Текст книги " From Bad to Cursed"

Автор книги: Katie Alender

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

“Alexis,” Farrin said, “on your way out, would you mind sending Jared Elkins back?”

“Okay,” I said. “Thank you all.”

“You’re welcome,” Farrin said. And then she coughed.

Our eyes met. Hers were wide and shocked, and I imagine mine were the same.

Aralt’s girls didn’t get sick.

They didn’t completely space out during important interviews, either.

I hurried back to the lobby. Jared waited on the bench, studying one of his new prints. I paused to look over his shoulder.

It showed a young girl on a swing, her hair streaming behind her and her feet pointed forward in the perfect expression of action and innocence. But behind her lay a wasteland—some kind of junkyard. The whole image was colored in the muted, hopeless tones of waste and destruction.

“Like it?” he asked.

I nodded without looking up. The joy and freedom of the little girl starkly contrasted with the horror behind her. In a single moment, the picture made you happy and afraid and desolately lonely. It kind of blew my mind a little.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“Fine.” Then I remembered myself. “They asked me to send you back.”

“Okay, thanks,” he said, sliding the book out from under my gaze.

I swallowed hard. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.” He reached a hand out and shook mine decisively. “May the best man or woman win.”

“Yes,” I said, my breath catching in my throat.

He gave me a slight wave as he disappeared down the hall. When he was gone, the lobby seemed thick with an almost dead stillness.

Would the best man or woman win?

How would I live with myself if the answer was no?

The next morning, I avoided the Sunshine Club altogether and went to the library, where I got a head start on the day’s shelving. But I couldn’t hide out at lunch. I set my lunch box down at the very end of the table.

I thought about saving a chair for Carter, but he was nowhere in sight. Whatever was going on with us—with Aralt—was loosening my hold on Carter, too. Which was partially fine—but I didn’t want us getting so loose that we fell apart.

Megan slammed her tray down and took the chair to my right. She bent over her food like she wanted to be ignored, but the way she was breathing—through her nose, as fast and hard as if she’d just run a marathon, made that impossible.

“Um…are you okay?” I asked.

She didn’t look up, just kept slurping soup off her spoon. “Fine.”

All right, then.

Kasey ended up in the seat next to mine. A low buzz came from the other end of the table, and I looked down to see Adrienne glaring in our direction.

I elbowed Kasey. “Is Adrienne looking at us?”

“It’s me,” Megan said, dropping her spoon. “She’s looking at me.”

Adrienne started to get up, but the girls around her pulled her back to her seat.

Kasey leaned closer to me and whispered so quietly I could barely hear her. “Swttzz.”

What? Sweaters? Megan was wearing a pale yellow, scoop-necked sweater with three-quarter sleeves cuffed by a delicate ruffle of sheer ivory ribbon.

And so was Adrienne.

Megan’s tractor-trailer breath hadn’t gotten any softer.

“Whoa, take it easy,” I said, like she was a horse. “There’s nothing to be upset about.”

Megan’s eyes shot daggers at me. “I told her last night I was going to wear this today.”

Adrienne escaped her handlers and stalked to our end of the table, carrying a small carton of skim milk. “And I said, no, that’s what I’m going to wear, you should find something else!”

“I said it first!” Megan said.

“Well, I planned it first,” Adrienne growled.

Before I could stop her, Megan drew back her bowl and doused Adrienne with soup. Then Adrienne pounded her skim milk into Megan’s shoulder.

The carton imploded. Milk went everywhere.

In a split second, they were all over each other.

“Girl fight!” someone called, and in no time a gleeful crowd had encircled us.

But this was no stereotypical slapping-and-squealing catfight.

Megan landed a hard punch on Adrienne’s left cheek. Adrienne grabbed Megan’s hair and whipped her face down, missing the rigid edge of a chair by about a centimeter. With a free hand, Adrienne grabbed a lunch tray and smacked Megan with it in the back of the head, hard enough that Megan reeled. Adrienne pinned her arm behind her back and began to twist it.

