No Charm Done

Chapter Thirty-Six

“No shit,”

Chrysanthemum muttered, and Lily flinched.

Why did Chrysanthemum have to be so prickly? Even now? Yes, Lily had screwed up and she was determined to make it right, but if Chrysanthemum had just answered her text earlier, then she could have apologized and explained and …

Ugh. This was not the time to fret over their relationship issues.

Lily closed her eyes briefly, forcing herself to concentrate on the more pressing problem. Chrysanthemum’s face was paler than usual, and her hands were shaking. She looked like someone who’d had the spit shocked out of her. Since Lily was feeling the same thing, it would have been nice to share a comforting hug and feel the reassurance of warm skin.

But they couldn’t. (Her fault. No—time to focus.)

It shouldn’t have, but Chrysanthemum’s obvious anxiety relaxed Lily a bit. It meant she was taking this seriously.

“Was it a pumpkin?”

Chrysanthemum asked.

“A … pumpkin?”

Chrysanthemum motioned toward the jack-o’-lantern sitting on a hay bale nearby. The patio and ballroom were filled with them, most with more interesting designs than smiles carved into their faces.

“There was smoke coming out of it,”

Chrysanthemum said. She sounded like she was making an effort to sound calm. Seeing as she’d been much more chill than Lily about everything that had happened up to this point, this didn’t bode well.

“Smoke and worms. You know what kind of worms I mean.”

Lily shuddered.

“What about the black lines?”

“Those, too.”

Chrysanthemum warily moved her gaze from the jack-o’-lantern to Lily, but she seemed unwilling to turn her back on it.

“I was about to text you.”

“Oh, finally. So this is all it took?”

Lily tried to make it sound lighthearted, but she could hear the hurt in her voice, and no question Chrysanthemum could, too. She held up a hand, cutting off whatever Chrysanthemum was about to say.

“Sorry. Not the time, I know. I think something is really wrong.”

“No shit,”

Chrysanthemum said again.

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing to me, but there are lines—cracks—appearing in all the mirrored surfaces in the ballroom. No one else can see them. I’ve been looking for you—I even went into the bathroom looking, and the mirrors in there all have cracks, too.”

Lily wrapped her arms around herself.

“I’ve never seen so many. They don’t fade away like they used to, either. That’s how I found you—I followed them to you. And they’re bigger than they used to be. Wider?”

Chrysanthemum’s eyes opened wide themselves in response to that.

“I had the creepiest premonition that they would get so wide that I could fall into them. When midnight comes …”

She didn’t have to finish the sentence.

Lily didn’t know if it was possible for living people to slip into the Other Side, but every witch knew that energies and spirits could. Widening cracks …

The veil wasn’t merely thinning anymore; the curse was actively breaking the barrier.

What that would mean for Thornhaven was a question Lily didn’t want answered.

“We have to banish it again,”

Lily said.

Chrysanthemum threw her hands up.

“Yes, sure, great plan. Because we did it so well the first time.”

“Obviously we missed something.”

“Or we screwed something up because we don’t know what we’re doing.”

“Or that.”

Lily spun around, fighting the urge to bite her fingertips.

“But what’s our other option? It’s still about us. That means whatever has to be done, it needs to come from us.”

She half expected Chrysanthemum to continue arguing for the sake of arguing, but Chrysanthemum’s shoulders slumped.

“We don’t even know where it is. I think you’re right that we have to be involved, but maybe it’s time for help. We need more powerful people.”

Although she remained convinced that Chrysanthemum had way more power than she was giving herself credit for, Lily sighed.

“Let’s find it first,”

she said, putting a plan together as she spoke.

“We know how to do that, and we don’t need help with it. Once we’ve found it, I can go home and gather our supplies while you find Ms. LaPlant. We’ll let her decide who else to involve. She’ll know who the right people are.”

That seemed reasonable to Lily, and Chrysanthemum nodded. Good. Plan accomplished. Lily wished it made her feel better like plans usually did.

“Do we start searching here or at school?”

Chrysanthemum asked.

In vain, Lily tried to recall everything she’d read about curses. Could they move once they’d taken up residence somewhere? But her memory was foggy with fear, and her brain was spinning with Chrysanthemum’s closeness and the emotions that aroused. She was certain she’d read something, but the words on those weathered pages wouldn’t materialize.

“You said you trust your instincts,”

she said to Chrysanthemum.

“What do they say?”

Chrysanthemum looked a little queasy.

“I don’t know how smart that is, but … my instincts say we kicked it out of the school, and since the school’s been covered in spells by the Society, it would have a hard time returning. Last time it manifested, its magic was mostly focused on where it was located, so … here?”

