Chapter Nineteen
Chrys stepped out of the Historical Society building and breathed deeply of the crisp night air. Woodsmoke overlaid the normal saltiness on the breeze, sweet and pungent and worlds better than the jumbled stink suffusing the classroom. Too many people had created their own charm bags. Plenty of herbs could be used for protective spells, but no one should be subjected to the scent of all the possible combinations at once.
While Chrys understood the urge—charging a crystal the way she had was more challenging, and herbs were cheaper to replenish—she couldn’t approve. Who wanted to go around stinking like old socks? The joke was on her, though, because she had only a few more pieces of quartz left. Maybe she should give old socks a chance.
Although the stink wasn’t the cause, Chrys was in a rush to get home. The rest of her day, post-bathroom, had been unexciting, but this morning’s adventure had drained her. Part of her had stupidly hoped that by her telling Ms. LaPlant what she’d seen, the mystery would be solved. Ms. LaPlant would either know exactly what was causing the weirdness, or she would take the information to the Society, and they would know.
Funny how disappointment, even when your expectations were unrealistic, left you wanting a nap.
“I’ll meet you at the car,”
Chrys overheard Lily saying, and that jostled her into moving faster. She’d seen enough of Lily for the day.
Yawning, Chrys walked down the stone steps to the parking lot.
“Chrysanthemum.”
Her name was a half whisper out of Lily’s mouth, an obvious attempt to get her attention without ensnaring anyone else’s notice. But even so, Chrys was not expecting Lily to call out for her, so while she heard her name, it didn’t register that Lily was speaking to her until she heard it again.
“Chrysanthemum.”
A hand landed on her arm, and Chrys nearly jumped out of her skin. Lily was inches away, that same anxious and conflicted expression on her face from the morning.
Something inside Chrys twitched, a long-buried piece of her that once would have been gleeful to have Lily initiate a conversation. She scowled her displeasure at it. “What?”
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
The no danced on Chrys’s tongue, but curiosity won out (never mind the long-buried piece, which softened in the face of Lily’s distress). Chrys raised her eyebrows in a go on gesture.
More people were leaving the building, and Lily frowned.
“Not here.”
She started moving away, and Chrys rolled her eyes.
Following Lily, she decided, would be too enthusiastic. She didn’t move. Whatever Lily had to say about the incident this morning—because that was what it had to be about—could be said with an audience. Chrys had already told Ms. LaPlant everything, and she didn’t care if Lily didn’t want to be seen talking to her.
“Please. Come on.”
Lily stepped toward her and grabbed Chrys’s hand to pull her along.
The pure shock of Lily’s skin on hers sent Chrys’s feet and pulse flying. Chrys didn’t touch anyone—she wasn’t a hugger—and she certainly didn’t touch Lily.
Of all that had happened today, that satiny skin contact had her mind reeling the most strongly.
Lily seemed to realize immediately what she’d done. She dropped her hand and looked at it as though she no longer knew what to do with the offending appendage. Chop it off, maybe, before it contaminated the rest of her. Blood rushed to her cheeks, and she stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets as though she’d like to pretend they didn’t exist.
“Sorry,”
she mumbled.
“Please, just come here.”
Baffled, Chrys followed Lily around to the granite courtyard in front of the Historical Society building. Cauldron-shaped planters had joined the stone urns around the stairs for the season, each bursting with purple, orange, and yellow chrysanthemums that looked faded and ghostly in the building’s lights. Below her feet, the only nod to the Historical Society’s true mission were pentacles carved into the rocks, one centered in each cardinal direction. Above, a few streaks of turquoise clung to the sky in the west, velvety enough to almost touch.
Lily paused in front of a wrought iron bench and bit her lip.
Chrys waited. The jolt from Lily’s touch had worn off on the brief walk, and irritable tiredness was overtaking her.
“We’re the only two people who can see the lines,”
Lily said at last.
Before class had begun tonight, Lily had been asking the other witches if they’d seen creepy black lines around the school. But clearly, no one had, and Chrys didn’t like the implications.
“We don’t know that for sure. They’re not everywhere. They come and go. Maybe other people haven’t encountered them yet.”
Lily crossed her arms.
“You believe that?”
Chrys didn’t.
“I just don’t understand why it would only be us.”
“Me neither!”
But guilt flashed over Lily’s face, leaving Chrys with the distinct sense that Lily did have thoughts on the matter.
“I mean, it’s obviously some kind of negative energy, and you hexed me a couple weeks ago, so …”
That was what this was about? Chrys’s blood warmed.
“A tiny hex that was quickly undone. I can’t believe you’re blaming me for this, except I also totally can. You are deranged. You know that? I …”
Chrys swallowed down the I hate you. Lily didn’t deserve the satisfaction of knowing she’d gotten under Chrys’s skin. It flew in the face of her Ignore Lily plan.
I hate you.
This time, the words came back to Chrys on the wind, a memory of spitting them out in her bedroom, and the feeling of relief and emptiness afterward. A feeling that was awfully reminiscent of releasing the power in a spell.
Anger’s heat drained from Chrys’s blood. She hadn’t been trying to hex Lily, but if she’d done so, that was about as vague and dangerous a spell as could be cast.
Except she wasn’t that powerful. She couldn’t have done it.
Except she’d been full of rage. Strong emotions heightened power.
And that vagueness—it could explain why the effects had taken so long to manifest. Even the smell at school, the smell she’d noticed on the wind—those could have been early signs of the negative energy hovering around her.
Chrys closed her eyes. No. A thousand damn nos. She was not accepting the possibility that she might be responsible. It didn’t make sense. More to the point, she refused. Completely. These Thornhaven witches, and Lily first among them, had treated her like a second-class witch from the moment she arrived. Whatever was going on, it was their mess. If she couldn’t be one of them, she was not taking responsibility for their problems.
“I’m not blaming you. I’m just …”
Lily’s fingers tapped along her lips, as though she hadn’t even heard the venom in Chrys’s voice. As though it were irrelevant. Just like she always seemed to think Chrys was irrelevant.
“I’m only saying there’s bad energy between us, and we’ve manifested it a few times, and maybe this is related. I’m trying to figure this out.”
“Well, figure it out on your own. I had nothing to do with it.”
She shoved her hands in her pockets and stormed off.
Lily’s feet pounded the stones after her, and she darted in front of Chrys so that they almost collided. Chrys took a step back as Lily’s warm breath washed over her face. This close, it was easier to see how deep the worry in Lily’s eyes was. The birthmark on her left cheek stood out against her skin, which seemed paler.
Again, Chrys softened a touch.
“Wait,”
Lily said, and her arm moved, but she wisely dropped it back to her side before getting closer.
“If it concerns the two of us, don’t you think we need to talk about it? Together?”
Chrys mentally clamped that irritating twinge of empathy and crushed the life out of it. If, and it was a big if, a spell she’d inadvertently cast had gone wrong, she would have to think about how to deal with it. Any so-called assistance Lily might provide would not improve that thought process.
“I told you—no,”
Chrys said, doing her best to keep her tone and her face blank of her conflicting emotions.
“You heard Ms. LaPlant. Let the Society deal with it. I know you think you’re the greatest witch to ever cast a spell, but trust me: you’re not good enough to fix this on your own.”
She yanked her hood up against the wind and huffed the rest of her way to her bike, and Lily didn’t follow. That was good. But the possibility that Lily had put in her head, the memory of last Wednesday night, chased her all the way home.