Chapter 15 #2
Joselyn pulled her sunglasses down and stared blankly at the paper.
“And she’s gone and blown herself up. What a waste.
Hats off to whoever’s on the waiting list.” She mimed cheers-ing a wineglass, and I caught sight of the tattoo on her bicep: carefully curved letters that spelled The Devil hides behind the cross.
I stared at the tattoo until I realized why it felt so familiar. It reminded me of the HELL IS HERE carving on my bed. I made a mental note to ask around about who’d stayed in my dorm room since I’d been gone.
Max leaned in close and took off his hat.
“Hey, look, I get it, believe me. Someone always getting in your way, throwing her clothes all around the room. Keepin’ the light on all night, crunching her snacks in your ear.
I wouldn’t want to live with her anymore either.
And then she goes and steals your spot at MIT, and you realize you’ve had enough, that’s it.
And you just snap. I mean, everybody’s got their limits, right? ”
Joselyn shoved up to a seated position and took off her sunglasses, eyes narrowing at him.
“No. And let’s get one thing straight. I never wanted to live with Dani.
Our families were old friends after our dads were physicists at the same lab together for years.
But that was before her dad stole my father’s job.
Sooooo, no. After that, I didn’t want to keep up the sham that we were friends.
Dr. Strauss’s little pet project. Always getting the best marks on everything when she didn’t deserve it.
‘Oh Dani, what a great observation, oh Dani, how astute, oh Dani, right there, oh, how do you do that, oh-oh my God—”
Students walking into the School of Business looked over.
I cleared my throat. “They were sleeping together?”
She snorted. “He wishes. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t be surprised if he killed Maya in some botched attempt to get Dani to love him back.
I’m not the only one who noticed how obsessed he was with her.
” She took another drag from the vape. “Take out the competition and all that. Oh, that sweet, sweet unrequited love.
“To tell you the truth, Dani wasn’t above using people to get what she wanted.
Dr. Strauss worked with her a lot, on whatever questions she had.
He was her window, her key to understanding more about Magic.
It only made sense that he wanted something in return.
For everything he taught her, for every way he helped her.
“But if you’re asking all this because you think I had something to do with Little Miss Perfect going off and killing her girlfriend, I didn’t.
I was in the hospital and hadn’t even left my room for days before that.
Everyone says I just drank too much at the party, but I’m telling you, I was only throwing up because of that fucking pill. ”
“What pill?” Max asked.
“The pills with the shitty enchantments that are so popular right now. Go to any party with a drink in your hand and someone’s bound to try it.
Mine was slipped into my drink by local perv Grant Hafer.
He should’ve been expelled years ago.” She took another drag from her vape, exhaling toward the sky.
“An enchantment?” I asked. “How do you know it had a spell on it?”
“Why else would I be sick for so long? With my head pounding with thoughts of his jeans unbuckling? Just the thought of him alone is enough to make me want to puke, and I was having sex dreams about him.” She spat on the ground, as if to get an awful taste out of her mouth.
“I told Paul he was a creep, but, of course, he always stood up for him. Should’ve never trusted them. Bunch of fucking pagans.”
I considered her statement. In the sky above us, a hawk let out a piercing cry and dove. “The enchantment sounds a lot like a hex. Is that why you have Brueste’s An Analysis of the Black Magicks? Were you looking up hexes?”
Her eyes flashed with alarm. No doubt half the student body by now knew we were looking for information about a hex.
“I don’t know anything about hexes. That book has one of the best compilations of the Magical properties of plants, and seeing how I’m failing my ecology course, I thought it would come in handy.
Dani was the same way about books, reading them all with this crazed desperation until she realized they didn’t have whatever she was looking for.
Could barely get my hands on any that she hadn’t torn through like a psycho.
All I know is Grant slipped me this date-rape pill.
Grant Hafer, H-a-f-e-r, and I could barely get out of bed for days.
Why don’t you ask him about it? Maybe you guys will do something more than my advisor, whose stellar advice was that I shouldn’t have been drinking in the first place. Fucking prick.”
She got up from the bench. Before she left, Max called out to her. “One more question! Your tattoo, what’s it mean?”
She looked down at the words on her bicep and smiled. “Even the Devil can quote Scripture. It means be wary of who you trust around here.”
Max made a slow whistle after she left. “Wooh-wee. Don’t know what idiot decided to mess with her. That bit she said about reading books with a crazy desperation sounds like someone else I know.” He grinned over at me.
“Funny, because to me it sounded like you. I’ve never heard of a hexed pill before, though, have you?”
He shook his head, picking up one of the pebbles beneath a yucca plant and smoothing over it with his thumb. “No, but it looks like we’ve got another person to look into. Grant Hafer, H-a-f-e-r.”
As we were walking back through Ludlow House, we stopped on one of the balconies that looked over the grounds.
The sun was sinking in the sky. The ranch hands who worked the apple orchards on the far side of the property were packing up and heading home.
In the distance, I could see the faint outline of their trucks pulling out, bouncing and kicking up dust as they made their way down the dirt road.
This was when the Land of Enchantment truly shone.
The sky lit up cherry-red and tangerine against the mesas.
Cicadas chirped as the sun drifted lower.
A breeze rustled through the brush, trickling across the ground and lifting the roots of my hair.
I looked over at him. “Can I ask you something? And I swear to God, if you say, ‘You just did’ …”
He smiled. “Shoot.”
“What would you have done if things hadn’t happened the way they had? If I’d stayed and you could use your Magic whenever you wanted. What would you have done? Would you have taught?”
He snorted. “God, no. I’d probably be in the same place as now, taking care of the horses at Mom and Pop’s and trying to make enough to open my own ranch. Though no doubt it would be easier with a little Magic.”
I balked. “So then why do you care so much if I’m back? Why volunteer every time Robetresse wanted to find me, if your life would’ve been exactly the same?”
He looked at me for one long moment, then averted his gaze.
The look was gone so fast I might have imagined it, replaced by his cheeks brimming into a bright, mischievous grin. He gathered me up in a bear hug and squeezed, then smacked a kiss on my cheek. “Easy. So I can annoy you whenever I want.”
I pushed him away. “Barf.”
“You love it,” he called over his shoulder, loping off for the cafeteria.
I shook my head as he walked away, grinning in spite of myself. “Dork.”
When home isn’t a place where you feel safe, it becomes other things.
You attach the concept to people. Or to smells, or to places where you do feel safe and warm and loved.
Home for me was Max. Comfortable and familiar, and mine.
I watched him from the spot on the balcony, his long loping strides, a hint of the gawkiness that remained from his younger days.
He was looking at his phone and smiling about something.
A dimple poked out on his cheek, and my heart twisted painfully in my chest.
Except he wasn’t mine. Not anymore.