Charmfall (2 page)

And Jason Shepherd, my boyfriend, was a werewolf. He said being able to transform wasn’t exactly magic, but part of an ancient curse; I wasn’t sure about all the details, but being a werewolf apparently meant superstrength and a unique ability to fight. And, I mean, it was awesome to watch your boyfriend turn into a wolf and attack the bad guys in the middle of a battle. I also knew he was careful to stay away from me when the moon was full. It was too dangerous to be around him, he said.

Problem was, the gift of magic was only temporary—like an upside to puberty. Adepts like me promised we’d let the magic go in a few years, when our time came. We respected the natural order of things. Reapers, on the other hand, were magic users who started stealing the souls of others as a last-ditch attempt to hang on to their power.

That’s why we were standing in the dark and dirty tunnels beneath Chicago on an otherwise gorgeous November Sunday. Adepts were responsible for keeping the Reapers—or the Dark Elite, as they called themselves—in check. That meant a lot of late nights after school running around in the dark and a lot of keeping our fingers crossed that we wouldn’t run into anything we couldn’t handle.

We weren’t always lucky.

Anyway, when we weren’t chasing Reapers or taking classes, the Adept higher-ups decided we should get in workouts to keep our magic sharp.

“Dodge ball it is,” Scout said, rubbing her hands together. “Who gets the short straw this time?”

“Obviously me,” Michael grumbled. His magic was more about information than offense, so he always had to do the dodging. And Jason could really only nip at us, which left the magical aggression to Scout and me.

She looked at me and grinned. “Rock, paper, scissors?”

“All day long,” I said. I walked over and faced her, and put out my hands. One in a fist, one palm up. “You ready?”

“All day long,” she repeated, putting her hands out.

We counted down together—“One, two, three,
go
”—then picked our sides. She picked rock . . . but I picked paper.

“Booyah,” I said, covering her hands with mine. “Paper beats rock. My turn to throw.”

Scout grumbled a few choice words, but picked up her skull-faced messenger bag from our dump spot in a dry bit of tunnel and slid it over her shoulder. “Fine, newbie. Just try not to electrocute us,” she said, then pointed between Jason and me. “And no cheating.”

“Would I do such a thing?” Jason asked, sliding me a glance.

“Frankly, yes. You would. But that doesn’t matter now. Adept, ho!” she said, then turned around and began walking backward, taunting me. “Bring it.”

The goal of Adept dodge ball was to practice throwing magic at a target. In this case, Scout, Jason, and Michael were the targets, which meant I had to practice throwing really light firespell.
Diet
firespell. Strong enough that they wanted to jump out of the way, but not so strong that I actually hurt anyone.

It wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

“We’re waiting, Lils,” Jason said, moving toward Scout and beckoning me forward with a crooked finger. “Come and get us.”

He was cute, but this wasn’t just a race down a hallway.

This was
firespell
.

Sure, the power was still new to me. Mine was an accidental gift. I’d gotten my magic after a Reaper, Sebastian Born, inadvertently hit me with a shot of his own firespell. But I was getting better at controlling it—and throwing it at others.

“You got it,” I muttered, closing my eyes and opening myself to the flow of power that spilled through the tunnels beneath me. It rose through my arms and legs, looking for a way out, a way back to ground. It tickled my fingertips, eager to move.

I opened my eyes again, the cage lights that hung in the ceiling of this stretch of tunnel flickering with the effort. I imagined gathering up a lump of power like a snowball, and as Jason, Scout, and Michael stepped over the threshold into the next segment of tunnel, I lobbed it at the ceiling above them.

Scout squealed and ducked; the firespell exploded into a shower of green sparks that vibrated the walls around us. Not exactly a comforting feeling when you were a story or two underground, but it’s not like we had better practice grounds. Other than Reapers and the few nonmagical folks in Chicago who knew we had magic and helped us stay safe, our powers were secret.

“The race is on!” Michael said. He took off down the tunnel, Jason and Scout behind him.

I gathered up a bit more firespell and ran down the tunnel after them. Each caged light dimmed as I passed beneath it, like they were bowing to the power I held in my hand. I tossed another ball of firespell as the trio disappeared through an arched doorway, sparks showering down behind them.

