CHAPTER 15
Two days later I started cellar duty.
I should say upfront that I have never been in a cellar in my life. In fact, I can see no reason why anyone should ever go into a cellar unless there is wine involved.
This cellar seemed particularly unwelcoming. For one thing, the floor was just hard-packed dirt, which . . . ew. The air was cool despite the heat outside, and it smelled musty and damp. Add to that the high ceiling with its bare lightbulbs, the one tiny window that looked out on the compost pile behind the school, and the endless shelves of dusty junk, and I suddenly understood why a full semester of cellar duty sucked so bad. Not only that, but the Vandy had decided to be especially evil and give it to us three nights a week, right after dinner. So while everyone else was hanging out in their room, or working on one of Lord Byron’s epic essays, Archer and I would be cataloguing a bunch of crap the Council thought was too important to throw away but not important enough to store at Council headquarters in London.
Jenna had tried to cheer me up that morning, saying, “At least you have it with a hot guy.”
“Archer isn’t hot anymore,” I’d fired back. “He tried to kill me, and his girlfriend is Satan.”
But I have to admit that as we stood beside each other on the cellar steps and listened to the Vandy ramble on about what we were supposed to do down there, I couldn’t help but sneak sideways glances at him and notice that, homicidal tendencies and evil girlfriends aside, he was still hot. As usual, his tie was loose and his shirtsleeves were rolled up. He was watching the Vandy with this bored, vaguely amused look, arms crossed over his chest.
That pose did most excellent things for his chest and arms. How unfair was it that Elodie of all people got that as a boyfriend? I mean, where is the justice when—
“Miss Mercer!” the Vandy barked, and I jumped high enough to nearly lose my balance.
I clutched the banister next to me, and Archer caught my other elbow.
Then he winked, and I immediately turned my attention back to the Vandy like she was the most fascinating person I’d ever seen.
“Do you need me to repeat anything, Miss Mercer?” she sneered.
“N-no. I got it,” I stammered.
She stared at me for a minute. I think she was trying to come up with a witty put-down. But the Vandy, like most mean people, was dumb, so in the end, she just sort of growled and pushed between me and Archer to stalk up the stairs.
“One hour!” she called over her shoulder.
The ancient door didn’t so much creak as scream in pain as she pushed it closed.
To my horror, I heard a loud click.
“Did she just lock us in?” I asked Archer, my voice sounding way higher than I’d intended.
“Yep,” he replied, jogging down the steps to pick up one of the clipboards the Vandy had left precariously perched on a row of jars.
“But that’s . . . isn’t that illegal?”
He smiled but didn’t look up from his clipboard. “You’ve really gotta let go of charming human issues like legality, Mercer.”
He looked up all of a sudden, his eyes wide. “Oh! Just remembered something.”
He put the clipboard down and fished in his pocket for a second.
“Here,” he said, walking over to me and pressing something light into my open hand.
I looked down.
It was a wad of Kleenex.
“You’re a jackass.” I tossed the tissues at his feet and stomped past him. My face was flaming.
“No wonder Elodie’s your girlfriend,” I muttered as I picked up the clipboard. I made a big show of flipping through the pages. There were twenty in all, with about fifty items listed on each. My eyes skimmed over some of them, noting things like “Noose: Rebecca Nurse” and “Severed Hand: A. Voldari.”
I ripped off the top ten pages and handed them to Archer, along with a pen.
“You take this half,” I said, not meeting his eyes. Then I walked over to the shelf farthest from him, the one right under the little window.
He didn’t move for a moment, and I could tell there was something he wanted to say, but in the end he just sighed and walked over to the opposite side of the room.
For about fifteen minutes we worked in total silence. Even though the Vandy had spent forever explaining the job to us, it was actually pretty easy, if ridiculously tedious, work. We had to look at the items on the shelves and then find them on the sheets of paper and write down which shelf they were on and what slot on that shelf they were in. The only thing that made it difficult was that none of the items were labeled, so it was sometimes hard to figure out what they were. Like, on Shelf G, Slot 5, there was a scrap of red cloth that could’ve been “Piece of Cover, Grimoire: C. Catellan” or “Fragment of Ceremonial Robe: S. Cristakos.”
