We tossed our clipboards down and headed for the stairs.
As we started up, I could've sworn I saw a flash of green out of the corner of my eye, but when I turned around to look, there was nothing. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and I rubbed my hand absently over them.
"You okay?" Archer asked as he opened the door.
"Yeah," I said, but I was freaked out. "It's just . . . Can I ask you something really weird?"
"Those are my favorite kinds of questions."
"Do you think anyone around here could raise a demon?"
I thought he'd laugh or make a sarcastic comment, but instead he paused outside the cellar door and looked at me in that intense way he had.
"Why would you ask that?"
"Something Jenna said the other night. She thinks Holly may have been killed because, uh, some people raised a demon."
Archer took that in before shaking his head and saying, "Nah, there's no way. Mrs. Casnoff would know if there was a demon on campus. They're pretty conspicuous."
"Why? Are they green and horny?" I willed a blush away and said, "I mean, as in having horns, not . . . the other."
"Not necessarily. They can look as human as you and me. Some of them even used to be human."
"Have you ever seen one?"
He looked at me incredulously. "Uh, no. Thank God. I like my face where it is and not eaten off."
"Yeah," I said as we reached the main staircase. "But you're a warlock. Couldn't you take a demon?"
"Not unless I had that," he said, pointing to the stained-glass angel above the stairs. "See that sword? Demonglass. Only thing that can kill demons."
"And so originally named," I commented, making him laugh.
"You mock," he said, "but that's some hardcore stuff. The only place you can find it is in hell, so it's kinda hard to come by."
"Wow," I said, looking at the window with new appreciation.
"Archer!" I heard Elodie trill from somewhere upstairs. I walked past him. "Well, thanks. See ya."
"Mercer."
I turned around.
He was standing at the bottom of the stairs, and in the soft lights of the chandelier he was so handsome that my chest hurt. It was easy to forget how irritating he was when he looked that good. "What?" I asked in the most bored voice I could manage.
"Arch!"
Elodie came bounding past me, and Archer's eyes went from me to her.
I turned and ran up the stairs before I had to see her in his arms.
CHAPTER 19
By the beginning of October, Chaston had sent written testimony into the Council, stating she couldn't remember anything about the attack, so
Jenna was allowed to stay. I'd thought that news would do something to remove the shadows from under her eyes, but it didn't. She hardly talked to anyone besides me, and even then she barely smiled, and she never laughed.
As for me, I started to feel like I might actually be getting the hang of life at Hecate. My classes were going well. Elodie and Anna had been shaken up for about two weeks after Chaston and temporarily lost their sadistic urge to torture me. Instead they pretty much ignored me. But by the middle of October they were back to normal, which for them meant making nasty remarks and talking about clothes.
I avoided trouble with the Vandy even though she'd made Archer my permanent Defense partner, probably in the hopes that he'd inadvertently kill me. But even that wasn't going too badly, although being forced to spend more time in close proximity to him was its own type of torture. In fact, the more time we spent cataloguing in the cellar or blocking each other's blows in Defense, the more I began to suspect that my crush might be deepening into something else, something that I really didn't want to put a name to. It wasn't just that he was hot--although, believe me, that was definitely part of it--it was the way he ran his fingers through his hair. The way he looked at me like I was actually interesting to talk to. The way his eyes lit up when he laughed at my jokes. Hell, the fact that he laughed at my jokes.
And the more I got to know him, the more wrong his dating Elodie seemed. He'd sworn there was more to Elodie than met the eye, but in the two months I'd been at Hecate, practically the only things I'd heard her talk about were spells for making your hair shinier or freckles disappear. She'd looked at me when mentioning that one. Even her essay for Lord Byron's class was about the way physical beauty enhanced a witch's power, supposedly because it gave her easier access to humans. It was ridiculous.
Now, sitting behind her in Ms. East's Magical Evolution class, I couldn't help but roll my eyes as she prattled on to Anna about the dress she was planning on conjuring for the school's annual All Hallow's Eve Ball in two weeks.
