He stopped so suddenly that I actually walked three steps past him and had to turn around.
“If the Vandy had pulled that maneuver, you’d be at the infirmary right now. Sorry for trying to save your ass. Again.”
“I don’t need anyone saving my ass,” I shot back, my face hot.
“Right,” he drawled before walking toward the house. But then something he’d said struck me.
“What do you mean she has enough reasons to hate me?”
He clearly wasn’t going to stop walking, so I had to jog to catch up.
“Your dad’s the one who gave her those ‘tats.’”
I grabbed his elbow, my fingers slipping on his sweaty skin. “Wait. What?”
“Those marks mean she’s gone through the Removal. They’re a symbol of her screwup, not a point of pride with her. Why would you . . .”
He trailed off, probably because I was glaring at him.
“Elodie,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” I fired back. “Your girlfriend and her friends were really helpful in filling me in on the Vandy this morning.”
He sighed and rubbed the nape of his neck, which had the effect of pulling his T-shirt even tighter across his chest. Not that I cared. “Look, Elodie . . . she’s—”
“So do not care,” I said, holding up my hand. “Now, what did you mean when you said my dad gave her those tattoos?”
Archer looked at me incredulously. “Whoa.”
“What?”
“You seriously don’t know?”
I’d never been able to actually feel my blood pressure rising before, but it certainly was now. It felt kind of the way magic used to feel, only with more homicidal rage thrown in.
“Don’t. Know. What?” I managed to say.
“Your dad is the head of the Council. As in, the guy who sent us all here.”
CHAPTER 12
After that little tidbit of information, I did something I have never done in my entire life.
I had a full-on drama queen meltdown.
By which I mean I burst into tears. And not tragically beautiful, elegant tears either. No, I had the big messy ones involving a red face and snot.
I usually make it a point not to cry in front of people, especially hot boys that I’d been totally crushing on before they’d tried to choke me.
But for some reason, hearing that there was yet another thing I didn’t know just sent me right on over the edge.
Archer, to his credit, didn’t look exactly horrified by my sobbing, and he even reached out like he might grab hold of my shoulders. Or possibly smack me.
But before he could either comfort me or commit further acts of violence upon my person, I spun away from him and made my drama queen moment complete by running away.
It wasn’t pretty.
But by that point I was beyond caring. I just ran, my chest burning, my throat aching from a combination of Archer’s chokehold and tears.
My feet pounded against the thick grass with dull thumps, and all I could think was what an idiot I was.
Don’t know about blocking spells.
Don’t know about tattoos.
Don’t know about big, stupid, evil Italian Eyes.
Don’t know about Dad.
Don’t know anything about being a witch.
Don’t know, don’t know, don’t know.
I wasn’t sure exactly how far I’d run, but by the time I got to the pond at the back of the school, my legs were shaking and my side ached. I had to sit down. Luckily, there was a little stone bench right next to the edge of the water. I was so out of breath between the running and the crying that I totally overlooked the moss creeping over the seat and flopped down. It was hot from the sun, and I winced a little.
I sat there, my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands, listening to my breath saw in and out of my lungs. Sweat dripped from my forehead to my thighs, and I started to feel a little dizzy.
I was just so . . . pissed. Okay, so Mom had been freaked out by Dad being a warlock. Fair enough. But why couldn’t she at least have let me talk to the guy? It would have been nice to get a little heads up about the Vandy. You know, just a friendly “Oh, and by the way, your gym teacher hates me a lot, and so, by extension, hates you! Best o’ luck!”
I groaned and lay across the bench, only to come shooting back into a sitting position when the hot stone touched my bare arm.
Without really thinking, I laid my hand on the bench and thought, Comfy.
A tiny silver spark flew from my index finger, and immediately the bench under me began to stretch and undulate until it morphed itself into a pretty, lush, velvet chaise lounge covered in hot-pink zebra stripes. Clearly, Jenna was rubbing off on me.
I settled back onto my newly comfy resting spot, a pleasant buzz humming through me. I hadn’t done magic since coming to Hecate, and I’d forgotten how good even the littlest spells could make me feel. I couldn’t create something out of nothing—very few witches could, and that was some seriously dark magic anyway—but I could change things into different versions of themselves.
So I put a hand on my chest and smiled as my gym uniform rippled and receded until I was wearing a white tank top and khaki shorts. Then I pointed a finger at the water’s edge and watched as a stream spiraled upward from the surface of the lake, spinning into a cylinder until I had a glass of iced tea hovering in the air in front of me.
I was feeling pretty satisfied with myself, and more than a little magic drunk, as I leaned back against the chaise lounge and took a sip of tea. I may be a loser, but hey, at least I’m a loser who can do magic, right?
I sat there with my sweaty arm over my eyes for several minutes, listening to the birds, the gentle lap of the water against the shore, and for those few moments I was able to forget that I was in some serious trouble when I got back to the school.
Lowering my arm, I turned my head to look at the pond.
There, just across the water, was a girl standing on the opposite shore. The pond was pretty narrow, so I could see her clearly: it was the ghost in green I’d seen my first day at Hecate. And just like on that first day, she was staring right at me.
