“There you are.”
Cal appeared at my elbow, and it was all I could do not to jump guiltily. Then I saw what he was wearing. “Where did you get that?”
Cal was dressed in a Hex Hall uniform. The blazer was a little tight on his broad shoulders, more so when he shrugged. “It was mine. Mrs. Casnoff brought it with her. I don’t really, uh, do costumes. Figured this was a good compromise.”
I’d thought no one but Archer could make that uniform look good, but Cal proved me wrong. The bright blue was nice against his tan skin and golden hair, and he looked younger. There was a dimple in his cheek as he smiled at me—something I’d never noticed before. “You make a good Hecate,” he said.
I would have snorted and made a sarcastic comment, but there was something in his eyes that made me just say, “Thanks.”
All of the sudden, something else he’d said clicked. “Wait, Mrs. Casnoff brought it? Is she here?”
“Yeah,” Cal said, nodding over toward the ice sculpture, where, sure enough, Mrs. Casnoff stood. She was wearing a draping gown in the same bright blue as Cal’s uniform.
When Mrs. Casnoff saw us, she walked over to us. “Sophie,” she said, her voice warmer than I’d ever heard it. “Happy birthday. It’s good to see you.”
I actually believed she meant it, which was weird.
Weirder still was the smile she gave me as she said, “I was just talking with several of the guests about your decision not to go through with the Removal. We’re all so pleased.”
Great. Nothing better than my superpersonal decision being party chitchat.
“Well, that’s probably a first for you,” I tried to joke. When she just looked confused, I clarified. “Being pleased with me.”
And then she completely freaked me out by laughing. Granted, it was a low, short laugh, but still. Before Mrs. Casnoff could blow my mind any more, Dad walked over, wearing a long black robe and carrying a staff topped with a dark red jewel carved to look like a pomegranate. Once again, I had no clue who he was supposed to be. He and Mrs. Casnoff just nodded at each other, so I guess they’d said their hellos earlier.
“Are you having a nice time?” Dad asked, and there was such a hopeful look on his face that I forced a bright grin.
“Yeah, best birthday party ever!”
I think I oversold it a little bit, but Dad seemed relieved. “Good. I know it’s a bit much, but…well, it’s the first time I’ve celebrated one of your birthdays. I wanted it to be special.”
Guilt and other general yucky feelings bounced inside me. To keep Dad from noticing, I turned my attention to the gift table. That one present was still floating above the rest, spinning in lazy circles. As I looked at it, it drifted toward me, landing softly in my hands.
“I think that one wants you to open it,” Cal observed.
The wrapping paper was a deep purple, and the silver ribbon curled and undulated around my fingers like it was underwater. It was a beautiful gift, but the magic coming off it felt awfully strong. Probably from the floating spell, I thought as I tugged at the bow.
It was the smell I noticed first, that weird metallic scent you sometimes get in a lightning storm. There was a sudden flash of red light, and a sound like a sonic boom. I heard Dad or Cal shout, and the next thing I knew, I was on my back, a painful stinging sensation in my shoulder.
My ears felt stuffed with cotton, but I had the sense that people were yelling, and I watched pairs of feet run by my head. It reminded me of prom, when I’d sat in that pool of punch, watching chaos erupt all around me. Then my shoulder stopped stinging and started burning, badly enough that I moaned. There was a crush of people around me, and I saw a tall figure wearing a mask push his way to the front of the crowd. His mouth was tight, and I thought I saw fear in his familiar brown eyes. I almost opened my mouth to tell Archer to get out of here before I realized how stupid that would be. Then the people shifted, and he was gone.
Cal’s face swam into view. I couldn’t hear him over the ringing in my ears. I’m pretty sure he mouthed for me to lie still, which seemed easy enough.
He held my hand, and while the pain didn’t go away, a woozy sense of calm spread over me. So I was pretty dispassionate as I rolled my head to the side and watched Cal pull a six-inch shard of demonglass out of my shoulder. As soon as it was out, the burning faded, but I knew I’d have yet another scar. “That present sucked,” I muttered.