"Most people think redheads can't wear pink," she was saying, "but it totally depends on the shade of pink. Either really light pink or dark pink works best. And hot pink, of course, is just trashy."
This last bit was spoken in a louder voice for Jenna's benefit. She was sitting beside me, and even though she pretended to ignore them, I saw her fingers steal up to her pink streak a few minutes later.
I nudged her arm. "Don't listen to them. They're total bitches."
"Excuse me, Miss Mercer?"
I looked up to see Ms. East standing over my desk, one hand on her hip. Ms. East looked like she'd be one of the coolest teachers at Hecate.
Jenna and I privately joked that her look was dominatrix-chic. She was rail thin and always wore her dark maroon hair pulled back in a tight bun. Factor in her all-black wardrobe and sky-high heels, and she looked like she could easily be walking the runways in Paris. But like all the teachers at Hecate, Ms. East seemed to have been born with her sense of humor gland completely absent.
Now I smiled weakly at her and said, "Um . . . there are witches? In this class?"
The class erupted into giggles except for Elodie and Anna, who had probably guessed what I actually said, and were glaring at me.
The corners of Ms. East's mouth turned down a fraction of an inch, which was about as close to a frown as she got. I think she was afraid of creasing her perfectly smooth face.
"What a thrilling observation, Miss Mercer. However, you know that I do not tolerate interruptions in my class--"
"I wasn't interrupting," I interrupted, and Ms. East's mouth tilted down ever farther, which meant I'd just crossed into the land of Royally Screwed.
"Since you have so much to say, perhaps you would like to write it in an essay on the different classes of witches? Two thousand words, let us say? Due tomorrow."
As usual my mouth opened before my brain had a chance to stop it, and I yelped, "What? That's totally unfair!"
"And now you may exit my class. When you come back, kindly have your essay and an apology in hand."
I bit off a retort and gathered my things under Jenna's sympathetic gaze and Elodie's and Anna's smirks. It took a lot of self-control, but I didn't slam the door as I left.
I checked my watch and saw that I had forty minutes to kill until my next class, so I ran upstairs and dropped my books off before heading outside for a little fresh air.
It was one of those insanely beautiful days that only October seems capable of producing. The sky was a deep clear blue. The trees were still mostly green, with a few orange and gold leaves poking out here and there.
There was a pleasant sort of smoky-smelling breeze blowing, which felt just cool enough to make me glad I was wearing my blazer. So even though a part of me was still seething with the unfairness of getting kicked out of class, I was pretty happy about being given an unexpected free period, even though I should have been using it to write my stupid essay.
Just before I could do something super lame like spread my arms wide and burst into the chorus of "Colors of the Wind," I heard a voice say, "Why aren't you in class?"
I turned around to see the groundskeeper, Cal, standing behind me. As usual he was rocking his lumberjack look--all flannel and denim. And this time he even had a prop: a giant ax, which he
held in his left hand, the lethal head gleaming dully against his boot.
I don't know what the expression on my face was as I stared at that ax, but I imagined I must have looked like Elmer Fudd when Bugs Bunny had dressed up as a girl--popping eyes, jaw dropped to the ground.
Apparently that wasn't too far off, because Cal seemed to stifle a laugh as he lifted the ax and rested it on his shoulder.
"Relax. I'm not a psycho."
"I know that," I snapped. "You're the healing janitor dude."
"Groundskeeper."
"Isn't that like a janitor?"
"No, it's like a groundskeeper."
From the two interactions I'd had with him, I'd assumed Cal was some sort of Neanderthal jock type. For one thing, he was super buff, and his hair was dark blond, making him look exactly like your average high school quarterback. Plus I'd barely ever heard him speak more than three words at a time. But maybe there was more than met the eye.
"So if you can heal with your touch, why are you working here as like, Hagrid, or whatever?"
He smiled, and I noticed his teeth were very white and very straight.
