Chapter 11
“Something’s wrong with Fable!”
My own fear cut through the mental shock like a hot knife through butter. I threw open the door and broke into a sprint as I stuffed the stones back into my pouch. Gary didn’t hesitate, following close behind.
House Felinita was on the left side of Heathermoor’s grounds, not far from Liam’s cabin, if the map I’d seen was right. Gary and I ran full out as I went through a series of runes in my head.
When I’d touched the stone, it felt like she was being tortured, pulled apart at the seams. Her connection to me felt somehow dulled, but I could still feel it – as if, now that I’d opened myself up to it, I couldn’t tamp it back down.
“There!” Gary pointed at the big House Felinita crest over the double doors of a large dormitory.
I didn’t slow down to knock – nope, I leapt and rammed the door with my shoulder and every bit of my weight, busting through it as I began to prep a rune to blast everyone away from her.
Which is why, when I saw Fable sitting at a table with a group of other kids, not being tortured or anything of the sort . . . just staring at me and Gary like we’d sprouted extra heads, her eyes willing us to go away, I couldn’t make sense of it.
Torture. Fear. Dying.
Sitting playing cards?
Gary coughed, looking around awkwardly for a moment before saying, “Oh . . . shoot, sorry! Erm, wrong house.”
One of the older kids from House Felinita stood and moved toward us, her long, straight hair swaying around her hips as she moved. Her hands flashed quickly, and words sparkled in the air between us.
“Are you two, okay? You look terrified!”
I did a double blink, my shoulder throbbing with pain. “Uh, sorry? Like . . . Gerard said, we thought this was . . . somewhere else.”
The thing was, I could still sense Fable’s absolute terror, the stone still almost vibrating with it. She was keeping it off her face well, though – if anything, she looked embarrassed. Like she wanted to shoo us away.
Gary grinned. “Wow. That’s cool.”
The girl smiled and her hands quickly flicked through a few more runes that turned out to be words again. “Thank you.”
I tugged at Gary’s arm. “We should go. Sorry about the door.”
The pretty girl winked at Gary, her signed words floating between us. “We can fix it no problem. Glad you guys are alright.”
Gary shot her a sheepish grin and took a step back with me. “Thanks.”
He couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from her, and it wasn’t until we were at the door that he finally turned around.
The second we walked out, he let out a low sigh. “She’s pretty.”
“Yes, she is.” Like many of the other students here, she seemed older. Probably one of the homeschooled Dwimmers that were mainly here for a semester or two so they could prove themselves and collect their certificate.
But, as the remembered sensation of Fable’s pain washed over me in waves, a budding potential romance between Gary and the pretty Felinita student was far from my main concern.
I picked up a brisk step, not sure what to do.
Part of me wanted to turn right back around and yank Fable aside to make sure she wasn’t being coerced to act like everything was okay . . .
You saw her with your own eyes. She’s totally fine. You’re the one who has a problem right now.
“I don’t get it. I felt it so strongly.” I rested my hand over the bag at my hip, not wanting to actually touch the stone again. “Even now, I can still sense her fear. Why? What’s going on?”
Gary shook his head, his eyes kind of dreamy. “You think she’ll sit with me at dinner?”
“Don’t seek her out after what just happened.
We have to be careful who sees us together, at least for a couple more days so we don’t seem like we all came here knowing each other, remember?
” I rubbed at my temples, fear for my friend pulsing through me so badly that my own anxiety rose along with it.
“I didn’t mean Fable, I meant her fellow House Felinita student.”
I glanced at Gary. “Gerard. We are not here to pep up our love lives; you know that, right? I’ve got to figure out . . . this thing that’s happening to Fiona.”
“I know that. You’re right. So, like, what do you think?”
That was the problem, I didn’t know what to think.
Was this a trick of some sort? But by who? And why? No one knew about the stones but us.
“I don’t know.” I hated those three words, especially strung together. In order.
We made it all the way back to my cabin without any good answers.
I took the pouch off and laid it on the kitchen counter, pouring the stones across it.
That helped with the sensation of her fear.
Using the tip of my dagger, I pushed her stone to the far side, then scooped up the others and tucked them back into the pouch and retied it to my waist.
