Chapter Twenty-Eight
As she’d made the invitation, Lily had half expected Chrysanthemum to bolt like she had last week. She knew she should give up on thinking she’d ever had Chrysanthemum figured out, though. Similarly, she should probably give up on insisting she disliked Chrysanthemum.
The truth was, Chrysanthemum could be pretty likable when she tried.
Now Lily needed to stop feeling nervous around her for no reason. Perhaps spending more time with Chrysanthemum doing normal things like homework or watching a movie would help with that. She could train her body to stop seeing Chrysanthemum as a threat. Valedictorian competition, but not an enemy.
They worked in companionable silence over the next hour. Lily had another chapter of Le Petit Prince she needed to read and write about for French class, and Chrysanthemum was taking notes on a book for their history term paper.
Around five, Lily’s phone vibrated with a text from her mother:
Sara is going over to Ophelia’s for dinner.
Okay
I think there’s leftover chicken in the fridge.
Thanks
Sighing, Lily left Chrysanthemum to her reading and went downstairs to peek into the fridge. Sure enough, there was a container of leftover chicken parm.
It looked very unappealing.
“Pizza?”
Lily asked, returning to the bedroom. It was early for dinner, but she was getting hungry, and it might take a while for her and Chrysanthemum to agree on something.
“Sure,”
Chrysanthemum said, although Lily wasn’t sure at all that Chrysanthemum had heard her.
“Listen to this. This is one of the books I’m reading for history, and it’s going over reputed witchcraft on the island. It claims there was a feud between two families—the Allertons and the Langmores—in the early nineteenth century!”
Lily sat on her bed.
“Okay? Why are you so excited?”
“An Allerton woman and a Langmore woman both mysteriously disappeared together. They had a friendship their families didn’t approve of—hmm, wonder what that could mean—and so when they vanished, each family blamed the other. There were accusations of foul play, although no evidence of it was ever found. But soon after the women disappeared, fights broke out and—coincidentally, according to the book—there were crop failures, a roof that blew off a house, livestock that died …”
Chrysanthemum tore through the pages.
“This could help explain what’s going on! There’s a whole history of negative energy between us.”
“Wait.”
Lily held up her hands.
“How does this explain anything?”
Chrysanthemum stared at her for a moment.
“I told you—my family is from Thornhaven.”
“Yeah, but your last name is Quinn, so what does this have to do with us?”
“I’m also a Langmore—well, descended from Langmores. We haven’t been Langmores in a couple of generations. But everything makes sense now! How could either of our hexes, even if they collided, been powerful enough to turn into a curse? They probably weren’t. But if they built on negative energy that was already there, sleeping for a couple of centuries …”
Lily nodded, the pieces fitting together.
“And because we did those hexes at this time of the year, when the veil between the material and metaphysical planes is already thin, it was enough to tear a hole and for the curse to manifest.”
“What if we need to address the feud in order to destroy the curse?”
“But address it how?”
Lily asked. She got up and started pacing. New information was good, but they needed more.
“We can speculate about why our ancestors disappeared, but we can’t really know what happened or why our families reacted the way they did.”
Chrysanthemum flipped through a few pages.
“There’s nothing else here. But how do any of these things really start? There’s probably no clear answer.”
“How can there be no answer? Someone must have done something first.”
“Really?”
Chrysanthemum raised her eyebrows.
“Why did we start fighting?”
Lily opened her mouth, then quickly shut it before something she didn’t want out found its way into the air.
“Luke,” she lied.
Chrysanthemum slammed the book closed and tucked it into her backpack.
“No. At the ninth-grade magic fair, you threw a fit to your friends when I won, and I decided I couldn’t stand you.”
