Charmfall (3 page)

“You ever wonder what it’s like to be them?”

Lesley looked back at me. “You mean instead of having magic?”

Lesley was one of the few people without magic who was allowed to know about Adepts and Reapers. I wasn’t sure if she knew the entire story, but there was an advantage to not knowing too much—having all the details about the world of underground magic apparently put a Reaper target on your back. Lesley might have been a little odd, but she’d been a friend to us when we needed it, so I certainly didn’t wish that on her.

“I mean to be popular, and for how you look to be the most important thing on your mind.”

Lesley painted lines of glue onto the raven’s feathers. “I play the cello,” she said. “Sometimes I help you and Scout. I speak four languages, I’m super good at physics, and I will probably get into whatever college I want.” She looked up at me, and it was clear she wasn’t bragging. She was just giving me the facts. “So why would I want to spend my time worrying about whether everyone else thinks my shirt is cool enough?”

Like they were following a script, raised voices carried from the brat pack corner of the room.

“I’m trying to do it right,” Lisbeth said. She was attempting to carve a piece of foam into the shape of . . . Well, I’m not really sure what it was supposed to be. A gargoyle, maybe?

Veronica, who’d made her way over to the group, wasn’t buying it. “It certainly doesn’t look like it. You’ve been working on that thing for, like, an hour now.”

“Seriously,” M.K. said. “It looks like an angry terrier, and that’s really off-theme.”

I doubted M.K. cared whether the decoration was right or not. She probably just liked having someone to terrorize. And Lisbeth definitely looked terrorized. She burst into tears and ran from the room, leaving the brat pack rolling their eyes behind her.

“She is so
moody
,” M.K. complained. “I was just being constructive.”

Lesley and I exchanged a glance.

“See what I mean?” she asked.

I definitely did.

*  *  *

When the drama was over, we all went back to Sneakifying. Earlier, Veronica, as head of the planning committee, had told us Sneak got its name because St. Sophia’s girls of old used to sneak out every year and host an impromptu prom in an old storage building behind the dorms. (The school used to be a convent, so even the storage building was antiquey and cool.) Add twenty years, lots and lots of money, and parents who didn’t want their heiresses playing dress-up in an old storage building, and you had the modern version of Sneak.

I wasn’t one of those heiresses; I’d been sent to Chicago from my home in New York when my parents went to Germany for research work.

Well, that was their story, anyway. I wasn’t exactly buying it. I thought they knew more about magic than they let on, and that they’d sent me to St. Sophia’s specifically because our headmistress, Marceline Foley, also knew magic existed. It wasn’t something we chatted about regularly, and I don’t think Foley was thrilled to be in the know, but she gave us a little bit of room to take care of business.

I poured glitter over the lines of glue Lesley had made. I’m sure I didn’t exactly look like your average teenager—too much eyeliner and weird vintage shoes for that. But I didn’t exactly look like a teenage witch, either. The only real sign I was anything other than a junior at St. Sophia’s School for Girls was the Darkening on my back, a strangely shaped pale green tattoo that had appeared after I’d been struck by a shot of firespell—and had ended up being able to wield the power, too.

Sure—having power was better than ending up the pitiful victim of a Reaper. But was it better or worse than worrying only whether I was as pretty as the girls in
Vogue
and if my clothes were hot enough?

Lesley had clearly made up her own mind about that one. Scout had, too. She came from money and could have afforded the same stuff the brat pack wore. But she was one hundred percent Scout, and not the type to worry about what anybody else thought. Keeping the world safe from Reapers was number one on her agenda.

I shook the excess glitter from the raven and put it on the floor beside the others.

“Do you have a date for the dance?” I asked Lesley.

“No. I don’t really know any boys. I’m saving that kind of thing for college.” She looked up at me. “Are you going with Jason?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Do you have a dress yet?”

“Not yet.” Spending my evenings trying to save the world—or at least some of the teenagers who fell victim to Reapers—didn’t leave a lot of time to check out the fashion scene. “Scout and I were going to look this week. What about you?”

