Chapter Twenty-Seven
After playing with the bunnies, they spread out on the floor of Lily’s room with more of Chrys’s mom’s cookies. One of the rabbits—Chrys couldn’t tell them apart—had stretched out on Lily’s foot, and Lily was absently petting her. Chrys found it a bit alarming, both how long the rabbit actually was (not a ball of fluff, after all, but more like a stretchy toy) and how sweet Lily looked scratching the back of the rabbit’s head. The bunny’s eyes had closed in contentment.
“Can you, I don’t know, open the books to the right pages for us to read?”
Lily asked.
“That’s more specific than my talent gets,”
Chrys said, drawing her gaze away from Lily’s fingers.
“We need to do the legwork.”
Lily sighed.
“I suppose I should be glad your talent isn’t that good. Then you’d just cheat your way to valedictorian.”
“Like I need to cheat to beat you.”
Lily stiffened, and Chrys regretted the joke … but then Lily shook it off.
“Watch it, or I’ll tell Ella to chew your finger off.”
“Really?”
Chrys snickered and opened the closest book.
“I take back everything I’ve said about you being nice. You have a vicious streak.”
“Yes, I do.”
Lily tossed her hair, but even she couldn’t pretend well enough to not break into a laugh.
“Oh, shut up and read.”
Chrys shut up and read.
Only a few weeks ago, she’d discovered that antagonizing Lily was more fun than ignoring her. Only a few days ago, she’d discovered that antagonizing Lily was even more fun when Lily smiled as she shot back.
Knowledge was a dangerous thing.
“I don’t know if this helps,”
Lily said sometime later.
“But the person who wrote this book makes distinctions between hexes and curses.”
Chrys had rolled onto her back, and she turned her head.
“That might explain why I’m getting confused by my book. What’s the difference?”
Lily sat up straighter, as if she liked being the first one to have found something useful. That should have made Chrys groan, but instead she found it kind of endearing. Undoubtedly part of that was developing an understanding of why Lily craved validation, but Chrys knew now that it was also much simpler—Lily was a geek. Learning new things made her happy. Just like it did Chrys.
This wasn’t a total surprise. Chrys hadn’t developed a crush on Lily three years ago just because Lily was pretty. She’d known Lily was smart. It was obvious in both regular school and witch school. When she asked questions in class, they were smart questions—frequently, the same ones in Chrys’s brain. And when other people wasted class time by goofing off, Lily usually became as annoyed by their behavior as Chrys did.
“Apparently a hex is a specific spell. You know, like what you did to me.”
Lily shot her some massive side-eye.
Chrys made an innocent face.
“I maintain you deserved it, but go on. A curse?”
Lily looked like she wanted to argue, but she returned to petting her bunny instead.
“A curse is something altogether different. It lasts longer than a hex and takes on a life of its own. It almost sounds like you can’t intentionally curse someone or something. The book talks a lot about how a buildup of negative magic is what leads to a curse.”
Chrys chewed her lip. She still didn’t entirely believe she’d hexed Lily the night Lily had hexed her, but it was true that she’d never felt any direct repercussions of Lily’s hex. Possibly, Lily hadn’t done it well enough. Or possibly, the negative energy Chrys had been giving off had collided with Lily’s magic first and … created a curse?
“A buildup of negative magic that takes on a life of its own definitely sounds like what we’re dealing with,”
Chrys said.
“It does.”
“Hold on.”
Chrys picked up her second book.
“I saw something in here about curses, too.”
Her hands were jittery with a toxic combination of caffeine, hyperawareness of Lily watching her, and growing anxiety about what they’d done.
As she searched, the other rabbit (the one not currently making a bed of Lily) came over and stuck her head under the crook of Chrys’s arm, as if to offer herself up for petting stress relief. Coincidence, or had Lily noticed Chrys’s tension and sent her over? Chrys rubbed the rabbit behind the eyes like she’d seen Lily do, and they both relaxed a bit.
“Okay, here it is.”
She began to read.
“All magic, while intangible on the material plane, contains mass on the metaphysical plane. Over time, if too much mass accumulates in a given location or around a specific object …”
Chrys stopped reading and skimmed ahead.
“This is too long, but they’re explaining how objects can end up having positive or negative magic associated with them. It’s saying that the magic can break the veil separating the planes and manifest on the material one.”
“Manifest?”
Lily sounded like she might be ill.
“Like, it’s saying that the curse will be here physically?”
