Firespell

by Chloe Neill

  I raised my eyebrows. “I’m guessing that’s their motto.”

  “You’d be right,” Scout said. “They think the world would be a better place if they kept their magic. They think they’re the elite, and everyone should give them their due. A survival of the fittest kind of thing.”

  “Survival of the craziest, more like,” Jason muttered. He glanced down at his watch, then looked up at Michael. “We probably need to head,” he said, then glanced at me. “Sorry to leave you in here. We’ve got some stuff at MA this afternoon.”

  “No problem. Thanks for coming by. And thanks for the flower.”

  He stuck his hands into his pockets and grinned back at me. “No problem, Parker. Glad you’ve rejoined the land of the living.”

  I grinned back at him, at least until Scout’s throat clearing pulled my attention away.

  “I should also head back,” she said, pulling a massive, baffled down jacket off the back of her chair. She squeezed into it, then fastened the clips that held it together. The white jacket went past her knees, which made it look like she had on nothing but tights and thick-soled Dr. Martens Mary Janes beneath it.

  “You look like the Pillsbury Snow Boy.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s breezy out there today. Not all of us have these warm, lush accommodations to look forward to.”

  I snuggled into the bed, thinking I’d better gather what warmth I could, given the possibility that I’d be returning to my meat locker of a room tomorrow.

  “Take care,” Michael said, rapping his knuckles on the tray at the end of the bed. I assumed that was the macho-guy equivalent of giving me a hug. Either way, I appreciated the gesture.

  I smiled back at him. “I’m sure I’ll see you soon.”

  “And hopefully under better circumstances.” He cast Scout a sideways glance. “Green.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Garcia.” When she looked at me again, she was smiling. “I’ll give you a call later.”

  I nodded.

  The trio gathered up their things, and I clenched my fingers, itching to ask one final question. Well, scared to ask it, anyway. My palms were actually sweating, but I made myself get it out.

  “Jason.”

  They all turned back at the sound of his name.

  He arched his eyebrows. “Yeah?”

  “Could I talk to you for a sec?”

  “Um, sure.” He shouldered his backpack, then exchanged a glance with Scout and Michael. She winged up her brows, but let Garcia push her toward and out the door.

  When the door shut behind them, Jason glanced back at me. “Everything okay?”

  “Oh, yeah.” I frowned down at the blanket for a minute before finally raising my gaze to his crystal blue eyes. “Listen, I just wanted to say thanks. For getting me out of the basement, I mean. If it hadn’t been for you and Scout—”

  “You wouldn’t have gotten hit in the first place,” he finished.

  I opened my mouth, then closed it again, not really able to argue that point.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” he softly said. “And for what it’s worth, you’re welcome, Lily.”

  I liked the way he said my name, as if it weren’t just a series of letters, but a word thick with meaning. Lily.

  “I mean, I’m not glad you got wrapped up in this—especially since you don’t have magic to defend yourself with.” He tipped his head to the side. “Although, I think I heard something about a flip-flop?”

  “I guess Scout’s been giving up all my offensive moves?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “And impressive moves they are. I mean, who’d have thought that a few square inches of foam were really a technologically advanced—”

  “All right, Shepherd. You’ve made your point.”

  “Have I?” he asked, with a half smile.

  Turned out, Jason’s half smile was even more deadly than the full, dimpled grin. The half smile was drowsier—almost ridiculously handsome.

  “You did,” I finally said.

  We stared silently at each other for a moment before he bobbed his head toward the door. “I guess I should join Scout and Michael?”

  He made it a question, as if he didn’t want to leave, but could sense my nerves. Heart pounding fiercely in my chest, I stopped him. “Actually, one more thing.”

  He raised questioning brows.

  “When we were down there in the basement. When I got hit. I thought—I thought I heard a growl. Like an animal.”

  His eyes widened, lips parting in surprise. He hadn’t expected me to bring it up, but I couldn’t get the sound out of my mind.

