Firespell (21 page)

“So,” Derek asked, “are you from Chicago?”

“Sagamore,” I said. “New York state.”

“You’re a long way from home, Sagamore.”

I glanced through the windows toward St. Sophia’s towers, the prickly spires visible even though we were a couple of blocks away. “Tell me about it,” I said, then looked back at Derek. “You did your time at MA?”

“I was MA born and bred. My dad owns a chain of bodegas”—he bobbed his head toward the shelves in the store—“and he wanted more for me. I got four years of ties and uniforms and one hell of an SAT score to show for it.”

“Derek’s kind of a genius,” Scout said, placing the Choco-Loco on the counter. “Biggest decision I’ll make all day, probably.”

Derek chuckled. “Now, I know that’s a lie.” He held up the front of the comic book, which featured a busty, curvy superheroine in a skintight latex uniform. “Your decision making is a little more akin to this, wouldn’t you say?”

My eyes wide, I glanced from the comic book to Scout, who snorted gleefully at Derek’s comparison, then leaned in toward her. “He knows?” I whispered.

She didn’t answer, which I took as an indication that she didn’t want to have that conversation now, at least not in front of company. She pulled a patent leather wallet from her bag, then pulled a crisp twenty-dollar bill from the wallet.

I arched an eyebrow at gleaming patent leather—and the designer logo that was stamped across it.

“What?” she asked, sliding the wallet back into her bag. “It’s not real; just a good fake I picked up in Wicker Park. There’s no need to look like a peasant.”

“Even the humblest of girls can have a thing for the good stuff,” Derek said, a grin quirking one corner of his mouth, then lowered his gaze to the comic book again. I sensed that we’d lost his attention.

“Later, D,” Scout said, and headed for the quick shop’s door.

Without lifting his gaze, Derek gave us a wave. We walked outside, the sky still gray and moody, the city eerily quiet, and toward St. Sophia’s.

“Okay,” I said. “Let me get this straight. You wouldn’t tell me—your roommate—about what you were involved in, but the guy who runs the quick shop down the street gets to know?”

Scout nibbled on the end of one of the sticks of chocolate in her Choco-Loco wrapper, and slid me a sideways glance as she munched. “He’s cute, right?”

“Oh, my God, totally. But not the point.”

“He has a girlfriend, Sam. They’ve been together for years.”

“Bummer, but let’s keep our eyes on the ball.” We separated as we walked around a clutch of tourists, then came back together when we’d passed the knot of them. “Why does he get to know?”

“You’re assuming I told him,” Scout said as we paused at the corner, waiting for a crossing signal in heavy lunchtime traffic. “And while I’m glad he’s supportive—seriously, he’s
so
pretty.”

“It’s the hair,” I suggested.

“And the eyes. Totally chocolatey.”

“Agreed. You were saying?”

“I didn’t tell him,” Scout said, leading us across the street when the light changed. “Remember what I told you about kids who seemed off? Depressed?”

“Humans targeted by Reapers?”

“Exactly,” she said with a nod. “Derek was a near victim. He and his mom were superclose, but she died a couple of years ago—when he was a freshman. Unfortunately, he rushed the wrong house at U of C; two of his fraternity brothers were Reapers. They took advantage of the grief, made friends with him, dragged him down even further.”

“They”—how was I supposed to phrase this?—“took his energy, or whatever?”

Scout nodded gravely as we moved through lunch-minded Chicagoans. “There wasn’t much left of him. A shell, nearly, by the time we got there. He was barely going to class, barely getting out of bed. Depressed.”

“Jeez,” I quietly said.

“I know. Luckily, he wasn’t too far gone, but it was close. We identified him and had to clear away some nasty siphoning spells—that’s what the younger Reapers used to drain him, to send the energy to the elders who needed it. We got him out and away from the Reapers. We gave him space, got him rested and fed, put him back in touch with his family and real friends. The rest—the healing—was all him.” She scowled, and her voice went tight. “Then we gave his Reaper ‘friends’ a good talking-to about self-sacrifice.”

“Did it work?”

