Charmfall

by Chloe Neill

  Daniel got an okay from Foley for us to skip art history, although we probably could have snuck out without much trouble, as we realized when we walked outside and watched one wickedly expensive car after another pull into the drive in front of St. Sophia’s. As the blue and yellow flag above the door waved in the wind, a Mercedes convertible pulled up, followed by a Bentley, a Rolls-Royce, and a really long limo driven by a white-capped driver.

  I’d forgotten—the dance was tomorrow, so this was parents’ night.

  “Aren’t they here early?”

  “There are events throughout the day,” Scout explained. “They have breakfast together; then, while the girls go to class, the parents go to seminars about raising bratty little monsters or something.”

  “Or financial aid for college,” I said.

  “Like these kids need financial aid,” Scout grumbled. “Let’s go.”

  I pulled my hoodie around me and followed Scout down the street.

  The city smelled like smoke and wetness and dirt, and there was a chill in the air that said winter wasn’t far away. I wasn’t looking forward to that any more than I was looking forward to putting Scout and Sebastian together in the same place. She’d watched him knock me out with firespell, he’d been there when the Reapers had kidnapped her, and he was at least part of the reason I was sad about Jason. So he wasn’t exactly at the top of her popularity list.

  We walked silently toward the river through a part of downtown Chicago I hadn’t seen yet. The streets were a little quieter over here, and there weren’t as many tourists. It looked more residential, like the folks who worked and shopped in the busier parts of downtown lived here. Even the bars and restaurants looked smaller—more like neighborhood joints. They all had little patio areas with stand-up heaters, I guess for Chicagoans who weren’t quite ready to give up the fight to winter.

  The bridge appeared at the top of a rise in the road. There was a stone tower on each side of the roadway, and symbols were carved into the walls. As we walked closer, I could tell there were two kinds of symbols—a “Y” within a circle, and a quatrefoil. These were the signs of the Adepts and Reapers. Appropriate meeting place, I thought.

  There were cars on the bridge, and plenty of tourists and businesspeople going about their days, but no Reapers as far as I could see. We walked to the edge of the bridge where the sidewalk narrowed to cross it, then stopped. Scout put her hands on her hips and surveyed the area with a critical eye.

  “He’s not here yet,” she said.

  I frowned. I couldn’t see the other side of the street because of the angle, and she wasn’t much taller than I. “How do you know that?” I wondered, a little spark of hope fluttering that maybe, somehow, she’d gotten her magic back.

  That wishful thinking didn’t last long.

  “Jill just signaled it,” Scout said, then pointed over to one of the high-rise buildings that lined the river.

  Jill stood beside the building’s front door, arms wrapped around herself in the chill, her long auburn hair nearly horizontal in the wind. She uncurled a hand and gave me a little wave. But her head suddenly whipped to the side toward the river—she’d seen something.

  When she looked back at us, she raised her index finger, then made a fist, then pointed to the bridge.

  “A Reaper has arrived,” Scout translated. “That must be Sebastian.”

  “I guess so.” I pushed down a bolt of fear. Fear wasn’t going to do any good right now. Besides, if Sebastian didn’t have magic, what could he do? Water balloons? Slap fight? It didn’t seem likely that he’d start punching two girls in the middle of downtown Chicago.

  I glanced at Scout. “Are you okay with this?”

  “Am I ready to have a civil conversation with a Reaper who didn’t lift a hand to help me when I was lying on the table? I’m not sure. I’m certainly not ready to forgive someone who had a chance to do the right thing but cowarded out. And I’m not convinced he’s the good guy you think he is.”

  “I don’t think he’s a good guy,” I said, not realizing I’d decided that until I said the words aloud. “But our lives are weird, and sometimes you make friends with strange people.”

  “Frenemies?”

  “I guess so.” I nodded with confidence, trying to convince myself as much as her. “Let’s do this.”

  We started across the bridge, and as we walked closer to the middle, Sebastian appeared over the hill. He wore jeans and a black leather jacket, his hands tucked into his pockets. With the dark hair and blue eyes, he looked like a bad boy from a movie poster—the kind that was charming and handsome, but turned out to be not so good by the end.

  It probably looked like I was a helpless schoolgirl in a plaid uniform, but my guard was all the way up.

  We met him a few feet from the middle, a gap between us.

  Sebastian looked at Scout, then me, and it felt like his eyes were boring into my soul—like he knew I had doubts.

  He raised his hands, palms facing us.

  Scout did the same thing. They looked like street performers pretending to be stuck behind a glass wall. She elbowed me. “Hands up,” she murmured.

  “Why?” I asked, but did what she said.

  “Tradition. Proves you aren’t holding a wand or something.”

  “I could have a wand?”

  “It’s a personal preference. Come on.” Apparently satisfied that Sebastian wasn’t about to throw bad magic at us, she put down her hands and walked forward.

  We walked closer and faced him down, two Adepts against a Reaper.

  “I request a temporary cease-fire,” Sebastian said.

  “Granted,” Scout said. “South side rules, no snipe hunt.”

  Slowly, I turned my head to look at Scout and tried to ask a question with my eyes: What in the crap are you talking about?

