I stepped forward. "Hello?" I called out.
Kristi walked around a large boulder on the other side of the small parking lot behind the stadium. It was just big enough for a half-dozen cars to park—or one bus from a visiting team.
"You," she hissed.
"You're going to have to start saying more than that when you threaten me," I told her. "It's very difficult to know what I've done when you say only the one word."
Her eyes hardened, and she started across the road without looking. Which was unfortunate, as that was the moment the bus decided to return.
I could see what was going to happen before it started.
"Kristi, move!" I shouted.
"Don't tell me what to do," she snapped and strode forward.
The screech of brakes tortured my ears, but it was nothing compared to the absence of sound. Kristi didn't have time to scream as she and the bus became one blood-covered yellow monstrosity.
I blinked a couple of times, unable to process the horror I'd witnessed.
The rumor.
I wanted to throw up. I'd written in that book that she'd be killed by a bus. Sinking to my knees beside the bus, I fought back the retches and swallowed the bile.
But Kristi had said that things only came true if they were written in blood. And I hadn't done that. It had been ink. Black as night ink.
If that was true, why did I have the sinking feeling that this was somehow my fault. How had this happened?
A scream alerted me to the fact the other students had arrived. The field must've been emptying and the teams returning to the locker rooms to change.
"What happened?" Jayse asked, pulling me to my feet and wrapping his huge arms around me.
I sunk into him, trying not to let panic overtake me. "I came back here to wait for you, and I overheard Kristi talking to someone. When she realized I was here, she yelled at me and then—" I sniffed, sobs threatening to overtake me. I didn't want to seem weak, but at the same time, I could still picture the mangled parts of Kristi's body under the bus, even with my face buried in Jayse's chest. There was no way around what had happened to her, and no way she survived.
Jayse pulled back so he could look down at me, but he didn't take his arms away. I appreciated that. He was the only thing keeping me upright.
"What happened after she yelled?" he asked softly.
"The bus." I pointed to the big yellow thing as if it was an explanation.
The driver sat on the little staircase behind the door, visibly shaking as one of the witches with healing affinity saw to him. I hoped they could make him feel better. I couldn't imagine it was any easier for him to feel than me.
"She pushed her," someone whispered behind me.
"She wouldn't," another person answered.
"They hate each other."
"Her fault."
I shook, the horror and realization of what it could all mean setting in. People were going to blame me. The students, the driver, the academy.
And the worst thing was that they were right. Not in the way they thought, but that didn't matter. A dim thought about finding the book settled within me, but I pushed it aside. I had more important things to deal with than the damned book, even if it was proof that I'd done something.
"Ignore them," Jayse whispered.
I shook in his arms. That was going to be easier said than done.
"Lou? Are you alright?" Estelle asked from beside me.
Wait, Estelle? Where had she come from? As far as I was aware, she hadn't come with us to the game, so why was she here now? It made no sense.
"She'll be fine," Jayse said coolly. I wasn't sure why. I'd never told him much about her. Probably because I didn't feel like I knew much about her.
Except for her vendetta against Kristi. I guessed she'd won that one now.
I laughed bitterly, hysteria taking over. My mind knew it was a part of shock after a trauma, but laughter wouldn't help dissuade the rumors that I'd pushed Kristi.
Francis and Brooks ran toward us, and Jayse handed me off to them. "Get her out of here," he said. They looked horrified, but put their arms around me as they craned their necks to see the front of the bus. "Find someone to make a portal back to the school and take her to our room. They'll be wanting to question her soon, but she needs to process. I'll be there soon.
Brooks tutted. "Come on. I can make a portal." We walked into the locker room and they checked to make sure nobody was inside. “It’s empty,” Brooks said. “Let’s go.”
The portal opened straight into their room at Magic and Metaphysics Academy. They ushered me to one of the beds and climbed in on either side of me, still in their uniforms, muddy and sweaty. I didn’t care. As I laid in their arms, I sobbed, the guilt of the words written in that book overcoming me. How could I have done that?
I KNOCKED, STILL UNSURE if I'd understood correctly.
"Hello?" Sadie called out.
I cracked the door open and peered inside. "You wanted to see me?" I asked, trying to gulp down my nerves. I wasn't in the best of shape. I hadn't been sleeping well since Kristi's accident.
"Come in, Lou, close the door." Her words were soft, and not at all accusatory. It was almost like she didn't blame me. That made one of us. I was in all-out Lou's fault mode.
I did what she asked and the door clicked shut. She hurried over and locked it, leaving the three of us alone in the room.
"I'm sorry for what happened," I blurted. "I didn't realize—"
"What?" Sadie cocked her head to the side.
"For writing in the book. Kristi made me, and then..." Tears fell again as I thought through everything. "I didn't mean it."
"Oh, Lou." Madison rushed over and pulled me into a hug. "We don't blame you."
I sniffed and looked between the two girls. "You don't?"
"Of course not," Sadie responded. "We knew what she was like." Despite her words, there was a hint of sadness in her voice too. At least I wasn't alone in how I felt. "If she told you to write in the book, you had to."
