Spell Bound (16 page)

“You can buy me a burger when we get out of here,” Cal said, and as usual, I had no idea if he was joking or not.

I stepped away from Archer and reached out to give Cal one of those uncomfortable side hugs. “It’s good to see you,” I told him. “And not just because of, um…” I gestured to Archer, who raised an eyebrow at me but didn’t say anything. Willing my face not to go red, I asked Cal, “Did you get here yesterday like the rest of us?”

Sighing, Cal shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. One minute, I was heading out to the tent to grab some stuff; the next, there was all this light, and here I was. Back in my cabin, actually.”

“Why are we just now seeing you?” Jenna asked.

“The cabin was locked,” he replied. “Windows sealed shut, everything. Then this morning, I got the order to come here. Lara said they needed my ‘special skills.’ Gotta admit, I didn’t think it was going to be anything this intense.”

Now that he mentioned it, Cal did look awfully gray and exhausted. Healing magic is hard, and just one spell took a lot of Cal. To repeatedly bring someone back from the brink of death? No wonder he looked ready to keel over.

Still, Cal was tough, and he shook off his obvious weariness to ask, “So they’re turning everyone into demons, huh?”

“That seems to be the plan,” I said. Briefly, I filled him in on the assembly last night, adding, “And from what Elodie said, it’s like they want to do some kind of experiment on all of us, see what happens when you put a demon in a vampire.”

“What do you mean, ‘Elodie said’?” Archer asked, furrowing his brow.

“Oh. Um, Elodie haunts me. And now, uh, she can possess me and stuff. Which”—I hastened to add since Archer’s expression had gone dangerously dark—“is actually a
good
thing, because she can do magic through me.”

Jenna and I stood there, letting the boys take that in.

“Okay,” Archer said slowly. “Well, that’s incredibly disturbing, but I’m all for anything that helps us get out of here faster. Especially if I’m going to be used as some kind of guinea pig for torture.” I moved closer to him, wrapping my arm around his waist, and pretended not to see the way Cal suddenly looked away.

“So what do we do now?” Jenna asked.

I sighed. “Honestly, I want to say run. Spend some time researching spells that will get us through that killer fog, and then maybe find another spell that can make a magical boat or something.”

Cal made a sound that might have been a laugh, and Jenna smiled at me. Archer’s arm tightened around my waist. “But?” he prompted.

“
But,”
I added, “that’s like putting a Band-Aid on Marie Antoinette’s neck. I think our best bet is to try to talk to Mrs. Casnoff.”

“Why?” Archer asked.

“I don’t know. It’s just…she could’ve staked Jenna, but she didn’t.”

“Because she wants to put a demon in her,” Cal pointed out.

I shook my head. “Maybe, but I’m not so sure. Look, Lara is completely evil, but Mrs. Casnoff was…Okay, nice isn’t exactly the right word, but you guys have seen how awful she looks. Something is bothering her. It’s worth a shot to try to get her alone.”

“Maybe she knows where the grimoire is,” Jenna said, reaching out to grab my arm.

“She might,” I said, shooting for “enthusiastic” rather than “ambivalent and maybe a little scared.” As badly as I wanted my powers back, Torin’s second prophecy sat lodged like a stone in my chest. Just thinking about it made my head hurt.

So I turned to Archer, running my fingers over the front of his shirt. It was still stained with blood. “We’ll deal with Mrs. Casnoff. But first, there’s someone else we need to talk to.”

“I
don’t like this,” Archer said later that afternoon, as we sat across from each other on the floor of my room.

“I don’t either, but you have to admit it’s better than being tortured every day.”

Archer muttered something under his breath that sounded like, “Not so sure about that.”

Back at Thorne Abbey, I’d been able to summon Elodie. Well, I wasn’t sure if it was technically summoning, or if she just showed up when she felt like it. So I felt kind of stupid as I said, “Um, Elodie? You around? I need to talk to you.”

There was a stir of movement out of the corner of my eye, and suddenly Elodie was floating near the closet. “What—” she mouthed at me. And then she saw Archer.

