School Spirits (Hex Hall Novel, A) (2 page)

T
he lights in our kitchen were too harsh. My eyes ached in the fluorescent glare, and my head was pounding. It didn’t help that we’d taken an Itineris home. That was a type of magic portal, and they were located at posts all over the world. Problem was, like most things involving magic, there was a catch. While an Itineris made traveling a lot more convenient, it was also really rough on your body. I guess getting bent and twisted through the space-time continuum isn’t exactly good for you.

The concoction in front of me finally seemed cool enough to drink, so I choked it down. It tasted like pine trees smell, but the ache in my head disappeared almost immediately. Across from me, Mom turned her coffee mug around and around in her hands. Her mouth was set in a hard line.

“He was a young vamp,” she said at last, and I fought the urge to lower my head to the table.

“Yes,” I replied, hand reaching up to touch the little puncture marks just under my jaw. Thanks to Mom’s “tea,” they were already starting to close, but they still hurt.

“He should have been no issue at all for you, Isolde,” she continued, her gaze still on her mug. “I would never have sent you in there alone if I’d thought you couldn’t handle it.”

My hand dropped back to the table. “I could handle it.”

Mom looked at the bite on my neck and raised her eyebrows. When she was younger, my mom had been beautiful. And even now there was something about the strong lines of her face that made people look twice at her. Her eyes were the same dark green as mine and Finley’s, but there was a hardness that neither I nor my sister had.

“I mean, I
was
handling it,” I mumbled. “But he was one of those mind-reading ones, and he…he got inside my head—”

“Then you should have shoved him right the heck out,” Mom fired back, and I wondered what felt worse, the vampire bite or the guilt.

With a sigh, Mom dropped her head and rubbed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Iz. I know you did the best you could.”

But your best wasn’t good enough.

Mom didn’t have to say the words. I felt them hanging between us in the kitchen. There were a lot of words filling up the space between me and Mom these days. My sister’s name was probably the biggest. Nearly a year ago, Finley disappeared on a case in New Orleans. It had been a totally routine job—just a coven of Dark Witches selling some particularly nasty spells to humans. We’d gone together, but at the last minute, Finley had told me to wait in the car while she dealt with the witches herself.

I could still see her standing under the streetlight, red hair so bright it almost hurt to look at. “I got this one, Iz,” she’d told me before nodding at the book in my lap. “Finish your chapter.” A dimple had appeared in her cheek when she grinned. “I know you’re dying to.”

I had been. The heroine had just been kidnapped
by pirates, so things were clearly about to get awesome. And it had seemed like such an easy job, and Finley had swaggered off toward the coven’s house with such confidence that I hadn’t worried, not really. Not until I’d sat in the car for over an hour and Finley still hadn’t come out. Not until I’d walked into the house and found it completely empty, the smell of smoke and sulfur heavy in the air, Finley’s weapon belt on the floor in front of a sagging sofa.

Mom and I looked for her for six months. Six months of tracking down leads and sleeping in motel rooms and researching other cases like Finley’s, and it all led nowhere. My sister was just…gone.

And then one day, Mom had just packed up our things and announced we were going home. “We have a job to do,” she’d said. “Brannicks hunt monsters. It’s what we do, and what we need to get back to. Finley would want that.”

That had been the last time Mom had said Finley’s name.

Now Mom sat across the table from me, and her
coffee mug turned, turned, turned.

“Maybe we should take it easy for a while,” she said at last. “Let you go on a few more missions with me, get your legs back under you.”

Finley had been doing solo missions since she was fourteen. I was almost sixteen now, and this had been the first time Mom had let me out in the field by myself. I really didn’t want it to be the
last
time, too.

I shoved my own mug. “Mom, I can do this. I just…
Look, the vamp, he could read my mind, and I wasn’t ready for that. But now I know! And I can be better on my guard next time.”

Mom lifted her gaze from the table. “What did he see?”

I knew what she meant. Picking at the Formica tabletop, I shrugged. “I thought about Finn for a sec. He…saw that, I guess. It just distracted me.”

I didn’t add the bit about how Pascal had mentioned the boy in the mirror. Bringing up Finn was going to bother Mom enough.

