“William Prescott is in our round of testing.” As soon as she says it, the other girls squeal again.
I nod my head. “Good for him,” I say. I have no idea who that it is.
All four of the girls look at me as if I have grown a second head. “You do realize how huge this is, don’t you?”
“Yeah, sure. It’s huge for all of us,” I say, trying to play it off. I have no idea what’s happening.
“Tell me you know who he is,” Trina says. I don’t need respond, because they all know I don’t. Kessa grabs my arm, her shimmering light-pink nails against my skin.
“William Prescott is the only son of Victor Prescott—you know, the Triad leader?”
I raise my eyebrows. A Triad’s son trying out for Enforcer? That’s a little strange. It’s pretty widely known that first-born children of any Triad leader or council member are automatically expected to take on the role themselves. It’s passed down as closely as our magic is. A boy trying to change that has got to mean trouble.
“William is apparently smart and powerful. He’s at St. Jude’s,” Trina adds. Ah, the private school.
“Not to mention rich,” Kessa adds. Definitely trouble.
“Gorgeous,” Beth says.
“Any girl would be beyond lucky to be Paired with him,” Maple says on a sigh.
I scoff. “I don’t care about rich and powerful. Those qualities don’t necessarily mean he’d be a good Enforcer. I care about having someone who can back me up if I need it.”
Kessa’s face is red, like she wants to explode or something. Even though I might actually like to witness that, I feel a little bad. Before anyone can blow a gasket, Mrs. Bentham claps her hands to get our attention.
“Today, girls, I’m going to test your basic skills of self-defense. Each girl alone must be able to protect herself in case her partner is otherwise involved. You must be strong individually as well as together. Any girl who does not perform to perfection will be dismissed.” Mrs. Bentham calls two names—Beth is one of them—and the girls both disappear into another part of the room.
The room is quiet while they are gone. Almost as if every girl is nervous to breathe. Miriam shakes her foot while we wait and stares at the door. For ten minutes. Then, the door opens and Mrs. Bentham comes out, clears her throat. “Jenna Lakes and Chrissy Jenkins.”
The girls pass us as they move toward the door. It clicks shut, allowing the silence to resume. I guess we don’t find out who’s left until class tomorrow. I stare at my feet. Looking anywhere else makes me want to vomit.
I’m in the sixth group that’s called to go in. The girl I’m up against, Edith Summers, is taller than me—about six foot two and fierce-looking. Her lip is slightly curled, her hair cropped short with red and black streaks. Her muscles are bigger than a lot of boys I know. She’s obviously been preparing for this, too—which means that I’m in a hell of a lot of trouble.
Mrs. Bentham stands close enough to see us, but far enough away so she’s not in our space. “This is a non-magical sparring test. You don’t know the fighting knowledge a demon can possess, so you need to be prepared for every move. Shake hands, ladies.”
Edith Summers could break my hand if she squeezed hard enough. That’s not intimidating at all. Nope. I bite my lip as we both get into block position. I breathe and try to focus. This is a make-it-or-break-it moment.
Edith makes the first move before I’m ready. Her fists of fury fly at my face. My arms are there to block her. Her punch has less force than I expect, which means she’s saving it for later. I’ll have to remember that. Dad used to say that when you were facing someone bigger, you had to let your opponents wear themselves out.
I move first. My foot shoots toward Edith’s left leg and she wobbles. She keeps herself from falling over, and when she’s regaining her balance, I strike with my other foot toward her right leg. She anticipates the move and bounces back to her left side. Missed. Edith reverses the move on me, twisting her body, and I jump over her while she’s down, so I’m behind her now.
I swing, leaning into the punch and using my legs to keep myself stable. She avoids each blow I make and I only get air. I need to go back to the defensive. As I decide that, Edith kicks her feet out toward me. I’m ready so I don’t fall like she intended. I step forward, keeping my balance and moving my feet despite her attempts to knock me over. She doesn’t land a hit on me either. I use a duck-and-jive method that Ric taught me. Edith and I circle each other, gliding above the mat.
“Helix,” Mrs. Bentham yells a fighting maneuver for us to do next. “Now!”
Edith pauses, it’s half a second. It’s all I need. I ram my fist toward her face and she blocks me; it’s too late. My fingernail grazes her cheek. Her face is red in the spot, blood starting to flow. She launches at me with her body twisted, feet toward my face. I duck. Edith lands. She looks ready to have a go at me again, but Mrs. Bentham stops us.
“Edith Summers, you’re dismissed.”
Edith drops her hands. “Why? She didn’t do anything!”
Mrs. Bentham points to Edith’s face, at the spot where my fingernail grazed her skin. Edith touches her cheek, her hand coming back with drops of red. “If Miss Grey had been a demon, you very well could be dead right now.”