What was with this place? Even the staff looked like Abercrombie & Fitch models.
"Shouldn't you be out there healing really important people instead of here, pulling weeds and patching up teenagers?"
He shrugged. "When I was released from Hecate last year, I offered my services up to the Council. They decided my talents were most useful here, protecting their most precious treasures. You."
There was something so . . . I don't know, intimate, about the way he said it that I felt like I might burst out in giggles and start blushing. Then I caught myself. I already had one stupid crush. I wasn't about to start lusting after the groundskeeper, for God's sake.
Maybe he realized the way he'd said it was weird too, because he quickly cleared his throat. "I mean, all of you. You know, their kids."
"Right."
"Anyway, now get back to Portraits of Faeries in Eighteenth Century
France, or whatever other dumb-ass class you're skipping."
I crossed my arms, both because I was getting a little pissed and also because the breeze across the lake was turning chilly. "Actually, I got kicked out of Ms. East's class. Magical Evolution."
He snorted. "Man. Cellar duty for a semester, kicked out of class . . ."
"Tell me about it," I replied. "Apparently there's something about me that pisses off every teacher in this school."
To my surprise, Cal shook his head. "I don't think that's it."
Dimly in the distance, I heard the clanging bell that signaled class changes. I knew I should hurry back for Byron's class, but I wanted to hear what Cal had to say.
"What do you mean?"
"Look at it from their point of view, Sophie. Your dad is head of the
Council. Everybody at Hecate is bending over backward to not show favoritism to you. So maybe they're going a little overboard in the opposite direction, you know?"
I just nodded. Why wasn't I surprised to find out that yet another thing was my dad's fault?
"You okay?" Cal asked, his head tilted a little.
"Yeah," I answered way too brightly. I sounded like a cheerleader on a Kool-Aid high. "Yeah," I repeated, much more normally this time. "I gotta go. Don't wanna be late!"
I rushed past him, nearly colliding with one of his shoulders.
God, the guy's built like a freaking oak tree, I thought as I picked up my pace.
In the end, I was still late for Byron's class. Which meant that not only did I get yelled at--in iambic pentameter no less--but I also had to write a five-page essay on my "chronic and egregious tardiness."
"I think I need to find a homework spell," I whispered to Jenna as I slid into my seat.
She just gave a halfhearted shrug and went back to drawing faces in her notebook.
Faces, I couldn't help but notice, that looked a lot like Holly and
Chaston.
CHAPTER 20
Later that night I worked on Ms. East's essay while Archer catalogued; I'd already written Byron's in my last class of the day, Classifications of Shapeshifters. Our teacher, Mr. Ferguson, was in love with the sound of his own voice, so he rarely paid attention to what we were doing at our desks. Jenna and I used to pass notes the whole time, but these days she usually spent the period doodling in her notebook and trying to shrink inside herself.
Archer and I had gotten to the point where we both barely catalogued more than ten things during our hour in the cellar. The Vandy hadn't said anything, which only confirmed my suspicion that the real point of cellar duty was being trapped down there for an hour three nights a week. After all, doing the work was pointless since everything we catalogued was in a different place the next time we arrived. We spent most of our time talking.
Since Jenna had started swimming in the deep end of the pity pool, Archer was pretty much the only friend I had. Elodie and Anna had completely given up on my joining their coven, and from what I'd heard, they were looking for white witches now, a sure sign that I had fallen below contempt with them. I tried to tell myself that it didn't matter, but the truth was, life at
Hecate had gotten pretty lonely.
"Do you think the teachers are hard on me because of my dad?" I asked Archer, looking up from the textbook spread across my lap.
"Probably." He hoisted himself onto an empty shelf. "Prodigium have pretty big egos. Not all of them are your dad's biggest fan, and Casnoff wouldn't want the other parents to think you're getting special treatment just because your dad is practically their king."
He raised an eyebrow. "Which makes you Crown Princess."
