3
Jason held out his hands. I stood up, then took his hands and pulled him to his feet.
“You know,” he said, “if you’re open to a little constructive criticism, you cut it a little close there.”
“Maybe next time you should be a little more careful where you fight.”
He rolled his eyes, but he was grinning when he did it.
“Thanks for taking the hit,” I said, pulling off my hoodie and pressing the sleeve to his ear, wiping away some of the blood.
Jason shrugged. “The wolf wanted to fight. And maybe I like rescuing the damsel in distress.”
“Just to clarify, I did rescue you back.”
He slid me a sly glance. “Then that makes us even. For now.”
I grinned back, then checked out Michael and Scout. “You two okay?”
They nodded, then helped each other up.
“Well done,” Michael said, then looked at Jason. “You good?”
Jason nodded.
“You okay, Lils?”
I nodded at Scout, but the relief at putting them down—and keeping us all relatively safe—gave way to exhaustion. I suddenly felt like I was about to get the flu—body aching, drained of energy. I needed warm soup and an equally warm bed. Instead, I still had five twitching slimy things to deal with.
“That’s all I’ve got,” I quietly said. “I can walk out of here, but that’s about the only thing I’m going to be able to do. And we still have a problem.”
We looked back at the creatures.
Jason stepped beside me. “At least they stopped moving closer. That’s something.”
“Since we’ve taken them out, can we please get out of here?” Scout asked.
“We still have to get past them,” Michael pointed out. “And we can’t just leave them here to roam the tunnels. God only knows where they’d end up.”
“Or who they’d attack,” Jason said. “That means we need a plan for part two. We need to get these things out of here, and we need it really quicklike. Scout? Got anything in the hopper?”
“I don’t—I don’t know—”
“You don’t have to kill ’em,” Michael said. “Maybe you can just transport them or something? I mean, since we aren’t sure what they are?”
“What?” Scout said, a thread of panic in her voice. “Because those claws and teeth are for eating carrots? These aren’t happy, fuzzy bunnies we’re talking about.”
I knew that sound in her voice. I’d heard that panic before, when she’d been taken by the Reapers to their sanctuary. I turned around and looked her in the eyes, and saw the terror there. She was panicking again, and God only knew what kinds of things she was remembering.
“You can do this, Scout.” >
She shook her head. “I can’t. I don’t remember how.”
“Michael, Jason, and I are here. And those creatures aren’t Reapers. They aren’t going to use magic against you.”
She sniffed. “They might eat us.”
I put my hands on my hips. “You honestly think a werewolf is going to let those things eat his girl and her best pal? You’ve already seen him in action. And that was just an appetizer.”
She only blinked.
“Look,” I said, bravado bubbling up from somewhere I hadn’t known existed. “We only have to kick a little butt here. You love kicking butt. And if nothing else, Jason can shift and we can let his wolf have an early breakfast.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate that offer,” Jason muttered, “but I have no interest in eating those things, wolf or not.”
Scout’s eyes were still frozen on the creatures on the floor.
I tried again. “Scout.” I waited until she made eye contact, then leaned down and put my hands on the sides of her face to make sure she was looking at me.
“Scout, you and Jason saved me from Sebastian and Alex, and we came and got you out of the sanctuary. Whatever our weaknesses, we are a team. And we’re here, now, together. You can do this. I believe in you.”
“I’m not sure what to do.”
Michael snapped his fingers. “I’ve totally got it. Scout, you could flutterby them.”
She blinked at Michael. “What?”
“Flutterby them. Use a transmogrify spell like you did on that Frankenstein thing last year. Remember?”
Scout was quiet for a couple more seconds. “I can’t use a flutterby down here. I don’t have anything. I don’t have an incantation prepared.”
Michael grinned over at her. “Scout, you are an Adept extraordinaire. If anyone could do a transmog spell off the cuff, it would be you.”
For a moment, there was silence. And then she reached out and grabbed his cheeks and planted a kiss right on his lips. “You are brilliant,” she said.
When she let him loose again, his cheeks were flushed bright red, his eyes wide. Probably the best part of his day, I figured.
“You’re right,” she said. “I can totally do this. But it’s going to take a few minutes, and I need space to work.”
We all looked down at the creatures, which were beginning to stir again, heads lolling as they fought off the firespell.
“First off,” Scout said, “let’s all back up a little.”
Carefully and quietly, we took a few more steps backward, putting space between us and them.
“And now for something a little more formal,” Scout said. She looked around at the floor of the tunnel, which was relatively dry compared to some of the other areas we’d been in.
“Protection circle?” Jason asked.
“Protection circle,” she confirmed with a nod.
“What’s a protection circle?” I asked.