“Well, we managed to bring one of them back. The other’s still a frat boy in the worst connotation of the phrase. Anyway, Derek’s one of a handful of people who know about us, about Adepts. We call them the community.” I remembered the term from the conversation with Smith and Katie. “People without magic who know about our existence, usually because they were caught in the crossfire. Sometimes, they’re grateful and they provide a service later. Information. Or maybe just a few minutes of normalcy.”

“Strawberry soda,” I added.

“That is the most important thing,” she agreed. She pulled me from the flow of pedestrian traffic to the curb at the edge of the street. “Look around you, Lil. Most people are oblivious to the currents around them, to the hum and flow of the city. We’re part of that hum and flow. The magic is part of that hum and flow. Sometimes people say they love living in Chicago—the energy, the earthiness, the sense of being part of something bigger than you are.”

Glancing around the neighborhood, across glass and steel and concrete, the city buzzing around us, I could see their point.

“There have always been a handful of people who know about us. Who know what we do, know what we fight for,” Scout said as we rounded the corner and walked toward St. Sophia’s.

And there he was.

Jason stood in front of the stone wall, hands in his pockets, in khaki pants and a navy blue sweater with an embroidered gold crest on the pocket. His dark blond hair was tidy, and his eyes had turned a muted, steel blue beneath the cloudy sky, beneath those dark eyebrows and long lashes.

Those eyes were aimed, laserlike, in my direction.

Scout, who’d taken a heartening sip of strawberry-flavored sugar water after relaying Derek’s history, released the straw just long enough to snark. “It appears you have a visitor.”

“He could be here for you,” I absently said.

“Uh, no. Jason Shepherd does not make trips to St. Sophia’s to see me. If he needed me, he could text me.”

I made a vague sound, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with her assessment, but my nerves apparently agreed. My throat was tight; my stomach fluttered. Had this boy—this boy with those ridiculous blue eyes—come here to see me?

Right before I melted into a ridiculous puddle of girl, I remembered that I was still irritated with Jason and wiped the dopey smile off my face. I’d show him “distraction.”

“Shepherd,” Scout said when we reached him, “what brings you to our fine institution of higher learning?” She managed those ten words before her lips found the straw again. I realized I’d found Scout’s pacifier, should it ever prove necessary—strawberry soda.

Jason bobbed his head at Scout, then looked at me again. “Can I talk to you?”

I glanced at Scout, who checked her watch. “You’ve got seven minutes before class,” she said, then motioned with a hand. “Give me your bag, and I’ll stick it in your chair.”

“Thanks,” I said, and made the transfer.

Jason and I watched Scout trot down the sidewalk and disappear into the building. It wasn’t until she was gone that he looked at me again.

“About yesterday.” He paused, eyes on the sidewalk, as if deciding what to say. “It’s not personal.”

I arched my eyebrows. I wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily.

He looked away, wet his lips, then found my gaze again. “When you were in the hospital, we talked about the Reapers. About the fact that we’re in the minority?”

“A splinter cell, you said.”

He bobbed his head. “In a way. We’re like a resistance movement. A rebellion. We aren’t equally matched. The Reapers—
we
call them Reapers—they’re not just a handful of misfits. They’re
all
the gifted—all the Dark Elite—except for us.”

“All except for you?”

“Unfortunately. That means the odds are stacked against us, Lily.” He took a step forward, a step toward me. “Our position is dangerous. And if you don’t have magic, I don’t want you wrapped up in it. Not if you don’t have a way to defend yourself. Scout can’t always be there . . . and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

An orchestra could have been playing on the St. Sophia’s grounds and I wouldn’t have heard it. I heard nothing but the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears, saw nothing but the blue of his lash-fringed eyes.

“Thank you,” I quietly said.

“That’s not to say I wasn’t bitter that you ignored me Sunday.”

I nibbled the edge of my lip. “Look, I’m sorry about that—”

Jason shook his head. “You saw the mark, and you needed time to process. We’ve all been there. I mean, you could have chosen better company, but I understand the urge to get away. To escape.” Jason looked down at the sidewalk, eyebrows pulled together in concentration. “When I found out who I was,
what
I was, I ran away. Hopped a Greyhound bus and headed to my grandmother’s house in Alabama. I camped out there for three weeks that summer. I was thirteen,” he said, raising his gaze again. His eyes had switched color from turquoise to chartreuse, and something animal appeared in his expression—something intense.

