Hexed (20 page)

I said it offhandedly, but now I realize that truer words have never been spoken. I made a promise to myself that night—that if I made it out of the theater alive, and if I was truly a witch, I’d master my magic and quit relying on others to protect me. And I intend to keep my promise.

Somehow when I pictured doing magic, it didn’t involve crappy office supplies.

I stare at the paper clip on the carpet and will it to move. Sweat beads on my forehead. Thoughts of food consume me, and there’s a slow throbbing in my temple from all the mental exertion. But the clip doesn’t budge, hasn’t budged once in the hours I’ve spent trying.

I blow out through pursed lips, determined that the magic work this time, and reach around inside me for the heat Bishop says is there, that I only have to grasp on to and move to my fingertips, where it can be manipulated to my will with simple incantations. Which just sounds
so
easy when he says it.

Please, paper clip,
I think.
Just
move
so
we
can
end
this
cat-and-mouse game.

After another hour of staring, with Bishop splayed out on the couch, reading
Catch-22
with Lumpkins at his feet, my internal dialogue becomes noticeably more terse.
Move
it, goddamn it! I haven’t got all day. Move it or I’ll snap your twisty metal limbs in half.

Despite the threats of violence, the clip doesn’t budge.

“Ugh!” I chuck the clip across the room. It lands with a
plink
against the desk.

Bishop doesn’t even glance up from his book. Maybe because it’s the third time I’ve chucked the paper clip, and the third time I’ve picked it up and refused his offer to break for a snack. I want to get this right. I have to get this right. Mom wanted nothing more than to be a witch all her life; it would somehow make this whole mess just the tiniest bit better if I got to carry out her dream.

“You need to relax,” Bishop says.

I walk over to the couch, blocking the last of the sun from his face. He still doesn’t look up. I pluck the book from his hands and drop it on his stomach.

“Hey,” he grunts. “I was just getting to the good part.”

“How sad. So look, can we not try something a little more exciting? Flying, maybe?”

He rolls his eyes. “How do you expect to fly if you can’t even summon your magic? You’ve got to learn the basics first.”

It’s my turn to roll my eyes. “Can I get a little more direction here? It’s obviously not working.”

“You need to find it on your own. But no worries—this is the hardest part. Once you know how to find it, it’ll always come easy. It’s like riding a bike: you can’t unlearn it.”

“If it’s even there,” I mumble. “What about candles? Energy drink for witches and all that.”

He snorts, which turns into a cough, and I get the distinct impression he’s fighting hard to rein in a huge grin.

“What?” I tilt my head to the side, hands on my hips. “You made that up, didn’t you?”

He shrugs and sucks in the corners of his lips.

“You jerk!” I punch him in the shoulder.

“Ow.” Bishop cradles his arm, full-on laughing now. “What’s with you being so violent?”

“You make me this way.”

“Oh, sure. Abuser blames the victim. Classic excuse.” He picks up his book and flips through the pages, searching for the spot where he left off. “Channel all your pent-up anger and you could single-handedly wipe out the Priory.”

“Hardy har har.” I turn to retrieve the paper clip from the desk but Bishop’s words, intended as a joke, bounce inside my head. Couldn’t hurt to try, I decide.

I think about everything that makes me angry: Bishop, reading his stupid book while I struggle; Bishop, using his magic like it’s the easiest thing in the world, while I burst a blood vessel in my brain from all the concentration and get nothing,
nothing
for my efforts; the fact that I have to do this at all, because there’s a group of evil sorcerers that wants me dead, all because I might be a witch, something I never asked to be.

My nostrils flare, and my breath comes hard and fast. I clench my fists and dig my nails into my palms, knuckles turning white. A warm sensation starts low in my stomach, like I’ve just drank hot chocolate too quickly. Sheer excitement almost knocks the heat right back to where it came from, but I force myself to concentrate, to think of the thing that makes me angriest: that they killed Mom, took her from me forever, and in the most brutal way possible.

The heat moves up into my chest, igniting into the ball of fire I felt earlier when Bishop summoned Mom’s voice, pulsing not just in my veins but in every cell of my body, surging from my center out into my arms with every beat of my heart.

“Do you feel it?” Bishop asks, bent low to my ear. I didn’t even hear him get up.

I nod.

“Repeat after me:
Sequere
me
imperio
movere.
”

I glance over my shoulder at him, simultaneously shocked to hear this strange language slipping so easily from his mouth and sure that he’s screwing with me, because I’ve never heard him utter a word to make his magic work, but he repeats it again, urging me to copy with a little shove.

“
Sequere
me
imper … imperi
-something or other—” I groan as I feel the heat slipping away.

Bishop squeezes my shoulder. “Concentrate. Focus on the clip. And repeat after me.
Sequere
me
imperio
movere.
”

I sigh, leveling my gaze at the paper clip on the desk.
“Sequere … sequere me imperio movere.”

