Chapter 10

Chapter

Ten

B eing in my room is my choice, and there’s a reason I want to be in here. Normally, I would go to Aimee’s room, which is always cleaner and more comfortable, but I cleaned my room the day Mom grounded me. And I don’t want Aimee to see what I’m doing. Don’t want Mom to bitch about us ignoring the rest she thinks we need. I want to write down the details of everything that happened, everything I can remember.

Auda rubs his side against my leg and purrs as I sit at my desk. I reach down to give him a rub but I continue filling the pages of my Advanced Potion notebook with everything I remember about the syphoner.

I also write that I think that the syphoner was familiar in a way I can’t explain, like I’ve seen her face before somewhere, but I can’t figure where no matter how hard I try.

But I keep writing about all of it, the ropes of light, the popping and crackling sounds, the way Aimee had writhed and moaned and cried out in pain. I write about the sky and only now recall the swirling clouds, the flicker of the lights further into the park, and the rein of sparks when one blew .

Margery Faulkner. She’d fallen when the syphoner saw Aimee and me, and the syphoner had gone straight for Aimee. It makes me wonder if she could sense that Aimee was stronger than I would ever be. I don’t know if she chose Aimee because of her proximity and dumb luck, or if she saw something in Aimee that she didn’t see in me.

How’s that for fucked up? I’m concerned because a syphoner wanted Aimee more than she wanted me. Although she did come for me when she finished with Aimee.

I don’t dare write that thought down. Not taking that kind of chance. What is written, even if it’s erased or shredded to pieces, can be discovered.

I’ve got seven pages written when Aimee walks in and sits on my bed. She doesn’t try to peek over my shoulder, but stares down at her fingernails. She usually keeps them manicured, sharpened to a hard point, but now they’re bitten down and without a sliver of paint.

I close the notebook and put the cap on my pen. It’s not the order I would usually do it, not that it matters, but I don’t want her to see how I described what happened to her.

But she doesn’t even try. She sits motionless, no foot tapping, no slow, semi-loud sigh, no fidgeting. Aimee is still.

I should wait her out, not push her because pushing her makes her withdraw. “What’s up?” But I can’t sit still. It isn’t who I am.

“I’ve been thinking.” She’s started about a thousand conversations a month this way, but there is something different. Aimee is sure of herself. Every minute. Every day. Every conversation. She doesn’t speak unless she’s sure of what she’s about to say .

She hands me a page. It’s a drawing in the blacks and grays of pencil. She is a talented artist. Every picture of hers conveys all the emotions, ideas, and thoughts she had while creating it. This is no different. I can feel her fear. Every stroke of her pencil is guided by it.

She’s drawn the syphoner who took her power and she’s drawn herself in a heap. Even Margery is in the drawing, also in a crumpled heap on the ground. In the background there is a light pole with sparks showering the air. The picture is vivid enough I am there again, in the park.

“It was like she knew how I would react. What defenses I would try to throw at her.” She shakes her head. “I tried a protection spell.”

Maybe that was why the syphoner hadn’t been able to get to me. Because the spell had shrouded me and not Aimee. “A protection spell?”

She nods. “Yeah.” I don’t want to tell her that the syphoner hadn’t been able to take my power but had gotten hers, and it’s probably her spell that saved me and not her. But at least my theory about the syphoner knowing my powers were weaker is wrong. It’s a relief I don’t particularly want to examine.

“When I threw the spell, she blocked it.”

Maybe I should’ve paid better attention in Spell-Defense class which taught us how to defend ourselves against rogues who throw evil spells, and also against inadvertent spells. I’d thought the class was useless. I know better now. “Blocked it?”

Aimee nods and the exhaustion on her face is obvious. She looks a decade older than her twenty-one years. “Batted it away. When I threw the deflection spell, same thing.” Of course, Aimee would think to throw spells. So, the syphoner expected it. “It’s like she was connected to my thoughts, leeching off them. I felt so violated.” She looks down. “I still do.”

I want to console her, protect her, find the asshat who did this and make her fucking pay for what she’s done to Aimee. My confident, beautiful sister looks haggard, sounds beaten.

“Did you recognize the syphoner?” We’re without a doubt now that syphoners exist. One certainly has Aimee’s power. And where there is one, there may be more.

“Maybe. I thought so, but then I couldn’t do more than watch her take my power. I thought maybe feeling like I’d seen her before was because we were so connected and she was inside my mind.” She stares at me and it makes sense, especially since I can’t come up with a place I might’ve seen her before.

“Do you think we did this with the grimoire? Summoned her?” I don’t want this to be our fault, but somehow, I can’t shake the feeling that Mom’s right. We did this. Or more specifically, I did this.

Aimee shrugs. “It doesn’t really matter now. We can’t undo it. So we have to figure out how to fight it. How to get my power back.”

She’s right. Thoughtful, logical Aimee is usually right.

“So, what do you want to do?” Aside from getting her powers back.

She sits for a moment, crosses her legs, and pulls them up so she can hug her knees. “Do you have a plan?”

Now I know why she’s here. I think for a minute. “I think we have to track the syphoner. Figure out where and why she strikes.” I watch crime TV. Not the made-up shows with actors, but the real stories of real-life crime. And I listen to detectives and podcasters who investigate. And maybe I see danger everywhere. And maybe she’s going to think I’m imagining the conspiracy, but this time it’s real. “She went for you first.”

Guilt drags the words out of me, or maybe I’m trying to be the analytical one, to think before I act.

“So?” Aimee stares at me with her brow pinched and her eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

“It means I was a step closer, but she went for you instead.” It’s a detail I hadn’t thought of and I want to write it down before I forget it again, but I need to think about it for a second or two. Figure out if it matters.