  But it was Sebastian who understood the look and answered me. “Cease-fire means no magic will be used during this meeting. South side rules mean we’re fair game after we leave the bridge, but we can’t snipe hunt—so only the people on the bridge can work the magic, not the folks we brought with us.”

  I guess it was a tradition, but it seemed silly to have rules like that when there was no magic to use.

  “We didn’t bring anyone with us,” Scout said. She didn’t make a very good liar.

  Sebastian didn’t take the bait. “We did,” he said, then pointed behind him. Two teenagers stood at the edge of the bridge. One was Alex, a blonde who’d been with Sebastian when he hit me with firespell. She’d also attacked us when we went in to rescue Scout. She was not one of my favorite people.

  The other was a really tall girl with dark skin and really short hair. She wore a T-shirt with what looked like a techie joke, skinny jeans, and a really big pair of mean-looking boots. She smiled. She was a pretty girl, but that didn’t mean I wanted to run into the business end of those boots anytime soon.

  “None of them have magic,” I said, looking back at Sebastian.

  His gaze shifted to me. “Not at the moment. And that’s why we’re here. What did you want to know?”

  Scout got to the point. “We think your cousin is behind this, and we don’t think that comes as a surprise to you.”

  Sebastian looked at me. “She didn’t tell me she was a member of the Dark Elite.”

  “I know,” I said. “We saw you fighting outside the store.”

  “Spying on me?” he asked.

  “Honestly, yes,” I said. He’d seen us outside the store, so there was really no point in lying. “You hung up on me really fast when I asked about the fairy tale. I thought that was worth a little consideration. But that’s not the point—we actually saw Fayden do magic. She has firespell.”

  “I know.”

  “Tell us what you’ve seen,” I said.
r />   He didn’t look at me, but his face was tense. He definitely knew something. “I can’t.”

  “You can, and you have to,” I said. “The blackout is taking your magic, too. The only way we solve this problem is if we work together.”

  “You want us to work together?” he asked, but there was a little bit of a smile in one corner of his mouth. I think he was actually enjoying this.

  “It’s a limited-time offer,” I said. “We want things to get back to normal.” If chasing Reapers through tunnels beneath Chicago could ever be considered normal. “Start at the beginning. How did you find out she was involved?”

  “When I realized she was the only one in the city who could actually do magic.”

  “You might have mentioned that to us,” Scout grumbled.

  “I didn’t know. Not until I saw her turn off a light. I think she forgot she was standing in front of me. And I wasn’t exactly thrilled. She played it off like it wasn’t any big thing. Like being the only person in town with magic wasn’t any big thing.”

  “Why would she be doing this?”

  He turned to face the river, putting his hands on the railing.

  “I don’t know. I mean, she was a bully when we were growing up. Bossy. Manipulative. Always telling the younger kids what to do.”

  “She mentioned something last night about a ‘new era,’” Scout said. “We know people are unhappy with Jeremiah right now, and we know the old Reapers are talking about a fairy tale involving someone named Campbell, like, overthrowing the government or something. Is it possible she’s working the blackout because she wants that kind of control? Because she wants to determine who gets to use magic and under what circumstances?”

  “If that was true, why hasn’t she announced it?” I wondered. “I mean, it’s all well and good that she wants to be in charge. But at some point, she’d actually have to, like, be in charge.”

  “Maybe she can’t,” Scout said. “Look, first the Adepts’ magic turned off, right? And then the Reapers’ magic turned off. As far as we know, she’s the only one in the city who has it. But if she’s going to control who gets to use it, she has to be able to give magic back to someone.”

  “And maybe the spell isn’t working that way,” I finished. “She got the magic turned off, but she can’t figure out how to turn it back on again?”

  “She ordered some things from Gaslight,” Sebastian said. “Maybe she was looking for a solution to that problem.”

  “What did she order?” Scout asked.

  “I don’t know. It was already bagged when we got there.”

  “Had she been to Gaslight before?”

  “Not with me,” Sebastian said. “But the girl at the counter knew her name.”

  Scout looked at me, and I could already see the wheels turning. She wanted to find out what Fayden had bought, and that was how she was going to find out what kind of magic she was working—and how to stop it.

  I looked at Sebastian. “She has firespell, right? Is turning off other people’s magic something you can do?”

  “Not as far as I know. You?”

  “Nope. So either she’s got some new version of firespell we don’t even know about, or she’s got friends helping her—donating their magic, maybe.” That kind of thing wasn’t impossible; I’d used my firespell to help Scout take out the imploded sanctuary.

  “Do you know who she hangs out with?” Scout asked him.

  “No. Like I said, as far as I knew, she was new to town. I didn’t lie to you,” Sebastian said, looking earnestly at me. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  Before I could answer, Scout cut in. “You’re a Reaper,” she said. “Lying is just par for the course.”

  “Not for me, it isn’t,” Sebastian said, his eyes going wide with anger.

  “Oh, please. Reapers kill without a second thought.”

  “Taking energy for food is one thing. No one has to die because of that. Killing someone out of revenge is something else completely.”

  Scout made a sarcastic sound.

