The Golden Lily

"Some things came for you, dear," she said. From a small office behind her desk, she produced two hangers with zipped garment bags on them. "A short, energetic woman dropped these off."

"Lia." I took the hangers, wondering what contents I'd find inside. "Thank you." I started to turn away, but Mrs. Weathers spoke again. "One more thing. Ms. Terwilliger left something for you too."

I tried to keep my face neutral. I was already drowning in Ms. Terwilliger's latest assignments.

What now? Mrs. Weathers handed me a large envelope that felt like it had a book in it.

Scrawled on the outer side was: Not classwork. Maybe you won't hate this. I thanked Mrs.

Weathers again and took my haul up to my room. After depositing the costumes on my bed unopened, I promptly tore into the envelope. Something about her note made me feel uneasy.

I wasn't entirely surprised to see it was another spell book. What did surprise me was that unlike the others I pored over for her, this one was new. Modern. There was no publisher listed on it, so it was probably someone's home project, but it had clearly been printed and bound within the last few years. That was startling. I'd pointedly never asked Ms. Terwilliger about her magic-using pals and their lifestyle but had always assumed they were reading the dusty old volumes she had me translate and copy. That they might be working from their own, new, and updated books hadn't even crossed my mind - though it should have.

I had no time to beat myself up, though, not once I got a look at the book's title. The Invisible Dagger: Practical Spells for Offense and Defense. Flipping through the pages, I saw that the spells were exactly as the title suggested but written in a more modern way than I was used to. Their origins were cited, times and places. Those varied wildly, but what didn't was the spells' efficiency. All were either the kind of spells that could be cast in very little time or ones that could be made in advance for immediate destructive effects - like the fire charm.

These were exactly the kinds of spells I'd been asking Ms. Terwilliger about.

Angry, I stuffed the book back in the envelope. How dare she try to lure me in with this?

Did she think this would make up for everything she'd put me through? Mrs. Weathers would still be downstairs, and I had half a mind to drop the book off and tell her it had been sent to me in error. Or I could simply leave it on Ms. Terwilliger's desk first thing in the morning. I wished now I hadn't even opened it. "Returning to sender" unopened would have made a powerful statement, that she wasn't going to trick me into her magic ring by finding a topic of interest to me.

Mrs. Weathers knew about my connection to Ms. Terwilliger, though, and would simply tell me to return it tomorrow if I tried giving it back tonight. So, I'd have to hang on to this until the morning. I consoled myself by getting out some tape. I couldn't undo opening the envelope, but there'd be something psychologically soothing about resealing it.

Yet, as I started to unwind the tape, my mind spun back to my evening with Adrian and Wolfe. Wolfe had calmed me a bit in his constant reminders that most attacks were random and came from carelessness on the victim's part. Knowing that and what to look for had made me feel empowered. He'd offhandedly mentioned attacks of a more premeditated or personal nature, but those clearly weren't his focus. Nonetheless, they brought me back to my discussion with Adrian. What if there was truth to Clarence's stories? What if vampire hunters were real? We'd all known Sonya's attack wasn't random, but if she really was dealing with some faction that had existed since the Middle Ages... well, then. My and Adrian's fears would be correct. They would probably come for her again. No amount of avoiding isolated parking spots or walking confidently would stop them.

I looked down at the envelope and decided not to seal it quite yet.

Chapter 13

THE DAY OF THE DANCE, I seriously considered going back to the costume store and buying the flammable white costume.

Lia's dress was... a bit more than I had expected.

She had done a fair job copying the chiton style worn in ancient Greece, I'd give her that.

The dress was sleeveless, pinned at my shoulders to drape into a neckline lower than I was comfortable with. The dress was floor length, and she'd somehow nailed my height perfectly without measuring me. That was where the historical resemblance ended. The material was some sort of silky, flowing fabric that draped around me and showed my figure better than you'd expect a dress like that to manage. Whatever the material was, it was nothing the Greeks could have produced, and it was... red.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd worn red. Maybe when I was a child. Sure, the Amberwood uniform variations sometimes had burgundy in them, but it was a subdued shade.

This was a brilliant, flaming scarlet. I never wore colors that intense. I didn't like the attention they attracted. Amplifying it was the amount of gold she'd worked into the dress. Gold thread danced along the edge of the red fabric, glittering in the light. The belt was golden too - and not the cheap plastic of the costume's. The pins holding the dress were gold (or at least some high quality metal that appeared gold), as were the accessories she'd provided: a necklace and earrings made of little coins. She'd even given me a gold comb with little red crystals on it.

I tried it on in my dorm room and stared at the glittering, red display I made.

"No," I said aloud.

Someone knocked at my door, and I grimaced. It would take forever to change out of the elaborate dress, so I had no choice but to answer in costume. Fortunately, it was Jill. Her mouth opened to speak and then just hung there in silence when she saw me.

"I know," I said. "It's ridiculous."

She recovered herself a few seconds later. "No... no! It's amazing. Oh my God." I hurried her into the room before our classmates could see me. She was also dressed for the dance, in a fairy confection of pale blue gauzy material that looked perfect on her willowy Moroi frame. "It's red," I told her. In case it wasn't obvious, I added: "I never wear red."

"I know," she said, wide-eyed. "But you should. It looks amazing on you. You should burn all your gray and brown clothes."

I shook my head. "I can't wear this. If we leave now, there's still time to go by the costume store and get something else."

Jill shook off her awed state and took on an adamant, fierce look that seemed kind of extreme for the situation. "No. Absolutely not. You are wearing that. It's going to blow your boyfriend away. And you should put on a little more makeup - I know, I know. You don't like anything crazy, but just darken the eyeliner and put on some lipstick. Just a little. You've got to match the dress's intensity."