Just like I’d thought, her eyes suddenly seemed a million miles away. “Okay,” she said gruffly, her chair shrieking on the linoleum as she shoved it back and stood. “Well, just…just go to bed. We’ll think about our next move tomorrow.”

Deep parentheses bracketed Mom’s mouth, and her shoulders seemed more slumped than they had been just a few moments ago. As she passed my chair, for just a moment, Mom laid a hand on my head. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she murmured. And then, with a ruffle of my hair, she was gone.

Sighing, I picked up my cup and swirled the dregs of tea still left in it. Every bone in my body ached
to go upstairs, take a shower, and crawl into my
bunk.

But there was something I had to do first.

Our house wasn’t much. A few bedrooms, a tiny kitchen, and a bathroom that hadn’t been updated since the 1960s. Once upon a time, it had been the Brannick family compound. Back when there had been more Brannicks. Now it was just a house surrounded by thick woods. But there was one room that really set it apart from your normal home.

We had a War Room.

It sounded cooler than it actually was. It was really just an extra bedroom stuffed with a bunch of boxes, a large round table, and a mirror.

It was the mirror I walked to now, yanking off the heavy canvas cover. Inside the glass, a warlock stared back at me.

His name was Torin, and he looked a couple years older than me, maybe eighteen or so. But since he’d gotten trapped in the mirror back in 1583, he was technically over four hundred years old.

“Isolde!” he called happily, leaning back, his hands on the table. “To what do I owe this lovely visit?”
It was always bizarre watching Torin. Trapped in the mirror, he appeared to be sitting at the table in the middle of the War Room. But the actual table was empty. Even though I’d seen the phenomenon my whole life, I still caught myself glancing back and forth, as though Torin would magically appear on our side of the glass.

The thought made my head hurt all over again. In his own time, Torin had been an extremely powerful dark warlock. No one knew what spell he was attempting when he’d trapped himself inside the mirror, but one of my ancestors, Avis Brannick, had found him and taken responsibility for him.

The fact that Torin made the occasional prophecy had probably had something to do with that. His ability to see the future had come in handy for a few Brannicks over the years; easier to fight a witch or a faerie when you know what it’s going to do.

But I hadn’t come to have my fortune told. Climbing up onto the table, I crossed my legs and propped my chin in my hand. “I got bitten by a vampire tonight.”

Frowning, Torin leaned forward. “Oh,” he said, once his eyes settled on the bite mark. “So you did. That… What is the word you use?”

I couldn’t help but smile a little as I rolled my eyes. “Sucks.”

Torin nodded. “Even so.” He mimicked my pose, ruby pinkie ring flashing in the dim light. Shaggy blond hair fell over his forehead, and when he smiled at me, his teeth were just the slightest bit crooked. “Tell me the whole story.”

So I did, the way I always had, ever since I was old enough to go with Mom and Finley on missions. There was something…I don’t know, relaxing about telling the story to Torin. I knew he wasn’t looking for all the flaws in my mission, all the places where I had zigged when I should have zagged.

Unlike Mom, Torin didn’t frown through the entire thing. Instead, he chuckled when I described Pascal’s lair, grimaced when I mentioned the body glitter, and raised his eyebrows when I talked about chasing the vamp up the stairs.

“But you’re all right. And you lived to fight another day.”

Sighing, I pulled my braid over my shoulder, fiddling with the ends of my hair. “Yeah, but if Mom hadn’t come in… She thinks I shouldn’t be doing jobs on my own. Which, I mean, I should. This one got a little out of hand, but if she’d just trust me a little more—”

“If she had trusted you completely, she wouldn’t have followed you, which means she wouldn’t have burst in when she did,” Torin said, lifting his shoulders. “And you, my lovely Isolde, would either be exsanguinated on what I can only guess was truly dreadful carpet, or the bride of the undead.” He narrowed his eyes. “Neither fate suits you. Or me, for that matter.”

His words seemed to lodge somewhere in my chest, but I shook them off. Torin had been a part of my life for, well, all of my life. When Mom and Finley had gone out on missions, he had kept me company. And after Finley disappeared, he was the only one I could talk to about my sister. Which is why that niggling suspicion, the one Pascal had picked up on, bothered me so much.