It was beyond creepy, to say the least. Not sure what to do, I raised my hand and lamely waved hello.
The girl raised her hand in reply. And then she vanished. There was no gradual fading away like I’d seen with Isabelle’s ghost. Just one minute she was there, then she was gone.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” I said, my voice just a little too loud in the quiet, and creeping me out even more.
My good mood had started to fade as the spell buzz wore off, and I looked down to see that my cute and much cooler outfit had dissolved back into my gym uniform. That was weird. My spells usually lasted a lot longer than that. The lounge beneath me was starting to feel a little harder too, and I figured it was only about five more minutes before I was sitting on hot mossy stone again.
My thoughts turned back to my parents and their apparent penchant for being big ol’ liars. But even as I tried to work up righteous anger at them for getting me into this mess, I knew that wasn’t what had my ugly gym shorts in a twist.
It was that my worst fear seemed to be coming true. It’s one thing to be different around people who you’re really, well, different from. It’s a whole other problem to be an outcast in a group of outcasts.
I sighed and lay down on the lounge, which now had moss creeping up one side. I closed my eyes.
“Sophia Alice Mercer, a freak among freaks,” I mumbled.
“Pardon?”
I opened my eyes to see a figure hovering above me. The sun was directly behind her, turning her into a black shadow, but the shape of her hair made Mrs. Casnoff easily identifiable.
“Am I in trouble?” I asked without getting up.
It was probably a hallucination brought on by the heat, but I was pretty sure I saw her smile as she leaned down to place a hand under my shoulder and maneuver me into a sitting position.
“According to Mr. Cross, you have cellar duty for the rest of the semester, so yes, I would say you are in a great deal of trouble. But that is Ms. Vanderlyden’s concern, not mine.”
She looked down at my hot-pink lounge, and her mouth twisted into a little pucker of disgust. She placed her hand on the back of the chair and my spell fell away in a shower of pink sparkles until my lounge became a perfectly respectable light blue love seat covered in big pink cabbage roses.
“Better,” she said crisply, sitting down beside me.
“Now, Sophia, would you care to tell me why you’re here by the pond instead of reporting to your next class?”
“I’m experiencing some teenage angst, Mrs. Casnoff,” I answered. “I need to, like, write in my journal or something.”
She snorted delicately. “Sarcasm is an unattractive quality in young ladies, Sophia. Now, I’m not here to indulge whatever pity party you have decided to hold for yourself, so I would prefer it if you told me the truth.”
I looked over at her, perfectly turned out in her ivory wool suit (again with the wool in the heat! What was wrong with these people?), and sighed. My own mom, who was super cool, barely got me. What help could this fading steel magnolia with her shellacked hair be?
But then I just shrugged and spilled it. “I don’t know anything about being a witch. Everyone else here grew up in this world, and I didn’t, and that sucks.”
Her mouth did that puckering thing, and I thought she was about to bust me for saying “sucks,” but instead she said, “Mr. Cross told me that you didn’t know your father is the current head of the Council.”
“Yeah.”
She picked a small piece of lint off her suit and said, “I’m hardly privy to your father’s reasons for doing things, but I’m sure he had a reason for keeping his position from you. And besides, your presence here is very . . . sensitive, Sophia.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She didn’t answer for a long time; instead she stared out at the lake. Finally she turned to me and covered my hand with hers. Despite the heat, her skin felt cool and dry, slightly papery, and as I looked into her face, I realized that she was older than I’d originally thought, with tons of fine lines radiating from her eyes.
“Follow me to my office, Sophia. There are some things we need to discuss.”
CHAPTER 13
Her office was on the first floor, off the sitting room with the spindly chairs. I noticed as we walked through this time that the spindly chairs had been replaced with prettier, much sturdier-looking wingback chairs, and the vaguely moldy-looking couches had been reupholstered in a cheery white-and-yellow-stripe fabric.
“When did you get new furniture?” I asked.
She glanced over her shoulder. “We didn’t. It’s a perception spell.”
“Excuse me?”
“One of Jessica Prentiss’s ideas. The furnishings of the house reflect the beholder’s mind. That way we can gauge your comfort level with the school by what you see.”
“So I imagined the gross furniture?”
“In a way, yes.”
“What about the outside of the house? No offense, or anything, but it still looks pretty rank.”
Mrs. Casnoff gave a low laugh. “No, the spell is only used in the public rooms of the house: the lounge areas, the classrooms, and so forth. Hecate must maintain some of its brooding air, don’t you think?”
I turned in the doorway of Mrs. Casnoff’s office and looked again at the sitting room. Now I could see the way the couches, chairs, even the curtains shimmered and wavered slightly, like heat rising off a road.
Weird.
I’d thought Mrs. Casnoff would have the biggest, grandest room in the house. You know, something filled with ancient books, with heavy oak furniture and floor-to-ceiling windows.
Instead she led me into a small windowless room. It smelled strongly of her lavender perfume, and another stronger, bitter smell. After a moment I realized it was tea. A small electric kettle was bubbling away on the edge of the desk, which wasn’t the wooden monstrosity I’d imagined, but simply a small table.