The left end of the desk pitches up so quickly that loose papers flutter to the carpet. A gasp tumbles out of my mouth, my heart pumping at a dangerous speed. The break in concentration makes the desk thunk back to the floor. But before Bishop can say a word, I lock eyes on the desk again and repeat the words.
“Sequere me imperio movere.”

“What the … ?” Bishop’s hand falls from my shoulder. He steps in front of me, eyeing the levitating desk with a mixture of awe and incredulity.

Once it’s up, I’m happy to discover it’s easy to move the desk where I want it simply by willing it there with my eyes. It takes everything in me not to grin like an idiot as I float the desk over the wood floor, over the bearskin rug, and drop it inches from Bishop’s bare feet, so that he has to jump back lest his toes be squashed.

I did it. My heart swells up like I didn’t think was possible anymore. “Oh my God,” I say. “I’m a freaking witch.”

A
ll I want is to get through one full day where absolutely nothing bad happens so that I can bask in the glow of my magic and try to forget about Mom’s death and the sorcerers trying to kill me. I don’t think it’s too much to ask, but no sooner does my butt hit the chair in homeroom the next morning, I get called to the school psychologist’s office, where I’m accosted with lame pamphlets for a crisis helpline and a journal that I’m to bring to my new weekly sessions. Great.

I mean, it’s nice that the school is concerned about me, but I’m getting pretty tired of the kid-glove treatment. It’s like they all think I’m going to commit suicide if they don’t ask me how I’m coping at least three hundred times a day.

I’m sitting in history when the overhead speaker beeps, alerting the classroom to yet another Mrs. Malone announcement.

“Ms. Indigo Blackwood, please report to Coach Jenkins in the gymnasium. Thank you.”

Seriously, universe?

I stuff my books into my bag and trudge down the hall to the gym. When I push open the double doors, I’m surprised to find a half-dozen massive floats in various stages of completion spread out across the shiny gym floor, twinkling under the harsh fluorescent lights.

I recognize the squad’s float instantly—an old-school gilded carriage with big wheels and a velvety roof, pulled by two white unicorns. The carriage was Bianca’s idea—to haul the homecoming-court nominees around at the parade—but I’d suggested the unicorns in place of horses, and the whole squad loved the idea. I know it’s ridiculous, all things considered, but I feel a pang in my gut that I missed out on its creation, on what could have been had life not completely changed for me. Maybe I do need a therapy session after all.

I swallow the lump growing in my throat. “Coach Jenkins?” I call.

“Over here,” Carmen answers. I follow her voice to the back of the gym and find her standing on the bed of a float, snipping at the blue and silver tissue paper of a giant football with a pair of craft scissors.

“Indigo, thank you for coming,” she says.

Like I had a choice.

“Please, have a seat.”

I sit down heavily on the bed of the float and pull my bag onto my lap. And the whole thing is so depressing—the stupid floats, the way Carmen won’t look at me, the corny speech I’m sure to endure. I just want to get this whole thing over with, no beating around the bush for half an hour. “So, my mom died,” I say.

Carmen snips away at the tissue paper without responding.

I sigh. “So, do you want me to tell you how I’m feeling or fill out a journal or something?”

She continues with her arts and crafts project as though she hasn’t heard me.

“Look, I know I missed a few practices, and I’m sorry I haven’t helped with the float, but I don’t plan on missing anything else, and I’m totally committed to the squad and … hello?” I lean across the trailer, trying to catch her eyes. “Coach Jenkins?”

She doesn’t answer.

I knock on the wood, but she doesn’t look up.

A sinking sensation washes over me. I cautiously look behind me, and am beyond relieved when no one’s there. But when I turn around again, the scarred man who held the knife to Mom’s throat—Leo—stands behind Coach Jenkins, a maniacal smirk on his face. My body shifts into panic mode, and I scrabble back.

Leo scratches his marred cheek, and Coach Jenkins scratches her own smooth one.

“Kind of fun,” he says.

“Kind of fun,” Carmen repeats.

I gasp.

Leo scratches both his armpits,
ooh-ooh
and
aah-aah
ing in a lame monkey impersonation, and so does Coach Jenkins.

Leo holds up his fisted right hand, like a magician performing a trick, and then swiftly jams it into his neck, chortling all the while.

“No, Carmen, don’t!” I scramble to my feet, but it’s too late. Carmen jabs her right hand—the one holding the scissors—into her neck. Blood spurts out of her mouth as she cackles, falling to her knees.

Oh
God …

I ease Carmen onto her back and frantically search for something to stanch the blood flow, but when Leo steps around her I have to give up any notions of dressing her wounds. Because if I don’t get the hell out of there—and fast—it won’t just be Carmen fighting for her life.

