CHAPTER 27
“I knew it,” she said, louder now. “I knew you were up to something. When Mrs. Casnoff finds out you’ve been doing a spell on the whole school, you’re going to join your little leech friend in London.”
I was still frozen at the door, the knob half turned in my hand. Of all the people to catch me sneaking out, why did it have to be the one person who hated me the most? I stood there thinking of something to say that would keep her from running to Mrs. Casnoff right then and there.
Then I remembered the look on her face when she’d asked me about the bone spell, and an idea occurred to me. I just hoped Alice would go with it.
“Okay, you caught me.” I tried smiling sheepishly, but probably just looked deranged, because Elodie moved back a step as I came closer.
“Since my magic was going so badly—no thanks to you—I’ve been taking, um, private lessons from one of the ghosts here.”
Elodie rolled her eyes. “Oh, please,” she said. “A magic tutor? Who happens to be a ghost? You must think I’m completely brain dead.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Who are you really meeting out there? A guy? Because if it’s Archer—”
“There is nothing going on between me and Archer,” I said, which wasn’t technically a lie. I mean, I was pretty sure I was in love with the guy, and I think he might’ve kissed me at the ball if Elodie hadn’t rushed in, but it’s not like we were meeting for secret trysts in the woods. No matter how much I wished that might have been true.
Now I smiled at Elodie and held out my hand. “You wanna learn some awesome magic? Come with me.”
Just as I’d hoped, the thought of learning new magic was too seductive for Elodie to pass up.
“Fine,” she said. “But if this is some trick that ends up getting me killed, I’m so haunting your ass.”
Alice must’ve known Elodie was coming, because there were two brooms waiting outside.
Elodie’s eyes widened like a kid’s on Christmas morning. “You ride brooms?”
I just smiled and hopped on. “Come on,” I told her, repeating Alice’s words to me. “Be traditional for once.”
Then we were riding through the night, the cold, clear air burning our lungs. Overhead, the stars sparkled in the inky sky. I could hear Elodie laughing next to me, and I looked over at her, our eyes meeting in the first smile we’d ever shared.
After we landed in the cemetery, I introduced Elodie to Alice, leaving out the part where Alice was my great-grandmother, and introducing Elodie as a “member of my coven.”
Alice gave me a sideways glance at that, but she didn’t say anything.
“So. What sorts of magic do you two do out here in Creepyville?” Elodie asked.
“A number of things,” Alice replied. In the moonlight, her skin looked like porcelain and her cheeks were rosy. Even her eyes seemed brighter. I wondered if she had some sort of beauty spell. If so, I really hoped we’d learn that one next.
“Sophie has mastered summoning objects,” Alice continued, “and she is currently working on a transportation spell.”
Elodie turned to me, surprised. “You can make things appear out of nothing?”
“Yeah,” I said, like it was no big deal even though I still couldn’t summon anything bigger than a lamp, and that made me sweat buckets. Concentrating on something small that wouldn’t leave me gasping for breath, I waved my hand and an emerald brooch appeared in the air right in front of Elodie. Her mouth fell open, and I smiled at Alice.
Elodie reached out and took the brooch, turning it over and over in her hands. “Teach me.”
She was a quick learner, faster than I had been, and within an hour she had made a pen and a tiny yellow butterfly appear. I was a little jealous; I’d never conjured anything that wasn’t inanimate. On the bright side, Alice didn’t seem very impressed with Elodie, and she didn’t praise her nearly as much as she had me.
While they worked on that, I worked on transporting myself from one spot to another, a spell I still couldn’t master. Alice said the best witches could cross oceans with that spell, but so far I couldn’t even move one inch to the left.
Finally, Elodie and I were both exhausted and pretty tipsy with magic, so we sat on the grass, our backs against the cemetery fence while Alice leaned against a tree, staring off into space.
“I hope it’s okay that I’m here,” Elodie said to her.
“Why did you come with Sophia tonight?” Alice asked. She didn’t sound angry, just curious, so I answered, “Elodie caught me sneaking out, so I invited her to come along. I thought she might like to learn some new magic, too.”
