CHAPTER 29
At first I refused to believe what I was seeing. Then Archer, noticing how I’d frozen up, pulled back and looked down.
When he lifted his face back to mine, he was pale, and there was a panicked look in his eyes. That’s when I knew that what I was seeing through my fingers was real: it was the mark of L’Occhio di Dio. Archer was an Eye. I said the words in my mind, but it was like they wouldn’t compute. I knew I should scream or run or something, but I couldn’t move.
Archer spoke. “Sophie.”
It was as if my name was the code word to break my paralysis—I pressed both of my hands hard against his chest and shoved. I caught him by surprise or I never would’ve been able to knock him down. But he fell back, crashing into a shelf, sending its contents to the floor. A viscous, yellow liquid spilled from one of the broken jars. I slid in it as I turned to run.
But Archer was already steadying himself, and he grabbed my arm. I thought he said my name again, but I wasn’t sure. I whirled around, and my momentum knocked him off balance again. As he slipped in the yellow ooze, I shoved my elbow as hard as I could into his chest. He bent over as the air rushed out of his lungs, and I took that as my chance to slam the heel of my hand into his jaw.
Skill Number Three, I thought.
Just like in Defense.
Archer clutched his mouth as bright red blood seeped through his fingers. I felt the crazy urge to laugh bubble up inside of me. I had just kissed that mouth, and now it was bleeding because of me.
He reached for me, but he was moving slowly, and I was able to spin away from him.
How many times had we fought each other in Defense? Had we just been preparing for this moment? Had Archer watched me struggle to deflect his blows, and laughed at how easy it would be to kill me?
I dodged his last grasp and ran for the stairs. My mind felt like it was going down one of those spiral slides. All I could think was that Archer had kissed me, Archer had killed Holly, Archer had hurt Chaston, Archer had attacked Anna. I didn’t look behind me, but I thought I felt his fingers brush my ankle. I ran for the door, only to remember that it was locked . . . Oh my God, it was locked.
I fell against the wood, screaming, “Vandy! Mrs. Casnoff! Somebody!”
Banging as hard as I could on the door with my fists, I finally looked behind me in time to see Archer pulling up his pant leg. It took me a minute to figure out that he was reaching for something strapped to his leg.
A knife. A silver knife, like the one that had cut out Alice’s heart.
My scream turned breathy and weak with fear, like something out of a nightmare.
But Archer didn’t come near me. He ran for the low window in the back of the room, sliding the knife along the ancient lock.
I could hear people on the other side of the door—footsteps and, I thought, the jangle of keys.
The lock on the door and the lock on the window gave way at the same time.
Archer looked at me one last time as I sagged against the door. I couldn’t read the expression on his face, but I was shocked to see that there were tears in his eyes. Then he turned and shimmied out the window just as the door opened behind me, and I fell, shaking, into the Vandy’s arms.
I sat on the couch in Mrs. Casnoff’s office, a cup of hot tea in my hands. From the smell of it, there was more than just tea in the cup, but I hadn’t taken a sip yet. I couldn’t get my teeth to stop chattering long enough to drink, even though Mrs. Casnoff had wrapped a heavy afghan around me. I wasn’t sure I was ever going to stop shaking.
Mrs. Casnoff sat next to me, stroking my hair. It was a weirdly motherly gesture from her, and it was more unsettling than comforting. The Vandy was leaning against the door, rubbing the back of her neck. It had been a long time since anyone had spoken.
Then Mrs. Casnoff said, “You’re sure it was the mark of The Eye.”
It was the third time she’d asked me, but I just nodded and tried to bring my shaking teacup to my lips.
She gave a sigh that made her sound a hundred years old. “But how?” she asked for the third time. “How could one of ours be L’Occhio di Dio?”
I closed my eyes and finally drank. I was right: the tea was fortified with some kind of alcohol. It hit my stomach in a warm wave, but it did nothing to stop the shivering.
How? I thought. How?
I tried to answer the question for myself, wondering if he’d sought them out last year when he’d left Hecate for a while. But that was a logical question, and my brain felt totally incapable of dealing with logic right now.
Archer was an Eye. Archer had tried to kill me.
I kept repeating it in my head. Almost from a distance, I wondered if Archer had only befriended me, pretended to like me, so that he’d have a chance to get close to me. Was that the reason he’d started dating Elodie?
I rubbed my hand over my chest, just above my heart. Mrs. Casnoff watched with a look of concern. “Did he hurt you?”
“No,” I told her. “He didn’t.”
Nowhere you could see, at least.
“Looks like you got a few good blows in, though,” the Vandy piped up, nodding toward my right hand, which was turning purplish and swelling up from its runin with Archer’s jaw.