"She said it was a way of proving myself to the Sparkles." I sniffed again, not quite believing how stupid it all seemed now.
"She made us do the same," Madison assured me as she pushed on my shoulders until I sat on the bed.
It was only then that I noticed the two of them were wearing comfortable clothing. Almost as if the strict Sparkle rules no longer applied.
"What did you write?" Sadie asked.
"That she'd get hit by a bus." I'd have been able to hear a pin drop in the silence of the room after I'd said the words.
"In ink?" she checked.
I nodded. "At least, I think it was ink. It came from an ink pen and was very black. That shouldn't have come true, right?"
She shook her head. "It was nothing more than a terrible accident," she assured me. "A coincidence. You didn't do anything to cause it. I hadn't even heard the rumor."
"Neither had we." I paused for a moment, thinking through the best way to say the next bit that didn't make me sound too guilty. "I have to destroy the book."
The two of them exchange looks that I couldn't explain.
"I-I know that makes it sound like I'm guilty, but I need to know that it's not going to hurt anyone else."
"It's not that," Sadie responds. "We don't know where the book is."
I blinked a few times. "What?" My voice rasped over the word.
"It should be on the shelf over there, but it's gone. And it wasn't in Kristi's things. We packed her room up for her parents."
"How long?" Panic built inside me. Had someone already claimed it as evidence? Were they taking it in front of some kind of judge and jury ready to convict me and remove me from paranormal society?
I chewed on my bottom lip. I wouldn't be the only person in trouble if that book was found. Even if they didn't believe me about my innocence, I was certain neither of the two girls in front of me wanted it gone.
"We're not sure," Madison said eventually.
&nbs
p; "How could you not know?" I didn't put any kind of accusation in my voice, this wasn't the time and place for that. Not if I knew what was good for me.
"Kristi would come in and take it whenever she wanted," Madison admitted. "We asked what she was doing with it once, but she cut us off so fast that we never tried again."
I nodded. That tracked with just about everything I knew about Kristi. She'd ruled with terror and bitchiness.
"Do you have any idea where she'd take it?"
"No, sorry." Sadie shook her head.
"It's not your fault." Even as I said it, I wondered what there was we could do to try and find out.
"But that doesn't change the fact it's missing," Sadie mused. "If the wrong person gets hold of it..."
"We don't even know who the wrong person is," Madison pointed out.
"Kristi was talking to someone before everything happened," I admitted. They raised their eyebrows, so I recounted to them everything that had happened. I wasn't sure what it was about the two of them that made me trust them, but I knew I had to if I wanted to get through this unscathed.
"She never talked about anyone else," Sadie mused. "But she did spend a lot of time alone."
"And a lot of time alone with that book," Madison added. "Maybe she wasn't the only person that used it."
I swallowed. "Did you ever see her write in the book with blood?" I asked.
Sadie shook her head. "She once threatened to do it if we disobeyed her, but I never saw her do it. Why?"
"There were recent entries in blood," I admitted. "I didn't get a chance to read any of them, but there were definitely some." And if she'd been writing other things in there, maybe it wasn't me who'd caused the bus accident.
That was wishful thinking, and I knew it, but I needed to cling to something to stay sane, and that was as good a hope as any.
"Then we have even more reason to find that book," Sadie said grimly.
I nodded. "We do.”
Chapter Ten
I slammed the door of our dorm room shut and leaned back against the wood. The firm feel of it behind me gave me at least a little bit of comfort, even if it wasn't much. This was the only place in the whole academy where people didn't hate me.
A swift glance proved that neither Estelle or Tyler were here, and I let out a sigh of relief. They didn't hate me, but Estelle's smug face would have been too much for me right now. She didn't seem to care that Kristi had died. Far from it. She'd seen it as some kind of twisted win. And I still had no idea why. Neither her, nor Kristi, had ever explained why there was so much animosity between them. It only came from Estelle's side too.
I pushed away from the door, hoping to remove my thoughts from their dangerous spiral. It wasn't safe for me to dwell on what had happened, that way only led to insanity.
I was just lucky none of the faculty seemed to blame me. My parents had been informed that I'd witnessed something horrific, but hadn't been told I was responsible.
Thank the earth for small miracles.
Which meant I got to stay here. Except, I wasn't completely certain this was where I wanted to be.
A familiar shape on Estelle's dresser caught my attention. I took a few steps forward, dread filling the pit of my stomach. I needed to check, to be certain of what I was seeing. But I knew what this was.
Did Estelle know what I'd done? Was that why she was so smug? I'd taken the revenge she so wanted on Kristi and knew it.
I came to a standstill in front of the dresser, trying not to freak out at the familiar sight of the book there. I reached out a hand and touched the cover.
It was almost like the whole thing vibrated. It wanted me to open it, to use its power. But I wasn't going to do that. If I opened it, the only reason would be to check what was inside. I didn't want to be taken by surprise.
I took the book back to my bed. I stared at it for another moment, unsure if I had the courage to actually do this.
"Pull yourself together, Lou," I scolded myself.
I took a deep breath in and flipped to the part of the book where I'd written what would happen to Kristi. The dread in my stomach only got worse. That wasn't normal ink it was written in. It looked almost like it was across between the ink that was scrawled over most of the pages, and the blood I'd seen before.
