Charmfall

by Chloe Neill

  When I turned around again, Scout was leaning over the railing, her fingers linked together over the water. I joined her.

  “Do you think he’s telling the truth?”

  She laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh.

  “What about the confidentiality stuff? Do you think they’re really helping people?”

  She sighed, and it sounded tired. “A few years ago, there was a big Dark Elite PR campaign about Reapers being secret government weapons—helping solve crimes and fix problems and stuff. But no one believed it. It was made up.”

  That was the part that bothered me—how could she know it was made up any more than she could know it was true?

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We tell Daniel,” she said. “And we hope he likes the deal we just worked out.”

  My fingers were crossed.

  16

  After the excitement of our morning meeting, classes passed by in a blur. The teachers still technically did the teaching, but everybody was focused on parents’ night. Dinner was actually awesome—the girls attending parents’ night got a full-on catered meal, so the kitchen staff didn’t have time to cook a separate round of slurry for us. Instead, they ordered pizzas. A lot of pizzas. The bites I choked down were delicious, but I was nervous enough about our lingering problems that I didn’t have much of an appetite.

  Study hall was also canceled, which made our evening plans a lot simpler. As soon as we made it back to the room after dinner, Scout dialed up Gaslight Goods, switched it to speakerphone, and put the phone down on the table.

  “Gaslight Goods. Let us be your light in the midst of life’s darkness, the sunlight in your foggy day, the candle in your wind. This is Kite. How can I help you today?”

  I grimaced. That was their opener?

  “Kite, it’s Scout.”

  “Hi, Scout. What can I do you for?”

  “Information,” she said. “We need to know what Fayden Campbell bought from your store. Do you by chance remember what that was?”

  “I’m sorry, Scout, I don’t. I didn’t process her order.”

  “Kite,” Scout said, her tone serious. “We have a really strong suspicion that she’s behind the blackout. If you tell me what she bought, that might help us stop her. But if we can’t stop her, and no one has magic, pretty soon she will be your only real customer. I will not be dropping my parents’ hard-earned dough on the newest-fangled salt because I will have no magic. And nobody else will, either. Is that what you want?”

  There was silence on the line. Then Kite said, “I don’t know . . . but I could probably look it up on the computer for you.”

  Hands in the air, Scout did a weird little dance that was fifty percent running, fifty percent jumping, and one hundred percent awkward.

  “Yes, please,” she said.

  “ ’Kay,” he said. “And sorry; you know I have to do this.”

  I didn’t know what he was about to do, but it sounded suspicious to me. But not to Scout, apparently.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  Kite cleared his throat. “Gaslight Goods is a nonparty to any disputes among members of the Dark Elite. Gaslight Goods has an official position of neutrality with respect to any such disputes, and the provision of information to one party or other is not an indication in a change in that position, nor a statement of support. All rights of Gaslight Goods are reserved. Phew,” he added. “Sorry about that.”

  “No worries.”

  “So, now that that’s out of the way, here’s what she bought.”

  Scout snatched up the same notebook she’d been using for our list and a purple pen, tilted and ready to write.

  “Quartz. Pink salt. Some heavy-duty magnets. Dried feverfew. Oh, and a rod of copper. That just came in yesterday, actually.”

  “That’s it?” she asked.

  “That’s it.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Kite. If it turns out we’re right, you’ll be the first person we call.”

  “I’d appreciate it. I’ve got to run. Later, Scout.” Kite hung up the phone, and Scout stuffed hers away again.

  “What was with the legalese?” I asked.

  “That’s the official disclaimer that they’re still neutral even if they give you information. It’s so they don’t get blamed for stuff the Reapers or Adepts do.”

  “Why didn’t they have to do it before—when we were in the store, I mean?”

  Scout shrugged. “That was just chatting. You get official, with people looking up records, and they want to keep their names out of the discussion. That’s the disclaimer.”

  Magical rules were just bizarro. But that wasn’t important. “So we know what she bought. Does that help you?”

  Scout looked down at her paper. “This isn’t stuff you just buy for the heck of it. So whatever she’s doing with the blackout, it’s magical. She has created a spell, a hex, a machine, something that has taken away all of our power—”

  “Except hers,” I finished.

  “Exactly. I don’t know exactly what she’s brewing up. I’m going to have to think about it, let it float around in my head a little. But I’ll figure it out.” She waved the notebook. “This is the key, Lily. We still have work to do, but this is the key.”

  Thank goodness I’d finally done something right.

  * * *

  An hour later Scout had scribbled through a bunch of pages in the notebook and she’d chomped through half a pack of gum.

  “I chew gum when I’m working magical equations,” she said.

  I still wasn’t entirely sure what was meant by “equations.” I flipped through the pages of her notebook, which were filled with what looked like those puzzles where a picture is supposed to symbolize a word—an image of an eye is supposed to mean “I” and so forth.

  In Scout’s case, the drawings looked a lot like Egyptian hieroglyphics. “Are you, like, trying to add salt to quartz and then subtract the magnets or—”

  She flopped back on the bed. “I have no idea what I’m trying to do. None of these things go together. It’s like trying to add blue and twelve and a dandelion. That kind of math doesn’t work.”