Edith looks outraged—at me, at Mrs. Bentham, at herself. I cross my arms. Edith’s whole face is scarlet and I bet she’s going to yell. To my surprise, she doesn’t. She nods her head slowly; tears start to fall down her face.
“Thanks,” she mutters to Mrs. Bentham, then turns to me. “Good luck,” Edith says, extending her hand to shake mine. I stare at it for a second before I take it. When Edith lets go, she turns on her heel, head held high, and leaves.
Mrs. Bentham stares at me. “Well done, Miss Grey. It seems you have more gusto than I imagined. That’s what we look for in Enforcers,” she says.
I didn’t mean to scratch her, but I did and I’m here another day for it. I should be happy, but I can’t help but feel like I’ve destroyed someone else’s life.
“See you tomorrow, dear.” Mrs. Bentham says, going back to call another pair of names. I pick up my bag and head out the door. It’s already two thirty and I’m exhausted. From this morning, from the sparring, from the demon search. A demon can’t just disappear like that. I need a nap.
My phone rings as soon as I get into the car and I dig it out of my pocket. It’s Carter’s number. God, he really is so annoying. “How’d you get this number?”
Carter chuckles on the other end. “You gave me your phone earlier, remember? I texted myself so I’d have it.”
“You are such a stalker,” I tell him.
“Tracker, but thanks for the compliment,” he says. I laugh, but my stomach hurts. Man, what is it with this boy?
“So,” Carter pauses. I hear something crash in the background. “You busy?”
My hair is damp with sweat and my face red. I’m pretty sure I’ll have some bruises within the hour. I can’t let him see me like this. “I’m not really dressed to go out in public.” Wait, why do I care how he sees me? I feel the blush surfacing on my cheeks. I’m a sicko and I have to look at myself in the rearview mirror so I can see my own blush. Yup, rosy.
“I’m sure you’re just as pretty as you always are.”
Silence fills the line. Did he just call me pretty? That’s totally what that was, right? There’s a crash on Carter’s end, then he clears his throat. “So?”
I should say no. I should not go because I have things to do. But if he does know something about me, I have to find out. That desire is stronger than anything else. I have to protect myself. That means going somewhere with less people. “See you in the alley where we met?”
Chapter Seven
Carter’s leaning against the wall when I see him, phone in his hands, one foot propped against the brick. I inhale. Part of me wants to turn and leave. His voice echoes in my ear—“pretty”—which is completely ridiculous and it shouldn’t make me feel this way. I’m not his anything. I don’t want to be, but the word still means something. I wish it didn’t. I feel like I’m in some alternate reality; this is so not me. This caring what I look like and caring what he meant and blushing girl.
Crap, I’m turning into my sister.
He looks up and then back down at his phone. There’s a pause before his eyes shoot back in my direction. Even from a few feet away, they glance over me, head to toe. I’m glad I showered before I came. I feel naked—like he can see through me. I straighten my shoulders. It will take more than that to make me nervous.
Carter pushes away from the wall and doesn’t take his eyes off me as he moves closer. My mouth is dry. There’s a surge in the air between us. By the time he reaches me, my stomach is flittering. Carter reaches out and touches my damp hair at the ends. What the hell am I doing?
I wish I could rewind time.
Why
did I agree to this?
“So, you have a theory? I hope it’s not string theory; I hear people are working on that already. ”
“Always so funny.”
“What are we doing here?”
Carter leans in closer. I can smell his musky nutmeg scent. “You were surprised the other morning when you expelled that demon.”
His tone isn’t accusatory. It’s a statement, a fact. That unnerves me more than if it were a question. I keep my face stern and my eyes steady. The best way to lie is to tell the truth.
“I don’t get trapped by demons every day.”
But Carter shakes his head. “It was more than that. More like a girl who didn’t know her way out of a situation. You reacted more like a Static than a witch.”
The world seems to stop around me. All I can focus on are the words in my head.
I don’t have magic. I don’t have magic.
How does he know that? How
can
he know that? I clear my throat and try to figure this out.
I can lie. I can tell him he’s crazy and wrong. I can do magic. I’ll prove it to him, but that could fail if it decided not to work.
I could run, but he knows my name, my phone number, and my sister, and could probably find my address with the WNN. Stupid Internet.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” he says.
I shake my head. I see no other way out of this. “I have magic. It’s just cranky.”
“Cranky?” he asks, sounding amused.
“It has a mind of its own. Sometimes it’s tired.” Sure, like he’s buying this.
A huff. “That sounds like the answer a Static would give.”
I push him against the brick wall and grit my teeth. “I am not Static.”
“Then what are you?”
He doesn’t miss a beat. Give the boy a mic and call him Jay-Z. I stare at him, because he doesn’t know anything. He can’t. That’s why he’s fishing. This is all a game that I will not let him win.
“I’m just a girl.”