Then I saw Megan’s hand dart out and grab a metal knife from a nearby table.

They were literally trying to kill each other.

“Stop!” I said. “Megan!”

“Get her!” Kasey said, and we dove into the fray. Another group of girls went in after Adrienne.

“I’m trying!” I dodged kicks and clawing fingernails to wrap my fingers around the hem of Megan’s sweater. I took a stiletto heel to the shin and limped backward, hauling her with me.

The school security guard converged on us. “Break it up, girls! Break it up!” he yelled, trying to push between them, tweeting his eardrum-piercing whistle as hard as he could.

Megan tore a path through the crowd, dragging me behind her out the side door of the cafeteria.

A couple of teachers held on to Adrienne, who spat and sputtered like an angry alley cat.

Outside, Megan pulled away from me and sprinted toward the staff parking lot, half of which was taken up by portable classrooms.

I walked the line of portables until I heard muffled coughing coming from a set of back stairs. I found Megan on the steps, head bent between her legs. When she heard me, she jumped to her feet. For a moment, it seemed like she was going to charge me, but then she backed down. “Oh, Lex,” she said. “It’s just you.”

She was drenched in milk, and her face wore four fingernails’-worth of fresh red gashes. Her sweater was ripped and stained, and her nose was bloody. When she spat, a splotch of pink liquid stained the sidewalk.

She tried to wipe the dark tearstains off her skin with the sides of her hands. “I’m not being unsunny, I swear,” she said. “I’m just kind of in pain.”

I let out a shaky breath. “Are you okay?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, lowering herself back to the stairs. She lifted a hand to her abdomen. “She got in a few serious kicks, though. Might have broken a rib. No big deal, though.”

“It’s a huge deal! You just got in a fight,” I said. “Over a sweater. You could be in major trouble. Not to mention that you could have really gotten hurt.”

She gave me a so what look. “I’m not turning myself in,” she said matter-of-factly. “I can’t go to the office looking like this.”

I heard footsteps approaching. We both tensed, but it was just Kasey, clutching a handful of napkins for Megan.

“I don’t even know what happened,” Megan said, blotting her cheek. “I got so mad all of a sudden. I mean, I did tell her I was going to wear this sweater today…Whatever. I guess I should go home.”

“You have to go back in,” Kasey said. “They know it was you.”

“Never mind that,” I said. “She needs to get out of here. And it’s probably best to keep her away from Adrienne for a while.”

I hoped Aralt was still looking out for us enough that this incident would be overlooked.

“I guess,” Megan said, looking skeptical. “I’m not even mad anymore. It’s just a sweater, you know?”

Yeah, I knew. We all knew. And that was what worried me. Even the most fashion-obsessed Sunshine Club member would know that making that kind of scene in public was way worse than wearing the same sweater as somebody else.

We weren’t supposed to fight. Just like we weren’t supposed to cough. Or flip out and burn ourselves. Or completely lose it in the middle of an important interview.

Kasey went back for our bags while I herded Megan in the direction of her car, keeping an eye out—mostly for Adrienne, but also for faculty members.

Someone stepped into our path about thirty feet ahead, and I made an abrupt left. But the sounds of running footsteps followed us, and I turned, prepared to be busted.

It was Carter. “Lex? What are you doing?”

He hurried to catch up with us.

“I heard something about a fight—was that you? Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine—it was Megan and Adrienne.”

For the first time, he turned to Megan, who looked like she’d been through a cage match. Her face was stained black, like she’d smudged a gallon of mascara on her cheeks. She gave him a red-toothed smile.

He grabbed me by the sleeve and half-pulled me across the hall, out of her earshot.

“We have to talk about this,” he said, casting a freaked-out glance at Megan. “About a lot of things. Seriously. Like, a real talk. Can I come to your house after school?”

“No,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the park.”

“Lex,” Megan called, “can you hurry? I’m getting blood in my eye.”

Carter backed away, a horrified look on his face, and I kept walking with Megan out to the parking lot.

The campus police officer watched us drive away without batting an eye.