I leap off the trailer and dash across the gym, weaving between the floats so fast I nearly lose my footing. I’m almost to the double doors when I hear Leo’s voice.

“Not this again,” he says.

Palms out, I slam into the door. But instead of it flinging open, my body crashes against the metal so hard it makes my ears ring. Locked. Of course.

Dammit, dammit, dammit.
I wheel around and flatten myself against the door, my chest heaving as I gasp for breath.

Leo saunters up. “Indigo, it’s been far too long.” He smiles, but only half of his face moves. The sight is almost as unsettling as his predatory black eyes, the left one blinking far too frequently, flicking up and down my body.

I suddenly wish I hadn’t accepted Bishop’s offer to break for the night and take up training again after school today. Because as proud as I was of my skills yesterday, I somehow don’t think moving paper clips is going to help me in this situation.

“You know, I always thought you were pretty,” Leo says. “I came here to give you one last chance to break the spell on the Bible, but who’s to say I can’t have a little fun first?” He moves around the carriage, loosening his pin-striped tie. “Frederick never let me have any fun. Could waste half a day lecturing some dumb-shit teenager about a movie no one cares about, but the minute I try to have some fun, it’s all ‘we’re taking care of business.’ ” He gives a derisive snort. “But Frederick’s not around anymore, is he? Thanks to you.”

“B-Bishop’s protecting me,” I say. “He’ll be here any minute, any second.” I scuttle along the wall as he approaches.

Leo snickers. “And just where is he now, huh?”

Good question. I’d like to know the answer to that myself.

Leo unbuttons his shirt, loosened tie draped over his shoulder, revealing a sallow chest covered in sparse dark hair.

The sting of vomit burns my throat. I scan the room for an escape route. I spot the fire door at the rear of the gym. I’m willing to bet he hasn’t seen it—perfect. Except that I have to get there, past Leo, and all without him noticing so that he doesn’t lock it with his magic. I’m sure it won’t matter that I appear to be in better shape than him. Strong calves are probably not going to help against his magic.

Come
on, Indie, think! Think, think, think.
I do another quick scan of the room and stop at the first large object I spot—the carriage.

I’ve done it only once before, under the direction of a practiced warlock, but I try not to think about these little details. Instead I focus on the heat, will it to come, and it does without effort, tingling and stinging my fingertips. Like riding a bike.

But then I realize there’s a problem with this plan: I can’t say the incantation aloud, because this whole plan revolves around Leo not turning around for at least fifteen seconds, not guessing what I’m up to. I’ve never done a spell without saying the incantation, never even tried. Panic surges inside me.

Leo steps forward. He reaches his cold hand out and grazes my cheek with his fingers. I let out a little whimper, and he laughs.

“Don’t be shy, now,” he says. “I promise not to hurt you
too
badly.”

Sequere
me
imperio
movere, sequere me imperio movere, sequere me imperio movere.

The front end of the carriage lifts up—oh my God, I did it!—so that it’s balanced on the back two wheels, hovering just inches from the floor, and I find myself strangely grateful that Leo’s too busy noisily unbuckling his belt to notice the slight groan of the metal. The upended float wobbles over the floor. It dips up and down as my magic wavers, and I have to bite down on my lip from the mental strain. When it’s a few feet behind Leo, I decide it’s close enough.

“Sorry I can’t promise the same thing,” I spit out.

I let the carriage crash to the ground. For a split second, it teeters on its back wheels like it can’t decide what to do, and I worry it might fall the wrong way. But then the carriage gains momentum and tips forward. I jump out of the way just as it crashes onto Leo’s back, flattening him to the ground with a crack that echoes through the room.

It worked!

But I’ve patted myself on the back too soon, because Leo’s already squirming under the carriage, his low growl turning into a thundering roar. I give him a wide berth and make a mad dash for the fire door, but when I pass Carmen lying in a bloodied heap on the football team’s float, my breath knocks out of me. I can’t leave her here.

“Carmen!” I rush to her side and try to haul her up, but she’s all dead weight. When I hear rustling behind me I have to give up. “I’m so sorry, Coach Jenkins.”

I lay her down gently, then run. The door is unlocked—thank God!—and I burst onto the fresh-mown lawn of the football field, so thick with fog it feels as though I’m running into a scene from a slasher flick starring me as Lucky Victim #2.

Every second counts, but I can’t help glancing behind me. Leo’s already at the door, hands braced against the frame. Blood gushes from his nose as he huffs through clenched teeth.

But he doesn’t follow.

And I don’t get it.

He must be up to something, I decide. Something bad. I tear my eyes from him and dart a glance around. That’s when I see them: Bishop and Jezebel, dashing onto the football field.

“You’re late,” I call out, slowing to a jog now that the situation is looking entirely in my favor. “Had to go ahead and save myself.”