“I bet the spell just went wonky.” Gary put his hands on the counter and leaned over to look at the stone with her name etched into it.
He picked it up and turned it over a few times, inspecting it.
“Like, we’d never done anything like that before when we made them for you, so it could be that she made a mistake with her rune, and you just didn’t notice because we’ve been together up until now and didn’t need to use them.
Could also be that hers went wonky, what with the glamor pendants and then walking through the gates.
Maybe when the lightning hit you, it hit her stone too?
Just like, have her make you another one.
Put that one in a drawer somewhere and forget about it. ”
He made some good points.
“I’ve definitely been feeling off since going through the gate,” I conceded. “I guess it could have something to do with it.”
Maybe she was experiencing the same as me, just worse?
I discarded the idea almost instantly. If what I was feeling was like I had a bad hangover, the feelings I was sensing from Fable were like she was being drawn and fucking quartered.
And her trip through the gate had been a hell of a lot easier than mine.
But there was a third option: It could be me that had gone wonky. Getting fried by lightning could do that to a girl, like Gary suggested.
I could have asked Calypso what she thought, but I was glad for her silence and saw no reason to rile her up again.
Besides, Gary did have a point. I’d seen it with my own two eyes. If Fable was going to die today, it would be from embarrassment, and even that wasn’t going to happen, since nobody even knew we were friends. Clearly something or someone had gotten zapped between Neverthorn and here.
Either way, I opened a drawer and scraped Fable’s stone into it with a clunk, then shut it away.
The sensation kept on fading, slowly but surely, until it was gone. I let out a slow breath, focusing on the feel of air going in and out of my lungs, making sure I had my own emotions under control.
“We’re, like, pretty safe here, aren’t we? It’s not like anyone knows where we are, including Nocta.” Gary threw himself up so he could sit on the counter. “We shouldn’t have to worry as much? Right?”
In theory, he was right. But I also knew that Tarquinius was looking for us, and likely the Senate would be too at some point once the secret was out that we’d left Neverthorn.
Not to mention that Nocta had been able to find me when I went back to Neverthorn within days of me re-enrolling.
And besides . . . who knew what other creatures might be roaming the Scottish countryside?
You know, other than vampires and the odd Nessie here and there.
“Maybe not quite as much. But, even if we’re safe here, I wish Fable had followed us out so I could talk to her for a minute. Just to make myself feel better about it all.”
He scrunched up his face. “That would’ve been way too obvious. Like, we gotta lay low, like you said. You think you can figure out how to use the stones that aren’t messed up so we can stay in contact?”
“Yeah, I think so. And I’ll ask Fable to do another stone up for me next time I see her.” After all, she was the one who found the initial spell, it would take her all of two seconds.
I could only hope that the idea I had in mind would work for the others. “Help me look through the library upstairs, Gary. I need to find a couple of runes, and a way to make them work.”
Gary and I spent the afternoon in the upper level of the little house, scouring through the different books on runes. Honestly, it was almost as good as the library back at Neverthorn. We were closing in on dinner before we stumbled on something.
“This rune etches words into paper. Maybe it would work for stones?” Gary showed me a page out of a beat-up book that looked more like a journal than a proper spellcasting guide.
Using my yellow glass to help me, I unscrambled the written runes in my mind and reconstructed them into a casting motion. Reading magic was a little like reading music; you didn’t know how it was going to sound until you played it. And, in this case, your instrument was your hands.
The little symbols each corresponded to movements of the hand, but in a hard-to-explain, vibesy kind of way.
You had to dwell on each one, straining to understand it in the context of the neighboring symbols, before you could truly get the motion right.
First, I focused on the tight circular movement of the thumb, with all the other fingers in a fist. That bit opened the rune up, and then the reverse circular movement with your hand in the same position was used to close it.
Like holding a button down for a voice memo on your cell phone.
The final bit was to press your thumb through the rune and into the paper.
You were to lean close to the rune and speak into it, as if it were a microphone, using the person’s name that you wanted to speak to.
The instructions didn’t say that it was a microphone, but it’s what the motion reminded me of.
“Let’s try it on paper first.”