“It’s like a safety bubble,” Scout said, fumbling around in her messenger bag. “Like a little snow globe of happiness that will keep us safe from them.” She pulled out a small zip-top case. She opened it, then pulled out a small plastic hourglass filled with bright orange sand.
“You keep an hourglass in your messenger bag?” I wondered.
“Found it at a thrift store. Kept it for just such an occasion. Keep an eye on the biters.”
I made sure Jason and Michael were doing just that, then turned back to watch Scout work her juju. No way was I going to miss this.
She pulled a small screwdriver from the case and pried off the end of the hourglass. And then, starting behind us, she began to pour the sand in an arc around me. She completed most of a six-foot circle, but stopped when a gap of about a foot separated the two ends.
“Everyone inside,” she said. Michael and Jason both stepped carefully over the sand circle. When we were all inside, she went to her knees, put her hands on the floor, and pressed her lips to the gap in the circle.
“What’s she doing?” I whispered to Michael.
“She’s starting the Triple I,” he answered without looking back. “It stands for ‘intent, incantation, incarnation. ’ The three parts of a major spell.”
Okay, magic had officially become school.
“We ask a wish,” Scout said, sitting back on her heels. “We ask for peace. We ask for space between us and those who would harm us.”
She held the hourglass in her hands, then closed her eyes.
After a moment of silence, I leaned toward Michael again. “Is this part of it?”
“This is the part where I have to draft a spell on the fly since I haven’t poured a circle in forever,” Scout huffed. “It’s also the part where it helps if Adepts don’t ask questions while I do it.”
I zipped up my lips, just in time for Jason and Michael to take a step backward, bumping into me a little.
“They’re moving, Scout,” Michael said. “Draft faster.”
I glanced back. The things were starting to stumble their way to their feet.
Scout cleared her throat, then began her incantation. “Silence, serenity, solitude, space. We ask for protections inside of this place. Empower this circle with magical grace, and keep us all safe . . .”
She stopped. I looked over and saw the blank expression on her face.
“. . . and keep us all safe,” she repeated, desperation in her voice. She couldn’t seem to find the right phrase to end the poem.
“Hurry up, Scout.”
At Jason’s harried tone, I looked up again. All five of the creatures were on their feet, and they looked pretty angry. There were only ten or fifteen feet between us, and they were lumbering forward, fangs bared, claws beginning to scrape the concrete like nails on a chalkboard.
“Don’t listen to them,” I told her, “and don’t worry—you can do this.”
“And keep us all safe . . .”
Michael glanced back. “Anytime now!”
She snapped her fingers. “—in this circle we trace!” She poured the rest of the sand in a line, just as claws struck out at Michael. He jumped back, but she’d finished the circle just in time—the creature was out of luck.
The bubblelike shield shimmered as the creature made contact with it, then disappeared again when it yanked back its claw with a fierce whine. The pain didn’t deter it or the rest of them. They all began to attack. We stood there and watched them claw and scrape at the energy to get at us. The shield shimmered a little every time they made contact, but it held.
“Just in time,” Scout finally said.
Jason nodded. “You did good. Now, are you actually going to transmogrify them?”
Scout nodded, then knelt on the floor and began to pull stuff from her messenger bag. “A woman’s work never ceases.”
Scout Greene was a taskmaster worthy of any St. Sophia’s professor. She folded a piece of paper from a notebook into an origami cup in the shape of a bird, and started quizzing us to find stuff to put into it.
So far, I’d offered up a chunk of granola bar and three drops of water from my bottle. Jason and Michael didn’t have man purses, so she took stuff from their pockets—sixty-two cents, a ball of stringy blue jeans lint, and a tube of lip balm. Together, all that stuff was supposed to represent our sacrifice of various bits of earth—water, metal, food, etc.
When everything was in the paper cup, she folded the top carefully again, then scribbled out what I assumed was an incantation on another piece of paper. While she drafted, the monsters poked around the bubble, looking for a weak spot. Although they weren’t successful, from what I could tell, the shield wasn’t going to last forever.
When Scout had the finished incantation in one hand and the closed paper cup in another, she glanced around at each of us. “Are we ready?”
“I’ve never been more ready to climb into bed,” I told her. Michael and Jason nodded in agreement.
“Here’s the plan.” She held up the piece of paper. “I’m going to repeat the incantation, and as soon as I’m done, I’m gonna wipe out the circle and throw the charm. If I’ve done this right, the spell will trigger as soon as the charm hits.”
Michael pulled the cell phone from his pocket.
“Really,” Scout said flatly, “you’re going to make a call right now?”
Michael aimed the phone toward the creatures and began snapping. “I’m going to take pictures of these things in the likely event Smith and Katie don’t believe what we saw.” Smith and Katie were Varsity Adepts and the former leaders of Enclave Three. They’d held the reins when Scout had been kidnapped. Good riddance, if you asked me.