  Jason hadn’t yet given me an answer, so I pressed on. I knew the growling hadn’t come from Scout—she’d admitted to being a spellbinder. And I didn’t think it had come from earthquake girl or firespell boy. Jason was the only other person there.

  “That sound,” I said. “Was it you?”

  He gazed at me, a chill in his blue eyes, shards of icy sapphire.

  “Scout gave you the simple answer about Adepts,” he finally said. “She told you that we each have magic, a gift of our own. That’s a short answer, but it’s not entirely accurate.” He paused, then wet his lips. “I’m not like the others.”

  My heart thudded so fiercely, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he could hear it. It took me a moment to ask him. “How much not like them?”

  When Jason looked up at me again, the color of his eyes had shifted to green and then to a silvered yellow, like those of a cat caught in the light. And there was something wolfish in his expression.

  “Enough,” he said, and I’d swear his voice was thicker, deeper. “Different enough.”

  He turned to go.

  My heart didn’t stop pounding until the door closed behind him.

  10

  The room was quiet after the triplets left, at least for a few minutes. The doctor finally visited and looked me over, and reached the same conclusion that had been passed along earlier—I was fine. Notably, he didn’t ask me what threat sent me from an all-girls’ private school to a hospital.

  Whatever he knew, I had hours yet to kill in the hospital. For the first ten minutes, I flipped my cell phone over and over in my hand, trying to gather up the nerve to call Ashley. But she was probably still in class and, besides, what was I going to tell her? That I’d met some magical weirdos who’d managed to rope me into their shenanigans? I wasn’t crazy about the idea of that conversation, or how I was going to explain it without sounding completely loopy—so I put the phone down again and glanced around the room. Since no one had brought me homework—and I wasn’t about to ask for any—I turned on the television bolted to the wall, settled back into the bed, and had just started watching a reality show about bored, rich housewives when there was a knock at the door.

  I had no idea who else would visit—other than brat packers hoping to gloat about their victory—but I pointed the remote at the television and turned it off.

  “Come in,” I said.

  The door opened and closed, followed by the sound of heels clacking on the tile floor. Foley appeared from around the corner, hands clasped before her, a tidy, pale suit on her slender frame, ash-blond hair tidy at her shoulders. Her expression was all business.

  “Ms. Parker.” Foley walked to the window, pushed aside a couple of the slats in the blinds, and glanced out at the city. “How are you feeling?”

  “Good, considering.”

  “You lost consciousness,” she said. Said, not asked.

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “Yes, well. I trust, Ms. Parker, that you understand the importance of our institution’s reputation, and of the value of discretion. We, of course, do not wish to elicit untoward attention regarding the hijinks of our students. It would not serve St. Sophia’s, nor its students or alumnae, for the community or the press to believe that our institution is not a safe place for its students.”

  I don’t know what she knew about what went on—or what she
thought went on—but she was certainly keen on keeping it quiet.

  “I also trust that you understand well enough the importance of caring for your physical well-being, and that you will take sufficient care to ensure that you do not lose consciousness again.”

  That made me sit up a little straighter. What did she think—that I was starving myself and I’d passed out for lack of food? If only she’d seen the private moment I shared with the pudding cup earlier.

  “I take care of myself,” I assured her.

  “All evidence to the contrary.”

  Okay, honestly, there was a tiny part of me that wanted to rat on Scout, Jason, Michael, and the rest of the Adepts, or at least on the brat packers who threw me into harm’s way. It would have been satisfying to wipe that smug expression from Foley’s face, and replace it with something a bit more sympathetic.

  There were two problems with that theory.

  First, I wasn’t entirely sure Foley was capable of sympathy.

  Second, I had to be honest. I hadn’t gone downstairs because Veronica and the rest of her cronies had forced me. And I’d made my way down the other hallway—and into the Reapers’ path—because I’d decided to play junior explorer. I’d been curious, and I’d walked that plank willingly.