I let go of his shirt and move away from the wall, pressing my hand against my temple. This boy gives me a headache. All of this has my stomach in knots. I don’t have magic—he can’t truly know that, can he? Only three people know, and they haven’t told anyone.
“I’m leaving.” I say.
I take four steps before he says, “You feel it, don’t you?”
I don’t turn back around to him, but I do stop. “Feel what?”
I hear his footsteps behind me as he moves around. “You feel it in your stomach. When I’m around, you feel sick.”
I inhale, but don’t turn around. None of this makes sense. “What?”
“I feel it too. Mine’s not sick so much as it tickles. Yours though, yours is sickness. Deny it, but you went pale earlier.”
I swallow, but he’s right about that too. How does he know that?
“See that over there?” Carter whispers, his mouth right up against my left ear, warm breath trailing down my neck. I can’t see his face out of the corner of my eye, but I see what he’s pointing out. There’s a large bay window, on the other side of the alley, which is covered inside with a type of dark paper. A condemned building.
“The window?” I turn around, and he’s gone. I have to shade my face from a patch of sunlight to see his silhouette on the roof.
“Blow it up,” he yells from the roof, and then he disappears out of my sight.
Great.
Blow it up?
“Can’t I just knock over a garbage can?” I yell. Because that I could manage with my foot. He doesn’t respond.
This day keeps surprising me, and not in the good way. I face the window again. I can’t blow it up. I can leave. I could walk away right now and then what? He couldn’t do anything. He has no power over me. I have no power over me. Except I do feel sick. How can he know how I feel—unless he really does feel it too? This doesn’t make sense.
I walk around the space in front of the window. I could break it, but he’d hear that. There’s no way out of this. I knew someone would figure me out eventually. Why it is this infuriating boy, I don’t know. Might as well get my ruin over with. I won’t be able to do this and then I’ll be forced to live in a van down by the river, to escape being sent away. I’ll get some cats and we’ll eat tuna together, like some depressing version of
The Brady Bunch.
I need to focus. I try to connect, to feel the wind and to listen. To dig my toes into the concrete. To watch a cloud as it floats overhead. It feels like I’ve been standing here for an eternity trying to connect. I have to connect with
something,
but this isn’t working. Nothing is happening. There’s not even a spark within me. Even the anxiety in my stomach is gone.
“You win!” I yell and toss up my arms. I search for him along the rooftops, but I don’t see him. So I turn in a circle to scan them all. “I can’t do it! Happy now?”
“No,” he says from behind me. He’s close to the window, examining it with his fingers. “I’m not happy at all. You expelled a demon. I saw it. Plus, that waitress at the restaurant? That was you. That’s why you flipped out.”
I bite my lip. “I didn’t flip out. I just didn’t expect it.”
“She didn’t either.” He says it with a smile. It fades pretty quickly and he crosses his arms. “I was there for both things.”
I cross my arms to mimic him.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“So what? You want a prize for that?”
He ignores me. “When does your magic usually work?”
I stare at him. I’ve already told him too much. He doesn’t need to know this. Then again, it would be nice to share it. To have someone else understand.
Snap out of it, Penelope. You can’t tell him.
I don’t even know this boy! What if he tells everyone?
“You can trust me, Pen.”
Despite myself, despite every alarm blaring in my head, I want to trust him. For some reason—maybe it’s the churning of my stomach or the look in his eyes or the fact that he’s not smiling—the words all flow out. “When I’m with my family. I channel it through them. Why are you asking?”
Carter doesn’t answer; he moves around the alley, like he’s looking for a clue. He comes back to me and leads me to a spot on the ground. It’s near the iron grate, the same place where I expelled the demon. I ask him questions again with no response. He disappears a little into a shadowy place in the corner.
“We’re both standing in the same place. Try blowing up that window now.”
“Carter—”
He puts his hands up. “I can’t explain it, but can you humor me, Penelope?”
He called me Penelope. He’s not trying to annoy me? That’s pretty much a sign that he means business.
I clear my throat, tuck a piece of short hair behind my ear, and turn toward the window. I do the same thing as before, try to connect with the elements, and this time it’s not the same. It’s not like the other times with my family. It’s like in the alley and in the restaurant, where I feel the magic forming—queasy, butterflies in the stomach, waves lapping against the shore in elation—building up inside of me. It’s not pulling from anything; it’s already there, wanting to come out. I picture it in my head, the window shattering, and two seconds later the magic tumbles out of me and shoots into the window. There’s a crash as it explodes to the ground.
Carter is laughing on the other end of the alley. Me? I don’t even know how to breathe. Is my heart still beating? Magic doesn’t work that way, so what did I do? How did we do that? Immediately, my stomach is calm. I don’t feel sick. In fact, I feel alive.
“I knew something was up! Have you ever done anything like that before?”