  “So you don’t have any ideas?”

  “Not unless”—she picked up her notebook and turned it so that she was reading it upside down—“Fayden Campbell is attempting to work bacon-typewriter-earmuff magic.”

  “That seems unlikely.”

  “Yep.” She tossed the notebook back on the bed and rubbed her hands over her face. “What am I missing? What am I missing?”

  “Is there, like, a secret ingredient? Like a catalyst or something? Like, you have to heat everything up, or maybe you have to use the things in a particular order?”

  “That’s magic 101, Parker. All accounted for.”

  It might be introductory magic for an Adept who’d been doing it for years, but it was pretty advanced stuff for me.

  “So we know what she bought, but we don’t know why she bought it?”

  “Yep.”

  “And we can’t try to fix the magical blackout if we don’t know how she made it happen in the first place.”

  “Since we have no magic because of said magical blackout, that is correct.”

  I put a hand on her arm. “It may be time to accept temporary defeat. Or at least to call Daniel.”

  She sighed. “I’ll call him,” she promised. “But I’m not calling it defeat. How about ‘temporary not-knowingness’?”

  “Whatever gets you through the night, Scout.”

  * * *

  She updated Daniel, and he invited us into the Enclave to work on the magical problem.

  When we emerged from her room to head out into the tunnels, the suite was empty; Amie and Lesley were probably both at
parents’ night.

  The school was equally empty. We could hear the sounds of chatting and music as we walked through the buildings, but we never actually saw the party. We walked silently to the basement door and through the giant metal one, then pulled it shut behind us.

  We made it only twenty yards before we stopped short, hearts suddenly pounding.

  The tall girl who’d been at the bridge with Sebastian stood in the middle of the tunnel. She wore jeans, knee-high boots, and a long-sleeved top, and she bobbed to the sound of music we could hear faintly from her white earbuds. She had no flashlight, and had apparently been skulking in the dark waiting for us to arrive.

  I swallowed down fear, and both Scout and I held up our flashlights like baseball bats. They were the only weapons we had. “Don’t come one step closer.”

  She pulled out her earbuds, stuck them in a jeans pocket, and held up her hands. “I’m not going to.”

  “Then why are you in our tunnels?”

  “It’s nice to meet you, too. I’m Kiara. Sebastian sent me.”

  Scout’s eyes narrowed. “To do what?”

  “To keep an eye on the door and make sure none of Jeremiah’s Reapers get into the school tonight.”

  You could have pushed me over with a feather.

  “Could you say that again?” I asked, and Kiara smiled a little.

  “You made a deal on the bridge,” she said. “You agreed to help Sebastian’s cousin without turning her over to Jeremiah. In return, we agreed to keep him out of your hair.” She shrugged. “At least as much as we can without giving ourselves up.”

  “You aren’t fans of his, either?” I wondered.

  “Let’s just say we have different opinions about how the Dark Elite should operate.”

  She seemed sincere to me, but Scout wasn’t so easily persuaded. “How do we know you aren’t just making this up? That you won’t sneak into the school as soon as we walk away?”

  Kiara shrugged. “You don’t. But I could have waited for you to leave and snuck in without your knowing it. Sebastian trusts you, or at least he trusts her.” She gestured toward me. “And I trust Sebastian.”

  “What will you do if Jeremiah’s Reapers show up?” I wondered. “Won’t they be suspicious if you don’t let them into the school?”

  Her eyes sparkled a little. She looked even prettier when she did it, but a little scarier, too. “You let me worry about that.”

  Scout and I looked at each other for a moment, silently debating what to do.

  “Could you excuse us for a minute?” Scout asked. Without waiting for Kiara to answer, she grabbed my hand and pulled me down the tunnel and around the corner.

  “Crap on toast. Could these people just give us a break for, like, a couple of days?”

  “Apparently not,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

  Scout scratched her head and looked really confused. “I don’t know. I mean, can we just leave her here? In the tunnels right by the school?”

  “She didn’t have to tell us she was here. She made a good point.”

  “Yeah, but maybe that’s just some kind of ploy so she can walk right in.”

  Maybe, but I doubted it. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Sebastian had multiple motives in helping us out—like getting his own magic back—but this didn’t seem like the kind of thing he’d waste effort on.

  “How about this,” I suggested. “Let’s trust her for now, and as soon as we get to the Enclave, we tell Daniel. Maybe he knows more about this movement of underground Reapers or something, and if it’s really stinky he can send us back out or call Foley and give her a heads-up.”

  Scout pointed at the tunnel. “Technically, wouldn’t they be underground-underground Reapers?”

  “Not the point. Is that okay with you? And I don’t think we have a better option,” I added when she didn’t respond.

  “Fine, fine. But let’s add this to the list of things you get to explain to Daniel.”

  “Why do I have to explain it?”

  “Because you got us mixed up in this Reaper mess.”

  I rolled my eyes and walked back to where we’d left Kiara. Scout eventually followed me.

