Hex Hall (17 page)

"Wow," I said. "Who knew girls sucked just as bad as boys?"

She sighed and tilted her head back against the headboard, eyes closed. "They're going to kick me out."

"Why?"

She looked incredulous. "Um . . . helo? They're totaly going to pin Chaston on me. Holy was one thing, but two girls in a six-month period?" She shook her head. "Somebody's gonna go down for that, and you can bet it's gonna be me."

"Why?" I repeated. Jenna was the only person at Hecate I considered a friend. Wel, maybe Archer and I were friends now, but there was stil that whole possiblybeing-in-love-with-him-maybe-a-little thing, and that pushed him out of the friend zone. If Jenna left, I'd be at the mercy of Elodie and Anna.

No way.

"You don't know that they're gonna kick you out. Chaston may remember what happened to her. Just wait and talk to Mrs.

Casnoff, okay? Maybe by tomorrow everyone wil have calmed down some."

Her derisive snort told me exactly how likely she found that scenario. After a moment she began putting her clothes back in the closet. I stood up and helped her.

"So how was celar duty tonight?"

"Celar-ific."

"And your stupendously futile crush on Archer Cross?"

"Stil stupendous. Stil futile."

She nodded as she hung up one of her many Hecate blazers. "Good to know."

We worked in companionable silence.

"What did you mean about Elodie and her coven trying to raise a demon?"

"That's what Holy told me they were working on," she said as she closed the closet. "Mrs. Casnoff was realy pimping the whole
L'Occhio di Dio will kill us all
thing she's so big on, and their coven freaked out. Holy said they thought if they raised a demon, it would give them more power and they'd be safer should stuff go down."

"Did they do it?"

She shook her head. "I don't know."

The lights blinked out, plunging us into darkness. I heard a few startled shrieks from down the hal, but then Mrs. Casnoff's voice boomed, "Lights out is mandatory tonight. Go to bed, children."

Jenna sighed. "You gotta love Hex Hal."

Bumping into furniture and whispering bad words, we made our way to our respective beds.

I flopped down on mine with a low groan. I hadn't realized how exhausted I was until I felt my cool soft pilow under my head.

So I was nearly asleep when I heard Jenna whisper, "Thank you."

"For what?" I mumbled.

"Being my friend."

"Wow," I replied. "That's like, the lamest thing anyone's ever said to me."

She gave a cry of mock outrage, and a second later one of her many pilows landed on my face.

"I was trying to be nice," she insisted, but I could hear the laughter in her voice.

"Wel, don't," I retorted. "I like my friends mean and hateful."

"Wil do," she replied, and a few minutes later we were both asleep.

I awoke to Jenna's screaming and the smel of smoke.

Confused, I sat up. Morning sunlight was streaming into the room and onto Jenna's bed. It took me a minute to realize that that's where the smoke was coming from.

Jenna's bed. Jenna.

She was franticaly trying to stand up, but she was tangled in her sheets, and panic was making her clumsy.

My feet barely touched the floor as I leaped from my bed and tossed my comforter over her. As I did, I caught sight of her hand. The normaly pale skin was bright red, and it was bubbling up in places.

Without thinking, I pushed her into her closet.

Once she was in, I grabbed one of her sheets and shoved it against the crack underneath the door. Jenna was crying, but she wasn't making that high-pitched sound of pain anymore.

"What happened?" I shouted through the wood.

"My bloodstone," she sobbed. "It's gone!"

I ran to her bed and crouched to peer under it.

Maybe it just fel off, I told myself. Maybe the clasp broke, or it got caught on her pilow.

I wanted it to be one of those things.

I puled everything off the bed, even shoved the mattress off the box springs, but Jenna's bloodstone wasn't anywhere.

Rage surged inside of me.

"Wait here," I yeled to Jenna.

"Oh, like I'm going anywhere!" she replied when I was already halfway out the door.