Dad slipped an arm around my shoulder and helped me sit up. As he did, his sleeve fell back to reveal several slivers of demonglass embedded in his forearm.
“I’m fine,” he said before I could ask. “Cal can get them out later. Are you all right?”
My shoulder was still on fire, but there was no pain anywhere else, and other than the shock of being blown backward and stabbed, I was peachy. “I think so. What was that, like a magic pipe bomb?”
The present lay in tatters on the floor, its ribbon coiling and snapping like a snake. Cal stomped on the ribbon, and it went still. “Seems like it,” he said grimly.
“And it was ensorcelled to seek you out,” Dad added. He looked so worried and angry that I decided not to give him a hard time for using a word likeensorcelled.
“Thank God they couldn’t get their hands on very much demonglass,” Lara said, and I glanced up, surprised to see her. She was wearing some sort of eighteenth-century gown, with wide hips and a square neckline. Her hair was hidden underneath a towering powdered wig. “It seems like that was the biggest piece,” she continued, kicking the shard that had pierced my shoulder. Roderick was behind her, his black wings beating slowly, stirring the air. Lara turned to him and said, “Search the grounds. If Cross is still here, we’ll find him.”
My brain still felt woozy, and my voice was weak when I said, “Cross?”
It was Mrs. Casnoff who answered me. “Clearly, The Eye was behind this. Who else would do such a thing?”
“And since there’s only one Eye who can do magic,” Lara said, her voice sounding almost identical to her sister’s, “it’s obvious. Archer Cross just made another attempt on your life.”
chapter 27
The next nine days stretched out like taffy. Mrs. Casnoff went back to Hecate, which was kind of a relief. Having her at Thorne had been a little too “worlds colliding” for me. I spent most of my time in my room, recovering from my injury. But staring at the wall gave me lots of time to think, mostly about Archer. I’d seen the look on his face right after the explosion had gone off. He’d been scared. Shocked, even, and not in the “Whoops, my assassination didn’t go off as planned” way. He hadn’t known it was coming, which meant he couldn’t have been the one who planted the gift. Which meant there was someone else who wanted to kill me, a thought that made me want to never leave the safe cocoon of my bed. Still, I decided to keep my meeting with Archer. I had a feeling that all of this was connected somehow. Nick and Daisy, the attempt on my life, The Eye suddenly getting way more hard-core. The sooner I got to the bottom of it, the better.
There was one good thing that had come out of nearly being shish kebabbed; Jenna started talking to me again. She came by my room the morning after the party to check on me, standing uncertainly in the doorway. “How are you feeling?”
I scooted back onto my pillows and tried to shrug. That sent a fire bolt of pain through my whole upper body, though, and I grimaced. “Oh, you know. Like I got stabbed by glass from hell. But it’s getting better.”
Jenna took a couple of steps into the room, her expression grave. “You could’ve been killed.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t.”
A couple more steps and she was beside my bed, sitting on the edge. “Soph,” she started, but I interrupted her. “Look, Jenna, can we just skip to the part where we both say we’re sorry and hug?”
She gave a startled laugh, and for the first time, I noticed there were tears in her eyes. “Yeah, let’s do that,” she said with a sniffle, before gingerly wrapping her arms around me.
&
nbsp; We sat there, our arms around each other, until I asked, “You’re still not coming back, are you?”
She shook her head. “I can’t.” When she pulled away, tears were streaming down her face, and even her pink stripe looked dimmer. “I have to do this, Sophie.”
I wasn’t sure if I could talk around the sudden lump in my throat, so I just nodded.
“But it’s not like I won’t be able to see you ever again,” she said, squeezing my hand. “You could even come visit the nest at Christmas.”
“Nest?” I asked, raising both eyebrows.
Jenna shrugged, embarrassed. “That’s what you call it when a bunch of vampires live together.”
I tried to think up a witty comment, maybe something about hippies and communes, but I was too sad to be snarky.