  “You know,” I told her, “technically the brat pack got me wrapped up in this Reaper mess, since they’re the ones who locked me in the City Room. Can’t we just blame it on them?”

  She nodded. “You’re right. We should blame it on them. That just feels good.”

  Or at least as good as it was going to get tonight.

  * * *

  We made Kiara swear on her iPod that she meant no harm to the school. I’m sure that probably didn’t have much impact on whether she’d wreak havoc or not, but it seemed to make Scout feel better.

  Meeting Kiara in the tunnel gave the night a weird vibe, and that vibe continued when we got to the Enclave. Katie and Smith were absent, and they weren’t the only ones. Jason hadn’t shown up.

  Apparently noticing the same thing, Scout squeezed my hand when we walked inside.

  While we might have been missing an Adept, we had a ton more stuff. The room was full of goodies pulled directly from the shelves at Gaslight Goods. Candles. Icons. Salts in every color. Squares of velvet and silk. Herbs in tiny glass jars. The empty Gaslight Goods bags were scattered on the floor where they’d been emptied.

  “Kite must really want his customers back,” Scout said, grinning wildly.

  “He’s spending money to make money,” I suggested.

  “I guess so.” She started darting around the room from pile to pile, checking out all the stuff Kite had left. “Oh, my God, it’s like those books where you fall asleep in a museum and you get to use all the cool stuff while you’re asleep except I’m actually awake.”

  She bubbled on for ten more minutes. And when she was done with her inspection, she threw her messenger bag on the table, pointed at Jill, Jamie, and Paul, and put them to work mixing ingredients and writing out that weird hieroglyphic math on a dry-erase board Kite had also donated.

  As far as I could tell, cat plus monkey equaled water bottle.

  “And so we begin,” she said, and sat down at a table. Full of energy and ready to work, she immediately pulled out a notebook and started writing.

  * * *

  Two hours later things had gone completely downhill.

  Scout wasn’t any closer to a solution than she had been when we arrived, even with all the goodies, and the Enclave looked like a wreck. There were balled up pieces of paper everywhere, open books, and the dry-erase board was covered on both sides. She seemed completely flustered by the set of materials Fayden had bought, and couldn’t figure out how to reverse-engineer whatever magic Fayden had worked.

  I tried to help when I could, but since I was the least experienced Adept, there wasn’t a lot I could do.

  We took a break when Daniel brought in turkey sandwiches, veggie sandwiches with extra hummus, and drinks for a late-night supper. Since I hadn’t eaten much at dinner, I pretty much scarfed it down. Scout ate more slowly, picking at her own sammie as she stared hopelessly at the clutter around her. I knew she was frustrated, and I hated that I couldn’t do anything. But I didn’t get the magical math, so I had no idea how to help. It was also getting late. We were all tired, and irritable, and missing our magic. That was a pretty bad combination.

  Scout, finished with her sandwich, suddenly threw a dry-erase marker across the room.

  The Enclave went silent.

  “Scout?” Daniel asked.

  “I’m just . . . I am so mad. Who does she think she is, that she has the right to do this? To control who has and doesn’t have magic, and when they get to use it? How is that possibly fair?”

  “Hey, we’re all in the same boat,” Paul said. “It’s not like you’re the only
one with troubles.”

  “Oh, I am well aware of that, Paul. Well aware.” Her voice was snippy and tired, and from the way they glared at each other across the room, this conversation wasn’t going to end well. It seemed most likely to end at the First Immanuel recovery room—as had the last Adepts who’d gotten snippy with one another.

  “Hey, hey,” Daniel said. “Everybody bring it down a notch.”

  “How am I supposed to bring it down when I am the only one here working on this? I’m trying to reverse engineer magic I haven’t even seen. I don’t even know where she is, much less what she’s managed to make!”

  “We’re all trying,” Daniel said. “All of us. You know what? Let’s call it a night. We’re all tired and we’re all stressed out. We can reconvene tomorrow night after classes. We’ll leave all the experiments right where they are, and you can come right back to them.”

  “Tomorrow is the dance,” Michael said. “We can’t miss Sneak.”

  “I forgot about Sneak,” Daniel said. “I know you all have lives and things to do. This situation isn’t great, but until Fayden makes another move, it’s not crucial. Let’s just all get some sleep, and maybe we’ll have some sort of brainstorm tomorrow. I’ll talk to the Council and see if they have any leads on Fayden, maybe where she is. We’ll figure this out,” he promised.

  If only the rest of us could be so sure.

  * * *

  We’d closed the door on the Enclave only when Jason emerged from the tunnels in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. He looked uncomfortable, and he wasn’t the only one. Seeing him was like a punch in the gut. What was I supposed to say? Supposed to feel? Glad to see him? Angry that I was only just seeing him now?

  “Hey,” Michael said.

  Jason nodded.

  “Michael,” Scout said, “why don’t we go talk about . . . the . . . color of your tuxedo for the dance.”

  “I have to wear a tuxedo?” he whined, but followed along when Scout dragged him down the hall.