I sat in the grass, watching for Carter, and got to my feet when I saw him coming down the path, watching as he headed for the footbridge that crossed the murky drainage ditch.

“Hi,” he said, enfolding me in a half-hug. Every impulse in my body longed to turn the half-hug into a kiss, but Carter held back, so I did, too.

We ended up sitting about two feet apart, facing the brook, not each other.

“How’d your interview go last night?” he asked.

“Great,” I lied.

“Now, please tell me what’s going on.”

I shook my head. “It’s compli—”

“Yeah, I get that it’s complicated, Lex. But some people consider me highly capable of complex thought.” He leaned closer. “I want to help you.”

“It’s nothing like that,” I said, picking up a pine needle and twisting it. “I don’t need help.”

Carter leaned away again. Birds sang and insects buzzed, and the wind bullied its way through the leaves. In the past, sitting in silence like this would have been completely comfortable. Now it felt like something was missing.

“Megan’s okay?” he asked, the tiniest bite to his voice.

“Yes. Fine,” I said. The pine needle, nearly shredded, fell from my fingers.

Carter picked it up. “I saw Zoe at your lunch table. I didn’t know you guys converted her.”

“We didn’t convert her,” I said. “That’s not how it works.”

“Lex, I really don’t care. If Zoe wants to be a Sunshine Girl, that’s her decision.” He paused. “I just think…if there’s something else going on…I mean, people are getting hurt—the fight today—and there are these weird rumors about Emily…The whole thing is either dangerous or insanely stupid. Or both.”

It wasn’t that I totally disagreed with him. In fact, we were pretty much in complete agreement.

But when he calls the Sunshine Club stupid, he’s calling me stupid.

The thought pissed me off. “Okay,” I said. “Whatever you say.”

He grabbed my hand. “Lex, look at me.”

I looked at him.

“Is it drugs?”

That made me snort. “Drugs? Oh, please.”

“This isn’t funny,” he said. “I have no idea why you’re laughing.”

“Because,” I said. “It’s a club. If you think it’s dumb, then fine. Think that. But you can’t just insult me and expect me to dump my sister and all of my friends because you said so.”

“No,” he said. “Not because I said so. Because something is happening. Under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t go within ten feet of those girls.” He drove his fist lightly into the grass. “I know you don’t see it that way—but maybe that’s because you can’t.”

But I could see. I could and I did, and all I had to do was tell him, and he’d stop thinking I was brainwashed, and I could stop pretending everything was great. But then what would happen? He’d insist that we go to the authorities. Call Agent Hasan. Get Kasey shipped off to who knows where.

“You know, that girl Tashi—she doesn’t go to All Saints. I asked my friend Dave, and he said—”

“Are you kidding?” I asked. “I can’t believe you’re checking up on my friends.”

This wasn’t going right. We were supposed to reconcile, forgive each other, admit we belonged together—not fight.

Joining the Sunshine Club was a huge mistake.

The words came into my head like a line in a script—Aralt’s irresistible whisper, back when I needed it most.

No. No. No. I couldn’t.

But—it wasn’t like I would embrace the whole thing. Only the parts I needed. Just enough to keep Carter from freaking out.

“I don’t even know why I bothered trying.” Carter shook his head and started brushing off his pants. He was mad. He was going to leave me there.

This one time, and then I’d stop. I’d never do it again.

I turned to him, putting my hand flat against his chest to keep him from standing up. “Joining the Sunshine Club was a huge mistake.”

He looked down at my hand and squinted, like he was trying to remember something.

Whispered words flooded my head. But it means so much to Kasey and Megan that I have to see it through.

Carter watched me warily as I repeated everything the voice told me.

It’s a short-term thing. It’ll be over soon.

For a moment he glanced away, but then his expression turned hazy.

And I hope that, when it’s over, you can forgive me.

“And I hope that—” I stopped.

Those words would draw Carter back to me like a cat to a bowl of cream, have him fawning over me and following me around and carrying my bag and hanging on my every word, the perfect devoted boyfriend. All I had to do was open my mouth and speak them.