I raised my eyes to her. “Yeah,” I said flatly. “Thanks for your high-quality defense lessons. Much appreciated.”
“I just don’t understand,” Mrs. Casnoff said, dazed. “We should have known. We should have been able to sense it. Or someone should have seen his mark.”
I shook my head. “It was hidden. It only appeared because . . .” Because of Alice’s protection spell, I thought, but I didn’t want to tell them about Alice. “I did a protection spell on myself,” I lied. As usual I sucked at lying, but they were too shaken up to notice. “When I touched the mark, it appeared.”
Mrs. Casnoff looked at me. “You touched it?”
I felt my face flame with embarrassment. Like it wasn’t bad enough that the boy I loved had turned out to be an assassin, now I was going to get busted for making out in the cellar.
Luckily, Mr. Ferguson, the shapeshifter teacher, came in, shaking rain off his heavy leather coat. There was an enormous Irish wolfhound at his side, as well as a golden mountain lion. As I watched, the wolfhound stood and became Gregory Davidson, one of the older kids on campus. The mountain lion was Taylor. For the first time since Beth had told her who my father was, Taylor wasn’t glaring at me. In fact, I was pretty sure I saw pity in her eyes.
“No sign of him, Mrs. C.,” Mr. Ferguson said. “We searched the whole island.”
Mrs. Casnoff sighed. “None of my tracking spells have turned up anything either. It’s as though he vanished into thin air.”
She massaged her temples and said, “The much more pressing issue now is informing the Council that we were infiltrated. Your father will definitely want to hear of this, and then of course, our security spells will have to be strengthened, and the other students will have to be told what happened.”
Her voice wavered on the last word, and to my horror, she dropped her face into her hand with what sounded like a sob.
I shrugged off the afghan and draped it over her shoulders.
“It’ll be okay.”
She looked up at me, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “I’m so very sorry, Sophie. I should have listened to you.”
Just a few hours ago, those words from Mrs. Casnoff would have had me dancing in the streets. Now I just smiled sadly and said, “Don’t worry about it.” I was glad that this meant Jenna might be able to come back, but that one piece of happy was buried under a compost pile of hurt, sadness, and anger. I’d wanted to be proven right, but not like this.
I left Mrs. Casnoff, Ferguson, and the Vandy planning an assembly for the next morning, and headed for my room. Though I missed Jenna, tonight I was actually looking forward to being alone.
Cal met me at the foot of the stairs.
“I’m okay,” I said, holding up my hand. “It’ll heal on its own.”
“It’s not that. Mrs. Casnoff doesn’t want you going anywhere on your own for now. Not until we find Archer.”
I sighed. “So . . . what? You’re going to follow me to my room?”
He nodded.
“Fine.” I laid a hand on the smooth wood of the banister and attempted to drag my weary self up the stairs. Now I finally understood the term heartsick. That’s exactly how I felt. Like I had the flu, but in my soul instead of my body. I was so tired, and everything seemed to hurt. Just as I was thinking I might reconsider my pledge to never get into one of those spooky bathtubs, I heard Elodie say, “Sophie?”
I turned around to see her standing in the foyer. Her face was pale, and it was the first time I’d ever seen her look anything less than beautiful.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “All these people are saying that Archer, like, attacked you in the cellar, or something, and I can’t find him anywhere.”
Just when I thought the pain in my chest couldn’t get any worse, it seemed to bloom like a thorny plant.
“Wait here,” I said to Cal.
I took Elodie’s hand and led her into the nearest sitting room. Sitting next to her on the sofa, I explained what had happened, leaving out the whole me and Archer kissing part and mainly telling her about the fight and the mark over his heart.
Halfway through, she started shaking her head. Tears pooled in her eyes. I just kept talking and watched those tears spill down her cheeks and onto her lap, leaving dark spots on her blue skirt.
“That’s impossible,” she said when I was through. “Archer . . . couldn’t hurt anyone. He . . .”
By then she was crying too hard to talk, and I reached out to hug her, only to have her slap my hands away. “Wait,” she said, and a sliver of the old Elodie began to reemerge. “How did you see his mark?”
“I told you,” I said, but I couldn’t look her in the eyes. I looked at the lamp behind her instead, keeping my eyes on the blank face of the shepherdess at its base. “That protection spell Alice put on us.”
“I know that,” Elodie said, scooting back from me. “But why were you touching his chest?”
I lifted my eyes to hers and tried to think up a plausible lie. But I was tired and sad, and nothing would come. Guiltily, I looked down at my lap.
I waited for Elodie to yell or cry some more, or hit me, but she didn’t do any of that. She just wiped her face with the back of her hands, stood up, and walked out.