Hexbound (18 page)

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Authors: Chloe Neill

BOOK: Hexbound
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Scout let out a muffled sound, but she kept her fingers tight on mine. She kept the current intact.
A low hum began to fill the air. I opened my eyes a little. The hum was coming from the rivets as they vibrated in their sockets. The green glow was also deeper now, the light more intense as Scout transmitted the magic into the door.
“How’s it coming?”
“I think we’re . . . almost there. I can feel it filling up. Sealing. Closing up the cracks.”
That was great, but it was late, and I was exhausted, and Scout wasn’t exactly a finicky magic eater. I could feel her capacity power, like a cavern of magical potential.
And that potential liked firespell.
“Okay, I think we’re done, Lily.”
I tried to pull back, to slow down the flood of power to a trickle, but it didn’t want to stop. Scout’s magic kept sucking more power, and I couldn’t close that door.
“Lily, we’re done here.”
“I can’t make it stop, Scout.”
The door began to pulse with green light. Off and on, off and on, like the world’s largest turn signal.
“Lily, I need you to do something. This is starting to hurt.”
I looked over at Scout. Her hair was standing on end, a punky blond-and-brown halo around her head.
“I’m trying, I swear.”
“You can do it, Lily. I believe in you.”
I closed my eyes and pretended the magic was a faucet and I was turning one of the knobs. Unfortunately, that imaginary knob felt like it had been welded closed. “I can’t get it!”
“Then we’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way!”
I opened my eyes and looked at Scout. The door was beginning to emit a pulsing noise. Each time it glowed it put out an electrical roar. I had to yell over the sound to be heard. “What old-fashioned way?”
“On three, we pull ourselves apart! Agreed?”
I swallowed, but nodded. “On three!”
She nodded back, and we began the countdown. “One—two—and
three
!”
We yanked our hands apart, but it wasn’t easy. It felt like I was pulling back a twenty-pound concrete block. I managed to untangle my fingers from hers, but the power was still pouring out, and it wanted to
move
. Since it couldn’t flow into Scout anymore, it pushed her away—and me with it.
I flew down the corridor and hit the floor five or six feet away. I heard the echoing
thump
as Scout hit the floor in the other direction.
“Ow
.
”
Very slowly, I sat up, hands braced on the ground to push myself upright. “Oh, crap, that hurt.”
“Seriously,” she said groggily, sitting up again, a hand on her forehead. It took a moment before she turned her head to look at me. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve been better. Are you okay?”
She checked her arms and legs. “Nothing broken, I think.”
One hand on the wall for support, I stood up, but had to wait until the room stopped spinning. “I have to say, that totally sucked.”
Scout tried to flatten down her hair, which was still sticking up in odd angles. “I guess our magics hate each other.”
“Or really like each other, since we had trouble prying ourselves apart. Either way, I don’t think we should do that again.”
“And we also probably should not tell Katie or Smith or Daniel that just happened. Lecture,” she added in explanation.
Very, very slowly—my bones aching from the fall—I moved back to the door and reached out a hand to Scout.
“Definitely don’t need a lecture,” I agreed as I pulled her to her feet. “I do need fourteen or fifteen hours of sleep and a giant cheeseburger.”
“Aren’t you a vegetarian?”
“That’s my point.”
When we were both on our feet, we looked back at the door. It still pulsed like a severed heart in a horror film.
“You know, that’s really gonna be noticeable if someone comes down here.”
“I guess we could try to ward the door upstairs to keep people from coming down.”
I gave her an exceptionally dry look. “No way am I going through that again. Got a better idea?”
“Well, the firespell fades over time—I mean, people wake up after they get knocked unconscious with it. You did, anyway.”
“I love being a cautionary tale.”
“So maybe it works the same way here, too. Cop a squat.” Without waiting for me to move, she turned her back to the wall across from the door, crossed one foot over the other, and sat down on the floor.
“We’re going to wait it out?” I could hear the grumpy sleepiness in my voice. I felt bad about it, but it was
late
. I wanted to be curled up in bed—or even in a wrinkled blanket on Scout’s floor—fast asleep.
“Just until we’re sure the green is fading,” she said. “If we know it’s fading, that means it’s going back to normal. And if it’s going back to normal, we’ll sleep a lot better later.”
She had a point. And it would have been pretty irresponsible to just walk away. Adepts were supposed to be a secret, but it wouldn’t be long before anyone who saw the door started asking questions.
“Fine,” I said, and sat down on the floor beside her. She immediately pulled out her cell phone and began texting.
“Daniel?” I wondered.
“Daniel,” she agreed. “We need to tell him about the breach, and we definitely need to tell him the Reapers know about the creatures. That raises all sorts of nasty questions.”
“Like?”
“Like whether they’re trying to domesticate them to use as some kind of weapon.”
I grimaced. “In the interest of my ever sleeping well again, let’s pretend that’s just not possible.”
When the texting was done, Scout put her phone away. She sighed, then dropped her head to my shoulder. “Does the door look any different to you now?”
“Not really. You?”
“Not yet.”
“We’ll just give it a few more minutes.”
If only.
12
There are nightmares, and then there are
nightmares
. You know the dream where you’re in class, but you totally forgot to take a shower and stuff? How about the dream where you wake up beside your best friend in the basement of a private school fifteen minutes before classes start?
Long story short, that dream ends with you running through the school in yesterday’s clothes in front of pretty much the entire junior and senior classes.
Luckily, the fact that we were nearly late for class kept us from having to explain to the dragon ladies what we’d been doing in the main building so early. But I heard Scout yell “Fell asleep studying!” three or four times before we were back in our rooms.
There was no time for a shower, so I cleaned up the best I could, brushed my teeth, and pulled on my uniform—plaid skirt, button-up shirt, fuzzy boots, and a cardigan. I pulled my hair into a topknot. My only accessory was the classic—my room key on its blue ribbon.
I met Scout in the common room, both of us pulling on messenger bags and hustling through the door. I handed over a smushed granola bar. She ripped into the plastic with her teeth, then stuffed the wrapper into her bag.
“If only the brat pack knew how glamorous we truly were,” she muttered, taking a huge bite of the bar. With her wrinkled skirt, untucked shirt, and mismatched sneakers, she didn’t look much better than I did.
“Yeah, it definitely looks like you were in a hurry. It’s not like you’d wear mismatched sneakers on purpose.”
She gave me a dry look.
“Okay, except in this particular instance because mismatched shoes look awesome,” I amended. “Truly an amazing fashion choice. You’re quite the trendster.”
Scout rolled her eyes and started down the hall again. “One of these days, you’re going to respect me.”
“Oh, I totally respect you. It’s your wardrobe I have issues with.”
Issues or not, I did a pretty good job of dodging the chunk of granola bar that came my way.
 