  Besides, I could have walked away from all of it earlier. I could have stepped aside, told Jason, Michael, and Scout that I didn’t want to be included in their magical mystery tour, and let them handle their Reaper problems on their own. But I’d invited their trust by asking them to fill me in, and I wasn’t about to betray it.

  So this time, I’d take one for the team. But Scout so owed me.

  “You’re right,” I told her. Her eyes instantaneously widened, as if she were surprised a teenager would agree with her orders. “It’s been a stressful week.” Total truth. “I should take better care of myself.”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “That’s a surprisingly mature attitude.”

  “I’m surprisingly mature.” It wasn’t that I wanted to snark back to the principal of my high school, the head honcho (honchess?) of the place I lived, slept, ate, and learned. But her attitude, her assumption that I was here because I lacked some fundamental ability to keep myself safe, practically begged for snark.

  On the other hand, since I’d made the decision to move deeper into the convent instead of heading back to my room, maybe I did.

  Foley lifted her brows, and her expression made her thoughts on my snark pretty clear. “Ms. Parker, we take the well-being of our students and the reputation of our institution very seriously.”

  Given what was going on beneath her institution, I wondered about that. But I managed to keep my mouth shut.

  “I expect you’ll return to St. Sophia’s tomorrow?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  Foley nodded. “Very well. I’ve asked Ms. Green to gather your assignments. Given that tomorrow’s Saturday, you’ll have some time to complete them before classes resume. I’ll arrange for a car to transport you back to St. Sophia’s. If you require anything before your return, you may contact our staff.”

  I nodded. Her work apparently done, she walked toward the door. But then she glanced back.

  “About our conversation,” she said, “perhaps I was . . . ill informed about your parents’ professions.”

  I stared at her for a few seconds, trying to make sense of the about-face. “Ill informed?”

  “I recognize that you, of course, would know better than I the nature of your parents’ work.” She glanced down at her watch. “I need to return to the school. Enjoy your evening.”

  My mind began to race, but I managed to bob my head as she disappeared around the corner, then opened and closed the door again.

  I stared down at the remote control in my hand for a minute after she’d left, flipping it through my fingers as I ruminated.

  It was weird enough that she’d dropped by in the first place—I mean, how many high school principals visited their students in the hospital? She clearly had her own theories about what had happened to me—namely, that it was my fault. I guess she wanted to cover her bases, make sure I wasn’t going to spill to the media or call a lawyer about my “accident.”

  But then, out of the blue, she brought up my parents and changed her story? And even weirder, she actually seemed sincere. Contrite, even, and Foley didn’t exactly seem like the nurturing type, much less the type to admit when she was wrong.

  I gnawed the edge of my lip and gave the remote a final flip. Call it what you want—Reapers, Adepts, magic, firespell, whatever. Things were seriously weird at St. Sophia’s.

  True to the doc’s word, I was released the next morning. True to Foley’s word, one of the glasses-clad matrons who usually patrolled the study hall brought casual clothes for me to change into—jeans and a T-shirt, probably selected by Scout—and signed me out. A nurse wheeled me, invalid style, to the front door of the clinic and the St. Sophia’s-branded minivan that sat at the curb. The matron was silent on the way back to the convent, but it was a pretty short ride—only a few blocks back to my new home on Erie. They dropped me off at the front door without a word, and I headed up the stairs and into the building. Although I’d been gone only a couple of days, the convent seemed almost . . . foreign. It hadn’t yet begun to feel like home, but now, it felt farther from Sagamore than ever.

  It was a Saturday afternoon, and the main building was all but empty. A handful of students peppered the study hall, maybe catching up on weekend homework or trying to get ahead to pad their academic resumes. The halls that held the suites were louder, music and television spilling into the hallway as St. Sophia’s girls relaxed and enjoyed the weekend.

  I unlocked the door to our suite. Scout jumped up from the couch, decked out in jeans and layered T-shirts, her hair pulled into a short ponytail, and practically knocked me over to get in a hug.