Lily picked up Cinder. It was true—that hadn’t been one of her finest moments—but she’d had no idea Chrysanthemum had overheard her. For the first time, she considered whether some of the nervousness she felt around Chrysanthemum was due to guilt. She should have been nicer to Chrysanthemum when she moved here. It seemed ages, now, although it had been only three years ago. She could console herself that she’d been less mature then, more judgmental …
Chrysanthemum had shown up that first day of school dressed all in black, and Lily had scoffed, because Chrysanthemum looked like she was faking it. A witch cliché. But if Lily was being 100 percent honest, that wasn’t the entire truth.
The entire truth was … Lily had also been intimidated.
Chrysanthemum was different and she didn’t care, and that took a strength, a power, that Lily didn’t have. So Lily had ignored her, hoping that would help her ignore the jealousy and the something else—a kind of longing—that gnawed at her chest whenever she glanced Chrysanthemum’s way.
She’d known the other witches would follow her lead; Lily had been on top of the social pyramid for too long for them not to. Ignoring Chrysanthemum was the only way she could stay there, and she had to stay there. Already her parents were growing less interested in her. David would be applying to college soon. Sara was beginning to shine as a swimmer. Lily was the unremarkable child.
None of that was Chrysanthemum’s fault, but Lily had—because of her own insecurities—essentially ostracized her from the magical community. Lily was an Allerton witch, as people liked to remind her, a descendant of one of the oldest families on the island, and she should have been the one to welcome Chrysanthemum into the fold. They might not have had enough in common to become friends, but surely it had been Lily’s responsibility to help Chrysanthemum feel like she belonged?
How could Lily take pride in being responsible if she couldn’t do that?
All the times Chrysanthemum had teased her about being too kind to properly insult her, she couldn’t have really meant kind, could she? Because Lily had not been kind. She wasn’t good at insults; that was all.
Lily set Cinder down and sank to the floor next to Chrysanthemum.
“I’m sorry about that,”
she said.
“About all of it.”
Chrysanthemum froze, and in the perfect silence, Lily thought her heart was going to pound right out of her chest.
“All of what?”
Chrysanthemum asked at last.
Lily wished she hadn’t pulled her hair back in a ponytail while they were reading because she wanted to comb it over her face. Without that option, she pulled in her knees.
“For not being nicer to you when you moved here. For rejecting you. I knew other people would follow my lead.”
She gazed ahead, unwilling to see what was passing over Chrysanthemum’s face.
“Why weren’t you?”
Chrysanthemum asked softly.
Lily didn’t want to go into that—there was apologizing and then there was making a fool of herself—but she owed Chrysanthemum something.
“It’s complicated. But let’s say that it’s because I thought you were a tryhard. I literally thought you wore colored contacts.”
Lily finally turned, let herself stare into Chrysanthemum’s eyes. They did, still, strike her as an unnatural color, but there was nothing eerie about them. They were actually breathtaking, and that pinch of longing Lily had been trying to suppress for years expanded in her chest.
Chrysanthemum was, Lily had to admit, very pretty. Not just her eyes, but her thick eyelashes and pouty lips. Lily suddenly wasn’t sure whether she was jealous that she didn’t look like Chrysanthemum or upset that Chrysanthemum was almost certainly not thinking the same things about her. Although why should she care if Chrysanthemum thought she was pretty?
Chrysanthemum shifted, tugging her sleeves down over her hands, but it didn’t hide the color creeping up her neck. She laughed, sounding a little nervous herself.
“It’s funny. I assumed you snubbed me because you didn’t think I could be much of a witch, and I guess I was right. I really wanted to beat you at the fair that year to show you that I was—I am.”
“You definitely did.”
Lily cringed.
“It made me realize you were going to be major competition, and I became very … well, jealous. The spell you won with—the hair-color spell—have you ever thought about casting it again, changing things?”
Chrysanthemum doubled over, and for a moment Lily thought she’d burst into tears. She was shaking, her head pressed into the rug. But when Chrysanthemum raised her head, her eyes were watery, but only because she had been laughing silently. “Sorry.”
“What?”
Lily demanded. A pit had opened in her stomach.
