CHAPTER 34

I got out of the car, feet crunching on the shell-and-gravel driveway, and stared at the house looming up in front of me. “Well?” Dad asked, getting out of the passenger side.

Behind me, Archer and Jenna got out of the backseat and came to stand on either side of me.

Pushing my sunglasses up onto my head, I said, “It looks better. I mean, it’s still creepy as hell, but it’s back to its regular level of creepy.”

Hex Hall shone under a fresh coat of paint, and the windows were repaired. The ferns bracketing the front door were back to being a lush green, and someone had fixed the sag in the porch. Still, the trees around it were black, and the grass was gray.

“It’ll probably never be the same,” Mom said, coming around the car to stand with Dad and me.

Heaving a sigh, I said, “Maybe that’s a good thing.”

“What do you think they’ll do with it?” Jenna asked, studying the house.

“I kind of wish they’d burn it down,” Archer said. “Maybe sink the island while they’re at it.”

A breeze off the sea ruffled my hair as we made our way to the house. Inside there was no longer that sense of decay and desiccation, but I thought the house would probably always feel a little sad. Or maybe that was just me. We passed under the stained-glass window, and I looked up, pleased to see that everyone had their heads again, the colored glass glittering in the autumn light. I could already hear the murmur of voices as we approached the ballroom, and Mom took my hand. “Nervous?”

“Nah,” I replied, but since I bleated it like a sheep, I doubt she was convinced.

All the mismatched tables where we used to eat were gone. They’d been replaced by a sea of black chairs, but all of them were empty. Up on the dais where the teachers had once sat were twelve chairs that probably should have been called thrones. All but one of them were occupied.

The newly formed Council all rose to their feet as I entered the room, but I immediately raised my hands. “Oh, God, please don’t do that. I’m freaked out enough as it is.”

One of the faeries, a huge man with emerald green wings, frowned at me. “But as heir presumptive to the Head of the Council, you’re afforded a certain degree of respect.”

“I can feel respected with you all sitting down. Honestly.”

I thought they might argue some more, but in the end, they all sat down.

“Have you considered our offer?” a woman asked. I thought she was a witch, but it was hard to be sure.

Instead of answering that, I took a seat in one of the black chairs. “Can I ask you guys something?” No one nodded, but I kept going anyway. “Why did you pick me? I mean, sure, I’m a demon, but so is Nick. Why not ask him? Is it because of the whole ‘He Once Went Crazy And Killed A Bunch Of People’ thing?”

The green-winged faerie stared at me. “That is a large part of it, yes.”

“But not the only reason,” the woman spoke up. She linked her fingers, folding them in her lap, and I saw a few tiny purple sparks. A witch after all. “The courage, the fortitude, the…initiative you showed in stopping Lara Casnoff was very impressive. Especially in one so young. You didn’t let fear blind you to what needed to be done.” She glanced at her colleagues. “Which is perhaps something we could all stand to learn.”

“Now,” a tall man with white hair said, “have you made your—”

“Why did you fix up Hex Hall?”

I felt a sigh ripple through the entire Council. “Because,” the witch said, “Hecate Hall has always been a useful institution to us, and we have no intention of letting these…unfortunate occurrences kill over a hundred years of tradition. In the next month, all students who’ve been sentenced to this school will return here, and life can go on as normal.”

I wanted to laugh at that. Normal. Like life here had ever been that.

But still. She’d given me my answer.

Taking a deep breath, I stood up and said, “Okay. Yes, I accept your offer to become Head of the Council.”

Relieved grins broke out on a few faces, but I held up my hand. “On two conditions.”

The grins deflated.

“I will become Head of the Council, but not until I’ve finished school.”

“Certainly,” the witch said. “We can arrange for your transfer to Prentiss immediately.”

Prentiss was the fancy boarding school that wealthier witches and warlocks sent their kids to. It was supposedly the opposite of Hex Hall in nearly every way. I shook my head. “No, I don’t mean Prodigium schooling.

I mean real schooling. College. A normal, human college.”