I shake my head. “Even with my family, it’s not that strong.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” he says. I smile at the reference. Carroll was totally a witch. The secrets of our world are written into that book.
“Take my hand,” I say, and he does without hesitating. His hand is warm and a little clammy. I haven’t held a boy’s hand in so long. I try not to think about that part, but the magic inside me goes crazy. Like my heart is examining the lining of my stomach. “What would happen if we did magic together? When Connie and I are touching it’s stronger. Like whatever we do apart is even stronger together.”
“You think the same is true for us?”
“I have no idea,” I say.
He points to another window higher up the side of the building. Before my bobblehead stops nodding, I feel the magic billowing up. I picture it in my head, that tall, thin window shattering too. Nothing happens, not at first. There’s a tinkling noise, like the sound ice makes when it bangs inside a glass of water. Carter tenses up beside me at the popping sound. Not only that window—all the windows start popping. He’s fast and pushes me near the Dumpster before a whole alley full of windows shatters, raining shards of glass all over us. When I check, the whole building is now windowless.
My heart is pounding. I had magic. I did that. I just did that! A smile spreads across my face because that was awesome. Even more awesome than the last time with the demon. This was like flying into the sun and kissing on rooftops all at once. We did that. This could change everything. If I can do magic then I can be an Enforcer for sure! My magic-stealing demon is as good as found.
Carter’s body is shielding mine, practically on top of me. His face is only an inch from mine. I can see the traces of a beard trying to form on his chin. My arm is pinned next to his chest. I can feel his heart racing under me, his breaths sharp.
“Are you okay?” Carter asks me softly.
“That was not normal.”
“Far from it,” he says. His eyes get darker, serious. I suddenly feel very self-conscious under his touch and his gaze.
“It started that day, didn’t it?” he asks.
“It’s almost as if it only works when you’re around.” As soon as I say it I slam my mouth shut. Carter nods slowly and shifts on top of me. Did I make things super awkward? He’s staring at me, like I’m a puzzle he’s trying to solve. It’s unsettling. This must be how a goldfish feels.
“Funny, because I was thinking the same thing.”
Then he’s moving off me, reaching down to help me up. I stare at him, still trying to process what he was saying. “You were?” I ask.
I take his hand as he guides me to my feet. He doesn’t let go of my hand.
“For some reason, I’m in more control of my own magic when you’re around. The way you felt sick? I felt like I was on top of the world. Like nothing could touch me. Why is that?” he asks.
“I have no idea.” And I don’t. I don’t understand him or me or magic anymore. How could I make
him
feel more in control? I don’t even have control of myself or my own magic. None of this makes sense.
His free hand runs across my cheek. I shudder. I think my insides are melting from that one touch and I don’t like it. “What is it about you, Penelope Grey?”
“Me? I could ask the same thing about you, Carter—” What’s his last name? I don’t even know his last name. I take a step away from him. “What’s your last name anyway?”
He shifts back too, scrubs his hand across his chin. “Trent.”
Carter Trent. For some reason, knowing his last name makes all this a little less mysterious. I did not wake up two days ago hoping to have some magic mojo with a strange stalker boy, but I do.
“So, you think this means something? That we’re both better when we’re together?”
He leans in to my ear. “I totally think we’re better together.”
How did he get so close to me again?
“That’s not what I meant.”
He smirks at me. “I know what you meant, Penny Sue.”
“Penny Sue? Please tell me that’s not what you’re calling me now. It’s Penelope.”
“You don’t like any of my nicknames.”
I shake my head. “They’re utterly horrible.”
He laughs. Then it fades away. The crumble of glass under my feet fills the silence between us as I shift my weight. Carter raises an eyebrow. “Well, now we know my theory was right: we’re connected somehow, and the closer we are the better the magic is.”
“I think you’re looking for ways to keep tabs on me,” I say.
He laughs. “Maybe I am, Nell. Maybe I am.”
I groan. “That’s even worse. I think I prefer Penny Sue.”
“So you like Penny Sue?”
“Not particularly.”
“Maybe I should call you Jiminy and carry you around in my pocket forever.”
He steps in closer when he says it. “Forever” lingers in my ear. He’s so near to me I’m sure he can hear my heartbeat. He doesn’t look away from me, and his breath tingles on my skin. I blame the magic. There’s nothing sexier than magic. I really need to snap out of this.
“What’s the point of all this, Carter?” I ask.
“I’m trying to figure it out. Why would our paths cross? Why does our magic work better together? What
are
you?”
I blink and step away. He’s got to be kidding. But he’s still rambling about how he’s different or I’m different and how can this even happen. He thinks I’m something
else.
Something NOT. The magic stirs inside me like it wants to get out again, and I cross my arms.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask. The annoyance is in my tone, but I don’t care. I dig my nails into my elbow so I don’t hit someone. Someone named Carter.