“Your mum is simply worried about you,” Torin said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “She’s lost one daughter. I’m sure the idea of losing another is particularly hellish for her.”

“I know,” I said, the guilt returning with a vengeance. What if I’d gotten myself killed tonight, all because I let one stupid vamp mess with my mind? Where would Mom have been then?

I tugged the rubber band off the end of my braid and started unraveling the strands. A thin layer of vampire ash rose from them. Ugh. Apparently I’d been closer to Pascal than I’d thought.

Wrinkling my nose with disgust, I hopped off the table. “Okay. Shower, bed. Thanks for the debriefing.”

Torin made a little flourish with his hand, lace cuff falling back from his wrist. “Any time, Isolde.”

I was nearly to the door before I turned back. “Torin, you…” I trailed off, not sure how to finish. Finally I took a deep breath and said, a little too fast, “You swear you don’t know anything about Finn, right?”

I’d asked it before, the night Finley disappeared. Other than her belt, there’d been no sign of my sister in that rickety house. But there had been a mirror. A big one with a thick wooden frame, carved cherubs grinning at me. And while it could’ve been a trick of the light, I could’ve sworn that the glass had glowed slightly.

But I’d been beyond freaked out that night, confused, upset. I couldn’t be sure what I’d seen, really.

In his mirror, Torin came up close to the glass. “No, Isolde,” he said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “I do not know where your sister is.”

“Right.” I ran a hand through my hair, blowing out a long breath. “Right. Okay.” Reaching out, I flicked off the switch.

From out of the darkness, Torin added, “Besides, Finley was never of much interest to me. She isn’t the Brannick who will set me free, after all, is she?”

It was a wonder I could speak given how tight my throat had gone. “That’s never going to happen, Torin. I may be nicer to you than my mom or Finn, but you’ll be chatting with my
grandkids
from that mirror.”

Torin only laughed. “I’ve seen what I’ve seen. The time will come when you will finally let me out of this cursed glass prison. But until then, go wash that vampire out of your hair and get a good rest. You and Aislinn will be taking quite the journey tomorrow.”

“Where are we going?” I demanded. “What did you see?”

But there was no answer.

W
hen I woke up the next morning, Mom was already dressed and waiting for me at the kitchen table. She frowned at my tank top and pajama pants and pointed back up the stairs. “Get dressed. We’re leaving in five minutes.”

“Leaving?” The clock said it was just a little past six. Apparently Torin had been right. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Where are we going?”

But Mom just said, “And now it’s four minutes. Go.”

There wasn’t much to the bedroom Finley and I had shared. A bunk bed—Finn had claimed the top—a dresser,
a battered desk, and a mirror. Finley’s clothes were still folded in the drawers, and almost without thinking, I grabbed one of her black sweatshirts, tugging it over my tank top. I traded my flannel pants for jeans (my own, since Finn had been taller than me), and added a scuffed pair of black boots.

Jogging back downstairs, I twisted my hair into a sloppy braid over one shoulder. Hopefully, wherever we were going didn’t have a dress code.

Mom was just outside the front door, and when I appeared at her side, she didn’t say anything, merely jerked her head toward the woods surrounding the compound. Years ago, all the Brannicks had lived in this secluded spot deep in the woods of northern Tennessee. There were still outbuildings and training yards to
accommodate at least a hundred people, but I’d never seen the place that full. By the time I was old enough to remember, the only Brannicks left were me, Mom, and Finn.

The woods were full of noise that morning, from the cracking of branches under our feet to the birds singing, but Mom didn’t say anything and I didn’t ask any
questions.

Nearly a mile into the trees, we came to the Itineris. To anyone walking by—not that many people ever just “walked by” in these woods—the portal wouldn’t have looked like anything but a small opening in a bunch of branches. They wouldn’t even know it was there unless they accidentally stepped into it.

Which would probably be fatal since the Itineris was too intense for humans. We could only use it because we had some residual magic in our blood.

Mom held out her hand to me, and I took it, ducking under the branches and stepping into the Itineris.