The green-winged faerie frowned. “But you still have another year before you can go to college, correct? Isn’t that how it works? And if you won’t go to Prentiss, then where? A human high school seems unfeasible.”

Another deep breath. “I know. That’s my other condition. I want you to reopen Hex Hall. Not as a reform school, or a place of punishment, but what it used to be. A safe place. A school for all Prodigium who want to come here. Although, have to admit after the last year, there might not be many of them. But we can try. So those are my conditions.”

I stood there, hands clasped in front of me. Once again, I thought of Cal saying, “It’s okay. It’s okay,” as the pit closed in on him. He had given his life for mine. I had to make that count. And he’d loved Hex Hall. Believed in it, taken care of it, called it his home. The least I could do was restore it.

For Cal.

So when the witch looked straight at me and said, “We accept,” it wasn’t fear or regret or dread that shot through me. It was satisfaction.

Mom, Dad, Jenna, and Archer were all waiting for me when I came out of the ballroom. Before any of them could say something, I took my parents’ hands and said, “We can talk all the way home, promise. I need some alone time right now, though, okay?”

Dad squeezed my hand, wrapping his other arm around Mom’s waist. “Absolutely.”

“Sure,” Jenna said.

Archer nodded. “Do what you need to do.”

I walked past them and out onto the front porch. The steps hardly creaked under my feet as I walked down onto the lawn. I moved to one of the giant oak trees, leaning against it to stare at the school.

I was still standing there when I felt a presence at my elbow. Elodie floated next to me, her red hair wavering around her face. “Hi,” I said softly.

“So you’re going to be the Big Boss Lady?”

I opened my mouth to make some quippy comment, but nothing came. So I just said, “Yeah. I am.”

She gave a little nod. “You’ll be good at it. But if you ever tell anyone I said that, I’ll kill you.”

I chuckled. “Fair enough.” For a long moment, I watched her watching the house. And then, very quietly, I said, “If you’re ready for me to…I don’t know, set you free or whatever, I can now. At least I think I can.”

Elodie turned to me, her feet hovering just off the ground. “Where would I go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would you…” She trailed off, and if I hadn’t known Elodie better, I would’ve sworn nervousness crossed her face. Then her lips moved so quickly that I couldn’t make out any of the words.

“Whoa, slow down. My lip-reading skills aren’t that great.”

She drifted closer. “I said, if you’re staying at Hex Hall, then…I want to stay, too.”

I blinked. “For real? You want to stay tethered to me for all eternity? Because if you think for one second I’m letting you in my body again, you’ve got another think coming.”

“I don’t want to be in your body anymore,” she said, before screwing her face up. “That sounded gross. Anyway, I just want to stay here. For now.”

“Why?”

She threw up her hands. “Because you’re my friend, okay? Because helping you and your loser crew these past few weeks has been…I don’t know, fun. And way more fun than I thought I could have dead.”

I was weirdly touched, so I tried to keep my voice gentle when I said, “Elodie, I get that. And to be honest, the thought of you blinking out of existence makes me—” My throat closed up, so I tried to turn it into a cough before saying, “But I can’t have you tethered to me forever. It’s not fair to either one of us.”

“Is there any way you could transfer the bond?” she asked. “All the other ghosts around this place, they’re linked to the island. Could you do that for me?”

I thought about it, and my powers hummed through my veins. “Yeah, I could do that. But, Elodie, that will mean you’ll be stuck here on Graymalkin Island forever. It’ll just be you and whatever ghosts are still hanging around this place.”

Elodie vanished, and I rolled my eyes. “Oh, come on!”

But then she reappeared several feet away, on the rise of the hill that led down to the pond. Waving her arm for me to follow her, she floated out of sight.

Heaving a sigh, I climbed the hill, and as I crested the top, I had to shade my eyes against the sunlight bouncing off the water. “Wow,” I said, coming to a stop as Elodie hovered next to me. “That the prettiest I’ve ever seen the pond look. And look, the grass doesn’t look so dead over—”

Whatever I’d been about to say died in my throat, and I clamped a hand over my mouth.