She shrugged. “I have some ideas.” She stretched out her legs, revealing a worn pair of Converses. “But I’ll probably go with these. They’re so comfortable. And if we’re going to be dancing all night . . . or running from bad guys . . .”

I looked up at her. “What makes you think we’ll be running from bad guys?”

She shrugged. “I’ve seen television. Bad guys always attack the night of the big dance.”

I made a doubtful sound and grabbed another raven, then sprinkled glitter onto its wings. “Yeah, well, that’s not going to happen this time. There will be all sorts of Adepts there, and there’s not a Reaper in town who’d attack a party full of high-society teenagers. They don’t want that much attention.”

At least, that was what I hoped . . .

*  *  *

It was late when Lesley and I headed back toward the dorms. The rest of the girls had left an hour before we had, but I’d been having too much fun with glitter and glue. We left the decorations in the gym, but I carried back the messenger bag that I took pretty much everywhere. Lesley, bucking the trend again, carried a small round suitcase covered in stickers. It was pea green and looked like something from the 1970s that she’d nabbed from a thrift store. Strange, but a pretty good find, actually.

The walk from the gym to the dorms wasn’t far. The campus was made up of a handful of buildings, and the entire thing was surrounded by a fence with a key-carded gate. Foley’d only just had the gate installed. Probably a good idea even without the Reapers. There were weirdos in every city, and most of the St. Sophia’s girls didn’t have firespell to protect them.

The air outside was cool. Winter was coming, something I definitely wasn’t thrilled about. Winters in upstate New York were nothing to laugh at, but I’d heard the wind off Lake Michigan was pretty miserable. I planned on using the emergency credit card my parents had given me to invest in the thickest, downiest coat I could find. I might look like a lumberjack, but at least I’d be warm.

Lesley and I walked quietly past the classroom building. There was a bench outside, where a girl in St. Sophia’s plaid and a dark-haired boy in street clothes—jeans and a long-sleeved jacket—sat. His arm was around her shoulders, and he was whispering in her ear. She stared blankly ahead while he twirled a lock of her hair. I realized it was Lisbeth, the brat pack’s new recruit.

It wasn’t exactly unusual for St. Sophia’s girls to sneak out of the building to meet with a boy. There was an old root cellar door I’d used to sneak out before—although for world-saving-type reasons.

But this seemed different. There was sadness in her eyes, and while he seemed totally into her, she seemed really, really unhappy about it. She gave off a vibe of desperation. That was quite a change from her brat pack bonding of a little while ago . . . but maybe not from the moodiness they’d accused her of.

When we passed them, I pulled Lesley around the corner of the building, my heart beginning to pound.

“That’s Lisbeth,” I whispered. “Who’s the boy?”

“I’ve never seen him before.”

“Did she seem okay to you?”

“She looked sad. Like she didn’t think she’d ever be happy again.”

That rung a bell. It sounded exactly like the effect of a Reaper stealing someone’s soul. In my two months at St. Sophia’s and as an Adept, I hadn’t actually seen any Reaping. I’d seen the effects—girls at school whose motivation was gone, who seemed depressed, who were tired and sleepy and unhappy all the time. That was the effect of having your soul—your will to live—ripped away by a Reaper intent on keeping his magic.

I glanced around the corner, where the couple still sat, almost motionless except for his fingers raking at her hair. He leaned in like he meant to kiss her . . . but their lips didn’t touch. Instead, he whispered something to her, and as he did, white wisps of smoke began to slip from her mouth and nose.

No, not wisps . . . her
soul
. It was her energy, her essence, her life’s blood, that was seeping away, and this Reaper was using her for it. That explained her depression. Soon, she’d be little more than a shell of a girl with no hope, no energy, and no interest in anything.

Adults thought
hormones
made teenagers tired and moody. As if.

My heart pounded with fear, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. This guy—this
teenager
—was a slow killer, a drainer of energy and taker of things that didn’t belong to him.

He wasn’t even supposed to be doing this. He was too young. I’d been told only adults did the Reaping because they were the only ones who needed the magic. This guy still had all of his powers, so he shouldn’t have needed the extra energy.

