CHAPTER 27

“So…Everton likes Leslie?” Romy asked around a mouthful of popcorn.

“Yeah. Loves her, actually. But that was before the amnesia.”

We were sitting in Romy’s room on Saturday night, a big bowl of popcorn on the floor, two different kinds of sodas on her desk, and all three seasons of Ivy Springs sitting beside her TV.

I’d filled in her on what had happened at the cave. Well, the love spell part. Not the me and Dex kissing bit. Romy had told me about her and Anderson finding salt on the grave—and I tried to act very surprised about that—but in the end, both of us agreed that Friday night’s field trips had been pretty successful, all things considered.

Then we’d put in Ivy Springs and let the trials of Leslie and Everton distract us from our failure. Romy had already changed into her pajamas—naturally, they had cute little ghosts on them—and I was painting my toenails. Well, trying to. Since I’d never done it before, my feet looked like I’d accidentally stepped into a meat grinder. As I dabbed at the bright scarlet mess, Romy glanced up.

“Whoa,” she said, eyes going wide. “What have you done?”

Sighing, I yanked a tissue out of the box on Romy’s nightstand and began trying to wipe off the worst of it. “I think I used too much.”

Romy laughed as she sat up. “Think? Iz, it looks like you poured half the bottle on your foot. Here, give me that.” She snatched tissues away from me and rummaged in her nightstand drawer until she emerged with a bottle of nail polish remover. I reached for it, but she held her arm over her head. “Uh-uh. You cannot be trusted with dangerous chemicals, clearly. Give me your foot.”

Hesitantly, I stretched out my leg, and Romy doused a few tissues with the polish remover. As she went to work scrubbing the worst of the mess off my right foot, she glanced at me over the top of her glasses. “You’ve never painted your toenails before, have you?”

I thought about lying, but seeing as how I’d somehow managed to get It’s a Bit Chili in Here between my toes, I didn’t think Romy would buy it.

“No. My mom is really strict about makeup.”

Giving a low whistle, Romy shook her head. “Never played dodgeball, never been kissed, never used makeup…”

My face was nearly as scarlet as my toes. Well, my whole foot, actually.

When I didn’t say anything, Romy raised her eyes. “Izzy?” she prompted.

I cleared my throat and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. I hadn’t planned on telling Romy about the kissing, but my stupid fair skin had given me away yet again. “I, um…me and Dex, we—”

Romy sat up so quickly she nearly turned over the bottle of polish remover. I caught it, but she didn’t seem to notice since she was too busy clapping and squealing something that sounded like, “Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod!”

Leaping off the bed, she paused the Ivy Springs DVD just as Everton was about to kiss Lila, Leslie’s identical cousin. “I cannot believe we’ve been sitting here for an entire hour, painting nails and watching TV, when you could have been telling me every last detail about yours and Dexter O’Neil’s mega-hot makeout session.”

“It wasn’t like that,” I protested. “It was… Okay, it was exactly like that, but—”

Romy cut me off with another squeal, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “This is so very excellent,” she said, flopping back down on the bed. “So when? Where? How?”

I drew back my now-polish-free foot, wrapping my arms around my knees. “Last night, at the cave, and, um, with our mouths?”

Romy rolled her eyes and hit me with one of the bright green throw pillows covering her bed. “I figured that last part. I just meant did he kiss you first, or beneath that shy exterior, are you secretly a seductive vixen?” She waggled her eyebrows, and now it was my turn to toss a pillow at her.

“He kissed me. Well, he asked me if I had a boyfriend, and I said no, and then we…kissed.”

Telling it like that, it sounded so flat, so uneventful. But I didn’t know how girls talked about this kind of thing. And besides, I kind of wanted to keep it private. It was almost like I was afraid if I shared all the details—how warm his lips had been, the softness of his jacket under my hands—it wouldn’t feel as special anymore. And since it was probably the only time it was ever going to happen, I wanted it to stay special for a long time.

Something must have shown on my face, because Romy’s giddy grin slipped into a puzzled frown. “Why did you make Sad Face?”

Before I could say anything, Romy rushed on. “Was it bad? I mean, I always thought Dex would be pretty good at kissing despite his general spazziness, but I could be wrong, and if I am, just tell me. I know he’s my Boy Best Friend, but you’re my Girl Best Friend, and that trumps him—”

I help up my hand like that could stop the rush of words. “No, it was not bad. And…I’m your best friend?” I’d never had a best friend unless you counted Finley. But even though she’d been my sister, and I’d loved her, it wasn’t like we’d ever painted each other’s toenails, and I shuddered to think of what she would’ve said about Ivy Springs.

Romy smiled, almost shyly. “Um, duh, of course you’re my best friend. What do you think all this means”—she waved her hand, taking in the popcorn, the polish, the TV—“if not your initiation into Best Friendom?”

In my head, I could hear Mom’s voice: These people are not your friends, Izzy. They are a means to an end, and as soon as this job is over, you’ll never see them again.