Between the thought of going back to Hecate alone and nervousness over meeting Archer, I was too much of a basket case to work with Dad. It wasn’t until the day before he left that I felt up to working with the grimoire. No one seemed to have noticed that it was missing, and once I went to check on the glamoured book Dad had left in its place, I could see why. Even I couldn’t tell it wasn’t the same book, and the trace of magic coming off the glamour was so faint that you couldn’t feel it unless you knew it was there.
We studied it in the same room where I practiced controlling my powers. The force coming off those pages still made my heart race and my head ache. Regardless, I sat down next to Dad on the floor, the book spread out before us, and listened as he explained every spell. He had been right: the magic contained within those pages was some of the darkest stuff I’d ever heard of. There were killing spells, and rituals that would bind another soul to yours so you could make someone your slave. Dad went over each one, his voice level and calm, no matter how bad the enchantments were. There was only one spell he didn’t talk about, which was weird. The markings for it only took up half a page, and they looked pretty simple, but when we flipped to that page, Dad drew in his breath.
“What?” I asked, fidgeting on the cold marble floor. “It can’t be any worse than that one about babies.”
“It’s not that,” Dad said. He pushed his glasses farther up on his nose. “It’s just that I didn’t know this particular spell actually existed.”
“What does it do?”
Dad paused before sliding the book over to me. “Touch it.”
I raised my eyebrows, but did what he asked. I don’t know why, but I pressed my whole palm to the page so that my hand nearly covered the markings. As soon as I did, I felt a weird thud in my chest, like someone had just punched me lightly in the sternum.
“Um, ow,” I said, drawing back my hand. “Are you going to tell me what I just did?”
He pulled the book back. “No. Hopefully, you’ll never need to know.”
And apparently that was that, because Dad shut the grimoire and stood up. “I think it’s time to put this back,” he said. “There’s nothing more to be learned from it, and I now see why the Council keeps it locked up.” He glanced down at the book with disgust. “If it were up to me, we’d destroy it.”
“So do it.” After some of the stuff we’d read in that thing, nothing would make me happier than seeing it in flames. The thought of it in the wrong hands was truly shudder-worthy.
But Dad shook his head. “Alexei Casnoff wanted it kept intact as a reminder.”
“Of course he did.” I winced as I stood, and Dad hurried to help me up.
“How are you feeling?”
“Hard as it may be to believe, better. How’s your arm?”
He absentmindedly rubbed it. “Stings, but it could’ve been much worse.”
He slipped the grimoire inside his jacket, and we made our way back downstairs. I could tell there was something bothering Dad, but whether it was all that stuff in the grimoire or the birthday party incident, I didn’t know.
We were all the way to the foyer before he said, “Sophie, I have to tell your mother about what happened.”
I suppressed a groan. I’d known this was coming, but I was hoping we could put it off until after Dad got back. I had a lot going on, and the last thing I wanted was a worried mom on top of all of that.
“Dad, she’s just going to freak. And probably come here and get me, and then you guys will start yelling at each other, and I’ll have to act out by wearing lots of eyeliner and doing drugs. Do you really want to deal with that?”
Dad smiled and ran a hand over my hair. The gesture was so parental and normal that I didn’t know how to react. “Perhaps it can wait until after my trip,” he said. “I’m not quite ready to give you back yet.”
His voice was full of affection, and I wondered if a person could actually choke on guilt, because it rose up in my throat as bitter and scalding as black coffee.
I looked away, hoping he wouldn’t see it, and said, “Where are you going, anyway?”
“Up north, near Yorkshire. Another attack.”
He didn’t have to say by whom.
“While I’m there,” Dad added, “I’m supposed to meet with a warlock in Lincolnshire. He’s supposedly done some extensive research on demons, and I’m hoping he may be able to help me with tracing Nick’s and Daisy’s origins. Hopefully, when I come back, we can begin to resolve this matter.”