There were a few girls in the hal. I recognized one, Laura Harris, from Magical Evolution. Her eyes went wide when she saw me.

I ran to Elodie's room and pounded on the door.

She opened it, and I pushed past her into the room.

"Where is it?"

"Where's what?" she asked. There were dark circles under her eyes.

"Jenna's bloodstone. I know you took it, now where is it?"

Elodie's eyes flashed. "I didn't take her stupid bloodstone.

Although if I
had
, it would've been totaly justified after what she did to Chaston last night."

"She didn't do anything to Chaston, and you could have kiled her!" I shouted.

"If she didn't attack Chaston, then who did?" Elodie asked, raising her voice. Little threads of light were racing under her skin, and her hair was starting to crackle. I could feel my own magic pulsing like a second heartbeat.

"Maybe that demon you were trying to summon," I fired back.

Elodie made a disgusted sound. "Like I said last night, if there were a demon, Mrs. Casnoff would know it. We
all
would."

"What's going on?"

We both whirled to see Anna standing in the doorway, her hair damp and a towel in her hand.

"Sophie thinks we took the vamp's stupid bloodstone,"

Elodie told her.

"What? That's ridiculous," Anna said, but her voice was tight.

I closed my eyes and tried to get control of my temper and my magic. Then, picturing Jenna's necklace in my mind, I murmured,

"Bloodstone."

Elodie roled her eyes, but there was a distinct squeaking sound as one of Anna's dresser drawers slid open. The bloodstone rose up from underneath a pile of clothes, its red center glinting.

It floated into my hand, and I closed my fist around it.

Surprise flickered across Elodie's face for a moment. Then it vanished. "You have what you came for, so get out."

Anna was looking at the floor. I wanted to say something withering, something that would make her feel ashamed for what she'd done, but in the end I decided it wasn't worth it.

When I got back to the room, Jenna's sobs had dwindled to sniffling. I opened the closet door a crack and handed her the bloodstone. Once it was back on her neck, she came out of the closet and sat on her bed, cradling her burned hand.

I sat next to her. "You should get this looked at." She nodded. Her eyes were stil red and watery.

"Was it Elodie and Anna?" she asked.

"Yeah. Wel, it was Anna. I don't think Elodie knew, but it's not like she would've disapproved."

Jenna released a shuddery breath. I reached up and brushed her pink stripe out of her eyes. "You need to tel Mrs.

Casnoff what they did."

"No," she said. "No way."

"Jenna, they could have kiled you," I insisted.

She stood up, puling my comforter around her. "It'l just make it worse," she said wearily. "Remind everyone that vamps are different from the rest of you. That I don't belong here."

"Jenna," I started.

"I said drop it, Sophie!" she snapped, her back stil turned.

"But you're hurt--"

And then she whirled on me, her eyes bloodred, her face contorted with rage. Her fangs slid out, and she grabbed my shoulders with a hiss. There was nothing of my friend in her face.

Only a monster.

I made a shocked sound of hurt and fear, and she abruptly released me. My knees gave out, and I crumpled to the floor.

She was immediately beside me, Jenna again, her eyes pale blue and filed with apology. "Oh God, Soph, I'm so sorry! Are you okay? Sometimes when I get stressed . . ." Tears spiled down her cheeks. "I would never hurt you," she said, pleading.

I didn't trust myself to speak, so I just nodded.

"Girls? Is everything al right?"

Jenna looked over her shoulder. Mrs. Casnoff stood in our doorway, her face unreadable.

"We're fine," I said, standing up. "I just slipped, and Jenna was, uh, helping me up."

"I see," Mrs. Casnoff said. She looked back and forth between me and Jenna before saying, "Jenna, if you don't mind, I need to speak with you for a moment."

"Sure," Jenna replied, in a voice that was anything but certain.

I watched them leave the room, then sat down on Jenna's bed. My shoulders were sore, and Jenna's fingers had left a mark.

I sat there absentmindedly rubbing my arms, the smoky smel of Jenna's burned skin stil stinging my nose.

