CHAPTER 12
After that little tidbit of information, I did something I have never done in my entire life.
I had a full-on drama queen meltdown.
By which I mean I burst into tears. And not tragically beautiful, elegant tears either. No, I had the big messy ones involving a red face and snot.
I usually make it a point not to cry in front of people, especially hot boys that I’d been totally crushing on before they’d tried to choke me.
But for some reason, hearing that there was yet another thing I didn’t know just sent me right on over the edge.
Archer, to his credit, didn’t look exactly horrified by my sobbing, and he even reached out like he might grab hold of my shoulders. Or possibly smack me.
But before he could either comfort me or commit further acts of violence upon my person, I spun away from him and made my drama queen moment complete by running away.
It wasn’t pretty.
But by that point I was beyond caring. I just ran, my chest burning, my throat aching from a combination of Archer’s chokehold and tears.
My feet pounded against the thick grass with dull thumps, and all I could think was what an idiot I was.
Don’t know about blocking spells.
Don’t know about tattoos.
Don’t know about big, stupid, evil Italian Eyes.
Don’t know about Dad.
Don’t know anything about being a witch.
Don’t know, don’t know, don’t know.
I wasn’t sure exactly how far I’d run, but by the time I got to the pond at the back of the school, my legs were shaking and my side ached. I had to sit down. Luckily, there was a little stone bench right next to the edge of the water. I was so out of breath between the running and the crying that I totally overlooked the moss creeping over the seat and flopped down. It was hot from the sun, and I winced a little.
I sat there, my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands, listening to my breath saw in and out of my lungs. Sweat dripped from my forehead to my thighs, and I started to feel a little dizzy.
I was just so . . . pissed. Okay, so Mom had been freaked out by Dad being a warlock. Fair enough. But why couldn’t she at least have let me talk to the guy? It would have been nice to get a little heads up about the Vandy. You know, just a friendly “Oh, and by the way, your gym teacher hates me a lot, and so, by extension, hates you! Best o’ luck!”
I groaned and lay across the bench, only to come shooting back into a sitting position when the hot stone touched my bare arm.
Without really thinking, I laid my hand on the bench and thought, Comfy.
A tiny silver spark flew from my index finger, and immediately the bench under me began to stretch and undulate until it morphed itself into a pretty, lush, velvet chaise lounge covered in hot-pink zebra stripes. Clearly, Jenna was rubbing off on me.
I settled back onto my newly comfy resting spot, a pleasant buzz humming through me. I hadn’t done magic since coming to Hecate, and I’d forgotten how good even the littlest spells could make me feel. I couldn’t create something out of nothing—very few witches could, and that was some seriously dark magic anyway—but I could change things into different versions of themselves.
So I put a hand on my chest and smiled as my gym uniform rippled and receded until I was wearing a white tank top and khaki shorts. Then I pointed a finger at the water’s edge and watched as a stream spiraled upward from the surface of the lake, spinning into a cylinder until I had a glass of iced tea hovering in the air in front of me.
I was feeling pretty satisfied with myself, and more than a little magic drunk, as I leaned back against the chaise lounge and took a sip of tea. I may be a loser, but hey, at least I’m a loser who can do magic, right?
I sat there with my sweaty arm over my eyes for several minutes, listening to the birds, the gentle lap of the water against the shore, and for those few moments I was able to forget that I was in some serious trouble when I got back to the school.
Lowering my arm, I turned my head to look at the pond.
There, just across the water, was a girl standing on the opposite shore. The pond was pretty narrow, so I could see her clearly: it was the ghost in green I’d seen my first day at Hecate. And just like on that first day, she was staring right at me.
It was beyond creepy, to say the least. Not sure what to do, I raised my hand and lamely waved hello.
The girl raised her hand in reply. And then she vanished. There was no gradual fading away like I’d seen with Isabelle’s ghost. Just one minute she was there, then she was gone.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” I said, my voice just a little too loud in the quiet, and creeping me out even more.
My good mood had started to fade as the spell buzz wore off, and I looked down to see that my cute and much cooler outfit had dissolved back into my gym uniform. That was weird. My spells usually lasted a lot longer than that. The lounge beneath me was starting to feel a little harder too, and I figured it was only about five more minutes before I was sitting on hot mossy stone again.
My thoughts turned back to my parents and their apparent penchant for being big ol’ liars. But even as I tried to work up righteous anger at them for getting me into this mess, I knew that wasn’t what had my ugly gym shorts in a twist.
It was that my worst fear seemed to be coming true. It’s one thing to be different around people who you’re really, well, different from. It’s a whole other problem to be an outcast in a group of outcasts.
I sighed and lay down on the lounge, which now had moss creeping up one side. I closed my eyes.
“Sophia Alice Mercer, a freak among freaks,” I mumbled.
“Pardon?”
I opened my eyes to see a figure hovering above me. The sun was directly behind her, turning her into a black shadow, but the shape of her hair made Mrs. Casnoff easily identifiable.
“Am I in trouble?” I asked without getting up.
It was probably a hallucination brought on by the heat, but I was pretty sure I saw her smile as she leaned down to place a hand under my shoulder and maneuver me into a sitting position.
“According to Mr. Cross, you have cellar duty for the rest of the semester, so yes, I would say you are in a great deal of trouble. But that is Ms. Vanderlyden’s concern, not mine.”
She looked down at my hot-pink lounge, and her mouth twisted into a little pucker of disgust. She placed her hand on the back of the chair and my spell fell away in a shower of pink sparkles until my lounge became a perfectly respectable light blue love seat covered in big pink cabbage roses.
“Better,” she said crisply, sitting down beside me.
“Now, Sophia, would you care to tell me why you’re here by the pond instead of reporting to your next class?”
“I’m experiencing some teenage angst, Mrs. Casnoff,” I answered. “I need to, like, write in my journal or something.”
She snorted delicately. “Sarcasm is an unattractive quality in young ladies, Sophia. Now, I’m not here to indulge whatever pity party you have decided to hold for yourself, so I would prefer it if you told me the truth.”
I looked over at her, perfectly turned out in her ivory wool suit (again with the wool in the heat! What was wrong with these people?), and sighed. My own mom, who was super cool, barely got me. What help could this fading steel magnolia with her shellacked hair be?
But then I just shrugged and spilled it. “I don’t know anything about being a witch. Everyone else here grew up in this world, and I didn’t, and that sucks.”
Her mouth did that puckering thing, and I thought she was about to bust me for saying “sucks,” but instead she said, “Mr. Cross told me that you didn’t know your father is the current head of the Council.”
“Yeah.”
She picked a small piece of lint off her suit and said, “I’m hardly privy to your father’s reasons for doing things, but I’m sure he had a reason for keeping his position from you. And besides, your presence here is very . . . sensitive, Sophia.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She didn’t answer for a long time; instead she stared out at the lake. Finally she turned to me and covered my hand with hers. Despite the heat, her skin felt cool and dry, slightly papery, and as I looked into her face, I realized that she was older than I’d originally thought, with tons of fine lines radiating from her eyes.
“Follow me to my office, Sophia. There are some things we need to discuss.”