But Romy was my friend. When she’d asked me to spend the night, I hadn’t agreed so that I could pump her for more information about the hauntings. I’d said yes because I’d wanted to hang out with her. To paint nails and talk about boys and watch Everton and Leslie make idiots of themselves.

“Okay, see, there you go with Sad Face again,” Romy said, and I sighed. “It’s just…the kiss with Dex was good. And I like him. Lots. But I can’t exactly do the boyfriend thing.”

Now it was Romy’s turn for Sad Face. “Why not?”

Because I’m a monster hunter and this whole thing was just a job and I have to tell my mom that Dex isn’t really Prodigium soon and then she’ll make us leave.

The words were right there, desperate to tumble out of my mouth in one big avalanche of overshare.

Instead I shrugged and said, “I need to concentrate on school. You know. For, um, SATs. And college. And… stuff like that.”

I expected Romy to argue, but she just sighed and picked up the nail polish remover. “I get that,” she said. “But it sucks. You guys seem like a weird fit at first glance, but I don’t know. I think you’d be good together.”

“Yeah,” I replied.

And then I got off the bed and restarted Ivy Springs before Sad Face became Crying Face.

“Isolde. Isolde. ISOLDE.”

Blinking, I sat up. Ugh, another Torin dream. Some-thing I was definitely not in the mood for. “Go’way,” I mumbled at him. “Don’t wanna play dress-up.”

But when I flopped over onto my stomach, I realized I wasn’t in a ball gown. I also wasn’t in a ballroom or on a boat. I was lying on the trundle bed in Romy’s room, and Torin wasn’t in my dreams, he was in her mirror.

Fully awake, I shot out of the bed and made my way as quietly as possible to Torin. My face nearly against the glass, I hissed, “What are you doing?”

“Dropping in,” he said, raising his hands innocently. “Isn’t that what blokes are supposed to do? Raid slumber parties?”

“No,” I shot back, my voice barely audible. “At least I don’t think so. But it doesn’t matter. You should not be here.”

Behind me, Romy made a snuffling noise in her sleep and turned over. I didn’t think it was possible to be any quieter, but I tried anyway. “Go. Away.”

“I miss you,” he said suddenly. Our faces were very close to each other, and even though I knew it was impossible, I could’ve sworn I felt a puff of breath on my cheek. “You never talk to me anymore. And that?” He pointed to the stack of Ivy Springs, eyes narrowing. “Traitor.”

“This is my job,” I told him, ignoring the pang of guilt in my chest. What was wrong with me? I didn’t have anything to feel guilty for. So I chose to watch the show with a real girl my own age instead of a four- hundred-year-old warlock trapped in a mirror. Surely, that wasn’t anything to feel guilty about. Or at least I thought it wasn’t. Sassy Miss hadn’t exactly covered that.

“These people aren’t a job to you anymore, Isolde,” Torin said, voice low. “They’re your friends. And while it causes me actual physical pain to admit this, your mum is right. In the end, getting close to humans can only hurt you.”

I backed away from the glass, but he kept going. “I’ve watched generations of Brannick women get close to regular people. Fall in love, make friends. It ended in tragedy every single time, Isolde. I know you don’t believe a large percentage of what I say, but believe that I have no desire to ever see you hurt. And these people will hurt you.”

Romy rolled over again, and I looked back at her. “Romy is…she couldn’t hurt me.”

“Could she not?” In the glass, Torin walked over to Romy’s desk and opened the top drawer, pulling out something thin and golden.

My heart sank, but I made myself cross the room and open that same drawer. There, hidden under a stack of purple Post-its, was a charm bracelet. There was a ballet slipper and a tiny golden unicorn and horseshoe and what I think was supposed to be a pot of gold. And in between the slipper and the unicorn was a space where, I had an awful feeling, a heart was supposed to go.

I put the bracelet back where I found it, silently slid the drawer closed, and walked back to the mirror. “It makes sense,” Torin said as soon as I was in front of him. “She finds a harmless little love spell somewhere, decides to try it out. And then she tries another spell, and another. And what do you know, she runs a ghost-hunting club, but there are no ghosts. So she works a little hedge magic, does a summoning or two. Just to make things interesting. And then it very quickly gets out of hand.”

I wanted to deny it. To say there had to be some mistake. But Torin was right. It made total sense.

“What do I do?” I asked, but I wasn’t sure if I was talking to Torin or myself.

“Tell your mum. Or tell that bloody Prodigium Council and let them deal with it. Let this girl know there are consequences for messing about with the unknown.”

Both of those were technically good ideas, but they made my stomach twist in really awful ways. What if it turned out the only way to break this particular spell was to kill her? Mom would do that. If it was the only way, I had no doubt she could. And as for the Council…my cousin Sophie may have been in charge, but she wasn’t there right now. Who knew what those people would do to Romy?

“I can’t,” I said, and Torin watched me with an unreadable expression.

Finally he said, “This is being a Brannick, Izzy. No one said it would be easy.”

And with that, he was gone.