–when it’s over, you can forgive me.

“What do you hope?” Carter asked, tracing my cheekbone with his finger.

Sure, I could get Carter back. If I swallowed my pride and recited a bunch of wimpy, lying apologies.

Was the Sunshine Club stupid? Yes. Dangerous? Yes. Was it a huge mistake? Yes. Yes to everything. Except the part where had to I play sick mind games to earn Carter’s love.

I jumped to my feet. “I have to go.”

“No, Lex, wait!” He scrambled to his feet behind me, but he headed for the bridge. I just hiked up my skirt and ran for the ditch, taking a huge leap, utterly confident that I would land neatly on the other side.

My purse made it.

But I didn’t. Halfway across, my confidence abandoned me like an octopus letting go of a fish, and I hit the edge of the far bank and splashed backward into the water, landing hard on my backside.

“Lex!” Carter called, running over.

I hauled myself onto the grass, refusing to take his hand or look up at him.

“What were you thinking?” he asked. “That’s a seven-foot jump!”

My whole body shook with anger and humiliation. I pushed my wet hair away from my eyes and realized with horror that I was crying.

He hovered over me, a helpless onlooker. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

And then the voice filled my head again.

I’m sorry I’ve been acting so strangely. I know I’m not being the girlfriend you deserve, but—

“No!” I said, turning my face and trying to rub the tearstains away. “Stop it!”

Stunned, Carter backed away.

If you just give me a chance, I’ll show you that I can be worthy of your love—

Forgetting to care about my own appearance, I stared in horror at Carter’s. And he stared back, his expression teetering on the edge of utter devastation.

There was no way to separate him from the voice. No way to be around him and turn off Aralt’s constant coaxing in my head.

The only way to keep Aralt from controlling my thoughts and feelings was to leave Carter behind.

“Please don’t,” I said. “I don’t need your pity.”

My words cut him to the quick. “Lex, I just want to help you.” He looked around helplessly. “We’re supposed to be a team.”

“No,” I said, backing away. “We’re not. We can’t—there’s no more team. There’s no ‘us.’ Stay away from me…please, just stay away from me.”

I turned around and walked away, putting one foot in front of the other, thanking God I felt too numb to feel sad or scared—to feel anything at all.

MEGAN CAME TO THE PARK and picked me up. She was so distracted that she didn’t even ask if I was okay. Instead I asked her if she was okay.

She checked her mirrors, like there might be someone tailing us. “No,” she said. “I talked to Mimi. She rear-ended some guy on the way home, and it took three girls to drag her away so she wouldn’t kill him. And Monika and Paige were standing in the hall and being super mean to all the freshman girls—calling them horrible names. Lydia tripped one girl and threatened to beat her up if she told anybody. And Tashi quit. You can’t just quit!”

“Tell me about it,” I said. It was all I had the energy to say. Then I noticed that she’d hung a left instead of a right. “Where are you going?”

“My house. We’re having an emergency meeting.”

Oh, for the love of God. I’d just broken up with my boyfriend. The very last thing on a list of fifty things I didn’t feel like doing would be going to a Sunshine Club meeting.

“Everyone’s going out of their minds,” Megan said. “I don’t get it. Did Tashi leave because she knew this was going to happen? Why isn’t Aralt helping us?”

She was right, of course. Everything was spiraling out of control. Somehow Aralt had packed up and left us flailing.

It had to stop soon, or someone could get seriously hurt.

Betterment was a zoo. At one point it turned into a shouting match.

I got called out eight times. Not the least of my offenses was thoughtlessly falling in a ditch before an unplanned Sunshine Club meeting. There was also my unwillingness to trust Aralt in the matter of Emily, which came from Emily herself, with her head covered in a short blond wig; the way I’d skipped Monika’s house over the weekend; the way I’d been absent from the courtyard before school; and so on…I nodded, nodded, nodded, and apologized too many times to count. We all did. We were all guilty of something.

Finally we moved on to the matter of Tashi.