There were books, but they were stacked in vertical rows around three of the four walls. I tried to make out the titles on the spines, but those that weren’t too faded to read were in languages I didn’t know.
The only thing in Mrs. Casnoff’s office that was even remotely like I’d expected was her chair. It was less of a chair, really, and more like a throne: a tall, heavy chair covered in purple velvet.
The chair on the other side of the desk was lower by a good five inches, and as I sat in it, I immediately felt about six years old.
Which, I guessed, was the point.
“Tea?” she asked after primly arranging herself on her purple throne.
“Sure.”
A few more moments passed in silence as she poured me a cup of thick red tea. Without asking, she added milk and sugar.
I took a sip. It tasted exactly like the tea my mom made for me on rainy winter days: days we’d spent curled up on the couch, reading or talking. The familiar taste was comforting, and I felt myself relax slightly.
Which, again, had probably been the point.
I looked up at her. “How did you—”
Mrs. Casnoff just waved her hand. “I’m a witch, Sophia.”
I scowled. Being manipulated has always been one of my least favorite things. Right up there with snakes. And Britney Spears.
“So you know a spell that makes tea taste like . . . tea?”
Mrs. Casnoff took a sip from her cup, and I got the impression she was trying to hold back a laugh. “Actually, it’s a little more than that.” She gestured to the kettle. “Open it.”
I leaned forward and did just that.
It was empty.
“Your favorite drink is your mother’s Irish breakfast tea. Had it been lemonade, you would have found that in your cup. Had it been hot chocolate, you would have had that. It’s a basic comfort spell that’s very useful for putting people at ease. As you were before your naturally suspicious nature kicked in.”
Wow. She was good. I had never even attempted an all-purpose spell before.
But not like I was going to let her know I was impressed.
“What if my favorite drink had been beer? Would you have given me a frosty mug of that?”
She lifted her shoulders in something that was far too elegant to be called a shrug. “There, I may have been somewhat stymied.”
Pulling a leather portfolio out of a stack of folders on her desk, she settled back into her throne.
“Tell me, Sophia,” Mrs. Casnoff said, “what exactly do you know about your family?”
She was leaning back in her chair, one ankle crossed over the other, looking as casual as was possible for her.
“Not much,” I said warily. “My mom’s from Tennessee, and both her parents died in a car accident when she was twenty—”
“That is not the side of your family I was referring to,” Mrs. Casnoff said. “What do you know of your father’s people?”
Now she wasn’t even trying to disguise her eagerness. I suddenly felt like something very important depended on my next answer.
“All I know is that my father is a warlock named James Atherton. Mom met him in England, and he said he grew up there, but she wasn’t sure if that was true.”
With a sigh, Mrs. Casnoff put down her cup and began rummaging through the leather portfolio. She slid her glasses down from their usual spot on top of her head as she muttered, “Let’s see, I just saw . . . Ah yes, here it is.”
She reached into the portfolio, then suddenly stopped and looked up at me.
“Sophia, it is imperative that what we discuss in this room remains in this room. Your father asked me to share this with you when I thought the time was appropriate, and I feel that time has come.”
I just nodded. I mean, what can you say to a speech like that?
Apparently that worked for her, a
nd she handed me a black-and-white picture. A young woman stared back at me. She looked maybe a few years older than me, and from the style of her clothes, I could guess that the picture had been taken some time in the 1960s. Her dress was dark, and it fluttered around her calves as though a gentle breeze had just caught it. Her hair was light, probably blond or red.
Just behind her, I could make out the front porch of Hecate Hall. The shutters had been white back then.
She was smiling, but the smile looked tight, forced.
Her eyes. Large, widely spaced, and very light.
And very familiar.
The only other eyes I’d even seen like that had been my father’s, in the only picture I had of him.
“Who—” My voice broke a little. “Who is this?”
I looked up at Mrs. Casnoff to find her watching me closely. “That,” she said, pouring herself another cup of tea, “is your grandmother, Lucy Barrow Atherton.”
My grandmother. For the longest moment I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I just stared at the face, trying desperately to find myself in it.
I couldn’t find anything. Her cheekbones were sharp and high, and my face is slightly rounded. Her nose was too long to resemble mine, and her lips too thin.
I looked into her face, which despite the smile, looked so sad.
“She was here?” I asked.
Mrs. Casnoff placed her glasses on top of her head and nodded. “Lucy actually grew up here at Hecate, back before it was Hecate, of course. I believe that picture was taken shortly after your father was born.”
“Did you . . . did you know her?”
Mrs. Casnoff shook her head. “I’m afraid that was before my time. But most Prodigium know of her, of course. Her story was a very unique one.”
For sixteen years I had wondered who I really was, where I came from. And here was the answer right in front of me. “Why?”
“I told you the story of the origins of Prodigium your first day here. Do you remember?”
It was like two weeks ago, I thought. Of course I remember. But I decided to store the sarcasm, and said, “Right. Angels. War with God.”
Hex Hall Book One Page 9