Chrysanthemum took a couple of deep breaths.
“I’m not laughing at you, I swear. Apparently that spell was a fluke. I’ve tried to change my hair back to its natural color so many times, and I can’t. It wasn’t even supposed to be black! I was trying to turn it blue, but I guess my intentions weren’t clear, and … Well, you can see. I’ve never asked for help because I didn’t want to admit that I screwed it up!”
Lily’s stared at her in shock. A fluke? She’d been obsessing over Chrysanthemum’s prodigy-level power for the past two years because of a fluke? She must have stopped breathing for a moment, her entire body too devoted to processing this information to remember how to sustain life. Then Lily gasped, and oxygen flooded her lungs. She was going to scream. Absolutely lose her shit.
She burst out laughing.
“I don’t believe this! Oh my god. I have …”
But she had nothing, not even words. A few weeks ago, learning this would have filled her with triumph and relief. It was proof that Chrysanthemum was fallible. Lily was positive she’d have laughed then, too, but it would have been a very different sort of laugh.
Now, it all struck her as simply hilarious, and Chrysanthemum was laughing, too, and that made Lily laugh harder.
Before she could think better of it, she reached over and twirled a strand of Chrysanthemum’s hair around her finger. Chrysanthemum’s laughter disappeared abruptly, and she tensed.
Odd. A single strand of hair could be powerful if used in a spell (or a hex), but Lily had hoped Chrysanthemum trusted her.
Reluctantly, she dropped Chrysanthemum’s hair, unsure what had possessed her to touch it in the first place.
“You still cast a powerful spell. Even if it didn’t go the way you intended. That’s natural ability.”
“True,”
Chrysanthemum said with a shrug.
“On the bright side, black is better than blue.”
“Did you just say ‘on the bright side’?”
Lily grinned, happy to put that momentary awkwardness behind them.
“I didn’t know you could think like that. I must be rubbing off on you.”
Chrysanthemum clutched her hands to her chest.
“Shit. I need to get out of here before it’s too late!”
“It might be too late already,”
Lily said mildly, getting up.
“You were the one who started frolicking this afternoon.”
“I do not frolic. I was smashing those leaves.”
Lily stood in her doorway and gestured for the rabbits to follow her. When no one else was around, they got to roam the house.
“Call it what you want, but I know what I saw. Are you coming or not?”
Chrysanthemum glanced at the rabbits.
“Are you talking to me or them?”
“All of you. You’re not leaving before pizza, right?”
Chrysanthemum hesitated for a second; then she smiled.
“I’d never leave before pizza.”
A smart witch would have spent last night and this morning reading more about how one would defeat a curse.
Chrys was not that witch. She’d spent last night, this morning, and 90 percent of the afternoon (until this very second) replaying in her head the time she’d spent with Lily yesterday.
The moment Lily had touched her hair (Chrys was still recovering). Hanging out on the sofa, eating pizza. Chrys had broken all her rules about not sharing more of her life than was necessary, telling Lily about growing up in New York, her grandfather’s music career, her grandmother’s sunflowers, and more. In return, Lily had told her about the trials of growing up with siblings and how one day she wanted to travel the world.
After the last bell rang, Chrys pulled out her phone, wondering where she was supposed to meet Lily, and as if summoned, a text from Lily popped onto her screen. Wait ten minutes for people to leave, then we’ll meet in the main lobby.
Thornhaven High was built like a misshapen T, with the academic classrooms in the main building and two blobs coming off the western end—one for the performing arts rooms and theater, and the other for the gym and athletics rooms. The cafeteria sat on one end of the junction, nearest the academic classrooms, and the main lobby at the other by the theater.
There weren’t a lot of places to sit in the lobby, so Chrys perched on a windowsill and brought up her latest library download on her phone while she waited.
“Oh, good. You’re already here,”
Lily said, sitting next to her and startling her out of her book.
“I have a plan, but I’m not sure it’s going to work.”