Lydia got up and calmly recounted her conversation with Tashi, in which Tashi had decided that the Sunshine Club wasn’t right for her and she was going to leave town.

Could it be true? Could Tashi just decide to leave Aralt behind? Was that why she’d been scared, because he didn’t want her to go? And maybe that was what caused Aralt to start freaking out.

Part of me figured, well, if somebody wants out, the sunny thing to do would be to let them go, right?

But I was apparently alone in that line of thinking.

“She can’t quit!” Mimi said. “It’s so completely disrespectful! Just take Aralt’s gifts and leave? No wonder he’s angry. You can’t blame him!”

“It’s like she knows all of our secrets,” Monika said. “She’s exploiting us. She might even be telling other people our private business!”

Even Lydia hadn’t expected such a violent response. I could tell by the way she backed out of the discussion and stood silently, looking from person to person.

Emily straightened her wig and stood up, a concerned look on her face. “I think we need to contact Tashi, reason with her. Say we want her to come back.”

Inwardly, I sighed with relief. Finally, someone was being sensible.

“And if she doesn’t want to?” Megan asked.

“What do you mean?” Emily’s soft eyes hardened. “She doesn’t have a choice.”

“Listen,” Adrienne said. “We know she’s out there. So Aralt can help us find her. And then we’ll…bring her back. And help her see the error of her ways. Her disloyalty.”

“We’ll better her,” Paige said. “We’ll better her so much she’ll never run away again.”

Emily’s mouth curled into an ugly smirk. “She’ll learn that you can’t leave Aralt.”

I raised my hand. “Why do we have to worry about Tashi?” I asked. “Why can’t we just graduate?”

Adrienne went all deer-in-the-headlights, and Lydia took over.

“We can,” she said. “Soon. But we’re just ironing out one little wrinkle.”

Everyone groaned, and Adrienne looked around anxiously. “If anyone knows of any prospective new members…”

“Are you kidding? No one wants to join now,” Mimi said. “Not after all the weird stuff.”

“I thought we had enough people!” Paige protested.

Lydia’s smile superglued itself to her face. “So did we,” she said.

And then it hit me:

They were counting Kasey. If we really needed twenty-two people to graduate, my sister was the wrench in the machine.

My eyes cut sharply over to meet my sister’s. Then I looked around.

From her spot on the bed, Megan was watching us both.

“So if we got Tashi back,” Monika said, “that would work?”

“I guess,” Lydia said. “But in the meantime, everyone focus on recruiting.”

“And let this be a reminder to us all,” Adrienne said. “In case anyone is ever tempted. This situation proves that you can’t just desert Aralt.”

“And if you try,” Emily said, “you can die, for all we care.”

“This is ridiculous,” Kasey said, following so close she was practically on top of me. “You can’t just leave me behind! I’m not a helpless little kid.”

“You don’t need to be spending any extra time around Sunshine Club members,” I said. “The last thing we need is for people to figure out that you’re a filthy traitor.”

Kasey’s mouth fell open.

“Joking,” I said.

“Not funny.”

“I’ll think of something funnier on the road,” I said, grabbing Mom’s car keys from the hook, “and tell it to you when I get home.”

* * *

I pounded on the door. Adrienne opened it, fully made-up and dressed to the nines.

“Alexis? What’s wrong?”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“What do you mean?”

And then I realized that this was just how she dressed now. How we all dressed now.

“Never mind. I was hoping we could talk,” I said. “About Aralt.”

Every Sunshine Club girl’s favorite topic. Her eyes lit up, and she led me over to the dinner table.

“Where did you get the book?” I asked.

The lights turned off. The glow faded. She mashed her lips together and looked away.

“Adrienne?”

She fixed her eyes on the ceiling. “Here’s the thing, Alexis. I’m really not supposed to say.”

For all I knew, she really wasn’t. Maybe that was one of Aralt’s rules.

“Can I see it?”

She shook her head furiously. “No,” she said. “I’m sorry. You can’t.”

“I won’t touch it,” I said. “I just think it’s so pretty.”