And I wondered.

A
week later, things stil weren't any better. No one had heard anything from Chaston, so Jenna was stil the number-one suspect.

After dinner, I was in the celar with Archer again. This was our fourth time down there, and we'd begun to work out a kind of routine. For the first twenty minutes or so we just worked on the shelves. Half the stuff we'd catalogued the last time had usualy moved, so we'd spend time trying to sort that out. Once this was done we'd take a break and talk. Our conversations hadn't realy graduated beyond smal talk about our families and the occasional insult, which wasn't that surprising. Other than being only children, Archer and I had almost nothing in common. He'd grown up super wealthy in a big house on the coast of Maine. I'd lived with my mom in everything from the cottage in Vermont to a room in a Ramada Inn for six weeks. But I stil found myself looking forward to our talks. In fact I'd started dreading the days when I didn't have celar duty, which was almost too pathetic to contemplate.

Archer sat in his usual place on the steps while I hoisted myself onto a bare space on top of Shelf M.

He pointed at a pile of empty dust-covered jars in the corner. Two of them rose in the air and twisted and contorted until they were cans of soda. He flicked his hand in my direction, and one of them sailed straight toward me. I caught it, and was surprised by how icy cold it was.

"I'm impressed." I meant it, and he nodded his head in thanks.

"Yeah, turning jars into soda. Let the world tremble before my power."

"Wel, at least it proves you stil have powers."

He looked up at me quizzicaly. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Crap. "I--uh, I just . . . some people said that you left last year because you wanted to get your powers taken away."

I'd assumed he'd heard al those rumors, but he looked genuinely surprised. "So that's what everybody thinks. Huh."

"They know you didn't," I replied hastily. "Lots of people saw you drop Justin on the first day."

A smile played around the corners of his mouth. He looked up at me. "Bad dog."

I roled my eyes, but I couldn't help smiling back. "Shut up.

So where did you go?"

He shrugged and rested his elbows on his knees. "I just needed a break. It's not unheard of. The Council acts like it'l never let anybody out of Hecate, but they'l give you a leave of absence if you petition them. I guess they figured I needed it, especialy after Holy."

"Right," I said, but the mention of Holy had me thinking about Chaston again. Her parents had come to get her the day after her attack. They'd been in Mrs. Casnoff's office for over two hours before Mrs. Casnoff had come to get Jenna.

When Jenna had come back to the room, she hadn't said a word, just gone to lie on her bed and stare at the ceiling.

The sudden shift in my mood must have showed on my face, because Archer asked, "Is Jenna okay? I noticed she wasn't at dinner tonight."

I sighed and leaned back. "It's not good," I told him. "She won't go to class or meals. She barely gets out of bed. I don't know what they said to her in that meeting, but the fact that they caled her in there seems to prove her guilt to everybody."

He nodded. "Yeah, Elodie's pretty pissed."

"Wow, what a shame. I hope it doesn't give her wrinkles."

"Don't be like that."

"Look, I'm sorry your girlfriend is upset, but the only friend I have here is being accused of something she didn't do, and Elodie is leading the charge. I just can't feel sorry for her right now, okay?"

I waited for him to fire back, but apparently he decided to drop it. He got up off the steps and went back to his clipboard.

"Have you seen anything that looks like 'Demon-possessed Instrument: J. Mompesson'?"

"Possibly." I hopped off the shelf and went to the space where I'd found a drum the other day, but of course it had vanished.

By the time we found it (it had hidden itself behind a pile of books that disintegrated when we moved them. "Realy, realy hope those weren't important" had been Archer's only comment), our hour was nearly up.

I heard the lock above us click open. The Vandy had stopped coming down to the celar to get us; she just unlocked the door.

We tossed our clipboards down and headed for the stairs.

As we started up, I could've sworn I saw a flash of green out of the corner of my eye, but when I turned around to look, there was nothing. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and I rubbed my hand absently over them.