We stood there for a moment, horrified, our mouths gaping, but unable to look away.
It was a Thursday lunch in the St. Sophia’s cafeteria.
It was also the near end of what had been a long and unfortunately creative week in the St. Sophia’s kitchen: meatloaf with wasabi mustard sauce; vegetable mix with parsnips, whatever those were; and roasted potatoes—the funky purple ones.
Unfortunately, the end of the week meant leftovers. And, unfortunately, leftovers at St. Sophia’s meant “stew.”
The stew was one of the first things Scout had warned me about (yes—even before the Reapers and soul-sucking). This wasn’t your average stew—the stuff your mom made on a snowy weekend in February. It was a soupy mix of whatever didn’t get eaten during the week. Today, that meant parsnips and funky potatoes and chunky bits of meatloaf.
I was a vegetarian, but even I hadn’t been spared. There was a veggie version of the “stew” that included beans and rice and some kind of polygon-shaped green thing that didn’t look all that edible.
And the worst thing? It was only Thursday. Over the weekend, it was actually going to get
worse
. We had three-day-old Sunday stew to look forward to.
I pointed to a green thing. “What do you think that is?”
“It looks like okra. I think the stew is supposed to be gumboey.”
I curled my lip. “I’m not sure I’m up for brave food today.” I grabbed a piece of crusty bread and a bowl of fruit salad. Compared to my other options, I figured they were pretty safe. And speaking of bravery, I should probably get started on my drawing of the building.
“Hey, I’m going to head outside after class. I need to get my drawing in.”
“You still thinking about drawing the SRF building?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure what it’ll accomplish, but it’s the least I can do. I know I have to stay low-key in terms of investigating my parents, but I still have to do
something
, right?”
Scout shrugged. “I think that’s up to you, Lils. You’re not even sixteen. You’re entitled to believe your parents told you the truth about themselves and their work—that they told you everything you needed to know. I don’t think you have any obligation to play Nancy Drew for the Parker family, you know?”
“That’s pretty great advice.”
“I have my moments.”
“Hmm. Well, anyway, did you want to head outside with me?” I bobbed my head toward the window and the strip of blue fall sky I could see through it. “It looks pretty nice out there. Might be fun to get some fresh air.”
She shook her head. “Nah, that’s okay. I need to get some work done.”
“Schoolwork? Did I miss something in class?”
Crimson crossed her cheeks. “No. I’m just working on something.”
The words sounded casual, but the tone definitely didn’t. I didn’t want to push her, but I wondered if this was going to be another one of those locked-door nights for Scout. If so, what was she doing in there? Not that it was any of my business . . . until she decided to tell me, anyway.
“No problem,” I said. “I’ll see you before dinner.”
“Go for it. And if you decide to break into the SRF building to figure out the goods on your parents, take your cell phone. You never know when you’re going to need it.”
 
A few minutes later, I stood on the front steps of St. Sophia’s, my sketch pad and pencils in my bag, ready to walk to the Portman Electric Company building and begin my investigation. I mean, my sketch.
But that didn’t make my feet move any faster. I felt weird about going there—not just because I was trying to be sneaky, but because I recognized I might learn things I didn’t want to know.
What if my parents were involved in something illegal? Something unethical? Something that shamed them so much they had to hide it from me? Foley certainly thought it was something that could get them in trouble. At the very least, it was something I wasn’t supposed to know about . . . or talk about.
Problem was, my imagination was doing a pretty good job of coming up with worst-case scenarios on its own. St. Sophia’s was practically next door to the SRF, and I’d seen the letter in which they tried to convince my parents to drop me off at St. Sophia’s. Plus, the SRF did some kind of medical research, and Foley had said my parents did genetic research.
And now . . . the Dark Elite had a medical facility?
That was the rock that sat heavy in my stomach, making me rethink all the memories of my time with my parents. After all, if they’d lied about their work, what else had they lied about?
I shook off the thought. That was just insecurity talking. They were my
parents
. They were good people. And more important, they loved me. They couldn’t be wrapped up with the Reapers.

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