Or it could have been neither of those things and something on Archer’s list. It would’ve gone faster if we’d worked together, but I was still pissed off about the Kleenex thing.
I squatted down and picked up a tattered leather drum. My eyes scanned the list, but I wasn’t really seeing anything. I knew I shouldn’t have cried in front of him, but I couldn’t believe he’d be enough of a jerk to make fun of me for it. Not like we were best buddies or anything, but that first night I felt like we’d bonded a little.
Apparently not.
“It was a joke,” he said suddenly. I whirled around to find him crouched behind me.
“Whatever.” I turned back to the shelf.
“What did you mean about me and Elodie?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes as I stood up and walked to Shelf H. “Is it really that hard to figure out? I mean, she got quite a big laugh at my expense the other day, so it’s only appropriate that you, as her boyfriend, would also enjoy mocking me. It’s so sweet when couples can share hobbies.”
“Hey,” he snapped. “Elodie’s little stunt got me in here too, remember? I tried to help you out.”
“So did not ask you to,” I replied, pretending to intently study what at first appeared to be a bunch of leaves floating in a jar of amber liquid.
Then I realized they weren’t leaves but tiny faerie corpses.
Suppressing the urge to fling it away from me and make some sort of “NEEEEUUUUUNGGGHH!” sound, I rifled through my pages, looking for something that read “Small Dead Faeries.”
“Well, don’t worry,” Archer snapped, flipping through his own pages. “It won’t happen again.”
We were quiet for a moment, both of us looking at our lists.
“Have you seen anything that could be part of an altar cloth?” he asked at last.
“Check Shelf G, Slot 5,” I replied.
Then out of nowhere, he said, “She’s not that bad, you know. Elodie. You just have to get to know her.”
“Is that what happened with the two of you?”
“What?”
I swallowed, suddenly nervous. I really didn’t want to hear Archer wax poetic about Elodie, but I was also genuinely curious.
“Jenna said that you used to be, like, a card-carrying member of the We Hate Elodie club. What gives?”
He looked away and started picking up random things without really seeing them. “She changed,” he said quietly. “After Holly died—you know about Holly?”
I nodded. “Jenna’s roommate. Elodie, Chaston, and Anna filled me in.”
He ran a hand through his dark hair. “Yeah. They’re still really hung up on blaming Jenna. Anyway, Elodie and Holly had been really close when they started here, and Holly and I had been betrothed—”
“Hold up,” I said, raising a hand. “Betrothed?”
He looked confused. “Yeah. All witches are betrothed to an available warlock on their thirteenth birthday. A year after they come into their powers.”
He frowned. “Are you okay?” he asked. I’m sure I was making a pretty strange face. At thirteen I was thinking about allowing a boy’s tongue into my mouth. Getting engaged would’ve been pretty far beyond me.
“Fine,” I mumbled. “That’s just weird to think about. It’s so . . . Jane Austen.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Right. Arranged marriages for teenagers are a good thing.”
He shook his head. “We don’t get married as teenagers, just betrothed. And the witch always has the right to refuse or accept the betrothal and change her mind later. But the match is usually a good one, based on complementary powers, personalities. Stuff like that.”
“Whatever. I can’t even imagine having a fiancé.”
“You probably have one, you know.”
I stared at him. “Excuse me?”
“Your dad is a really important guy. I’m sure he made a match for you when you were thirteen.”
I didn’t even want to get into that. The thought that there was some warlock out there who was planning on making me his missus one day was too much to handle. What if he was here at Hecate? What if I knew the guy? Oh God, what if it was that kid with bad breath who sat right behind me in Magical Evolution?
I made a mental note to ask my mom about all of this as soon as I decided to speak to her again.