For a long moment, they just stared at each other. Then, as nicely as I could, I said, “Look, Elodie, I know you and Archer have…issues, but I need your help. The Casnoffs are using him for target practice, and if that keeps up, he’ll probably die.”

Elodie made a gesture that was pretty easy to interpret.

“I told you this was pointless,” Archer said, moving to stand up. I caught his sleeve and pulled him back down.

“Wait. Elodie, please.”

She floated over toward us, that same unreadable expression on her face. “What do you want me to do?”

Relieved, I let go of Archer’s sleeve and said, “Anything you can. Some kind of protection spell, or invisibility spell…something.”

Folding her arms over her chest, Elodie glared at Archer. Then, with a wave of her hand and an, “Oh, fine,” she swooped into me.

It was so weird to have Archer looking at me but seeing Elodie. His expression was stony and cold, something I’d never seen on his face before. Even weirder was watching him with Elodie’s thoughts in my head. She was angry; I could feel that pumping through my veins, thumping inside my stomach. But it was more than that. She was…sad. Hurt.

“Give me your hands,” I heard my voice say. He hesitated for a moment and then laid his palms over mine.

As soon as he did, I had an image of those hands cupping my face as he kissed me. No. Not me.

Elodie.

Stop thinking about that!

You think I want to have that memory?
she snapped in reply.

“Okay,” she told Archer, who was looking somewhere over my shoulder. “I can’t make you invisible or anything, but this spell will keep you from feeling the pain and limit any real damage that can be done to you. It won’t last forever, though, so I suggest you and Sophie find some way out of here ASAP.”

“Oh, great, because that hadn’t occurred to us.”

“Do you want the spell or not?”

Scowling, Archer nodded and gripped my hands tighter. After a moment, I felt Elodie’s magic rain down from the top of my head, spreading down my fingers and into Archer’s. As soon as the magic faded away, Elodie dropped his hands, wiping mine on my thighs.

“There,” she said.

Archer flexed his fingers, looking at them as he said, “Thanks.”

“Whatever” was Elodie’s only reply, and then she was gone, leaving me sprawling on the floor.

I’m sure it was very attractive.

I felt firm hands on my shoulders, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting up and leaning against Archer’s chest.

“That was weirder than I thought it would be,” he said against my temple.

I tried to snort. “You’re telling me. How do you feel?”

“Better,” he said. “But if this protection is only going to last so long, I think the sooner you talk to Mrs. Casnoff, the better.”

Unfortunately, that ended up being easier said than done. For the next few days, I only saw Mrs. Casnoff at dinner, where she’d sit in her seat, staring blankly at the wall, and I wondered just how the heck I was ever going to get her alone.

That wasn’t the only thing that proved difficult. Jenna and I were determined to search for the grimoire, but between all the “training sessions” Lara forced on us (which were still unbearable to watch, even though I knew Archer was faking pain), and the fact that our doors were locked as soon as the sun went down, we hadn’t really had a chance. I’d tried calling Elodie again, but after the spell with Archer, she seemed to be keeping her distance.

By our fifth day back at Hex Hall, I was beginning to go crazy. “We have to do something,” I told Jenna that morning as we made our way from the greenhouse.

“We’ve been here nearly a week and we’re nowhere closer to finding the grimoire, we haven’t got the first clue how to stop the Casnoffs from turning all the kids here into demons, and I haven’t seen Mrs. Casnoff alone since—”

I glanced behind me to see that Jenna was frozen in place. She pointed to the pond. “Um, she’s alone now.”

There was a little stone bench by the water’s edge. Mrs. Casnoff was sitting on it, her back to us, white hair fluttering around her shoulders.

“Holy crap,” I said softly. I’d been wanting to get her alone for so long that I was actually shocked that it had finally happened.

“Go,” Jenna said, nudging me with her elbow. “Talk to her. I’ll meet you back at the house.”