My dread turned into sickness. Someone, probably Kristi, had put blood in the ink I'd used. It really was my fault that the bus had hit her. I'd been the one who wrote this about her.
A large part of me wanted to slam the book shut and never look at a single page from it every again. But I knew I had to. There was more for me to learn in this book, and no matter what happened, I was going to uncover the truth. It didn't matter that if I did, I'd have to work out what to do with it. One step at a time.
I turned the pages, looking for the one that Kristi herself had used. I found it with ease, noting that Sadie and Madison's handwriting was present as well, but only in ink, and their rumors were as silly as mine should have been. Despite myself, I smiled at that one. At least I knew I'd been right when I thought of them as good people.
None of Kristi's words explained anything that had happened, other than the one I'd already seen that said my glamour would go wrong. I still hated her for that, even though it was now tinged with a hint of sadness over her ultimate fate. I hated this whole situation.
I grunted in frustration and flipped through a few more pages. My eyes widened as I found another page with fresh-ish ink on it. But this one wasn't in Kristi's handwriting, or the other Sparkles’.
Kristi makes Lou write in the book.
Lou writes that Kristi will be killed by a school bus in the book.
My blood turned to ice in my veins. There were so many words on this page that it was almost impossible to make them out. But most of them were about Kristi and controlling things that she did. From this, it almost seemed like she wasn't as bad as I'd thought.
Who would do something like this?
Even as I asked myself the question, I thought I had the answer. There was only one person who hated Kristi enough to actually do that.
Despite being roommates, I had no idea what Estelle's handwriting looked like.
I glanced over at her dresser. Did I dare go through it?
It took a moment to realise that I had to. I needed to know if it was her who had done this. Then I could go about clearing my name. Hopefully, some of the other students had already heard rumours about this book and would be willing to believe me when I told them what was in it. The guys and the Sparkles would be on my side, I knew that for certain, but at the moment, no one else was. Not even Tyler.
I rose to my feet, leaving the book behind for a moment. Gingerly, I pulled open the top drawer of her dresser and rifled through the things, relieved to find she was messy and hadn't taken a lot of care when organising. She'd' have no idea that I'd been in here, which was reassuring.
A scrap of paper made its way into my hand, and I let out a sigh of relief. Something to compare against.
I shut the drawer and headed back to the bed before smoothing out the sheet of paper. It was nothing more than a series of notes passed between Tyler and Estelle about one of the teachers. Nothing too personal then.
Within seconds, I knew what I was looking at.
Estelle had been the one using the book to control Kristi. And through her, control the rest of the school.
"But why?" That bit made no sense. She'd never seemed like the kind of person who coveted power over everything else. She was a little edgy, sure, but so were a lot of people. It didn't mean they wanted to exert this level of control and manipulation over everyone else.
The door creaked and I slammed the book shut before stuffing it under my pillow. That wasn't going to help if it was Estelle and she noticed the book was gone, but I had to do something so it wasn't obvious I'd worked everything out.
"Lou?"
I cursed under my breath. Why had Estelle decided now was the right time to come back? And
why hadn't I thought to set up a spell to let me know people were coming.
"Hey!" I jumped to my feet and plastered a wide smile on my face. It wasn't going to fool anyone, but I had to at least try and act like I was fine.
"Oh good, you're here. Are you coming to the memorial?" she asked cheerily.
I wanted to punch her. How could she go around acting this way when it was her fault Kristi was dead?
"Yes, I'm just getting changed," I answered.
She raised an eyebrow.
"I'm hardly going dressed in pink."
"You're right, you should wear more Sparkles." Her voice dripped with menace. "Anyway, don't mind me, I was just dropping off my bag." Her rucksack thudded to the floor and she walked out, pushing past Tyler who must have come in behind her.
"What's up with her?" I asked, more to myself than to the other hybrid.
Tyler shrugged. "She's been acting weird for the last few days. I'm not sure what it's about." She shifted uncomfortably from side to side, as if knowing something but not wanting to voice it.
"What do you know?" I asked.
"Nothing."
Her response was too quick, and we both knew it.
"Please?"
Tyler sighed as she closed the door. "I think she's taking too much pleasure in Kristi's death."
"As if she had something to do with it?" I hedged.
Tyler probably knew better than I did how deep the animosity ran within her.
"She couldn't have."
"Can I show you something?" I blurted out.
She cocked her head to the side.
"You can't tell Estelle."
Tyler frowned. "Sure?" Confusion came through her voice, but I didn't have time for that. I already knew that she wouldn't believe me until she saw the evidence with her own eyes. I didn't blame her for that. It was only natural to be skeptical.
I pulled the book out from under my pillow and opened it to the page Estelle had been using.
Tyler's eyes widened. "That's Estelle's writing."
I nodded. "I thought as much. She's been using this to control the academy. To control Kristi." I didn't add me into that equation. I was actually a very small part of this, and beyond feeling a little used, I'd be fine about it.
Magical Mistake (Magic And Metaphysics Academy Book 2) Page 7