“Okay, good, yes. Yes. Great. I was wondering about a plan.”
Someone smack her. Looking at Lily, Chrys could barely string together a complete sentence.
Lily didn’t appear fazed by Chrys’s stammering. She was scanning the lobby, and she motioned to a spot above the large set of doors that led toward the academic hallway and cafeteria. Despite everything else going on in her head, Chrys caught on to what Lily was looking at immediately.
The black veins.
Over the past couple of weeks, they’d become a more constant presence around the school. Chrys could put them out of her head well enough to focus on her classes, but they trailed her like a shadow, appearing everywhere she went.
Lily waited for a few more students to cross the lobby and leave before speaking again.
“Have you noticed that every time the black lines appear, they seem to move with us? They don’t just fade in and out of existence.”
“Yeah?”
“Have you noticed it’s always from the same side?”
Chrys started to reply with an automatic yeah—she couldn’t help that Lily’s lips were distracting—but she snapped out of it and caught herself.
“What do you mean?”
Lily bit her lip, thinking.
“It’s like a yo-yo string. They stretch one way, and then they pull back the same way.”
She demonstrated with her arm.
“No matter which direction the lines move in, they always fade in and out from one side to the other. I noticed the other day. When I was in gym, the lines appeared and disappeared in one direction, and when I was in French, on the other side of the building, they did it the opposite way.”
Chrys racked her memory for confirmation, but the truth was that she’d never paid close attention to how the veins moved.
“You think they’re moving in and out from the location of the curse.”
“Exactly!”
Lily grinned, and Chrys’s stomach fluttered.
“It’s just a theory, but it’s the only explanation I can think of. And I think the curse is always trying to pull us together. Lead us toward each other, you know?”
Chrys glanced up at the lines above the set of double doors. They were static now. She and Lily were sitting so close that their knees almost touched, and the air in that space between their skin felt charged with electricity. “Go on.”
“I don’t know if this will work,”
Lily said, although she sounded confident.
“but what if we split up and start at opposite ends of the school? The lines should try to lead us toward each other, so they’ll be moving, and when they move, we’ll see the direction they manifest from. We head in that direction and see where it leads.”
“Sounds like a good plan,”
Chrys said. It also sounded like their only plan, but flattery never hurt, and the way Lily’s face lit up—as though a compliment from Chrys meant something—chased away her disappointment over needing to split up.
Since Chrys knew the theater wing better than Lily, they agreed that she would begin there while Lily would start at the far end of the academic wing. If the curse was located at one of the ends of the building where each of them was starting, it might confuse their search, but Chrys reasoned they would figure this out quickly enough based on the way the veins acted.
It took her a few minutes to get the hang of what she needed to do, but once her brain managed to focus, she moved quickly. Soon she was past the theater entrance and creeping right back to the lobby where they’d started.
Lily: Check in??
Chrys: Lobby. You?
Lily: Almost at cafeteria
Lily was moving faster than Chrys was. The performing arts wing was a convoluted mess of hallways, whereas the academic wing was a straight shot from one end to the other. Much easier to navigate.
Lily: I think it has to be here. Hurry up!!!
Chrys: Where?
The veins were on the move for her. They bypassed the doors leading to the gym and thrust straight toward …
Lily: Cafeteria
Chrys charged toward her. Lily stood on the far side of the room, near where the food service was located, and she spun around as Chrys flung open the doors. The veins streaked across the ceiling, leading her toward Lily.
“Did you find it?”
Chrys panted.
“Not yet.”
Chrys frowned at the grim reaper, which was once more a lifeless decoration, and suppressed a shudder. New pumpkins had replaced the ones that had exploded, although they were fewer in number, and the plastic spiders had long since returned to their fake webs. Perhaps it made sense that the curse would be located around the cafeteria. The biggest and most violent incidents had all occurred in this room.
“We’re the only ones who will be able to see it, right?”
“Right.”