I look down at Aimee’s drawing. Maybe the syphoner didn’t see the angle, that I was the closer of the two of us because Aimee was in her sightline and I was in her periphery. But Aimee saw it. Had drawn it. My body was between hers on the ground and the syphoner. “See?”

She’d drawn the scene exactly as it had happened, as if she’d seen it from some other view point than her own. She had all the same details I’d seen, things she wouldn’t have been able to see from her place during this…event. The light pole was behind her, she’d had her back to it. But she had the sparks, had somehow conveyed the flicker of the streetlamp.

And she had drawn one half of my face and one half of the syphoner’s, as if she’d been standing behind all of us, watching as it all unfolded. So it isn’t my viewpoint either. It’s someone else’s.

It’s not something we can use as a clue, but it’s intriguing, nonetheless.

“We need to do some research.” My voice is confident because I’m confident we can figure this out. At least, for Aimee’s sake, I hope we can.

I will my tense muscles to unclench as I breathe in slow and deep. I’m going to need a clear head to figure this out, to center myself, to feel nothing but confidence and power. Fortunately, I can usually turn my emotions off when I need to. Although this is a taller order. There are a mess of emotions connected to this. Sadness. Guilt. Shame. And even if I don’t understand why they exist, they do.

Aimee weeps silently. “What if I don’t get it back, RJ? What if my magic’s gone forever?” My door pushes open as Mom rushes in.

She looks at me almost as if she’s going to blame me, but then she glances at Aimee. “Sweetheart…” She rubs her hand down Aimee’s back, smooths her silvery hair.

“Mom, we can’t tell anyone. They’ll kick me out of the Institute if I don’t have magic. I can fake it. RJ can help until I get my magic back. Right, RJ?” Her voice is frantic, desperate, as if she thinks I won’t help her, as if she believes I wouldn’t do whatever it takes to get her power back.

I would walk through fire for her, as cliched as it sounds.

I nod because she’s my sister and she needs me, but we both know that my magic is nothing compared to hers. “Of course.”

She goes back to crying against Mom’s shoulder, but quieter now, as if she’s losing steam. And then she lifts her head and looks at me instead of Mom. “I feel empty. The space inside of me where the magic lived is gone.”

She swipes at her cheeks before she hugs Mom again and cries harder. It’s painful to watch and I walk out my room. They can have it. I’ll make tea because right now, I don’t know how else to help. It’s going to take a minute to come up with a plan and I can’t do it while Aimee is breaking down.

When I walk out of the bedroom and to the kitchen, I have to pass by the living room where the grimoire is lying open on the table. It draws me. Or maybe the temptation pushes me. I can’t be sure, I only know that tea is the farthest thing from my mind by the time I get to the book.

Most of the grimoire is written in another language. I can read some of it because I’ve been taught Latin, Romani, and the mother language, although most spells are written in English. Certainly, the modern spells are. But this grimoire is a mixture.

I close my eyes and concentrate on the book, will it to show me its power. There is no mention of syphoners, no pages that flip open, and when I try to flip through, the book leads me back to the same page—once when I try to turn to a new one, once when I close the book and then let it fall open, and once when I close my eyes again and ask the book to fan.

I can see enough, decipher enough to know that this is a seeing spell. The book wants me to see something. We’ve already used the book, so if the syphoner is connected to the book and somehow to us, it’s already started.

After I’ve weighed the danger and decided I have no other choice, I read the spell, then because a spell has to be spoken, I say it aloud. Power shoots into my body, connecting me and the book.

“Show me,” I tell the book because nowhere is it written—even witches recognize that power like this is dangerous—a seeing spell must finish with a command to act. But to make a seeing spell function, it has to be said.

My eyelids flutter shut. My head lolls and I need to look to the side so my neck twists. Immediately, I know where I am. I’m in the Institute in the corridor outside the open door to the Hall of Greats.

This is the worst game of show-and-tell I’ve ever played. It has shown me the same things I see every day. But a force pushes me forward, and I’m led inside to stand among the statues and the photos.

I don’t see faces. I see names. Foster. Faulkner. Hadley. Chadwick. Dupree.

Rowen Foster. Margery Faulkner. I don’t know a Chadwick. But I know Circe Dupree. That means Aimee doesn’t fit.

I don’t understand, but I refocus on the spell. “Show me.”

This time when my eyes open, I’m on the sidewalk. On a sidewalk in front of a club. Club Mera , according to the sign. A smaller sign on a door says, Open 1 p.m. for deliveries. Hours: F, S 10 p.m.-3 a.m.

As if it’s finished and no longer interested in our little game of show-and-tell, the book slams closed and I sit up. I should call to check on Circe, but I don’t know her number and my phone is upstairs in my room. I also don’t know if there’s a connection or if I’m living some weird side-effect from the syphoner.

Instead, I run to my room and look at my mother. She’s still soothing Aimee. “Mom.” I’m about to tell her, but she had the book for hours and it had shown her nothing. Maybe she isn’t meant to know. I keep it to myself and stare at the two of them.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” I ask because I have to say something.

“No.”

Aimee is calmer now, and I wonder if it’s because she’s gone to sleep. As soon as I have the thought, Mom lays Aimee on one of my pillows.

“Why don’t you go into Aimee’s room and rest. I’m going to call Dean Ryman and speak to him about tomorrow.” She nods at me as she goes to the door. “Or stay with Aimee in here. She might need you.”

My mom has always lobbied for Aimee and I to stick together, to strengthen our relationship by leaning on each other. It’s why she worked so hard for me to get into the Institute with Aimee instead of waiting two years and following her.

I nod and crawl onto the bed beside my sister.