She gave me an apologetic frown. “I know,” she said. “It totally is. Except…it’s not here.”

“Where is it?”

For a moment there was a flash of distrust across her features. But then she folded her hands and looked directly at me. “It’s at Lydia’s house.”

“But why?”

“Lydia thought it would be safer there.”

“Safer from what?” I asked.

Adrienne shrugged. “I don’t know. But it’s her book, so she can decide.”

“I’m sorry, wait,” I said. “Did you say it’s Lydia’s book? Kasey told me it was yours.”

Her eyes went wide and she clapped both hands over her mouth.

“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I won’t tell her you said anything.”

“But I promised!” Adrienne said, drooping. “She’d just be so embarrassed if she knew I told anyone.”

“What’s there to be embarrassed about?”

“I don’t know. I think because it’s about, like, being popular and pretty, and Lydia never wanted people to think she cared about those things. But we wouldn’t judge her.…” She gave me a questioning glance.

That was my cue. “No, never!”

“I tried to tell her that, but she seriously didn’t want people to know it was her book. She asked me to say it was mine. And what did I care, you know? I knew I was a loser. Everybody knew.”

“So she brought it to your house and asked you to lie?” I asked.

“No, not to lie,” Adrienne said, reluctant to be disloyal. “Just…not to tell the truth.”

“But she didn’t think it would be safe here?” I took a chance. “Didn’t Tashi have it for a while? And she was a total stranger.”

“Tashi wasn’t a stranger to Lydia,” Adrienne said. She gave me a worried look. “Tashi was Lydia’s friend. They met at…” The worry in her eye sharpened to mild suspicion. “Why do you want to know any of this?”

“I want to know as much about Aralt as possible,” I said. “I don’t care how Lydia and Tashi met. I care about making sure the book is safe.”

“Of course,” Adrienne said. “I understand.”

I dialed it back and spent a few more minutes making polite small talk. But my body practically quivered with impatience to leave. Adrienne was no longer any use to me.

I had bigger fish to fry.

The Smalls’ house wasn’t just a little house in a shabby neighborhood. It was sloppy. There was something distasteful about the little signs of neglect—junk mail scattered on the porch. A trash bag leaning against the steps, waiting for who-knows-how-long to be taken all the way out.

I rang the doorbell, and a man answered it—Mr. Small. He wore a pair of jeans and a wrinkled plaid button-down shirt that looked like it had been caught in a dust storm.

“Hello,” he said, polite but baffled.

“Is Lydia home?” I asked.

He turned and stared at the empty room behind him. “She ran out.…Was she expecting you?”

“No,” I said. “I guess not.”

“Well, come on in. She just went to the store. She should be back soon.” He glanced at the clock. “I told her I’d need the car at nine thirty, so it shouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes.”

He pointed me toward the tiny living room, where a huge, modern sofa was stuffed awkwardly against the wall. I recognized it from back when Lydia and I would watch TV and talk about how much we hated everyone. It was totally out of place in the new house.

“Can I get you a glass of water?” Mr. Small asked.

“No, thank you.” Noticing the way he kept glancing at the stairs, I said, “Don’t let me keep you. I’ll be fine waiting here.”

He hovered in the doorway. “Oh, well…if you don’t mind…”

“Please,” I said.

He smiled and went around a corner, and I heard thumping footfalls on the staircase.

All of a sudden, the silence was broken by a shock of loud music—a weird smooth jazzy sound, mixed with awkward melodic riffs—coming from a keyboard, by the sound of it.

The song went on and on. I couldn’t help but compare it to Tashi’s playing, so heartfelt, so passionate, with so much subtlety and emotion behind it. Mr. Small seemed to be banging the keys randomly with boxing gloves.

A few minutes later, the front door opened with a creak, and a disheveled Lydia came in, arms loaded up with bulging grocery bags. She stopped just inside the door and looked up at the ceiling, taking in the music.

“Oh, come on,” she muttered.

Then she noticed me.

Her face turned bright pink, like I’d been digging through her underwear drawer. She dropped her bags and raced out of the room. The keyboard playing stopped abruptly, and the sound of Lydia’s outraged voice blasted down from upstairs.