Lily nodded. Everything Chrysanthemum was saying was conjecture, but hearing it calmed Lily down enough to recall some of what she’d read.

“The hotel’s been the focus of a lot of magic with all the decorating, but it’s never been warded because it’s not owned by witches. Magic attracts magic.”

Lily offered up a tentative smile that Chrysanthemum returned with something more akin to a grimace.

“I knew my instinct to trust your instincts made sense.”

“My instincts say your instincts suck,”

Chrysanthemum replied, deadpan.

“They can’t possibly. My instincts allow me to talk to rabbits.”

Chrysanthemum rolled her eyes, but her grimace faded into a more familiar expression. Lily had missed that sarcastic smile.

“Okay, well, tonight we don’t need princess instincts. We need final girl instincts so we can survive the last act and stop the killer. Er, curse.”

“If this is what scary movies are like, I take back what I said about watching any with you,”

Lily said, before remembering that she and Chrysanthemum hadn’t lasted as whatever they were long enough for films.

“This is enough horror for me.”

Chrysanthemum’s smile dissolved into a scowl; then her face hardened into (what Lily was suddenly certain was) false indifference.

“Yeah, I think you already took that back.”

In spite of everything, Lily’s face crumpled at the sharp pain in her chest. But Chrysanthemum didn’t pay her any mind. She stalked past, heading toward the ballroom.

“Wait!”

It took Lily a second to recover from the emotional punch, but she caught up quickly.

“We should split up like last time. How do we want to do this?”

“I don’t know, but it’s too loud to talk in here.”

It was true that the music had gotten louder and livelier as the night had gone on, but Lily sensed that the mood inside the ballroom was changing, and not just because the drinks were starting to catch up to certain guests. The decorations were taking on a sinister tone. Lily wasn’t sure what, exactly, it was about them, but the colors looked off: Reds were too red, purples too purple, and suddenly there was too much lurid green. The cauldron smoke had a sickly smell, and the candlelight had dimmed. They strode past Mrs. Cook, who was talking to Lily’s father, and both adults wore confused expressions. Lily considered scrapping her own plan and telling her father what was happening, but another member of the Society board joined his conversation before she made up her mind, and then another.

So, on second thought, no. She couldn’t drag the Allerton name through the mud like that—so publicly, so irrevocably, screaming and crying in front of half the board. Patient, kind, discreet Ms. LaPlant, and only Ms. LaPlant, would do.

Lily pressed on.

They’d almost made it beyond the ballroom doors when one of the magical bats swooped down on them. It was just an illusion, a glamour spell, or it was supposed to be. But this spell had taken physical form; it grazed Lily’s head.

“Did you—”

She didn’t have time to finish asking before the bat circled around for another pass. Astonishment froze Lily’s feet in place as the bat aimed for her again. This time, its talons snagged a strand of her hair, and the shock and pain broke her stupor. With a cry, she swatted the bat, and it flew off.

Lily stared into the ballroom. Beneath the smoke and glittering lights, other decorations were going rogue. Most people hadn’t noticed yet, but some were pointing, and they looked less awed by the magic and more disturbed. Chrysanthemum, having heard Lily cry out, had spun around, and their gazes met. As one, they dashed through the rest of the ballroom as fast as Lily’s heels could take her.

Outside, Lily blinked as her eyes adjusted to the light in the lobby, and she glanced up. There were no more bats or other magical decorations, but the lines she’d spotted earlier had expanded. As she’d feared.

She rubbed the sore spot on her head and fixed the clip holding her hair back. The hotel was large, and aside from the main lobby’s path to this particular ballroom, Lily wasn’t familiar with the layout. She doubted Chrysanthemum was, either, which meant that choosing appropriate starting locations for each of them to follow the lines would be more difficult than it had been at school.

“Look.”

Chrysanthemum grabbed her arm.

For a moment, she wasn’t sure what Chrysanthemum was motioning to; Chrysanthemum was gesturing all around. But that was because the cracks were all around. All around and all doing that yo-yo disappearing-reappearing movement from the same direction.

“Convenient,”

Chrysanthemum said.

“What does that mean?”

Chrysanthemum stuffed her hands into pockets hidden in the volume of black tulle she wore, and despite everything, Lily couldn’t help but be slightly jealous that Chrysanthemum’s dress had pockets.

“I was going to say we shouldn’t split up,”

Chrysanthemum said.

“That is a classic horror-movie mistake. But it looks like we don’t need to. It’s beckoning us.”

