Shadow Mage: (Witchling Wars: Luxra Echelon, Book 1)

  Shadow Mage

  Witchling Wars: Luxra Echelon, Book 1

  Shawn Knightley

  Copyright © 2020 by Shawn Knightley

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

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  Glossary

  About the Author

  1

  “Oh, for heaven sake!” I grumbled a little too loud.

  My cheeks turned fire engine red as everyone in my corner of the library shushed me instantly. I shrank back into my seat and stared down at my phone. My roommate Annette was blowing it up with endless text messages. Apparently, refusing to answer her first four texts wasn’t a good enough way of saying leave me alone so she ended up calling me. I declined the call and surrendered to reading her texts.

  “Emergency!” the first one read. The others were just increasingly desperate requests to call her right away.

  Naturally, my mind went to the worst possible scenarios. Was she hurt? Did I need to go back to our hall right away?

  Probably the exact opposite. The previous week she texted me to let me know she had stepped on a razor someone left behind in the bathroom and claimed her foot was gushing blood. After I rushed out of class and back to our hall I discovered it was nothing more than the equivalent of a paper cut. That was when I realized that Annette had a flare for over dramatizing.

  I weighed the pros and cons of calling her and seeing if it was an actual emergency. I had two papers to finish writing and a mountain of books next to me that I had to reserve before anyone else from class could get their hands on them.

  I let out a deep breath and gathered up the books. Then I discreetly left the university library as quietly as I could, hoping I wouldn’t draw even more unwanted attention to myself.

  After checking the books out, stuffing them into my backpack, and pulling the hood of my raincoat up to cover my head, I was safe to pull out my cell phone once I was outside.

  “This better be good,” I snarled at her over the phone.

  Annette scoffed at me. “Why? Did you suddenly discover the mystery of Stone Henge? Was it built by aliens?”

  “Make fun of my degree all you want. I honestly don’t care anymore. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

  I was so sick of her ragging on me every chance she got. Which was always when her friends were around. I was the main source of entertainment. The freak that traveled from Dallas, Texas to get a master’s degree in archeology at the University of Edinburgh. Which to everyone else around me was as boring as watching paint dry but to me kept me up late at night reading textbooks about the topic. Only I quietly felt the same way about her. She traveled all the way to Scotland to study law. Give me ancient stones that tell stories about people who lived thousands of years ago over doing homework for a living any day of the week.

  “I need you to run an errand for me,” she said.

  I stopped dead in my tracks halfway down the steps leading to the sidewalk to go back to our hall. “You’ve got to be joking. You better have some life-threatening disease than can only be cured by an emergency trip to the pharmacy because this is the last time I’m answering a phone call from you ever again that begins with the word emergency.”

  I could hear her trying to contain a small fit of laughter. “Close enough. There’s a holistic health store down St. Mary’s Street. I have a meeting with my dissertation adviser but the pharmacy keeps strange hours. Can you get it for me?”

  I groaned in protest. “A holistic pharmacy? I didn’t know you were into that woo woo crap.”

  “Whatever! Dr. Johnstone is brilliant. He helped heal my adrenals last fall.”

  “Your adrenals?”

  “Just go get it for me. Please! I’m begging you.”

  “I have a meeting with my dissertation adviser too, you know,” I reminded her.

  Heavy rain droplets cascaded down to the wet cobblestone street. I peered up at the sky. A storm was brewing over my head and my roommate was asking me to go walking in it.

  “What time?” she asked.

  “4:30.”

  “Oh, that’s plenty of time. I’ll text you the address and buy you a drink tonight to cover the cost. You’re a doll.”

  I rolled my eyes. Others might have considered the term endearing but I knew the hidden meaning behind it. She meant that I looked like a porcelain doll. The sort with thick curly hair. It practically became a pet name she used after endlessly mocking me when I first moved in. Lucky for her, I have a good sense of humor about myself and didn’t take it personally. Over time I realized she did it to everyone. It was her way of being light hearted. Almost as if she was masking what was really going on inside her head.

  She hung up before I had a chance to give her my final answer. It was her usual method of stopping the conversation when she assumed she got the answer she wanted.

  Within a few seconds, my phone buzzed again with the address of the holistic pharmacy. It was a mile away and the rain was already starting to pick up.

  ‘You owe me for this one, Annette.’

  It only took a month of living in Edinburgh for me to realize that investing in a couple of pairs of thick rain boots was an absolute must. I knew Scotland would be wet but I had no idea how quickly the sole of one’s shoes could wear out after walking through the rain almost every single day.

  Twenty minutes later I was drenched and extremely frustrated. I managed to find the pharmacy using the GPS on my phone. The dark gray stones of the building were stained black along the edges. The corners at the top were lined with two stone gargoyles growling down below as if I was an unwelcome spirit invading a private residence. The open sign was turned inward. The place didn’t even look like anyone was working inside.