A minute later, she returned, trying incredibly hard to stay in control.

“So sorry about that.…Give me one sec to put this stuff away.” The whites of her eyes showed over the tops of her irises, making her look completely rabid-chipmunk insane. She half-carried, half-dragged the bags out of sight, and after a fair amount of clanking and thumping, she came back and sat, her hands folded in her lap. “Now. How can I help you?”

I noticed a thick layer of concealer under her eyes. And her lipstick leached away from her mouth in tiny red rivers. She was tired.

“Something’s going on, Lyd,” I said. “This whole Tashi thing is messed up.”

“What are we supposed to do about it?” she asked. “Honestly, Alexis. Face reality. I don’t like it either, but she’s gone.”

“Yes, but where did she go? Didn’t she say anything to you?”

“When would she have done that?”

“When she told you she was leaving. When she gave you the book.”

She looked at me blankly.

“I know it’s here, okay?”

She sighed and leaned back. “Tashi wasn’t who she claimed to be. She was totally using us. She walked up to me at the mall one day, all talky-talky-let’s-be-friends. We were hanging out, and she mentioned this book she had. She acted like it was something she’d picked up at a garage sale. She was lying, obviously.”

“But you brought her to the party,” I said. “You gave the book to Adrienne. And you took the oath.”

“I told you before,” she said, glaring, “I did it as a joke, okay? I was going to make fun of them for being naive. How was I supposed to know Aralt was so amazing?”

“Why did you tell Adrienne to pretend it wasn’t yours?”

“I never said that,” she said, shaking her head. “I asked her to say it was hers, not that it wasn’t mine. It’s not mine. It never was. It’s Tashi’s.”

“But now she’s gone, and she just left it here?”

There were footsteps on the stairs, and Mr. Small appeared. Over his clothes, he wore a black apron with SCHNELKER’S HARDWARE embroidered on the front.

“Going out tonight, Lyddie?” he asked, rubbing his hands on his jeans. “I’m working stock. Home before sunrise.”

She shrugged, staring at the wall over my head like she couldn’t bear to look at him.

“Well, leave a note if you do.” With a nod, he scooped the car keys off the table next to the door and started out. He paused at the last second. “Love you.”

Lydia gritted her teeth. “You’re embarrassing me,” she hissed.

He went out the door without another word.

Lydia shrugged, a contemptuous look in her eyes. “Tashi was having trouble dealing with things. She was really…sensitive. And kind of paranoid. You know, the prissy, artistic type? No offense.”

I let that go. “She never hinted that she was going to leave? She just showed up one night, handed you the book, and said she was heading out of town?”

“Basically,” Lydia said. “Look, she was nice, but we weren’t exactly BFFs. And I can’t say I’m thrilled that she dumped the book and ran—as much as I love Aralt. I mean, it is kind of her job.”

“Right,” I said. Never mind that the girl was essentially Aralt’s slave for two hundred years. God forbid she not do her job.

“Was there anything else you needed?” Lydia asked, standing up.

“Can I look at the book?” I asked, following her.

“Honestly, Alexis,” she said, stopping on the tile in front of the door. “I don’t mean to sound inhospitable, but I haven’t had dinner yet and—”

“You heard what everyone said tonight,” I said. “Things are falling apart. We need to figure out how to stop this before it gets even more out of control.”

“Oh that’s what you care about?” Lydia raised her eyebrows. “And here I thought you were actually worried about Tashi.”

“Well, I am, but—”

“I know how to stop it, Alexis.” She shook her head. “Why didn’t you just ask? You come in here all CSI, like you’re trying to track down a missing person, and what you really want is to know how to fix your own problems?”

When she put it that way, it made me sound like a jerk. “I’m worried about Tashi and the rest of it,” I said.

“Well, let me ease your mind,” she said. “Tashi gave me the name of the graduation spell before she left.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Why, like it’s a secret? I have it written down upstairs.”

“Can you go get it?”