That was the opposite of what it had been doing at the school. Or was it? Had the curse beckoned them all along? Lily didn’t know what to think, and she whimpered as Chrysanthemum took off in the lines’ direction.

“Are you coming?”

Chrysanthemum asked.

No, absolutely not, Lily wanted to scream. But they needed to. This was her plan. She had to hold it together.

“A quick look to see where it goes. Then you get Ms. LaPlant, and I get the supplies. We’re just confirming it’s actually here.”

Chrysanthemum nodded.

“We don’t engage. If it leads to a dead end, we turn around and don’t hunt for it.”

“Right.”

She fought the urge to grab Chrysanthemum’s hand as they started down the hall, away from the main lobby.

The music and general din from the ballroom faded as they walked, and so did the lights. During the day, Lily imagined this hallway must be brightly lit. One side was all windows that would show off a view of the ocean. But at night, those windows were nothing but darkness encroaching on the hotel. She could barely see the cracks spreading out before them.

Only, there … a single light flickered in the blackness beyond the glass. Then a second. Finally, three of them emerged, vaguely human shaped and glowing as though lit by an invisible flashlight.

Lily gazed, mesmerized, trying to figure out what she was seeing. Ball guests outside, holding candles? But something deeper, something magical and primal within her, understood that wasn’t true. Soon enough, the figures were practically at the glass, so close that she could make out details.

They seemed dressed for a costume party: tattered shirts and short jackets and canvas pants, some in silks and scarves, with unkempt hair and … wounds. Wounds leaking brighter light. And weapons.

Chrysanthemum had paused, too.

“Is that …?”

Sailors, Lily started to say, but they weren’t just any sailors. “Pirates.”

“Ghosts.”

Instinct told Lily to flee, but fascination grounded her in place as the pirates suddenly charged—that was to say, floated—through the window glass without a sound. A sensation of ice water rushed over Lily. Next to her, Chrysanthemum sucked in a breath. The ghosts paid them no mind. They swept right by and down the hallway toward the ballroom, their ethereal swords raised, their pistols bobbing at their bodyless sides.

“Have you ever seen a ghost before?”

Chrysanthemum asked. Her breath expelled in a white puff about the color of her face.

Lily shivered.

“Not even on Samhain proper.”

Her gaze landed on the cracks beneath her feet, and she glanced up at Chrysanthemum. They were running out of time. Without a word, they took off again.

The hallway ended down a short flight of stairs in a quiet, dimly lit foyer. To their left was an exit door. To their right, a set of double doors that probably led to another function room. Lily wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that the lines withdrew beneath those doors, but it meant the curse was definitely in the hotel.

“What are you doing?”

She reached out for Chrysanthemum, but Chrysanthemum had already moved toward the doorway.

“Seeing if the doors are unlocked, or if we’ll need to get someone from the hotel to open them.”

“Okay, right. Makes sense.”

Lily stepped forward, too, pretending to be braver than she felt. Chrysanthemum had once told her that they were badasses, but Lily didn’t feel like that. If it were her alone, she’d have let someone else check the doors, but she wasn’t about to let Chrysanthemum do it by herself. She’d been stupid and pushed Chrysanthemum away, and all she wanted now was to pull her close. So Lily would stay close, no matter what.

They each grabbed one of the handles, the doors swung open, and an invisible hand shoved Lily inside the darkened room.

Lily screamed. Chrysanthemum screamed. The doors slammed shut behind them with a boom louder than them both.

Lily found herself on her hands and knees, staring into the hotel’s hideously patterned industrial carpet. Its golds, blues, and reds were just discernible in the moonlight seeping through the tall windows against the far wall. It felt like it took an eternity to collect herself and scramble to her feet, but she was only a second behind Chrysanthemum.

Lily raced back to the doors, and together they yanked on the handles, but it was no use. The doors that had opened only too freely a moment ago refused to budge.

“Emergency exits!”

Lily pointed at the faintly glowing red sign above a set of doors and dashed across the enormous room. Those doors didn’t budge, either.

Lily threw her whole body into it, refusing to believe they wouldn’t open. They were emergency doors, for goodness’ sake. Weren’t they supposed to be openable at all times? She stopped when she realized Chrysanthemum hadn’t joined her. Like Chrysanthemum had known it wasn’t worth her energy to attempt it.

“Really?”

Lily shouted, although she wasn’t sure if her frustration was directed at Chrysanthemum’s fatalism, the curse’s audacity, or the universe in general.

“You think the curse cares that it’s violating the fire code?”

Chrysanthemum asked.

Lily kicked a door in frustration.

“It should. This is cheating.”