  I knocked on the window of the door. No one came.

  I knocked harder. Someone moved in the back through a doorway behind the counter hidden by a long purple cloth. He came to the door and pointed to the sign marking it as closed. I made the most endearing sad face with puppy dog eyes that I possibly could. The lock on the doorknob clinked and he opened it just enough so I could hear him loud and clear.

  “Are you blind or something?” He barked at me with a thick Scottish accent and groggy eyes. “We’re closed. You can leave a message on the voice mail if you have an order.”

  I glanced over to the sign to the left where the store hours were displayed. Oddly enough, it was a night time pharmacy. Their hours ran from 6 pm to 6 am with a note at the bottom to call in case of emergencies. Did they actually want business? I had never seen anyone other than pubs operate at such hours let alone a pharmacy. Why did Annette send me to a closed pharmacy?

  “I have an emergency prescription for my friend,” I said to him. “She really needs it and can’t come pick it up. Can you just hand it to me through the door and I’ll leave?”

  Annette’s version of an emergency wasn’t just getting on my nerves now. It was on this guy’s nerves as well. That was when I realized how young he was. He must have bee
n sixteen years old with floppy blond hair. He was barely even old enough to work in such a place. I peered at the upper floor of the building. It wasn’t just a holistic pharmacy. It was a home. Did he live upstairs?

  “What’s your roommate’s name, lass?” he asked.

  I hated being called lass, especially by someone obviously younger than me. I rolled my shoulders back and buried my agitation. “Kelly. Annette Kelly.”

  He moved back behind the counter. And to my amazement, he left the door open. I took it as the only invitation I was going to get.

  I stepped inside but stayed on the rug sitting at the front entrance, not wanting to soak his floors any more than other customers were bound to do.

  He reappeared from behind the curtain with a small white bag in his hand. He stapled it shut and beckoned me over to the cash register. “That will be eighteen quid.”

  I just about had a heart attack.

  ‘That’s one stiff drink Annette owes me.’

  I took out a twenty and handed it to him.

  “Does your roommate know how to use this?” he asked me.

  “Damn if I know.”

  He froze for a second then pushed the cash register’s slot back inside a little harder than I thought necessary. “This stuff is strong,” he informed me. “Do I need to run you through how to use it or am I going to get a phone call that your friend is passed out and you don’t know what the bloody hell to do?”

  “Just take the money, please.”

  “No! I need to know that your friend knows how this stuff works.”

  “Don’t you have a file on her from her previous appointments? Just look and see if this is a re-fill on her prescription.”

  He turned toward a small laptop on the counter and fired it up. Seconds later he got the answer he wanted and extended his hand out for the money. I was left wondering what the hell Annette was taking that caused the guy to freak out like this.

  My hand grazed over the young man’s skin. He yanked his hand away as if I had leprosy. His eyes widened. For a moment, I thought his mouth might drop.

  I took the prescription from the counter and stuffed it into my backpack. “Mind if I get my change?”

  He didn’t move. He just stood there staring at me like I was a robber about to pull a gun on him.

  “Hello?” I sassed him.

  “Uh… yes. Yes, here you go.” He rummaged through the cash register and pulled out a few coins. And in a strange turn of events, he intentionally made sure our skin touched when he placed them in my hand. It was almost a little too obvious.

  “What’s wrong?” I caved and asked him.

  “Nothing,” he covered quickly. “I need you to get out. We don’t open for another two hours and my father is asleep upstairs. Just go. Please!”

  He scurried around the counter and walked back to the front door, opening it so I got the message loud and clear.

  I gathered my backpack in my hands and swung it around my shoulder. “Thanks,” I muttered under my breath, making sure I sounded as gruff as possible at his rudeness.

  He shut the door behind me and I didn’t look back. I had bigger things to worry about. I looked like a drowned rat and I had to go to a meeting with my dissertation adviser. He wasn’t the type I liked to look sloppy for. Just thinking about the fact that I was going to see him in a matter of minutes was enough to make butterflies flutter inside my stomach.

  I wasn’t the type to have a crush on a teacher. He was off-limits. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t admire him from afar like every other girl in the course. His name was Dr. Edgar Connelly. Professor Connelly to the students. Annette called him Mr. Come-At-Me, which I always thought was a bit vulgar, although not entirely unfunny. Unlucky for her, she wasn’t studying archeology. And he was the head of the archeology department.

  ‘Lucky me.’

  2

  The rain eased off enough with just enough time to give my hair a little more frizz than it was naturally used to. I let down the hood of my coat and looked at my reflection in the window as I reached the history building. I was a freaking mess! My red, corkscrew, curly hair was more like a lion’s main and my mascara smudged under my eyes. I brought my hand up under my eyes to rub away the black marks and ran my fingers through my hair a few times.