I took a blank sheet and opened the rune with a quick circle, just using my thumb. A tiny pink sparkling circular rune floated above the paper. I leaned close to it and spoke loudly, “Gary, I love to eat sweets for breakfast.”
I quickly reversed the first motion, pushed my thumb through the sparkling pink, and down into the paper.
The glowing spot sunk in deep, until it was really not much at all – it looked like my thumb print had smudged through some white, glowing ink. And, if I didn’t know it was a rune, I might not have even seen it.
“Okay.” Gary took the paper, glancing at the book and then back to the paper. “Let me see if I can unlock it.”
He pressed his thumb over the mark, and it floated up. My voice came through at the same decibel level as I’d spoken.
Too loud. Good to note.
Next, we tried it out with Gary’s marker stone rather than the paper.
Which failed.
“Shit.”
“It’s just for paper then? How can we change it?” Gary scratched at his head. But my mind was already several steps ahead. It would be a bastardized rune, one that would eat at the fabric between us and Everdark, but hopefully just a little.
In this case, given that we were tasked to save the world, I had to think that the ends justified the means.
I flipped through the other books quickly. There had been one rune that was for cutting stone, and we’d tried it, but it was too complicated for a full message. But maybe if I used bits and pieces of it? That might just work.
“I’m going to try this on your stone, because we can replace that one if I break it. Okay?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
I picked up Gary’s stone, feeling his emotions. Calm, excited, and a little bit horny. I struggled not to laugh. That girl from Felinita really had him in a chokehold.
I thought about the two runes, and how they might work together, the point where the message spell and the stone-cutting spell would mesh.
Closing my eyes, I practiced the movement of the closed fist and thumb but tipped my fingers so my nail was forward instead of the pad of my thumb. Such a small thing.
Before I could lose my nerve, I opened my eyes and whipped the rune off. A sharp slash through it all with my nail, pressing it into the stone. “Gary, I love sweets for breakfast.”
The stone warmed, glowed with a flash of brilliant orange and then . . . there it was. A shimmering orange slash that begged to be touched.
“How do I open the message?” Gary looked at the paper in his hands. “Says it will open only to the person named?”
He put a finger on the mark I’d left, and it spoke my message back, same decibel, everything.
I fist pumped the air. “This is fucking perfection!”
After that it was just a matter of getting the first message to our friends right and sinking it into the stones.
As it was, we also went with a quick note to explain how to use them.
“I’ll get the papers to them. Right?” Gary took the four sheets of paper, and I took the four stones – Ross, Marina, Caterina, and Ellie.
“Yeah, and I’ll follow up with the stones. Don’t sit with me tonight, maybe go talk to that girl from Felinita?”
His blushing was damn cute. “Yeah, like, okay. Good idea.”
As if on cue, a large bell rang, the sound echoing even into the house, as if the freaking Liberty Bell was right over my roof. I winced. “You’re on.”
Gary saluted and left me there. I’d give him ten minutes, maybe a few more.
I rolled the four stones in my hand and found myself looking at the kitchen where I’d hidden Fable’s so I couldn’t feel her freaking out. My feet were moving of their own volition, circling me around the room.
“What are you doing?” Calypso’s voice jarred me out of my thoughts.
“Waiting until it’s time to go into the main hall for supper.”
“Excellent. Let’s get the kraken coin, yes?”
“Not tonight,” I said, fighting back a wave of nausea as I spoke.
I didn’t dare open the locket, but I pulled it out of my pocket. “Don’t you dare leave me behind!”
“You can’t be trusted to hold your tongue. And I don’t want to deal with this shit right now, anyway.” I opened the kitchen drawer where Fable’s stone was and put the locket next to it. “I’ll tell you everything I find out.”
“You little bitch! I want to be there! You don’t know when you might need me!”
My hand hovered over the locket, annoyance warring with pity. She was trapped in a well, with her only exposure to the outside world happening through me. “Only if you promise you’ll stay silent unless I ask for help or take you out of my pocket.”
Silence. Yeah, that’s what I thought –
“Fine. I’ll be quiet.”
I put the locket back into my pocket, though it wouldn’t be long before I regretted that decision.
Because, when it came to casing a joint you planned to break into . . . taking an impulsive, loudmouth siren along with you was a terrible fucking idea.