The Son of Ice and Dusk

Where I hear of how everything changes, again

Later during that day, I went to Mister Winter's private section of the library.

I was convinced that if I could somehow break the spell, those private books would tell me something on how to cure the family curse. Maybe now that we already knew about Nathan, Jeff's grandfather had removed the spell.

He hadn't. The little serpents made out of metal were still there, guarding the books.

I tried, but nothing happened.

Then I remembered — no magic seemed to be as powerful as the kind where you could change the perception of reality. I tried to imagine the serpents opening up for me and for me only, to let me read these books.

The spell broke. The serpents slithered away from the volumes. I was in trouble now, but it didn't matter.

The books were so old and worn out that the titles were hardly readable, but there was one thing I had no doubts about — there seemed to be nothing about prophecies.

"Show me something about how to cure a family spell," I commanded.

Nothing happened.

Then, a book fell from the shelf and opened up. It was a blank book, but letters started forming on the page. The word was 'Patrick'.

At that moment, I was brought up to the strange nightmares I had as a child. In them, I saw glimpses of the future — what a teacher would wear the next day, what one of my classmates would say to taunt me — but not only that. There was, often, the name Patrick featured in them. I thought I was going crazy, so I didn't tell anyone. Who was I supposed to tell? I knew what Mrs Barnes would have thought of that.

When I saw that name again, I bit my lip to keep from screaming.

"Are you Patrick?" I asked whomever had made the words appear. "Show me how to defeat Set."

This time, other words started appearing on the page, right below the name.

'You can't. Please don't.'

But I would. Because right then I had an idea, and I practised all night on the spell.

The day after, when I showed up in front of the old MagicPound, I saw my friends were there with me.

"There was absolutely no good reason you had to do this alone," Raegan told me.

"And risk losing any of you?" I asked. "Are you out of your mind?"

"If we take Set together we stand more chances," Edgar replied. "Are you out of your mind? You went to battle him and you are clearly not the face in the Enemy Mirror. You weren't even born yet."

"I'm not sure it matters."

"Wait," Edgar furrowed his eyebrows, and tried to read my expression. "Do you think it could be me?"

I huffed. The reason was Edgar's double powers. Brady had the same gift, but I'd never seen anything like it, and it made sense that if one of us could defeat Samuel it would be Edgar. But it would be like telling him that I thought he was special, so I didn't.

"Let's go," Jeff told us. "No overthinking. We have to do this."

He was right. Overthinking something like this would have killed me.

But when we entered, the first person we saw was not Jeff's father — it was Jinn. He was always recognizable because of his tall frame and because was the one who was the closest to becoming a monster — both his features and voice were unnatural. But I could see his eyes. The look in them was pure hatred.