The emergency doors were nestled between two enormous windows whose bottom sills were about even with her head. Lily eyed them, uncertain whether she and Chrysanthemum could reach high enough to attempt breaking the glass. Even more uncertain whether they’d be successful.

“What?”

she asked, spinning around because she thought she heard Chrysanthemum say something. Chrysanthemum was looking at her, but it was too dim to read her expression from this distance.

“Nothing.”

“You think I’m ridiculous, don’t you?”

Lily crossed her arms.

Chrysanthemum shook her head.

“I think you’re …”

She turned away.

“Motivated. Determined.”

Lily’s brain stumbled over those words, but before she could ask what Chrysanthemum was getting at, Chrysanthemum had pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight. That seemed like a better, and possibly less futile, use of Lily’s time, so she did the same.

Wordlessly, they shined light around the room. Lily assumed that, like her, Chrysanthemum was searching for the curse, although what they would do when they found it remained to be seen.

While the room was large, there weren’t actually a lot of spots for the curse to hide. Chrysanthemum poked around some chairs that were stacked along one wall, and Lily found light switches near the door that had slammed on them, but unsurprisingly, none of them worked. She tried them all twice anyway. She was motivated and determined.

She was checking around a water station when Chrysanthemum’s voice rang out.

“I found it!”

Lily followed her phone’s glow to the room’s enormous central chandelier. Perched among the dripping crystals, the curse sat like a shadowy blister, squirming and writhing in its own foulness. Cracks spread out along the ceiling, an intricate web of black lines that made Lily’s feet itch to run toward the door, despite knowing it was pointless.

The whole ceiling looked ready to cave in on them.

Lily shuddered, then let out a cry of triumph as it dawned on her that she was holding the key to getting help and was just using it as a flashlight. But her triumph was short-lived. Her phone had no signal.

This time, when she glanced Chrysanthemum’s way, she could see the duh expression Chrysanthemum was giving her.

“I suppose you already checked,”

Lily said, hating the flush creeping up her neck.

“I did while we were searching.”

Chrysanthemum jerked her head up at the curse.

“It’s so typical. Just shitty, shitty behavior from that thing. Horror-movie cliché nonsense.”

“It’s …”

Lily floundered for a word that didn’t sound totally stupid.

“Obnoxious.”

That did sound stupid. But Chrysanthemum didn’t disagree.

Lily tucked her phone away. It was time to plan again, and there was no sense draining what was left of her battery.

“We have no candles, but we do have water.”

The water station’s container was half full, and there were paper cups next to it.

Chrysanthemum turned her flashlight off, too.

“We don’t have half the things we need, and I don’t remember half of what we did.”

Lily took a deep breath. She had a plan, but it was a plan that went against every fiber of her being. What else was there to do, though.

“You’re right, but the last time we followed my scrupulous instructions, we failed. I think it’s time we try your methods. We wing it.”

Chrysanthemum stared at her.

“Has the curse possessed you? Do I need to threaten to harm your hamsters to see if you’re still in there?”

“Funny. You know I have rabbits.”

“That was a test.”

“Oh.”

Lily snorted.

“It wasn’t a very good one. The curse could be reading my memories.”

Chrysanthemum was already running over to the water station.

“I’ll keep that in mind. Look, we also have an amethyst.”

She pulled a ring off one of her fingers.

“It’s what I used to infuse the water last time.”

“Okay, and this will sound gross, but we have salt, too,”

Lily said, filling a cup.

“I don’t know about you, but, um, I’m sweating with nerves, and sweat has salt in it. So if we rub our necks or something and dip our fingers in the water …”

Was that too gross? Should she not have suggested that?

But Chrysanthemum grinned.

“Super gross. I like it.”

“Thanks.”

Lily smiled.

“If you want, I can go second so you don’t have to dip your finger into the cup with my sweat in it.”

“Please. It’s not like we haven’t swapped fluid before.”

Chrysanthemum averted her gaze, and Lily wondered if she was also remembering the last time they’d kissed.

“Besides, we both need to fling water. We can each have our own cups of sweaty, amethyst-infused liquid.”

Right, of course. She’d been so proud of her own idea that she hadn’t thought it completely through, and it didn’t help that Chrysanthemum was standing close to her again as they filled the tiny cups of water. Fear might be making Lily uncomfortably warm, but Chrysanthemum’s presence made her brain fuzzy and her body aware of every breath she took.

As for the swimmy feeling in her stomach, that was probably a result of the combination of the two.