“Okay,” I said to Archer. “Just . . . go on with your story.”
“I don’t think anyone realized how much Holly’s death got to Elodie. So we started talking over the summer, about Hecate and Holly, and one thing led to another . . .”
“And you can spare me the gory details,” I said with a smile even as something painful twisted in my chest a little. So he really liked her. I’d been harboring this secret fantasy that he was only pretending to like her so that he could publicly dump her in the most embarrassing way possible, preferably on national television.
“Look,” he said, “I’ll get Elodie and her friends to lay off you, okay? And seriously, try to give her another chance. I swear she has hidden depths.”
Without really thinking, I shot back, “I said spare me the gory details.”
For a second I’m not sure I even realized what I’d just said. And then it sank in and I damned my sarcastic mouth straight to hell. Face on fire, I glanced over at Archer.
He was staring at me in shock.
And then he burst out laughing.
I started giggling too, and before long we were both sitting on the dirt floor wiping tears from our eyes. It had been a long time since I’d really laughed with someone, or made a dirty joke, for that matter, and I couldn’t believe how good it felt. For a little bit I forgot that I was apparently made of evil, and that I was being stalked by a ghost.
It was nice.
“I knew I liked you, Mercer,” he said when we’d finally stopped cackling, and I was glad I could blame my suddenly red cheeks on the laughter.
“But wait,” I said, leaning on one of the shelves, trying to catch my breath. “If everybody gets betrothed at thirteen, isn’t she already set to marry somebody else?”
He nodded. “But I told you, it’s a voluntary thing. A betrothal can always be renegotiated. I mean, I’m considered something of a catch.”
“And so modest too,” I replied, tossing my pen at him.
He caught it with ease.
From above us, the door gave its death scream, and we both leaped to our feet guiltily, like we’d been making out or something.
Suddenly the image of me and Archer kissing against one of the shelves flooded my brain, and I felt the blush in my cheeks spread to the rest of my body. Without meaning to, I glanced at his lips. When I raised my eyes to his, he was looking at me with an expression that was totally inscrutable. But just like the look he’d given me on the stairs the first night, this one left me feeling breathless. I was actually glad when the Vandy shouted, “Mercer! Cross!”
Her harsh grating voice was the auditory equivalent of a cold shower, and the tension of the moment vanished. My lusty thoughts were pretty much gone by the time we were out of the cellar.
“Same time, same place, Wednesday,” the Vandy said as we practically sprinted for the main staircase.
Naturally, Elodie was waiting for Archer in the second-floor lounge. She was sitting on the grubby blue couch. A nearby lamp cast a soft golden glow on her flawless skin, and picked up the ruby highlights in her hair.
I turned to Archer, but he was staring at Elodie like . . . well, like I was staring at him.
I didn’t even bother saying good night. I just jogged up the stairs to my room.
Jenna wasn’t there, and after all that cellar grossness, I was in definite need of a shower. I grabbed a towel out of my trunk and a tank top and pajama bottoms out of my dresser.
Our floor was fairly deserted. Boys and girls didn’t have to separate until nine, and it was just now seven, so I figured everybody was hanging out in the drawing rooms downstairs.
My mind still on Archer (and the general suckiness of having an unrequited crush on someone dating a goddess), I made my way to the bathroom and opened the door. The room was shrouded in heavy steam, and I could barely see in front of me. As I stepped forward, warm water sloshed around my feet. I could hear the sound of running bathwater.
“Hello?” I called.
There was no answer, so my first thought was that someone had left a faucet on as a joke. Mrs. Casnoff would not be amused. Hot water isn’t great for two-hundred-year-old floors.
Then the steam began to part, flowing through the open door behind me.
And I saw why the faucet was still on.
It took a long time for my eyes to accept what they were seeing. At first I thought maybe Chaston was just asleep in the tub and that the water was tinted pink from bath salts or something. Then I realized her eyes weren’t closed, but sort of half-mast, almost like she was drunk. And the water was pink from her blood.