Pet Psychic Mysteries Boxset Books 5-8 (Magic Market Mysteries Book 2) Erin Johnson (good books for 8th graders .txt) 📖

black hand, followed by potion 1, potion 2, and potion 3. Further to the right of each entry were notes about the effects—no noted effect, beside the first one. Respiratory distress, beside the second. Finally—instant death beside the third.

My stomach clenched, and I blinked at the drawer, then the cubbies, stuffed to overflowing with records of potions tested on hundreds—no, thousands—of shifters like me. Icy dread washed over me. I’d hoped to locate records for the shifters trapped at the sanctuary, but Ludolf had been testing on so many of us—it would take days to pore through all of this.

“Find what you were looking for?” A quiet, tense, raspy voice startled me.

I lurched back, dropping the folder, and spun to face Ludolf.

33

Hexmakers' Lair

Ludolf loomed in the doorway, his skeletal frame unnaturally still.

“I, uh—I got your summons and just wanted to look around but—”

With a flick of his wrist, the folder flew out of my hands and back into the drawer, which slammed shut. The three potion makers began to cackle and laugh, their voices echoing off the round stone walls. I suddenly realized their humming must’ve alerted him about me. Traitors.

He stepped slowly, deliberately toward me. “Why are you lying?” His voice was quiet but laced with danger. His pale, yellow-ringed, unblinking eyes fixed on mine. He’d caught me. There was no point in keeping up my flimsy act.

I lifted my chin and glared at him. “I know you sold all those shifters to the sanctuary—why? They’re your own people. How could you do this?”

He sighed and lowered his head, as though stalking me, his bony shoulders up in his ears. He continued to advance as I backed up. “You still haven’t figured it out, have you?”

The witches cackled louder, and I cringed.

Ludolf’s lip curled into an angry grin, his pupils contracted to tiny points of black. “Everything laid out in front of you, and you can’t even see it?” He cocked his head, a sharp, bird-like motion. “I want a cure, of course.”

I scoffed. “For what? All the curses you’ve created?”

The red light of the fire reflected off his face, casting his hooked nose and hollow eyes in sharp shadow. “For the ultimate curse—shifterism. It’s disgusting. A stain. A disease. It needs a cure.”

I nearly stumbled back into one of the stone tables but slid to the right toward the cauldron and the walk-in fireplace. “But… you’re the head of shifters. Are you even a shifter?” I glared at him. “Is that why no one’s ever seen you shift?”

The three old hags howled, unhinged. I really wished I’d just gone with Peter to the station—this had been a very bad idea.

In a whirl of blue-black smoke, Ludolf shifted into an enormous heron. His long neck rose out of his body, his yellow beak razor sharp, and one eye fixed on me. I was too surprised to speak. He was a shifter—yet found it disgusting? The enormous bird, taller than I was, advanced slowly, strangely graceful and menacing at the same time. I froze, too terrified to move.

He changed back just as suddenly and adjusted the cuffs of his dark blue suit. “Do you know how herons kill their prey, Jolene?”

I couldn’t speak. It was as though my feet were rooted to the dirt floor.

He inched closer, his thin lips curled back. “We peck the eyes out first, blinding them, disabling them, and we then swallow them whole. I’ve disabled you, Jolene—you cannot shift, you cannot do magic. I have you, and when I’m finished with you, I will swallow you up, bones and all.”

My legs buckled, and I lurched out, grabbing the nearest table to steady myself.

His nostrils flared as though he might be sick. “I hardly shift, because it’s disgusting. Wouldn’t it be better if shifters just didn’t exist at all?” He let out a frustrated growl. “I want the cure for all of us, so we don’t have to live in the sewers, so we can be accepted by the rest of society.”

I straightened my spine. So that’s what this was about. He was still trying to be accepted by the upper tier of King Roch’s cronies. He’d not only helped spread the old king’s discriminatory propaganda, but he’d bought into it himself. I found myself oddly pitying him—what self-loathing he must live with.

I shook my head. “Being a shifter isn’t something that can be cured—it’s who we are.”

Anger flared in his eyes. He raised his hand, and the old women cackled. A glass vial full of bubbling purple liquid flew off a nearby table and crashed into my arm. The glass shattered and tinkled to the ground by my feet, the liquid inside burning my arm.

I yelped, and the women laughed harder. A few blisters rose on my skin, but I didn’t have time to react before he magically threw another vial of potion on me, followed by another and another. I backed up, arms raised overhead in an attempt to shield myself, potions freezing my skin, then burning, then making me light-headed and woozy. I staggered back, nearly falling over.

“Not that one!”

I lowered my arms and glimpsed the pot of boiling liquid flying toward me.

The old woman spoke up again. “She’ll die! Bones will shrivel, skin dissolve.”

I thought I might be sick. Then again, I was probably going to be dead soon, so what was a little vomit? The pot stopped midair, sizzling red goop spilling over the side and hissing where it landed on the ground. The pot hovered in front of me, a murderous glint in Ludolf’s eyes as he seemed to debate whether he should finish me off.

I gulped, my throat tight. “Don’t kill me.”

His voice croaked. “Why?”

I thought of all those files in the cabinet. Why had he kept me alive this long? My chest heaved, but I forced myself to stand tall. “If you do, you’ll never discover why I got stuck in human form. I’m unique, right?”

He watched me, very still, for several long moments, then smirked.