  “I get it,” Sebastian said. “You don’t like me, and you don’t trust me.”

  “Not even as far as I could throw you.”

  “You don’t even know me.”

  “And you don’t know me, but that didn’t stop you from kidnapping me.”

  “I didn’t kidnap you.”

  “Your friends did,” she countered, “and that’s close enough for me. And it’s not like you stopped them, did you?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But I helped Lily get you out.”

  That wasn’t enough to sway her. “You’re a malicious little jerk who takes things that don’t belong to him.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t I?” She put on her best know-it-all expression. “Sucked any souls lately?”

  His expression went flat. “We have a gift. And if we can’t use it? Then what happens?”

  “The rest of us live happily ever after?”

  “Our magic helps people. If we don’t have the magic, we don’t get to help.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “Help? Name one thing Reapers have done to help anyone.”

  “What we do is confidential.”

  “What you do is nothing. I’ve heard the ‘confidential’ story before, Sebastian. You think they don’t try to sway us with the nonsense?”

  Okay, I wasn’t thrilled my BFF and a Reaper were arguing in the middle of a bridge, magic or not. But this was stuff I hadn’t heard about before.

  “Who is ‘they’?” I asked. “And what’s confidential?”

  “‘They’ are the Scions,” Scout said, narrowed gaze on Sebastian. “The ones who make decisions for the Dark Elite. And the confidential crap is just that—a load of crap.”

  Sebastian looked at me. “It’s a long story, and there are details I can’t reveal. But we do help people. I promise you, Lily.”

  Scout was standing there, but I still felt like he was saying that just to me. I definitely believed they were doing secret things; I just wasn’t convinced they were for anyone’s good but their own. Willing to believe? Maybe. But I was going to need hard evidence, and we didn’t have time for that kind of proof today. So I changed the subject.

  “Let’s save the argument for another time,” I said. “Right now we have a more immediate problem.”

  “She’s your cousin,” Scout said. “You can just call her up and tell her to give you your magic back.”

  “If she’s done something, invented something, whatever, that takes magic away from whoever she wants, do you think she’ll just give it back to me because I ask her? She’s too manipulative for that, and I don’t even know if she can. Besides, I’m not going to help her do whatever she’s doing. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. Everybody makes their own decisions about whether to keep their magic or not. That goes for you and us.”

  “But not the humans whose souls you take?”

  “Are you so sure about that?”

  Scout growled, and I could see we were getting nowhere fast. It was time to talk about concrete options or they were going to start slap fighting right here on the bridge.

  “Fine,” I said. “You two can agree to disagree.” I looked at Sebastian. “Does Jeremiah know about Fayden?”

  “Not yet. She’s my cousin,” he said, pity in his voice. “He’ll go postal. I don’t want her to get hurt.”

  “Where can we find her?” Scout asked.

  “I don’t know. Her apartment is in Hyde Park near U of C. She wasn’t there. I’ve called her a few times, but no answer. I haven’t talked to her mom yet. I didn’t want to scare her if I wasn’t sure what was going on.”

  “She hasn’t been in Chicago very long,” I said. “How man
y hiding places could she even know about? Wait.” I pointed at Sebastian. “You played tour guide. Where did you take her? I mean, did she seem really interested in anywhere in particular? Was there anything unusual she really wanted to see?”

  He frowned and looked down at the ground as he considered. “Not that I can think of. I showed her all the tourist spots. Field Museum. Navy Pier. Wrigley Field. The planetarium. She hadn’t been to Chicago in years. She wanted to see pretty much everything.”

  I nibbled on the edge of my thumb as I racked my brain, trying to figure out our next move. This was when the crew from Scooby Doo or Buffy or Star Trek or one of those other shows where people solved a mystery at the end would have been really handy.

  “If I tell Jeremiah,” he finally said, “he’ll rush in and try to take whatever is there for his own use.”

  “He’s your boss.”

  “But that doesn’t mean I do everything he tells me. And that definitely doesn’t mean I want him using Fayden. If this is really her doing, I’m not a fan of it. But I wouldn’t be a fan of Jeremiah doing it, either, and I don’t think he could stop himself. Not when there’s that much power up for grabs.”

  Scout and Sebastian looked at each other for a minute, like they were taking each other’s measure.

  “Perhaps an agreement could be worked out,” he carefully said.

  “I’m listening,” Scout said.

  “You need Jeremiah off your back. I need you to take care of Fayden because you’ll be nicer to her than he would.”

  “How do we know we can trust you?” Scout asked.

  “You can’t. That’s the nature of trust—it’s always a risk. And I’m not crazy about trusting someone I know hates me. But what better options do we have?”

  Hands on her hips, Scout looked at him for a minute. Finally, she held out a hand. “Deal under those terms. The détente is extended between your crew and mine until Fayden is neutralized.”

  He held out his hand, and they shook on it. “Deal.” He gave me a nod, then turned and headed back down the bridge again. He met Alex and the tall girl and must have given them a little bit of a summary because they both gave us dirty looks. Maybe they weren’t thrilled about the plan . . . or maybe he’d told them what Scout had said about Reapers.