When he got back, I might have news of my own about Nick and Daisy. Not that I had any idea how I was going to tell him what I’d found out. I didn’t want to pursue that train of thought, what with it being all stomach-twisting, so instead, I asked him something else that had been bugging me. “Hey, Dad, remember earlier this week, when I got stabbed?”
“I have a hazy recollection, yes.”
“Is it worth it? Being head of the Council? I mean, if people are always gunning for you, why not hand it over to someone else? You could go on vacation. Have a life. Date.”
I waited for Dad to embrace his inner Mr. Darcy again and get all huffy, but if anything, he just looked rueful. “One, I made a solemn vow to use my powers to help the Council. Two, things are turbulent now, but that won’t always be the case. And I have faith that you’ll make a wonderful head of the Council someday, Sophie.”
Yeah, except for that whole sleeping with the enemy part, I thought. Wait, not that I would actually be sleeping with…I mean, it’s a metaphor. There would only be metaphorical sleeping.
My face must have reflected some of the weirdness happening in my brain, because Dad narrowed his eyes at me before continuing, “As for dating, there’s no point.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m still in love with your mother.”
Whoa. Okay, not exactly the answer I was expecting.
Before I could even process that, Dad rushed on, saying, “Please don’t let that get your hopes up. There is no way your mother and I could or will ever reunite.”
I held up my hand. “Dad, relax. I’m not twelve, and this isn’tThe Parent Trap. But that’s…it’s good to know. I always thought you and Mom must have hated each other. I thought that’s why Mom and I moved around so much—because she was trying to make sure you could never find us.”
His eyes slid away from my face, focusing on a spot above my shoulder. “Your mother had her reasons,” was all he said. Then he sort of sighed and turned away. “All the magic in the world can’t simplify affairs of the heart,” he murmured as he headed toward his office.
“Tell me about it,” I said to his retreating back.
Two days later, he left for Yorkshire, and I prepared for what I’d come to think of as my “field trip” with Archer. Calling it that seemed safer and more businesslike than “meeting” or, God forbid, “assignation.” Still, I spent most of the day in my room by myself because I was afraid Jenna or Cal would be able to tell something was up with me. I was so nervous that I was shooting off tiny flashes of magic like a sparkler.
I didn’t even attempt to sleep, and I thought three a.m. would never come. Finally, at 2:30, I threw on a black T-shirt and some ca
rgo pants, hoping that was an appropriate ensemble for meeting one’s former crush who had turned out to be one’s mortal enemy.
As I walked down the gravel path toward the mill, I tried to tell myself that despite my churning stomach, I had nothing to feel guilty about. I was doing this for a good reason. No, Dad might not understand that. And Jenna definitely wouldn’t, but…no. No, I wasn’t going to let the thought of Jenna make me feel bad about this.
When I got to the mill, Archer was waiting for me just as he had before, right by the doorway leading to the Itineris. His back was to me, and he was wearing a dark green V-neck shirt and a pair of worn jeans. That struck me as weird. I’d expected him to be all decked out in L’Occhio black, but instead he looked like any regular teenage guy.
Except for the giant sword in his hand. “Is that really necessary?” I asked when I walked in, noting that his dagger was also hanging off his belt. His head jerked up, and I thought he might have been relieved to see me. But then he turned back to the Itineris, crouching down to pull something out of a black duffel bag at his feet. “Never hurts to be prepared,” he said.
“It just seems like overkill when you already have a dagger and I have superpowerful magic at my disposal.”
“‘Superpowerful?’” He stood up, a gold chain dangling from his fingers. “Let me remind you of two words, Mercer:Bad. Dog.”
I rolled my eyes. “That was nearly a year ago. I’m way better now.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not taking any chances,” he said. For the first time, I noticed there was some sort of holster thing on his back. He slid the sword into it so the hilt rose over his shoulders. “Besides,” he added, “I thought you might not come. After what happened the other night…” he paused, studying my face. “Are you all right?”
“I will be when people stop asking me that.”
“You know I had nothing to do with that, right?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “And if you did have something to do with it, I will vaporize you where you stand.”
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