Chapter 18 #2
Nellie tucks the note away and finally pulls out her lunch, picking at it. "Honestly, it was hard to even get her on the phone about it. She's stretched so thin right now I felt bad keeping her on for my weird witch questions."
"Stretched thin how?"
"The usual, but worse." She shrugs, but it's a tired shrug.
"You know she does the readings, the charm work, the little jobs for tourists when they come through.
Half the older witches in town do—it's how a lot of them cover tuition.
Mom's been running herself ragged with it.
And now there's this whole—thing going around the coven that's got everybody spooked, so she's fielding calls about that on top of everything.
" She rolls her eyes, but it doesn't reach.
"She made me promise to ask around while I'm here.
Like I've got any pull with the elders. But I said I would, so. "
"Ask around about what?"
Nellie sets down her fork.
"About two weeks ago, the coven felt something.
All of them, all over Louisiana, at the same time.
" She lowers her voice. "An old ward died.
Really old—Mom said it was so old it left a signature that rattled around the minute it was broken.
Been sitting in the ground so long I guess the city forgot it was there.
And then one night it just—snapped. Broke clean, in a single night.
" She shakes her head. "That's not supposed to be possible.
That kind of working doesn't break, it erodes, over centuries.
And this one went out like somebody flipped a switch.
" She looks at me. "Now everybody wants to know who did it.
Whoever broke that ward is either the strongest witch in three states, or they had help nobody's ever seen. "
My stomach goes to water.
Because it was me.
Two weeks ago. That door under the Quarter. I broke it—me, and whatever reached in at the end and aimed the fire for me.
And I haven't told a soul.
Nellie is watching my face. She's known me long enough to read me a little now, and she's waiting—I can see her waiting—for me to say something. That's strange. I hope they figure it out. Or, God, it was me, Nellie. I did it. And I'm terrified.
"That's—wild," I say, clearing my throat. "I hope they figure it out."
The lie comes out smooth and easy, and it costs me more than anything I've ever told Leopold. Lying to your enemy is just breathing. But Nellie called her mother for me, and Odette is just as much of a gem. I'm spending their kindness and handing back a lie.
So I do the only thing I can, which is bury it.
"Hey—thank you," I say, and I mean that part, at least. "For calling her. For asking. I know she's got a lot on her plate. Tell her I said thank you too."
"'Course." Nellie's smile is small but real. "She likes you. Says you've got a serious look about you."
"That's one way to put it."
I turn her water glass in a slow circle again. Wait, there is something else I needed to tell her. "Hey—you'll never believe what I saw a couple days ago. Shandy! Leaving the Vassard house."
Nellie's head comes up. "Leaving—Leopold's? Why would Shandy be at Leopold's?"
"No idea. I’d just gotten back to the house and we all but collided." I keep my voice easy, but the memory isn't. "She looked wrong, Nellie. Pale. Glassy. Eyes all vacant, like she wasn't all the way behind them."
Nellie's fork stops. "Vacant how?"
"Like the donors here." I lower my voice a bit. "And here's the thing I keep snagging on—Leopold doesn't drink from bags. I've been in that house for weeks, I've seen the dispensary shipments come and go for everyone else, and he never touches them. He feeds live. Always."
Nellie goes very still. "You think—him and Shandy? Like an arrangement?"
"Maybe." I make myself shrug. "And if it's not him, it's one of his asshole friends—you know the ones he always keeps around to stroke his shitty ego. Either way, I’d bet he at least knows the vamp."
She sits with that, chewing her lip, and I watch her try to fit it somewhere and fail, the way I've been failing for two days. Shandy has no reason to be at House Vassard. She isn't sponsored, isn't in trouble, isn't anyone's ward. There's no reason I can come up with that isn't shady.
"That's—" Nellie starts, and stops. "That's really not good."
"No," I agree, and neither of us says the other thing, the thing sitting in the middle of the table getting louder—what happens to people at the Vassard house. She doesn't know what I saw last night. I'm not going to be the one to teach her.
For a second we just sit with it. Then Nellie exhales and visibly decides to shelve it. I’ll keep poking around and she’ll keep watching Shandy. But until we know for sure who she’s involved with, it could be dangerous to get involved.
So, I take the easy way out. Cool the tension.
I pull my bag up onto the bench and dig for my notebook, changing lanes as smoothly as I can.
"Okay, please tell me you did the Advanced Theory reading, because I got about four pages into the ley-line cartography chapter before it turned into another language, and Malloy wants the problem set Monday. "
Nellie groans, and just like that we're two students complaining about homework, and everything else—the broken ward, the thing tangling my magic up with Aamon's—slides back under the surface where I keep it. She digs out her own notebook. We compare answers. She finally eats.
I keep my face easy and my voice light, and underneath it I file one more thing in the folder marked things I can't tell Nellie, and I notice, distantly, that the folder is getting full.
I can’t keep this up.