“Oh. Well, good call,” Scout allowed.
Michael smiled sweetly at her. “I’m entitled to a few good ideas, you know.”
She blushed.
When Michael was done and the cell phone was tucked away again, Jason clapped his hands together. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road. Everyone in the back of the bubble. Puts more space between us and them when the circle goes down,” he explained.
When we’d stepped back, Scout glanced at each of us in turn. “Are we ready?” When we’d all nodded, she did the same. “Then here goes nothing.”
Michael, Jason, and I each put up our fists, like we were heading into a schoolyard fight.
Scout closed her eyes and held the crane in her lifted hands. “Beauty comes in many sizes, but these guys just aren’t prizes. Give them all a new disguise, and make them change before our eyes!”
She cocked back her arm to throw the bird. “And three . . . two . . . and one!” She used her toe to push some sand out the circle. As soon as it was breached, the shield gave one final shimmer and dropped away. They lunged forward, and Scout threw the paper bird into the middle of the group.
The tunnel exploded into noise and white light.
I dropped down, hands over my head, waiting for an attack—that didn’t come.
I opened an eye. The air was filled with a thousand tiny white paper cranes, all of them flapping their little paper wings as they spun around us. The creatures were nowhere to be seen.
“What just happened?” I asked.
“She transmogrified them,” Michael said, surprise in his voice.
I stood up, waving a hand in front of my face so that I could see through the cranes. After a moment, they formed a long V and flew past us down the tunnel, leaving us alone, the floor littered with bits of origami confetti.
Michael stared openmouthed at the birds as they disappeared into the next chunk of the tunnel. “This is just . . . fricking amazing! You did it! You actually did it!” He picked Scout up and spun her around in the air, just like in the movies.
I grinned at the look of total shock on her face. Considering the fact that she’d actually kissed him a few minutes ago, my math said Garcia, two. Scout, zero.
“It was teamwork,” she said, adjusting her shirt when he finally put her down again. Her cheeks were pink, but I could tell she was trying really hard not to smile. Before I could say anything to her, Scout jumped at me and wrapped her arms around my neck.
“Can’t breathe,” I said, patting her back. “Dial it back.”
When she finally loosened up, I rubbed my neck. “What was that for?”
“You believed in me,” she said simply, and then put an arm around my shoulders.
“Of course I did. Now, shouldn’t we tell somebody about those things?”
“On it,” Michael said, tapping the keyboard on his phone. “Gave Daniel the heads-up,” he said, then nodded when the phone beeped only a second later. “Enclave tomorrow night for the debriefing.”
“Then I think that means our work here is done,” Scout said. “Let’s go home.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Just in case there were any more nasties lumbering around, Jason and Michael escorted us to the door into St. Sophia’s. And then, wolfless, Scout and I made our way back through the main part of the convent and the Great Hall, where we studied during our mandatory two-hour study hall (I know, right?), to the building that housed our suite. The common room was dark when we unlocked the door and tiptoed inside, as was Lesley’s room.
But Amie’s door was open. The bedroom light was off, but Veronica was standing in the doorway.
My stomach turned.
Veronica took a step forward, closing Amie’s door behind her. She was dressed for bed in yoga pants and a tank top, her hair long and styled straight, circles beneath her eyes. She looked us over.
“Where have you two been?” she asked, crossing her arms and leaning back against the doorway.
I glanced between mine and Scout’s rooms, which faced each other across the suite, the doors wide open. That was an obvious signal that we weren’t tucked in like we were supposed to be—and hadn’t been for a while.
But Scout stayed calm. “We couldn’t sleep,” she said, “so we walked around for a little while.” She walked toward her room. When Veronica didn’t budge, Scout stopped and looked back at her. “What are you doing in our suite anyway?”
Veronica took a step forward and closed Amie’s door behind her. “We were studying. Unlike the two of you.”
Her voice rose at the end, like she was asking a question—or daring us to prove her wrong.
“I mean, it’s pretty weird,” she said. “You two just heading out to walk around or whatever. It doesn’t even look like you’ve been in bed at all.” >
Scout and I exchanged a glance. This was going to be tricky. If we stuck to our “we were just walking around” story, she might think we were lying and do some investigating that would only inconvenience both of us.
We obviously couldn’t exactly tell her what we’d really been doing. But maybe if we told her something a little bit bad, we might answer her questions . . . and keep her from asking too many more.
“I went to meet my boyfriend,” I threw out. Okay, so I was fudging about our status, but the rest was true enough. “And Scout went with me. To, you know, prop the door open so I wouldn’t get locked out.” That sounded legit to me, anyway.
“You haven’t been here that long. You don’t have a boyfriend.”
I managed a bored eye roll. “That you know of.”
