Chapter Twenty-Two
“YOU WANT me to do what?”
“If you could just get a glimpse of the file, we’d know if Nolan is failing his classes or not,” Elliot said quietly to Lila, not wanting to be overheard since he was asking her to do something illegal. She looked at him, Callie and the two Neans sitting beside him in the canteen, her eyebrows raised. She was dressed all in black as usual and wearing gothic make-up along with the nose stud and various earrings.
“Why not just ask him?” she said.
“He doesn’t even know us.” Elliot realised how mad the request sounded: if they wanted her help then they were going to have to tell her everything. He explained about his and Farlden’s magic and Eva’s request, then said what they had discovered so far which, when he said it, turned out to be nothing.
“You have magic?” Her eyes lit up. “Do something now.”
Elliot glanced at Farlden who shrugged. “Okay,” he said, “pick an event at a particular time period that you want us to read from your mind.”
She frowned at the ceiling for a moment then said, “Thirty-first October of last year.”
Elliot closed his eyes, the touch of Farlden’s magic as it mixed with his, familiar now and welcome. He could hear a party going on – the sounds of music and talking – but his vision was black and then he understood why as he experienced the kiss. It felt good but not right. Fal said, “There was a kiss but, although you liked it, you sent him away.”
Elliot kept his eyes shut as one scene stopped and another began, some details missing but the other boy and her nervous excitement towards him were clear and vibrant. She told him she was moving away soon but he promised they would make it work and this time the kiss didn’t stop.
“There were two different boys,” Elliot said, “but it was the second one you’d been wanting to kiss.”
Once again, he could feel everything she had felt that night and the knowledge that he and Farlden were experiencing the intimacy of those kisses together was disconcerting. It had a forbidden feel to it, as if they were doing something that bordered on kinky.
He hastily pulled back and, as the images and sensations disappeared, he opened his eyes, breathing unevenly.
Lila had an intense expression in her kohl-rimmed eyes as she looked from one to the other of them. “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”
“So will you steal your mum’s admin keys to help us with Nolan?” Callie asked.
“No, of course not,” Lila said with a snort. “There’s a much easier and safer way than that. Is Nolan here now?”
“He’s over there.” Elliot pointed out his table, a short way from theirs, and described which boy he was as he sat, as usual, with a large group of attractive, fashionably dressed teenagers.
Lila nodded. “Got it. Okay, phone up this girl, Eva, and tell her to distract the other people at the table for a minute.”
“Why?” Elliot asked as he got out his mobile.
“Just do it.”
He hesitated and then followed her instructions. He hung up and, when Eva pointed to the opposite side of the canteen, getting everyone at the table looking over there, Lila got up and walked past them, grabbing Nolan’s backpack from the floor. She came back to Elliot’s table with it and grinned at the group. “Simple.”
She handed the bag to Elliot, who pulled an A4 notebook out of it and checked the loose essays stuck in the back. “He’s getting all A’s,” he said, reminded that he needed to spend more time in the library studying.
“Well, that rules that out then,” Callie said.
“Check for drugs,” Fal suggested.
Elliot reached into the smart bag and felt around for anything that could be an illegal substance, producing only a couple of sweet wrappers. “Nothing. How do we get the bag back to him?”
“No problem.” Lila got up and sauntered past Nolan’s table again, dropping the backpack on the floor a foot away from where it had been before, close enough for Nolan to find but not near enough for anyone to notice what she was doing.
She returned and sat down with Elliot and the others, putting her booted feet up on one of the chairs. “So what’s our next move?”