Хлоя Нейл - Firespell

“You’d think I’d be used to this by now,” she said, suddenly turning around, the second house in her hand. “I mean, it’s not like this is the first time someone has walked away because I’m, you know, weird. You think my parents didn’t notice that I could do stuff?”

As if proving her point, she adjusted the house so that it sat in the palm of her outstretched hand,

then whispered a series of staccato words.

The interior of the house began to glow.

“Look inside,” she quietly said.

“Inside?”

Carefully, she placed the illuminated house back on the shelf, then moved to the side so I could stand beside her. I stepped into the space she’d made, then leaned down and peeked into one of the tiny windows.

The house—this tiny, glittered, paper house on Scout’s bookshelf—now bustled with activity.

Like a dollhouse come to life, holograms of tiny figures moved inside amongst tiny pieces of furniture, like a living snow globe. Furniture lined the walls; lamps glowed with the spark of whatever life she’d managed to breathe into it with the mere sound of her voice.

I stood up again and glanced at her, eyes wide. “You did that?”

Her gaze on the house, she nodded. “That’s my talent—I make magic from words. Like you said, from lists. Letters.” She paused. “I did it the first time when I was twelve. I mean, not that particular spell; that’s just an animation thing, hardly a page of text, and I condensed it a long time ago. That means I made it shorter,” she said at my raised brows. “Like zipping a computer file.”

“That’s . . . amazing,” I said, lifting my gaze to the house again. Shadows passed before the tiny glassine windows, lives being lived in miniature.

“Amazing or not, my mother freaked out. My parents made calls, and I was sent right into private school. I was put in a place away from average kids. Put into a home.” She lifted her gaze and glanced around the room. “A prison, of sorts.”

That explained Scout’s tiny museum—the room she’d made her own, the four walls she’d filled with the detritus of her life, from junior high to St. Sophia’s. It was her magical respite.

Her cell.

“So, yeah,” she said after a moment, waving a hand in front of the paper house, the lights in the windows dimming and fading, a tiny world extinguished. “I’m used to rejection because of my magic.”

“It’s not you,” I quietly said.

Scout barked out a laugh. “Yeah, that’s the first time I’ve heard that one.” She straightened the house, adjusting it so that it sat neatly beside its neighbors. “If we’re going to break up, let’s just get it over with, okay?”

I figured out something about Scout in that moment, something that made my heart clench with protective-ness. However brave she might have been in fighting Reapers, in protecting humans,

in running through underground tunnels in the middle of the night, fighting back against fire- and earthquake-bearing baddies, she was very afraid of one thing: that I’d abandon her. She was afraid she’d made a friend who was going to walk away like her parents had done, walk out and leave her alone in her room. That’s what finally snapped me out of nearly forty-eight hours of freaking out about something that I knew, without a doubt, was going to change my life forever.

“It’s probably nothing,” I finally said.

I watched the change in her expression—from preparing for defeat, to relief, to crisis management.

“Tell me,” she said.

When I frowned back at her, she glared back at me, daring me to argue.

Recognizing the inevitability of my defeat, I sighed, but turned around and lifted up the back of my shirt.

The room went silent.

“You have a darkening,” she said.

“A what? I think it’s just a funky bruise or something?” It wasn’t, of course, just a funky bruise,

but I was willing to cling to those last few seconds of normalcy.

“When did you get it?”

I stepped away from her, pulling down my T- shirt and wrapping my arms around my waist self-

consciously. “I don’t know. A couple of . . . days ago.”

Silence.

“Like, a couple of firespell days ago?”

I nodded.

“You’ve been marked.” Her voice was soft, tremulous.

My fingers still knotted in the hem of the shirt, I glanced behind me. Scout stood there, eyes wide, lips parted in shock. “Scout?”

She shook her head, then looked up at me. “This isn’t supposed to happen.”

The emotion in her voice—awe—raised the hair on my arms and made my stomach sink. “What isn’t supposed to happen?”

She stood up, then frowned and nibbled the edge of her lip; then she walked to one end of the room and back again. She was pacing, apparently trying to puzzle out something. “Right after you got hit by the firespell. But you’ve never had powers before, and you don’t have powers now

—” She paused and glanced over at me. “Do you?”

“Are you kidding? Of course I don’t.”

She resumed talking so quickly, I wasn’t sure she’d even heard my answer. “I mean, I guess it’s possible.” She hit the end of the room and, neatly sideswiping a footlocker, turned around again.

“I’d have to check theGrimoire to be sure. If you don’t have power, then you weren’t really triggered, but maybe it’s some kind of tattoo from the firespell? I can’t imagine how you could have gotten a darkening without the power—”

“Scout.”

“But maybe it’s happened before.”

“Scout.”My voice was loud enough that she finally stopped and looked at me.

“Hmm?”

I pointed behind me. “Hello? My back?”

“Right, right.” She walked back to me and began to pull up the hem of her shirt.

“Um, I’m not sure stripping down is the solution here, Scout.”

“Prude,” she said dryly, but when she reached me again, she turned around.

At the small of her back, in pale green, was a mark like mine—well, not exactly like mine. The symbols inside her circle were different, but the general idea was the same.

“Oh, my God,” I said.

Scout dropped the back of her T-shirt and turned, nodding her head. “Yep. So I guess it’s settled now.”

“Settled?”

“You’re one of us.”

Forty minutes—and Scout’s rifling through a two-foot-high stack of books—later, we were headed downstairs. If she’d found anything in the giant leather volumes she pulled out of a plastic tub beneath her bed, she didn’t say. The only conclusion she’d reached was that she needed to talk to the rest of the Adepts in Enclave Three, so she’d pulled out her phone, popped open the keyboard and, fingers flying, sent out a dispatch. And then we were on our way.

The route we took this time was different still from the last couple of trips I’d made. We used a new doorway to the basement level—this one a wooden panel in a side hallway in the main building—and descended a narrower, steeper staircase. Once we were in the basement, we walked a maze through limestone hallways. I was beginning to think the labyrinth on the floor was more than just decoration. It served as a pretty good symbol of what lay beneath the convent.

Despite how confusing it was, Scout clearly knew the route, barely pausing at the corners, her speed quick and movements efficient. She moved silently, striding through the hallways and tunnels like a woman on a mission. I stumbled at a half run, half walk behind her, just trying to keep up. My speed wasn’t much helped by my stomach’s rolling, both because we were actually going into the basement again—by choice—and for the reason we were going there.

Because I was her mission.