I rolled my eyes. "Oh yeah. Just let me polish my tiara and I'm set."
"Oh, come on, Mercer. I think you'd make a good queen. You've definitely got the snotty part down."
"I am not snotty!" I nearly yelped.
He leaned back on his elbows, a wicked smile on his face. "Please.
The first day I met you, you practically had a layer of permafrost covering you."
"Only because you were a jerk," I retorted. "You told me I sucked at being a witch."
"You did suck," he said with a laugh.
And then, in what was becoming a running joke, we said in unison, "Bad dog!" and smiled at each other.
"You're just not used to meeting women who don't fall all over your ass like you're in a boy band or something," I said when our laughter had subsided a little.
I'd turned back to my essay, so I had to look up when I realized he hadn't answered me.
He was looking at me with a small smile, a strange glint in his eye.
"So why didn't you?"
"Excuse me?"
"Well, according to you, women are always falling over me. So why didn't you? Not your type?"
I took a deep breath and hoped he didn't notice. Weird little moments like this one were getting too common with Archer and me. Maybe it was all the time we spent together alone in the cellar, or how familiar we'd gotten with each other's bodies while kicking the crap out of each other in Defense, but I was beginning to notice a subtle shift in our relationship. I wasn't delusional enough to believe that he actually liked me or anything, but flirting had definitely entered the picture. It left me feeling strange and totally unsure of myself in moments like these.
"Nope," I finally said, striving for a light tone. "I've always had a thing for the nerdy type. Arrogant pretty boys don't really ring my bell."
"So you think I'm pretty?"
"Shut up."
I needed to change the subject. "What about your family?" I asked.
He looked up, startled. "What?"
"Your family. Do they like my dad?"
He looked away quickly and gave a half shrug, but I could see something was wrong. "My family pretty much stays out of politics," he said. Then he held up his list. "Have you seen Vampire Fang: D. Frocelli?"
I shook my head.
As I turned ba
ck to my essay I wondered what the heck I'd said to freak Archer out so much. It occurred to me that in the past six weeks we'd been working together, Archer hadn't talked much about his family. It had never really bothered me before, but of course now that I knew he didn't want to talk about it, I was consumed by curiosity.
I wondered if Jenna would know anything about Archer's past, but then I quickly tossed the idea. Jenna was barely speaking to anyone and was clearly going through some major crap. The last thing she needed was me pestering her about my crush.
By the time the Vandy came for us, I'd already finished most of my essay, and I decided I would do the rest of it in the morning before class.
I walked back to my room, but as I did, I passed Elodie's open door and heard Anna's soft, lilting voice say, "Well, I'd be suspicious if it were my boyfriend."
I paused just outside the door and heard Elodie answer, "I would be if she weren't such a freak. Trust me, if Archer had to be stuck in the basement with any girl at this school, I'm positively thrilled it's Sophie Mercer. Archer wouldn't look at her twice."
It's funny. I knew that Archer wasn't interested in me, but actually hearing another person say it really, really sucked.
"She does have big boobs," Anna mused.
Elodie just snorted at that. "Please, Anna. Big boobs are not enough to compensate for being short and plain. And that hair!" Even though I couldn't see her, I imagined Elodie gave a shudder at that. I, meanwhile, was starting to feel vaguely nauseated. I knew I should walk away, but I couldn't stop listening. I wonder why it is that we always want to hear people talk about us, even if it's horrible stuff. And, you know, it's not like Elodie was saying anything I didn't know. I was short and plain and I did have crazy hair. I'd said these things about myself lots of times. So why were hot tears stinging my eyes?
"Yeah, but Archer is weird," Anna said. "Remember how mean he was to you first year? Like, didn't he call you a shallow bimbo, or something? Or dumb--"
"That's in the past now, Anna," Elodie said tightly, and I had to suppress a laugh. So Archer had apparently once been sensible. What had changed? Did Elodie actually have some depth to her, like he'd said? 'Cause
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