As she swallows the brew I realize I have to get closer to her so she can access my willstone. I lay her back and hover over her, but I don’t let my stone touch her. Forks of energy jump between us, and I feel all the hairs on my body prick with static. This is an inefficient way to transmute, but she’s so powerful it works anyway. I guide her, watching from the inside, as she uses her gift for the first time.
An “Oh” of surprise hangs in her chest. The wonder and the blinding brightness of understanding she feels are too much, and a lump forms in my throat. Her hands are braced against my chest and I feel them curl as she clutches at my shirt. She wants me nearer. She softens under me and I have to look away. I back off, helping her sit up.
“Magic,” she says. The word stumbles out of her mouth awkwardly, and I wish my mouth was there to catch it.
Something snaps in her. I watch as she struggles not to cry. She presses at her breastbone with her hand, like she’s trying to keep her heart inside her chest. Tristan and I tell her that she doesn’t need to be locked up and she can sleep in the tent behind her. She clambers into it, blind with fatigue and shock. I can hear her panting with panic on the other side of the thin sheet of fabric.
I stand there, listening to her smothered cries, wishing I could make them stop. I’m too scared to think it, but three words fly recklessly through my head anyway.
… A second chance.
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CHAPTER 1
Lily Proctor ducked into the girls’ room, already yanking back her rebellious hair. Aiming for the toilet through a blur of tears, she vomited until her knees shook.
Lily had been symptomatic all day, but she knew she’d rather eat her own foot than get sent home. Tristan would never take her to the party that night if he knew she was having another one of her epic reactions, and Lily couldn’t afford to miss this party. Not now. Not when things between her and Tristan had so recently—and so wonderfully—changed.
Tristan Corey had been Lily’s best friend all her life. They’d grown up together, building tent cities out of his mother’s clean sheets and space stations out of sofa cushions. Most kids drift apart when they start to grow up—Lily knew that. Some figure out the trick of being cool, and others stay runny-nosed geeks for the rest of high school. But to Tristan’s credit, no matter how popular he got over the years, or how isolated Lily became as her allergies intensified and embarrassing rumors about her mother spread, he never once backed away from their pinky-swear promise to be best friends forever. He never tried to hide how close they were or pretended not to care about her because other kids thought she was strange. The only reason he rarely let her go to parties with him was because lots of kids smoked at them, and Lily’s lungs couldn’t handle smoke.
Or at least, that’s what Tristan said. Since Lily had never been to one of these parties herself she couldn’t know for sure, but she had a sneaking suspicion that Tristan didn’t bring her with him because he was usually going to hook up with a girl. Or several girls.
Everyone in their graduating class knew that Tristan was the biggest player in Salem, Massachusetts. Sophomore year, he’d come back from summer baseball camp a foot taller and achieved legendary status by dating a senior. Ever since then the girls—and women—of Salem had passed him around like a pair of traveling pants. Unfortunately for Lily, she’d had a crush on Tristan since she first realized that there was a difference between boys and girls—way before he rode the testosterone rocket to studliness. And she’d suffered for it.