Lily wound a strand of hair around her finger nervously.
“But we don’t even know what it would look like.”
“I’m guessing it’s a you’ll-know-it-when-you-see-it situation.”
For Lily’s sake, more than her own, Chrys hoped it wasn’t too nightmare-inducing. She figured she could handle a lot more ickiness than Lily could. Watching horror movies had to confer some sort of inoculation benefit.
“Well, I don’t see anything out here. What about in there?”
Lily turned sharply. “Where?”
“That’s the kitchen where they store and reheat the food, right? Fewer people go in there.”
Some of the veins overhead did seem to be retracting toward that kitchen, which had only one door. But to really test the yo-yo theory, one of them would have to go in there while the other waited outside.
Chrys walked behind the food-service counter, swearing the stink of every meal the school had ever served blended together here. Pizza and mushy pasta and soggy hamburgers in foil pouches … Nausea roiled her stomach.
There was no lock, and the handle turned, so she inched the kitchen door open.
Behind her, Lily gasped.
“The lines are all moving! It must be in there!”
Chrys swallowed, creeping inside. The main lights were out—school was over—but some safety lights provided a dim glow, enough for her to see the enormous industrial freezers and the long central stainless steel counter. The smell worsened, too. It wasn’t old food now, but something earthy and rotting. She put her arm over her nose, amazed none of the normies who worked back here could detect it.
“It’s here.”
Chrys knew it in her bones. That foulness could be caused only by something dangerous and unnatural. Chrys followed her nose, moving slowly into the kitchen, deeper and deeper. The smell was strongest at the center of the room.
“I think I’m going to vomit,”
Lily whispered, coming up behind her.
“Please don’t. It smells bad enough.”
Lily scoffed and covered her nose.
“Thank goodness the ritual for destroying a curse calls for ‘the burning of strong incense.’”
No kidding. Chrys wouldn’t admit it, but she was closer to gagging than she cared for, and vomit was one thing she really couldn’t stand.
The only thing that might be worse than the stench was the physical manifestation of the curse, or so Chrys decided as she squatted by the central counter and sucked in a sharp breath of surprise. Her stomach churned, and she breathed again through her sleeve, deeply and slowly, to settle her guts.
“You found it?”
Lily darted over.
All Chrys managed was to raise one warning hand, hoping Lily would understand the gesture, but Lily was determined. She knelt next to Chrys—and grabbed her arm when she found what Chrys was staring at.
While Lily’s touch typically made her brain spin, today it steadied her. Made her stronger for Lily’s sake.
“Know it when you see it,”
Chrys whispered.
The books they’d read had shown an example of a cursed tree—a sickly, rotting thing with withered leaves, peeling black bark, and an air of menace around it. But, while the tree in the drawing might have been cursed, Chrys was now certain the actual curse must have been buried inside it. Because the curse in front of them was something else entirely.
It clung to the underside of the central counter, over a stack of foil pans. At first glance, Chrys had assumed it was a nest of worms, but they were unlike anything she’d ever seen (or wanted to see ever again). They formed a mass that was vaguely heart-shaped, and despite its disparate parts, the curse pulsed as one organism to a slow, steady rhythm. Dark colors—purple and green—swirled over the inky, squirming surface like an oil slick.
With her free arm, Chrys retrieved her phone from her pocket and switched on the flashlight. Lily tensed. Chrys wasn’t sure if she might disturb the thing with light, but she needed a better look.
In the flashlight’s glow, the veins seeping out from the curse were obvious. As they had the very first time Chrys saw them, they once again reminded her of cracks, and she thought she understood why. They were cracks—cracks between the material and metaphysical planes. The curse sat in the middle of a nest of them, like a disgusting baseball frozen in time as it shattered a windowpane.
Nothing bad had happened the last time she’d tried touching the veins, so Chrys reached out with a finger, curiosity overpowering her better sense. She never made it. Lily yanked her backward, and Chrys landed on her butt.