One of the weirdest things about using the Itineris is how it feels. There’s no rushing wind or sense of motion, but a crippling, sickening pressure, as though the weight of the whole universe is pressing down on you.

Suddenly, we were standing on a paved road.

Well, Mom was standing. I was on my knees, gasping. The portal was always rough on me.

Mom helped me to my feet, but that was clearly all the TLC I was going to get. As soon as I was steady, she started walking down the road.

“Where are we?” I asked, following.

“Alabama,” she replied.

I didn’t ask what part of Alabama, but between the sand and the slight tang of salt on the wind, I guessed we were somewhere near the beach. We hadn’t been walking long when we came across a path of crushed shells. Mom turned onto it, her boots crunching and sounding too loud in the quiet.

At the end of the driveway was a small, one-story house that actually looked a little bit like our place. An ancient Jeep was parked just by the front porch, and several sets of wind chimes twisted in the breeze.

The screen door creaked open, and a woman stepped out, squinting down the drive at us. She seemed to be about ten years or so older than my mom, and her dark blond hair, shot through with gray, was piled on top of her head in a messy knot. Her arms, bare in a black tank top, were pale and flabby. Roughly a dozen necklaces and pendants hung around her neck, and she held a coffee cup in her right hand. “Ash?” she asked, frowning at us.

“Maya,” Mom returned. She gestured at me. “Mind if me and Izzy come in for a bit?”

Maya
glanced over, seeming to notice me for the first time. I raised my hand in a tiny wave. “Hi.”

Maya didn’t wave back, but sighed and said, “Too early in the morning for Brannicks.” Then she turned and walked back into the house.

I dug a little hole in the shells with the tip of my boot. “Does that mean we should go?”

To my surprise, Mom just chuckled. “No. If Maya hadn’t wanted us here, trust me, she would have let us know.”

“Who is she?” I asked, but Mom didn’t answer; just trudged up the steps and into the house.

And after a long moment, I followed.

The house wasn’t quite as spartan as our place, but it still wasn’t what anyone would call homey. No pictures lined the walls, although Maya did have one of those
crazy cat clocks, the swinging tail marking off seconds, its eyes darting back and forth like it was watching for something. The only other things of note were a sagging couch covered in an ugly orange-and-brown plaid and a crooked coffee table. But that wasn’t what had me freezing in the doorway. Instead of magazines or heavy books, the coffee table was covered in…feet. Not human feet—at least I didn’t
see
any—but half a dozen chickens’ feet,
several of those rabbit’s foot key chains, and a brown, furry paw. Char marks dotted the table’s scarred surface, and there was a cracked leather book lying open facedown, its pages wrinkled. Everything about it screamed magic, but I hadn’t sensed anything when we came in, so I didn’t think Maya could be Prodigium. Maybe she was just a…
taxidermist or something. Mom had made some weird friends over the years.

And she must’ve been here before, because she didn’t even blink at the bizarre collection. But she did lean in and whisper, “Don’t say anything until I tell you to, okay? And don’t take anything Maya gives you to drink.”

I tried very hard not to gulp. “Got it.”

Sure enough, Maya came out of the kitchen holding three mugs, steam rising off of them. Even across the room, the smell turned my stomach. Still, Mom accepted two cups before sitting on the couch. I sat next to her as Maya took a seat on the floor in front of the coffee table. She was wearing a long skirt, and it jangled softly when she moved, as though there were bells hidden in its folds.

“So you’re Izzy,” she said, blowing the top of her drink. “Your mama brought Finley here plenty of times, but she always said you were too young to go out on jobs. How old are you now, thirteen?”

I had always looked younger than I was. “I’ll be
sixteen next month,” I told her, and she gave a low whistle. “My, my, time is flying. When I first met you, Ash, Izzy was what? Five? Maybe six? It was right after her daddy died, and—”

“We didn’t come here to chat, Maya,” Mom broke in. “I wanted to go through the file.”

Maya rolled her big blue eyes. “That’s it? You could’ve e-mailed, you know. You didn’t have to hike all the way out here for that kind of thing. I thought at the very least you wanted another locator spell. See if we’d have any luck finding your girl this time.”