  Who was I kidding? Professor Connelly was a professor. I wasn’t there to impress him with anything other than the first ten pages of my dissertation that he would most likely tear apart the second I walked in.

  I took a deep breath and entered the building. It was deathly quiet. The only sound inside was my sloppy wet rain boots as I walked up the three flights of stairs to Professor Connelly’s office at the top. I was a little out of breath by the time I reached it.

  His door was open with little more than a crack. I knocked gently.

  “Come in,” his deep voice called out to me.

  I pushed the door open and was greeted by one of the most beautiful men I had ever seen in my life. He was dressed in his typically formal academic fashion. A white collared shirt, a blue tie, a vest, a tweed coat, and a rimless pair of eyeglasses. He fit the university professor cliché perfectly but he did it with flare. His cheekbones were sharp, his jawline perfectly square, his hair jet black, and his eyes as blue as the Pacific Ocean. His beard and mustache were slightly scruffy as if he had found some interesting detail in a book that left him up late researching to the point where he forgot to shave. Or maybe that was just my imagination running wild with ideas of him being as big of a dork as I was.

  I cleared my throat and stepped inside.

  “Ah, Miss Waggener. Please come sit down.” He was standing by the window with the first rough draft pages of my dissertation in his hand. “Would you be so kind as to shut the door behind you?”

  I did as he asked and took one of the two chairs sitting in front of his large desk, watching as he flipped through the final pages I emailed him the previous evening. It took me a solid ten seconds to realize I was staring and inches away from being caught in the act of doing so. I diverted my eyes away from him and pretended as though I found the countless books stacked from floor to ceiling and along his cluttered bookshelves endlessly fascinating.

  He didn’t even look up from the words as he sat down at his desk. He continued to read them for a solid thirty seconds, finishing up the final page before looking at me with a warm smile. He removed his glasses and set them down on the desk before folding his hands together and placing them on the table. Professor Connelly had a way of making a girl feel like she was his sole focus when he looked at them. A quality I wondered if he practiced over the years or if he was just intentional in his focus when speaking with a person. Either way, I didn’t mind. It gave me time to look into his eyes.

  ‘Damn it, stop that!’ I scolded myself.

  “It’s a promising start,” he began speaking after an awkward silence between us. “But I want you to dig deeper. I think you’re capable of writing an introduction much better than this one.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  He went through a few of the pages, taking his focus off me and making me feel like I could take a breath again. “It’s very clear that you’re passionate about the topic. Your enthusiasm leaps off the page. Even so, it needs some fine-tuning. A deeper focus. It’s a bit vague. A bit too broad.”

  “Okay,” I said numbly, trying to pretend I wasn’t upset that he wasn’t entirely thrilled with what I had given him granted I spent three weeks working on those ten pages alone. “So what can I do to make it better?”

  “I would recommend going to the university library. There’s a collection of previously published dissertations from others in the same field of study. Look at their work, how it’s structured, and the various ways they focus in on their chosen topic. It might help give you some good ideas. If you’re going to make a valuable contribution to the field you need to be a little more adventurous. For the time being it’s a bit too…generic. And like I said, I think you
’re capable of more.”

  He left me curious as to what he meant. Professor Connelly hadn’t read any of my previous essays. That task was always left to the doctoral students trying to get their credits applied to their degree. Why did he think I could do more when he had never read anything I wrote previously? My papers were always marked by the student aids studying for their doctorate.

  Professor Connelly must have seen the confusion written all over my face because he let out a deep sigh and leaned back into his study chair with his hands stippled in front of his face.

  “The topic of funerary rites given to various tribes in ancient northern Scotland is a good start,” he explained. “I like the approach and your curiosity is apparent. But I need you to consider what about these ancient practices is critical to understanding the people who lived during that time. The differences between the funerary rights of male warriors versus women or children. You seem to be under the impression that some tribes took an angle which might appear rather…esoteric. It’s not that this angle isn’t intriguing. I just worry you might find the primary sources for your thesis a bit dry.”

  He wasn’t entirely wrong. The books I found about the ancient pagan tribes during the Iron Age mostly thought such practices were simply tributes to the regions gods and goddesses within a pagan culture. It wasn’t until I did further reading on the various items they were buried with that I understood there might have been a deeper meaning attached.

  “I’ve managed to find enough primary sources to reach the minimum requirement,” I assured him. “I’ll do as you recommend and read the papers of former students but I honestly like this angle and I want to see where I can take it. I think it will be a good contribution to the field if I can somehow prove that these funerary rites were more than just simple burials or just another religious practice.”