I muttered a curse. Sure, I wasn’t supposed to hit them, but I was trying to get as close as possible. And that last one could have been a little bit closer.

Water splashed in the tunnels in front of me as they ran away. The tunnels had been used for a small railroad that carried coal and trash between the buildings in Chicago. Water tended to collect in the floor between the old rails, not to mention the stuff that seeped down from the walls. The tunnels were usually dark and always cold, and they were especially chilly now that winter was on its way.

I followed the sounds of their splashing like a trail of crumbs, pausing when they slipped into a segment of tunnel I hadn’t seen before. There was a thin metal bar across the threshold.

“Is that actually supposed to keep anyone out?” I wondered, slipping underneath it and hustling ahead. But when silence filled the tunnel, I stopped.

It was quiet except for the slow drip of water somewhere behind me. Quiet enough that I could hear blood humming in my ears—and still no sounds of the other Adepts. Had they stopped running? Snuck into a side tunnel to ambush me when I wasn’t looking?

Only one way to find out.

I let the power flow a little more—just enough to gather a bit in my hand and scare the pants off them if they tried to be sneaky. I crept forward one step at a time, trying not to worry about the little multilegged things that were probably scurrying around me in the dark.

The lights were dimmer here, but they still flickered as I walked beneath them—
stalked
beneath them, with a pent-up dose of firespell in hand.

“Hello?” I whispered, peeking into a nook in the concrete. Empty. The firespell itching to be set free, I rubbed my fingers together.

“Anybody there?” I whispered, sneaking to the end of the tunnel and peeking into the next one, but there were no lights. It was too dark to see ahead of me more than a few feet, and every few feet that didn’t reveal three grinning Adepts (or two grinning Adepts and a werewolf) just made me more nervous. Anticipation built as I waited for them to make their move.

My nerves pulled tight, I stopped. “All right, you guys. I give up. Let’s head upstairs. I have party committee tonight.”

There was shuffling in the dark in front of me. I froze, my heart thudding beneath my shirt. “Guys?”

“Boo!”

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew Scout had jumped behind me, but my brain wasn’t exactly working. I screamed aloud and jumped at least two feet into the air, and then let go of the firespell I’d been holding back.

It flew from my hand, warping the air as it moved. It wavered past Jason and Michael, who’d edged against the walls of the tunnel to avoid it, but hit Scout full-on. Her body shook with the impact, and then went slack. I reached out and grabbed her before she fell, and I lowered her gently to the ground, her body cradled in my lap. Tears pricked at my eyes. “Oh, crap—Scout, are you okay? Scout?! Are you all right?”

Michael rushed to her side. He put a hand to her forehead, then tapped her cheeks like he was trying to wake her up. “Scout? Are you all right?”

“Scout, I am so sorry,” I said, panicked at the thought I’d knocked my best friend unconscious. It wasn’t exactly a good way to repay the first girl who’d actually paid attention to me when I’d been shipped to St. Sophia’s a few months ago.

Jason kneeled beside me and looked her over. “I’m sure she’ll be fine. You weren’t going full force, were you?”

“Of course not,” I said, but she
had
scared me. What if I’d accidentally turned up the firespell volume?

“If you wake up,” I said, “I’ll let you wear my fuzzy boots—those ones you really like? And I won’t complain when you take my chocolate muffin anymore at breakfast. You can have it every day from now on. I swear—just wake up, okay?”

A few seconds passed in silence . . . and then Scout opened one eye and grinned at me. She’d been
faking
!

“The chocolate muffin, huh?” she said. “
And
the fuzzy boots? You heard her, boys—you’re my witnesses.”

It didn’t bother me that she landed in the middle of a puddle when I dumped her onto the floor.

Maybe I should have firespelled her a little harder.

2

H
ow did you top off an afternoon of being faked out by your best friend in an abandoned tunnel beneath Chicago?

You helped snooty heiresses make party decorations.

Sure, party preparations were a little out of character for me, but that’s exactly why I was doing it. It wasn’t that I was eager to hang out with the other girls on the committee—most of them were into luxury handbags and money flaunting—but there was something seriously relaxing about playing around with glue and glitter. No rats. No spiders. No Reapers. No “workouts.” Just a little mindless arts-and-craftsing.
Yes, please.