I watched the back of Mrs. Casnoff’s head and wondered where to even start. I had so many things I needed to say that they all seemed jumbled up.

When I sat down next to her, she didn’t even turn her face toward me. “Hello, Sophie,” she said, her gaze still trained on the water.

“Hi,” was all I could say at first.

“She was so quiet,” Mrs. Casnoff said, and for a second, I was confused. Then she said, “When we were little. Father was afraid she might never speak,” and then I realized she meant Lara. “But I knew. Her mind was always working. Working, working, working. She was more like our father than I was.

“‘The ends justify the means’—he said that all the time,” she whispered. “The ends justify the means.”

Impulsively, I reached over and covered one of her hands with mine. Her skin was ice cold and felt as fragile as paper. “You don’t believe that,” I said. “Hex Hall…Look, it wasn’t my favorite place, but it wasn’t a
bad
place. I know
this
”—I gestured to the fog, the school, the whole poisoned island—“isn’t what you want.”

But Mrs. Casnoff didn’t look at me. She just kept shaking her head, and murmured, “It’s what he wanted. It’s what he gave up everything for.”

“Who?” I asked, my throat tight. “Your dad?” Then I shook my head. This might be my only chance to talk to her, and I needed to stay focused. “Why did you bring me here?”

Mrs. Casnoff turned to me, her face tear-streaked and tired. “Sophie Mercer,” she said. “A fourth-generation demon. The only one. All the others, too new, too fresh, too…unpredictable. But you.” She reached forward and grabbed my face between her hands and I instinctively reached up to pull her off me. “You’re our best hope.”

“Best hope for what?” I asked.

“It’s in the blood,” she said softly. “In the blood. Yours, and mine, and my father’s, and Alice’s…” Mrs. Casnoff trailed off, looking at me but not seeing me.

“What does that mean?” I demanded, but she let me go, her eyes going hazy again. “Mrs. Casnoff?” I reached out and shook her shoulders, but it was like she didn’t even feel it. Despair slammed into me, and I fought the urge to shake her until her teeth rattled. What was in the blood? How could I be her hope for anything?

“Sophie,” I heard someone say, and I turned to see Cal standing behind the bench. “Come on,” he said softly, holding his hand out.

I looked at Mrs. Casnoff again, at her white hair and ravaged face. And then I put my hand in Cal’s and let him lead me away from her.

“I thought she could help,” I said to Cal, once Mrs. Casnoff was far behind us. “That’s stupid, I know, but…she cared about us, Cal. She cared about this place.”

We walked side by side, and Cal eventually dropped my hand. His bent elbows kept brushing mine as we made our way to the house. “She’s sick, Sophie,” he answered as we crested the slight rise near his cabin. Hex Hall stood before us, looking more forlorn than ever. “Just like everything else here,” he said, and sighed. I thought of how much Cal had loved this place, the pride he’d taken in it.

“I’m sorry,” I said turning to him. His clear hazel eyes met mine, and a tiny bit of humor flickered there.

“You say that a lot.”

Tugging at my Defense uniform (which was even uglier than I’d remembered; bright blue stretchy cotton was not a good look on anyone), I gave a little laugh. “Yeah, well, I feel it a lot.”
Especially where you’re con
cerned
, I wanted to add.

Cal didn’t say anything to that, and after a moment, started walking toward the house. I waited a few seconds before following. There was so much I wanted to say to him, but I didn’t even know where to start.
Cal, I think I love you, but I’m maybe not
in
love with you, even though kissing you was pretty boss
was maybe one approach.

Or:
Cal, I love Archer, but my feelings for you are all con
fused because you are both awesome and smoking hot, and we’re already technically engaged to be married, which adds to the giant pot of boiling emotions and hormones I’ve become.

Okay, maybe don’t say
boiling
.…

“You okay?”

“Huh?” I blinked, surprised to see we’d come to the front of the house. Cal was standing with one foot on the bottom porch step, staring at me.

“You have this weird look on your face,” he said.

“Like you’re doing really complicated math in your head.”