55. Lily
LILY
Sometimes wards had an alarm feature, but thankfully there’d been none in the signatures.
Maybe it was beyond Hawleyhurst’s price point.
Still, she held her breath as each ward cracked and as she swung open the door of the apartment.
She gestured Seb in before her, and together they stepped into the darkened space.
Her heart pinged against her ribs. She sweated into her coat, completely drained.
“How much time?” she whispered.
“It’s already been forty minutes.”
“Shit. We’ve got to work fast. I still have to close the wards too.”
They peered into the only bedroom on the main floor, and Seb shook his head.
The stairs creaked as they ascended, and Lily reached for his hand.
She knew the moment Seb identified Hawleyhurst’s room because he froze in the doorway, blocking her view.
Beyond him was a room as unremarkable as the others.
It was the room of a jock, with sports posters and pennants and none of the class of the tower suite.
Above them, freezing rain began to spatter onto the roof.
“You don’t have to come in.” She squeezed his hand.
Seb considered. “I do. I really, really do.”
He stepped inside.
She hovered in the doorway as he spread the map on the bed, beginning the activation of the spell he’d prepared.
He muttered the incantation under his breath in French, and she smelled the comforting must of old books before she saw the spell begin to take shape as pinpricks of soft, mauve light gathered on the map.
Soon there were enough to form gentle tendrils that tested the air, like a glowing anemone.
Its motion was so calming that she sighed.
As the tendrils coalesced into a single filament, her phone buzzed and immediately buzzed again.
Their eyes met across the room, and in unison they withdrew their phones. Her screen was ablaze with warnings from Asher:
C texting. Looks serious.
Leaving library. Go now!
Get out of there.
Then came the texts from Daphne and Tori.
“Shit,” Seb whispered into the darkened bedroom. “He’s got an alarm on his bedroom.”
Of course he did, the absolute piece of shit.
That was the thing about Hawleyhurst—he might not be particularly book-smart, but he was clever when he cared to be, and that made him unpredictable.
It was much more fiendish to alarm his bedroom than three sets of wards—to let them think they were in the clear.
The tendril stretched, wavering, halfway across the room.
“Get out of here,” he said, his face set. “I’ll deal with this.”
What a beautiful idiot he was.
“I’m not leaving you. Not here. Not anywhere. Not with him.” She crossed the threshold of the room and stood next to him. She stared down at the map. Their phones buzzed again.
“Gemma’s at the steps.”
“Fuck Gemma,” Lily said. “She’s probably wearing heels. I’ll break her other arm if I have to.”
She summoned her Words and pressed her hands to the map. The magic flared, deepening in hue, washing the room in unholy magenta, and then the tendril became a vine, thickening and surging forward. It planted itself against a wall.
They exchanged a panicked glance. Seb shook his head and strode over to the wall, mouthing his Words as he went.
He raised a fist and banged the side of it against the plaster.
The illusion cracked open. Shouting came from the road.
Housemates. Seb stuck his hand into the wall-which-was-not-a-wall and pulled out the disc.
“Time to go.”
“The wards—”
“Doesn’t matter anymore.” He made to roll up the map, then stopped and stared at her. “Lily. Your nose!”
She looked down. Now that the magic had dissipated, she could see it—several drops of dark blood on the map.
“Doesn’t matter,” she echoed. From below: voices and the clicking of a key in the lock. She grabbed the map, rolling it hastily. “Go, go, go.”
They sprinted down the stairs, reaching the main floor just as the door crashed open. Seb hurled Rusalkan Tresses at the door, slamming it shut as he pulled her toward the main-floor bedroom.
“Window,” he gasped.
They hurtled into the bedroom, and Seb leaped onto the bed in one smooth motion, his fingers fumbling on the window latches.
It slid open with a great creak. He kicked out the screen, and one after another they tumbled through onto the frozen ground, and then they were running, running, running, into the sleeting night.