Chapter Twenty
Birds were going mad around the town hall.
Lily parked her car in the Historical Society’s lot Saturday morning and stared, unsure whether she wanted to leave the safety of its confines. Everyone knew what happened when something riled up the seagulls, but these weren’t seagulls, and this scene more closely resembled something out of The Lord of the Rings than a gross-out comedy.
At least a dozen crows flew in a circle above the building’s clock tower. Mottled gray clouds covered the sky, making for a warmer-than-usual morning, but also contributing to the ominous display. Lily wouldn’t have been surprised to see the clouds part, opening a portal to some other dimension, and a chill ran down her back.
Since the Society had cast dampening spells Wednesday night, school had been calm, but the way things had been escalating before that, an open portal didn’t seem entirely impossible. Nor did it seem impossible that those spells had caused the magic to slither its way into town in search of new opportunities.
Or this could be her projecting a lot of anxiety. Lily was here for weekend two of her unfair, unjust, and undeserved punishment, and having to put up with Chrysanthemum all day did kind of negatively impact her mood.
She watched for a few more minutes, but despite her expectations, the clouds remained unchanged and the old brick building wasn’t sucked into some kind of magical vortex. For the moment, the crows were just hanging out, acting creepy. People walked down the street without incident, although most were keeping an eye upward. Given her suspicions about her link to the magic, Lily questioned whether she’d get inside the Historical Society with its strong wards unscathed, but she couldn’t sit in her car all day, either.
She needn’t have worried. She slipped inside the Historical Society building without issue, and she redirected her thoughts to the more pressing matter ahead of her—dealing with Chrysanthemum after Chrysanthemum had rejected her suggestion to work together.
Her cheeks burned, and her mind had the gall to drift to the worst possible part of their whole interaction—when she’d actually grabbed Chrysanthemum’s hand. Shock had frozen Lily before it had spurred her to move from embarrassment. It had fried the words she’d meant to say and left her without the strong argument she’d planned to make for cooperating. It was no wonder Chrysanthemum had refused.
But, in the end, maybe that was for the best. The suggestion that they work together had been born of desperation. On Wednesday, Lily had been afraid. (Okay, fine, she was still afraid, but she wasn’t panicking as much and was therefore thinking more clearly.)
If this was her spell that had somehow gotten out of control, then she didn’t need Chrysanthemum to fix it. If she needed anyone, it was a wiser, more powerful, and more knowledgeable elder, but Lily wasn’t ready to confess to casting a hex. The trouble she’d get in would be immense, and there were too many unknowns for her to be entirely convinced this was her fault.
But she could figure it out without Chrysanthemum. It would be better this way. She wouldn’t have to deal with Chrysanthemum’s unsociable attitude. She wouldn’t accidentally touch Chrysanthemum (ew) because she was stressed and not thinking clearly. Or look at her distracting eyes, eyes that seemed to see right through Lily’s skin.
Eyes that met her gaze the moment Lily entered the library, causing a wave of heat to wash over Lily’s body.
Chrysanthemum was dressed in a pair of faded black leggings, a plain T-shirt, and a flannel shirt over that. Even that didn’t sport any color, merely more black and gray. Pathetic. But Chrysanthemum’s hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and her irises more than made up for the blahness of her clothes. Lily took off her backpack as an excuse to glance away, trying to ignore the annoying flush.
Honestly, she was not scared of Chrysanthemum. Not even after the laughing hex. Less so, actually. Lily had rebuilt her wards after that incident, and they were stronger than ever. Nothing Chrysanthemum could send her way would get through, so it was frustrating beyond belief that her body insisted on acting like she was nervous.
Lily took a deep breath, wishing she’d grabbed a drink from Black Cat.
“Instructions and a note.”
Chrysanthemum pushed the paper she’d been reading toward Lily, then walked away.
Lily snatched it. Last weekend they’d managed to work without speaking to each other. She’d been hoping to continue that trend, but no one from the Society was here this morning to orient them and supervise. For the moment, all they had was exactly what Chrysanthemum had said: a set of instructions on how to proceed.
Grimacing, Lily read everything twice. These tasks could take all day and then some. Almost as infuriating was the fact that she was going to be exhausted by the time she got home, where she could mope around the house because she was freaking grounded.
Once Sara’s crisis had passed, Lily had protested the unfairness of it all to her parents, hoping that they’d at least try to get her out of the library work. Spending every Saturday breathing in paint fumes and mildew took away from her schoolwork, and that had struck Lily as a winning argument. Her parents had disagreed. They’d seemed to think this whole working-with-Chrysanthemum deal was a good idea—witches needed to stick together and all—and since Lily was grounded, she’d have plenty of time for her assignments.
The wrongness of it stung like a slap, and the pain hadn’t subsided over the last two weeks.