“Please don’t!”
Lily scrambled to her feet.
“We found it. That’s all we came to do. Let’s get out of here.”
Lily’s face was taut, and she had a point.
“Okay, okay.”
Chrys got up and followed Lily, who was already halfway out the door, holding it open and pleading with Chrys with her eyes. She was scared shitless—but she clearly wouldn’t leave without Chrys.
They said nothing else as they returned to the lobby, gathered their belongings, and stepped out into the crisp autumn air. Chrys’s lungs cleared, and her head with them. Maybe it was a combination of adrenaline and Lily touching her, but she hadn’t felt this alive in a long time. She couldn’t prevent a stupid grin from spreading across her face.
When she turned toward Lily, Lily was smiling, too.
“I can’t believe you!”
She ran over and shoved Chrys.
“What is wrong with you? Trying to touch it, shining lights in its face … Who knows what it might have done to you?”
“I swear there was a time when you would have been thrilled if something awful happened to me.”
Lily’s cheeks pinkened.
“I mean, I never want something truly awful to happen to anyone. But … yes. There was a time I didn’t like you. And I guess … I’ve started to enjoy having you around.”
Was it possible to crack your face open from grinning? Chrys’s cheek muscles hurt, and her pulse was pounding harder than it had been in the kitchen.
“You’re not so bad yourself. For royalty.”
“Shut up.”
Lily shoved her again, and Chrys stumbled, laughing.
Not so bad yourself. Like she hadn’t 100 percent fallen for Lily again.
Except this time it was both better and worse, because this time Lily wasn’t some pretty but unattainable mean girl who didn’t deserve her.
This time, Chrys had gotten to know who she really was, and she’d learned that she and Lily weren’t all that different.
They were both messed up and messy.
She couldn’t be furious at herself for liking the real Lily.
So it was going to hurt a thousand times more when Lily didn’t like her in return.
Chrys needed to do something about that, but she didn’t know what.
“I don’t actually like Luke as more than a friend, you know.”
What the hell was wrong with her mouth? She might pass out.
Honestly, that could be a mercy.
She didn’t know why she’d said what she did.
Was it a confession? Did she think she should give Lily a hint about her own feelings?
If so, that was stupid.
Lily liked Luke.
Chrys knew this.
Wasn’t she essentially telling Lily that she would no longer stand in her way, then? So maybe it wasn’t a confession at all.
Maybe it was some kind of apology for trying to come between Luke and Lily in the first place.
That would be fair, since Lily had apologized for snubbing Chrys.
Or maybe fairness had nothing to do with it, and Chrys was just a pessimist, so it was easier to stab herself in the heart now and get it over with rather than wait for the inevitable rejection.
Surprise turned to confusion on Lily’s face, and no wonder.
If Chrys couldn’t figure out her own motivations, how could she expect Lily to?
As long as Lily didn’t hear the unspoken second half—I like you—then Chrys hoped she could play her comment off like it was nothing.
“You don’t?”
Lily asked slowly.
Chrys buried her hands in her hoodie pockets.
“I thought he was too pure and sweet for you, but you know, since I’ve decided you’re not that evil …”
“Oh.”
She didn’t know what to expect from Lily, but she’d have thought a little more emotion would have been normal. Relief? Excitement? Eagerness to go claim the object of her affections?
“Thanks for telling me that,”
Lily said, although she sounded less thankful and more what-the-hell-just-happened than Chrys would have preferred.
Then:
“Do you want to go shopping?”
Lily asked. Between the way she rushed her words and the change of topic, it took Chrys a moment to catch up.
“For supplies, I mean? We could stop at Black Cat and get coffee, then head to the Cauldron Supply. It’s such a nice day, and I have all this stress to burn off, and we could walk down to the harbor and see how the ball decorations are going.”
She paused.
“If you want.”
Chrys relaxed her hands in her pockets.
“Totally. Let’s do that.”