“Who is it?”
I made a little mental apology to Jason for outing our almost-relationship, but figured he’d get over it. “Jason Shepherd.”
Veronica’s eyes widened, and she uncrossed her arms. “From Montclare?”
I nodded.
“Isn’t he, like, John Creed’s friend?”
I opened my mouth to answer yes—Creed was a friend of Jason’s, a guy I’d met when Veronica and I had had our afternoon of friendship. He’d shared a flirty moment with Veronica at the store where we’d met them. Creed had dark hair and dark eyes, and just looked wealthy. It was obvious in the way he carried himself, in the way he talked. He was just comfortable in a way that said, “The world is at my feet.” But most important, he had a unique look. Funky designer watch, square-toed shoes, that kind of thing. I’d known rich kids who were joiners—who dressed just like everyone else—and rich kids who were so rich they didn’t have to be joiners. He was the nonjoiner type.
And Creed seemed friendly enough, but there was still something—I don’t know—odd about him. Something shadowy. Not like Reaper shadowy—I didn’t think he had magic, and he didn’t strike me as the type to run around in dark and damp tunnels in the middle of the night.
But I closed my mouth again. Had we just jumped from being in trouble for sneaking out to Veronica asking about Creed? Scout and I weren’t out of the woods yet, and we could probably use that.
Trying to play it cool, I just shrugged. “I guess they’re friends, yeah. Why?”
“No reason,” she said, but her cheeks blossomed pink. “Was he here?”
“Creed? No, just me and Jason and Scout.” I saw no need to also drag Michael into this. Besides, maybe Veronica had actually decided to turn her attentions elsewhere. Creed seemed more her speed anyway.
Veronica’s expression went flat again. “And where, exactly, did you meet Jason?”
“Admin wing,” Scout offered. “The very same door M.K. uses when she sneaks out to meet her boyfriend.”
Well, that was information I didn’t need.
Veronica’s eyes flashed, but since she didn’t move from her spot in the doorway, I guess the threat against M.K. hadn’t been all that effective. Scout tried again.
“They were in there, like, forever,” she said, sliding me a look of disgust. I tried to look guilty, shuffling my feet a little for good measure.
“That’s against the rules, you know.”
“Yeah, whatever.” I looked away, tucked some hair behind my ear and faked an attitude. “I’m almost sixteen. I do what I want.”
“She is from the East Coast,” Scout said. “They mature differently out there.”
“Well, whatever. It’s against the rules.”
“So’s spending the night in someone else’s suite,” Scout pointed out. “And I know you don’t want to get in trouble for that. So why don’t we all just go to bed and get in a good night’s sleep?”
Veronica’s lip curled, but she spun on her heel, walked into Amie’s bedroom, and slammed the door shut behind her.
Almost immediately, the door beside Amie’s opened. Lesley, our third roommate, glanced out. She was dressed in rainbow-striped pajama bottoms and a T-shirt with a pot of gold on it. Lesley knew about our midnight ramblings because—just as I’d done to Scout—she’d followed us into the basement one night. But she’d offered to help us, and she’d helped me out the night Scout disappeared. So as far as I could tell, she was one of the good guys. Or good girls. Whatever.
Lesley offered a thumbs-up.
Scout gave her back a thumbs-up. Apparently satisfied with that, Lesley popped back into her room and closed the door behind her.
Scout glanced over at me. “Next time you decide you want to make out with your boyfriend, call someone else.” Her voice was just a shade too loud—it was another scene in our little play for Veronica.
She rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue, then turned on her heel and walked to her bedroom door. “Good night, Parker.”
“Good night, Green.”
I went to my own room and shut and locked the door behind me. My messenger bag hit the floor, and I threw on pajamas that might have matched, but probably didn’t. My room, with its stone walls and floor, was always cold, so I went for warmth over beauty.
Grateful that I’d made it safely back—slimy monsters notwithstanding—I grabbed my cell phone and checked for messages from my parents. My father and mother had each sent me a text. Both of them said they loved me. My mother’s text message was straight and to the point: “HOW WAS YOUR MATH TEST? R U EATING PROTEIN?” I was a vegetarian; she usually just said I ate “weird.”
My dad always tried to be funny. That was his thing. His message read: “R U BEING GOOD IN THE WINDY CITY? SANTA WILL KNOW.”
Unfortunately, he wasn’t nearly as funny as he liked to think he was. But he was my dad, you know? So I typed out a couple of quick texts back, hoping they were somewhere safe and could actually read them.
After I’d pulled on thick, fuzzy socks, I climbed into bed and pulled the St. Sophia’s blanket over my head, blocking out the dull sounds of Chicago night traffic and the faint glow of plastic stars on the ceiling above my head.
I was asleep in minutes.