“You’re a . . . wolf?” I said it like a question, but I suddenly had no doubt, and no fear, about the possibility that he was something far scarier than Scout and the rest of the Adepts.

“I am,” he said, his voice a little deeper than it had been a moment ago. Goose bumps rose on my arms, and a chill slunk down my spine. I wondered whether that was a common reaction—Little Red Riding Hood syndrome, maybe.

I stared at him and he stared back at me, my focus so complete that I actually shook in surprise when the tower bells began to ring, signaling the end of the lunch period.

“You should go,” he said. When I nodded, he reached out and squeezed my hand. Electricity sparked up my spine. “Goodbye, Lily Parker.”

“Goodbye, Jason Shepherd,” I said, but he was already walking away.

He’d walked to St. Sophia’s to see me—to talk to me. To explain why he hadn’t wanted me to sit in on the Adepts’ meetings, mark or not.

Because he was
worried
about me.

Because he hadn’t wanted me to get hurt.

The moment I’d shared with Jason had been so incredibly phenomenal, the universe had to equalize. And what was the chosen brand of karmic balance for a high school junior?

Two words: pop quiz.

Magic in the world or not, I was still in high school, and a high school that prided itself on Ivy League admissions. Peters, our European history teacher, decided he needed to ensure that we’d read our chapters on the Picts and Vikings by using fifteen multiple-choice questions. I’d read the chapters—I was paranoid enough to make sure I finished my homework, magical hysterics notwithstanding. But that didn’t mean my stomach didn’t turn as Peters walked the rows, dropping stapled copies of the test on our desks.

“You have twenty minutes,” he said, “which means you have a little more than one minute per question. Quizzes will account for twenty percent of your grade, so I strongly recommend you consider your answers carefully.”

When the tests were distributed, he returned to his desk and took a seat without glancing up.

“Begin,” he said, and pencils began to scribble.

I stared down at the paper, my nerves making the letters spin—well, nerves and the thought of a blue-eyed boy who’d worried for me, and who’d held my hand.

Twenty minutes later, I put my pencil down. I’d filled in the answers, and I hoped at least a few of them were correct. But I didn’t stress over it.

Infatuation apparently made me intellectually lazy.

16

Scout waited until dinner to interrogate me about Jason’s visit to campus. It being Monday, we’d been blessed with brand-new food. Since I didn’t eat chicken, it was rice and mixed vegetables for me, but even simple food was better than dirty rice or stew. Or so I assumed.

“So, what did Mr. Shepherd have to say?” Scout asked, spearing a chunk of grilled chicken with her fork. “Are you engaged or promised, or what? Did you get his lavaliere? Did he pin you?”

“What’s a lavaliere?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s a fraternity thing?”

“Well, whatever it is, there wasn’t one. We just talked about the meeting. About the attitude he copped. He apologized.”

Scout lifted appreciative brows. “Shepherd apologized? Jeez, Parker. You must have worked faster than I thought. He’s as stubborn as they come.”

“He said he was worried about me. About the possibility that I’d get wrapped up in a Reapers versus Adepts cage match and wouldn’t have a way to defend myself, especially if you weren’t there to work your mojo.”

“And what spectacular mojo it is, too,” she muttered. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. “Listen,” she finally said. “I don’t want to warn you off some kind of budding romance, but you should be careful around Jason. I’m not sure I’d recommend getting involved with him.”

“I’m not getting involved with him,” I protested. “Wait, why can’t I get involved with him?”

“He’s just—I don’t know. He’s different.”

“Yeah, being a werewolf does make him kinda unique.”

She raised her eyebrows, surprise in her expression. “You know.”

“I do now.”

“How did you find out?”

“I heard him growl after I got hit with the firespell. I confirmed it yesterday.”

“He admitted he was a wolf? To you?”

“He let me see his eyes do that flashy, color-changey thing. He did the same thing again when we talked in the hospital.”

“After you made us leave?”

I bobbed my head. Scout made a low whistle. “In one week, you’ve gone from new kid in school to being wooed by a werewolf. You move fast, Parker.”

“I doubt he’s wooing me, and I didn’t do anything but be my usually charming self.”

“I’m sure you were plenty charming, but I just want you to be careful.”