Girls in spendy clothes—my fellow members of the Sneak decorating committee—sat in groups on the shiny parquet floor of the St. Sophia’s gym, sticking beady eyes onto cutout ravens and draping faux spider web around everything that sat still long enough to be draped. There were also foam gravestones everywhere, all painted black and coated with chunky black glitter.

Sneak was the fall formal of our junior class, and the St. Sophia’s girls in charge—the brat pack—had decided “graveyard glam” was our decorating theme. (The Sneak committee guys at Montclare, our brother school that Jason and Michael both attended, got to do all the audiovisual and electronic stuff.) The idea wasn’t exactly original, but since I was a fan of dark clothes and good eyeliner, I didn’t mind so much. Besides, St. Sophia’s alumnae had rented out the Field Museum, Chicago’s natural history museum, for the party, which was this Friday. I hadn’t been there yet, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but with all that money and all these decorations, there was no way it wasn’t going to look sweet when we were done.

I was pretty excited about the dance. The brat pack, on the other hand, I could do without. Veronica—an every-hair-in-place type of blonde—was their leader. She was currently using a pencil to point other members of the junior class toward their glittery assignments.

I didn’t like her, but I had been paying more attention to her lately. A few weeks ago, Veronica had walked right into the middle of a civil war between two vampire covens that lived in the Pedway—a bunch of passageways that connected buildings in downtown Chicago. Marlena was the reigning coven queen, and she hadn’t been happy that Nicu, a vamp she’d made, had started his own clan. Nicu helped us save Veronica, and something seemed to pass between them. She’d been spelled to lock down her memories of the fight and the meeting, but I couldn’t shake the feeling she was a magical time bomb waiting to go off.

Number two in the brat pack was Amie. She had a bright pink room in my suite but a quiet attitude, and she was currently painting the ravens I’d been assigned to glitter.

Mary Katherine, the third brat packer, whose dark hair was now streaked with yellow spiral curls and tiny rows of rhinestones, was painting her nails a deep shade of blue. At least, I assumed they were rhinestones. Who really knew?

Lesley Barnaby, another suitemate, walked toward me, a bundle of flat, black birds in her hand. She’d been given the task of carting the birds between the brat pack and me. Since their primary goals were being top of the St. Sophia’s food chain and driving me crazy, I was more than happy to let Lesley play middleman.

“More ravens,” she said, setting them down on the floor.

She sat cross-legged beside the stack, a pair of bright rainbow socks reaching up to her knees. She also wore a T-shirt with a rainbow on it and a small pair of fuzzy black cat ears tucked into her blond hair. Lesley had a very unique sense of style.

I liked clothes, and I definitely had an artistic streak. I hated the matchy-match plaid of our school uniforms. But that stuff just made me a teenager. Lesley was an altogether different type of girl. She acted less like a teenager than like a high-fashion model transplanted from some future world, complete with strange clothes and fuzzy expression. The stuff she wore might be really cool in twenty years, but right now it just seemed odd.

“Thanks,” I said, and glanced over at the girls. The brat pack was possibly increasing from three to four. A new recruit, Lisbeth Cannon, had been hanging out with the crew.

“How’s the brat pack?” I asked.

Lesley shrugged. “See for yourself. Veronica’s handing out orders. Amie’s following them. M.K.’s working on her nails.”

“What about Lisbeth?”

“She’s learning how to be like the rest of them.”

I glanced back. As much as I found them repellant, I could admit that I was also kind of intrigued. There was a lot of fighting. They were always pairing off together, leaving one girl out until the other two got mad at each other and decided it was time to switch partners again. Some days I’d find Veronica on the couch in our suite, complaining to Amie about Mary Katherine’s dramatics. M.K. usually complained to Amie that Veronica always had to have her way.

Both complaints seemed right to me.

I was glad to have a steady BFF in Scout, but in an odd way I was a little jealous about the dramatics. What if deciding between BFFs were the only problem I had to face? No magic. No Reapers. No slimy nasties in the tunnels? Just deciding which friend I wanted to wear on any given day.