Chrys swallowed. The curses described were terrifying. Anything that could do what this book was suggesting would have to be a thousand times more powerful than any magic they’d yet encountered—or consciously performed.
“Yeah, there would be a physical manifestation somewhere, the center of the evil magic,”
she said, reading more.
“To destroy the curse, we have to find it and perform a ritual that destroys it.”
“Oh, that’s all?”
Lily groaned and flopped to the floor next to her.
Lily’s head was mere inches from hers, but Chrys tried to ignore that.
“The ritual looks simple, but we’d have to know what energies the curse is made up of. Like, what motivated its creation.”
“Seems obvious,”
Lily said.
“It’s that we hate each other.”
Lily was right, obviously, but Chrys sat up, needing to do something to cope with the way Lily’s words twisted up her insides. They hated each other. Simple.
“Here.”
She shoved the book at Lily’s stupid, pretty face so she could read the ritual for herself. Lily shouldn’t be allowed to have cute bunnies. She shouldn’t be allowed to love animals or jump in leaves or buy Chrys coffee.
“So, yes, we need to find the curse’s core manifestation,”
Lily said.
“But we also need to gather some supplies before we can do this spell. The book makes it sounds like the manifestation is most likely to be where the effects are centered. That means school. You were right that the ritual doesn’t seem too complicated …”
Not complicated wasn’t the same as easy.
Lily was biting on one of her fingers as she set the book down.
“Since we don’t hate each other anymore, shouldn’t half the work already be done?”
Oh.
This simple sentence sent Chrys’s emotions spinning, and she fell back on her usual defense mechanism: sarcasm.
“Presumptuous of you to assume.”
Lily stared at her as if she couldn’t tell whether Chrys was being serious or not. Chrys was torn between laughing and …
She had the strongest urge to kiss Lily. Her lips practically buzzed with anticipation.
But that was out of the question. The chasm between not hating each other and other things was wide. Temporary allies, acquaintances, even friends would have to do.
“I’m kidding,”
she said, flopping back to the floor next to Lily. Lily’s eyelashes had a tint of red in them. She’d never noticed before.
“I know,”
Lily said, but she sounded relieved, and Chrys realized something more than the color of Lily’s eyelashes: Lily was a shitty liar.
“We should make a plan. Since the curse gets most violent when we’re close together, we should wait until after school to look for its manifestation. We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“So, we’ll search tomorrow?”
Chrys asked, and Lily nodded.
Lily laced her fingers together above her head.
“Saturday would be a good day to perform the ritual. No one around. So tomorrow, we find the curse, assuming it is at the school. This weekend, we gather supplies and practice the casting. And next weekend, we sneak into the school after everyone’s left to do the spell.”
Chrys imagined Lily color coding a calendar with a day-by-day breakdown of tasks.
“I know you love plans, but overplanning stresses me out, just so you know.”
Lily rolled onto her side, and holy shit—her face was even closer now, inches away, and every muscle in Chrys’s body tensed.
“Look, I know we’re apparently super powerful, but we can’t wing this,”
Lily said.
“Besides, doesn’t having a plan make you feel better? We accomplished something.”
Chrys sat up, casually (or so she hoped), wishing her brain could focus on the task at hand rather than the girl.
“I suppose.”
Lily rolled her eyes and also sat up.
“Stop being negative. The Society recast their magic-suppression spells on the school, so we should be fine waiting another week. We deserve to relax a little. Let’s do some homework.”
“That’s your idea of relaxing?”
Chrys snorted.
“No, but it needs to be done, and tomorrow we’re going curse-hunting, and Saturday we have to paint.”
Lily hesitated.
“We could do homework together to get it done faster … then do something fun to celebrate.”
Something fun. Together.
Lily had made a similar offer last week when she’d invited Chrys to stay for dinner.
Chrys felt less panicky this time, but still unsure. As an introvert, she didn’t mind being alone (helpful when one didn’t have many friends), but there was a difference between being alone and feeling abandoned, and Lily clearly leaned toward the latter.
Did Lily want her here, or just a warm body—someone she could talk to?
It felt ridiculous to think Lily wanted Chrys around for her own sake, but the idea held up better the more she considered it. After all, Lily had lots of friends. There had to be other people she could hang out with. But Chrys was the person Lily was asking.
“Okay,”
Chrys said, disbelieving the words coming out of her mouth.
“Homework, then fun.”