But even if it didn’t match what I’d been told, I knew what I was seeing. I had to stop this, had to interrupt it. I couldn’t let him drain this girl right in front of me, right in the middle of Adept turf. My hands shook with fear, but I reminded myself that the scariest times were the only times bravery mattered. I firmed up my courage, stepped around the corner, and cleared my throat.

The guy looked up, his expression irritated as I interrupted him. And then his eyes narrowed and sharpened . . . and flashed red.

I didn’t know who he was, and I didn’t know exactly what the flash of color meant, but if he was willing to show off his magic, he must have known who I was.

A chill ran through me. But it was too late to turn back now. “Kind of the wrong gender to be at St. Sophia’s, aren’t you?”

“This is none of your business,” he growled. Lisbeth cast a bored glance in my direction, and then looked away again. She seem almost hypnotized, like she was in some sort of magic-induced stupor.

“Actually, it’s precisely my business. You’re too far from your sanctuary, and I’m not thrilled about that.” Sanctuaries were Reaper headquarters. Adepts had Enclaves.

His eyes flashed again, and this time he stood up. Lisbeth, her body limp, slumped on her seat when he moved. The boy took a step toward me. He was still five or six feet away, and I wasn’t sure if he was brave enough to stay right here, but I began to feel out my own power just in case.

I was either really relaxed or totally getting used to my magic, because I hardly felt the pull of power at all. But there was no mistaking his. His eyes flashed red again, and he took a menacing step toward me, one hand outstretched. Reddish light began to dance along his fingertips. “I’ll give you one chance to run away and forget that you saw anything.”

I glanced to the side to make sure Lesley was safely around the corner, and called my power up. I could usually feel the energy as I pulled it up through my feet . . . but this time there was nothing. Not even a tingle. Of course, I was standing in front of two non-Adepts and facing down a really angry Reaper alone. I chalked it up to nerves and kept up my bravado.

“The thing is, St. Sophia’s is my school, and I don’t appreciate bottom-feeders using our students like protein shakes. I’ll give you one chance to run for the gate. If you make it before my firespell hits you, you win.”

His eyes widened at the mention of firespell, and I could all but see the gears turning in his head. My powers had been triggered by a shot of firespell from Sebastian Born, a Reaper, so word had traveled about me and my power.

“Yeah, I’m that girl,” I admitted. “So take your magic and run.”

My voice was all bravery—but he wasn’t afraid. He held out his hands. Little bursts of red lightning now shot among his fingers.

“That really doesn’t look promising,” Lesley said, stepping out from around the corner.

“No,” I agreed. “It does not.” I moved over and back a little, giving my firespell a clean path. Hitting Lisbeth wasn’t going to help the situation.

“I think you have the order of things confused, you bratty little anarchist.” He used his magic like an exclamation mark, throwing out his hands—and a red snake of energy—in our direction.

Lesley screamed; I threw her to the ground as the magic flew above our heads, a hot streak of power. I glanced up and watched as it hit a metal garden angel a few yards away . . . and turned it to solid stone.

My chest turned cold with fear. Being turned to rock was not going to help me meet my graduation requirements.

“Stay here,” I whispered to Lesley, and stood up again. “That was rude.”

“You deserved it, troublemaker. Maybe you should spend a little less time planning parties and a little more time practicing.”

All right, I’d had enough. I focused my energy and thrust out my hand, waiting for the sheet of firespell to fly through the air.

But nothing happened.

My heart pounded, my palms suddenly sweating from fear. This wasn’t possible. I
had
firespell—I’d had it for months now. I’d done the same things I’d always done, prepared the throw the same way I always had.

Maybe I was just nervous—maybe fear had made me mess it up somehow. My heart pounded, and I tried frantically again, throwing out my arm and hoping firespell would burst from my hands and fly toward him. . . . Again, there was nothing.

My stomach spun, panic beginning to seep through and shut off my brain. I was too scared to think, and for a split second I had no idea what to do.

And then Lesley called my name. “Lily! He’s gonna do it again!”

I looked up from my hands to his. The magic was beginning to bubble around his hands again.

I shook off the fear and decided I was a fighter even if I didn’t have firespell. I’d made it nearly sixteen years without it, after all.