“Mrs. Casnoff said to keep an eye on you,” Elodie said to me, but she was smiling. I wasn’t sure if it was from the magic or if she was just genuinely happy to be here.
“Why?” Alice asked, and both Elodie and I turned more serious. Briefly, I told Alice what had happened to Anna, and how Jenna and Byron were gone.
“Are they sure it was a vampire?”
“No. They don’t know who else it could be, though,” Elodie said.
“The Eye,” Alice said, and I felt Elodie stiffen next to me.
“I asked them about that,” I said. “But Mrs. Casnoff said there was no way they could get to us. There are too many protection spells.”
Alice gave a low laugh that sent chills up my spine. “Yes, that’s what they said to me too. It was nothing for my sleeping spell to blast through their pathetic defenses. Do you really think The Eye couldn’t do the same?”
“They don’t have magic, though,” I argued, but I sounded unsure. Elodie scooted a little closer to me.
“Don’t they?” Alice asked. She walked toward us and crouched down in front of me. I saw her long white fingers go to the buttons of her green cardigan, and when she’d discarded that, she unbuttoned her dress.
I sat, frozen in horror, as she pulled her arm out of the left side of her dress and pushed down her slip.
There, just where her heart would have been, was a large gaping wound.
“This is what The Eye did to me, Sophia. They tracked me down, they chased me until I could run no farther, and they cut out my heart. Here. At Hecate.”
All I could do was stare at that hole and shake my head. I could feel Elodie trembling beside me.
“Yes, Sophia,” Alice said quietly. I looked up at her face and saw that she was watching me with pity, like she was sorry she had to tell me all this.
“It was the head of the Council himself who set them on me, who tricked me into feeling safe here, and then offered me up like a lamb to sacrifice.”
“But why?” I asked, my voice no more than a strained whisper.
“Because they were afraid of my power. Because it was greater than theirs.”
My head was spinning and I felt like I might throw up. Somehow all the horrors we’d been shown that first night at Hecate were nothing compared to this one wound, this one story.
“Your father believed you’d be safe here because he didn’t know the real story of how I died. But, Sophia, you have to believe me. You are in very real danger here.” She looked over at Elodie. “Both of you are. Someone is targeting powerful witches, and you two are the only ones left.”
Now it was Elodie who was shaking her head. “No, no, there’s no way. It was Jenna. It was a vamp. It . . . it has to be.”
Alice’s face went very still, like a mask had come down, and her eyes seemed to be looking through us. “Perhaps it was. For both of your sakes, I hope it was.”
She reached out and took one of my hands in hers, and one of Elodie’s in the other. “But in case it wasn’t . . .” Suddenly my hand was hot in hers. Too hot, and I winced, trying to pull back. I could feel Elodie trying to do the same, but Alice held on until we were both making little whimpering sounds. Finally the heat faded, and she let us go. I studied the hand that now lay in my lap, thinking it would at least look red, if not blistered, but it looked normal.
“What was that?” Elodie asked in shaky voice.
“A protection spell. It will help you know your enemies, should the time ever come.”
Elodie and I were quiet as the three of us flew back to the school. This time there was no delighted laughter, no weightless feeling of freedom.
When we landed, Alice reached around her neck and pulled off the necklace she was wearing. It was just like the one she’d given me. Elodie didn’t put it on right away. She just looked at it, frowning, before closing her hand around it.
“Thanks for the lesson,” she told Alice. Then she looked at me, her face still troubled, and said, “See you tomorrow, Sophie.”
“Do you really think The Eye is here at Hecate?” I asked Alice once Elodie had gone inside.
Alice glanced past me at Hecate. The huge shadowed mansion looked like a many-eyed monster slumbering in the dark.
“Something is here,” she said at last. “But what, I don’t know. Not yet.”
I looked back at the house and knew Alice was right. A shadow had fallen over the school and seemed to be creeping closer and closer to me. Overhead, clouds snaked across the crescent moon, and the night became even darker. I dreaded the thought of walking into the dark hallways by myself and up to an empty room.
“Do you—” I started to ask Alice, but when I turned, she was gone, leaving me shivering and alone in the night.