  “Thank God,” she said. “The brat packers were getting almost unbearable.” She let me go, then gave me an up-and-down appraisal. “Is everything where I left it?”

  “Last time I checked,” I said with a smile, then waved at Barnaby, who sat on the couch behind us. She wore a fitted pale blue T-shirt with a rainbow across the front, and her hair was up in some kind of complicated knot. It was very Sound of Music.

  “Hello, Lily,” she said.

  “Hi, Lesley.”

  The door to Amie’s suite opened. Amie, M.K., and Veronica piled out of the room, their smiles fading as they realized I’d come home. They were all dressed in athletic shorts, snug tank tops, and sneakers. I assumed it was workout time.

  Amie’s smile faded to an expression that was a lot heavier on the contrition and apology. M.K.’s smile was haughty. Veronica was using both hands to pull her hair into a ponytail. I wasn’t even on her radar.

  “You were in the hospital,” M.K. said. There was no apology behind her words, no indication that she thought they might have been responsible for anything that happened to me. They weren’t, of course, responsible, but they didn’t know that. I’d hoped for something a little more contrite, honestly—maybe something in a nice “sheepish embarrassment.”

  “Yep,” I said.

  “What happened to you?” M.K. had apparently skipped embarrassment and gone right to being accusatory.

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” I told them.

  “Why? Is it catching?” M.K. snickered at her joke. “Something contagious?”

  “There are certain . . . liability issues,” I said, then looked over at Amie. She was the worrywart of the group, so I figured she was my most effective target. “Insurance issues. Parental liability issues. Probably best not to talk about it. We don’t want to have to get the lawyers involved. Not yet, anyway.”

  Scout, half turning so that only I could see her, winked at me.

  Veronica and Amie exchanged a nervous glance.

  “But thanks for the tour,” I added as I headed for my bedroom. I unlocked the door, then stood there
as Scout and Barnaby skipped inside.

  “It was very educational,” I said, then winked at the brat pack, walked inside, and closed the door behind us.

  As dramatic exits went, it wasn’t bad.

  I gave Scout and Lesley a mini- update, at least the parts I could talk about in Lesley’s company. Lesley wasn’t an Adept, at least as far as I was aware, so I kept my replay of Foley’s visit and my chat with Jason purely PG. But I shooed them out of my room pretty quickly.

  I needed a shower.

  A superhot, superlong, environmentally irresponsible shower. As soon as they were out the door, I changed into my reversible robe (stripes for perky days, deep blue for serious ones), grabbed my bucket o’ toiletries, and headed for the bathroom.

  I spent the first few minutes with my hands against the wall, my head dunked under the spray. The heat probably didn’t do much good for my hair, but I needed it. I had basement and hospital grime to wash off, not to mention the emotional grime of (1) more of Foley’s questioning of my parents’ honesty; (2) having been unconscious and apparently near death for twelve hours; (3) having been the victim of a prank that led to point number two; and (4) having been carried out of a dangerous situation by a ridiculously pretty boy and having almost no memory of it whatsoever. That last one was just a crime against nature.

  And, of course, there was the other thing.

  The magic thing.

  Varsity, Junior Varsity, Adepts, firespell, Reapers, enclaves. These people had their own vocabulary and apparently a pretty strong belief that they had magical powers.

  Sure, I’d seen something. And whatever was going on beneath St. Sophia’s, beneath the city, I wasn’t about to rat them out. But still—what had I seen? Was it really magic? I mean—magic, as in unicorns and spells and wizards and witchcraft magic?

  That, I wasn’t so sure about.

  I gave it some thought as I repacked my gear and padded back to the room in my shower shoes, then waved at Scout and Lesley, who were playing cards in the common room. I gave it some thought as I scrubbed my hair dry, pulled flannel pajama bottoms from the drawer of my bureau, and got dressed again.