Despite the way Chrysanthemum’s closeness threw her off, Lily kept one eye on the curse as they worked. It didn’t make any more moves against them, but neither one of them wanted to risk wasting time. Without cell signal and being so far from the ball, it was impossible to know what else was going on in the hotel. Not to mention, the curse had used magic against them for just thinking about banishing it. Lily didn’t know why it had stopped now that they were trapped, but she wasn’t about to take this reprieve for granted.

Chrysanthemum dug the amethyst ring out of the second cup of water and stuck it in a third. Then she reset her phone’s stopwatch.

“Why thirty seconds?”

Lily asked.

Chrysanthemum shrugged.

“That ritual you found said it’s supposed to sit overnight. I figure sunset to sunrise is an approximation for half a day, so half a minute will be our substitute.”

Lily decided not to question this logic. The faster they moved, the better.

Once Chrysanthemum had infused four cups, she stuck the wet ring back on her finger, and they carried the cups to the center of the room. The curse remained quiet, but Lily’s heart beat harder with it hovering overhead.

“Good thing you were so unwilling to trust me about the ritual last time,”

Chrysanthemum said, scrolling through her phone.

“You texted me the words we said.”

Lily swallowed.

“It’s not that I didn’t trust you would study. I was …”

She closed her eyes.

“I was looking for excuses to talk to you. I didn’t think you’d want to talk to me except about the curse.”

“Oh.”

Chrysanthemum’s brow pinched.

“I would have rather you just talked to me.”

“Yeah, well.”

Lily scrolled through their conversations, searching for the messages she’d sent Chrysanthemum about the ritual. It was a good excuse to keep her head down.

“I didn’t know.”

They’d anointed each other after speaking last time, but without supplies, that was out. Given they didn’t have properly spaced candles, herbs for purification, or anything else, it seemed like a small thing to worry about. Especially considering the words they were supposed to say. Words that were no longer true.

How was the curse going to respond to that?

“Ready?”

Chrysanthemum asked.

Hardly. But here went nothing.

Lily’s voice shook as she spoke.

“I, Lily Ellen Allerton, descendant of the Thornhaven Allertons, declare an end to the rift between my family and the Langmores. I disavow any negativity that remains, and I banish any remnants of discord between myself and Chrysanthemum Quinn. In …”

The lump in her throat caught her. Lily paused; then she tried and failed a second time.

In this endeavor, they were definitely not one.

Lily attempted the line once more, but the words tasted like a lie on her tongue, and when she glanced up, Chrysanthemum was biting her lip. Maybe it was the shadows splayed across her face or fear wearing her down, but Chrysanthemum’s nonchalant mask had slipped. Lily had known she must have hurt her, but seeing it was something else. Seeing it, there was no way she could force out the ritual’s last line with any conviction.

Her own composure broke.

“We might be united in fighting this curse, but we’re not in anything else. Because I pushed you away. And I’m sorry.”

Lily squeezed her eyes shut against a sudden rush of tears.

“I did this whole tarot reading, and I should have done a better job of explaining everything to you, but it hurt so much, and I should have known that meant I was doing the wrong thing, and …”

She was babbling. She could confess her stupidity about the tarot reading another time.

“The point is, I was so happy with you that it distracted me from school. I forgot a test, Chrysanthemum. Me. I was terrified of changing like that. I panicked. I wanted a perfect year. I wanted to be a perfect daughter. I wanted to be a perfect Allerton so someone would give a damn about me.”

She inhaled shakily.

“But I’ve realized I can’t have a perfect year without you in it. And I’m sorry if I made you feel like I didn’t care about you, because I know how that feels. I’m not as smart as I want to be about this—this sort of thing. But I do care, and I like you. A lot.”

She’d said her piece. And because of that, she finally became brave enough to meet Chrysanthemum’s gaze.

Chrysanthemum’s eyes had never been bluer. Even in the dim light, they took Lily’s breath away. But she looked like she’d been slapped.

“That’s … Shit. I don’t know if I wanted to hear that.”

She turned away, rubbing her hands along her arms.

“I’m just so tired of being hurt by people.”

“‘People.’ You mean me. I keep hurting you.”

The truth of it stabbed Lily in the gut. She was an awful person. She didn’t deserve Chrysanthemum, and Lily couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.

“You’re right. You deserve to protect yourself from me.”

That was that. She’d apologized, explained, and whether Chrysanthemum decided to accept her apology was out of her hands. All Lily could do was promise herself that she wouldn’t bring it up again. She would keep her distance. Do whatever it took to not hurt Chrysanthemum a third time, no matter how much that hurt herself.

Chrysanthemum glanced back over her shoulder. “I—”

Whatever she was about to say got lost as Lily went flying to the floor.