Cal walked along the edge of the pond. Well, his ghost did, at least. He was so faint that I could barely make him out, but there was no mistaking his long, easy stride. He knelt down and ran his hand over a patch of the gray grass, and as he did, it bled back to a vivid, emerald green.

He looked over at the hill where I stood, and he lifted his hand in a little wave. I waved back, tears streaming down my face. “Can he see me?” I asked Elodie. “Or is it just you?”

“He sees you,” she replied. Then, somewhat ruefully she added, “I don’t think he’d give me that particular smile.” Then her lips twisted into a mischievous smile. “At least not yet. I do have all eternity to make Cal change his mind about me.”

I knew she was joking, but I was serious when I said, “Take care of him, okay?”

And her face was surprisingly soft when she replied, “I will.”

In the end, releasing Elodie from me and tying her to the island was a simple bit of magic. But when I felt that little chain of power between us give way, I had to admit I felt more than a little sad.

By the time Archer and Jenna found me, Elodie had vanished again. So had Cal, although the grass all around the pond was green now.

“There you are,” Jenna said as she and Archer appeared at the top of the hill.

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, walking to stand between them. “Had a lot on my mind.”

“I bet,” Archer said, wrapping an arm around my waist. “So, you told them you’d do it.”

“I did. Do you think that’s dumb?”

“I think it’s dangerous,” he said, turning me to face him. “I think you’re crazy. But dangerous and crazy are two of the things I love most about you. So, no. Not dumb. Although I am disappointed that your condition for taking the job was reopening Hex Hall and not, I don’t know, a Caribbean vacation with your boyfriend.”

He lowered his head to kiss me, and Jenna cleared her throat. “Um, hello? Pretty sure vampire sidekick should get some kind of perk, too.”

Archer nudged Jenna’s shoulder. “Tell you what, when we get back from the Caribbean, she can take you to Transylvania or something. How does that sound?”

She punched his arm, but there was affection in the gesture, and I suddenly wanted to cry all over again. So I stepped back from Archer and said, “Any and all vacations will have to wait until I’m done with the school year.” When they both stared at me, I added, “Yeah, that’s the other part. When they reopen Hex Hall…I’m going to stay here. Just for the rest of the year,” I hurried on. “Not like, for life. And college was another part of the deal, so there’s that afterward. But, I mean, we’ll be able to stay in touch. There are all kinds of spells for that sort of thing.”

Jenna and Archer shared a look. “Why would we need to ‘stay in touch’?” Jenna asked.

“Well, because…Look, I can’t ask you guys to stay at Hex Hall for a whole other year. Jenna, you have Vix, and Archer, you have…Actually, what do you have?”

“You,” he said firmly. “And a whole bunch of holy knights who want to kill me.”

“Vix can visit,” Jenna said. “And the school will be a good place now, so it’s not like one more year will be torture. Although,” she said, frowning, “I will admit the place is pretty awful to look at. I don’t know how we’re going to fix that.”

Facing the pond, staring at that green, green grass, I gave a shuddery laugh. “I don’t think we have to worry about the island,” I said, wiping stray tears with the back of my hand. “It’s being healed.”

“Well, there you have it, then,” Archer said. “Vix can come for a visit, the island will eventually be a heck of a lot less depressing, and I’m not leaving you ever again.”

“Yeah, and we still have to deal with The Eye being…Eyeish, and me learning to be Head of the Council, which will probably involve lots of boring books and—”

Archer pressed his mouth to mine, effectively shutting me up and kissing the hell out of me. When he pulled back, he was grinning. “And you have an arrogant, screwed-up former demon hunter who is stupidly in love with you.”

“And an angsty vampire who will walk into hell with you. Actually, who has walked into hell with you,” Jenna added, coming around to my other side.

“And parents who love you, and who are probably making out back at the car,” Archer said, and I laughed.

“So, really,” Jenna said, and looped her arm through mine, “what more do you need?”

I looked back and forth between them, these two people I loved so much. The breeze ruffled the tall grass around the pond, and I thought I could hear Elodie’s laugh.

“Nothing,” I told them, squeezing both their hands. “Nothing.”