding them, simply because of what he was. Magical security, as far as Alex was concerned, was set up in magical schools to keep mages in line, but not Spellbreakers. After a frosty few minutes, the girls’ resolve thawed and they relented.
With a full stomach and a focused mind, Alex moved stealthily along the shoreline toward the white side-wall of the villa, keeping once more to the shady tree-line. Nobody seemed to see him as he clambered easily up onto the top of the broad battlements and scurried along it, skirting beneath the lookouts so as not to be discovered. He pulled himself up onto a higher wall that looked across one of the piazzas, tiled intricately in terracotta and cream-colored squares. Staying low to the wall, he moved toward the very edge and watched the goings on beneath him. The piazza itself was busy with people going about their business—too many people for him to dare drop down into.
However, as he scanned the archways that led to other sections of the villa, he saw a sign that gave him some hope. On a large square of stone embedded into the brickwork beside the arches, Alex saw, against all odds, a symbol he recognized. He had seen it so often, on all the trips he had taken to the hospital with his mother, that it was instantly familiar. The caduceus, with its two snakes twisting around a rod, and a pair of wings at the top—the symbol for medical assistance. He just