Chapter 14

Chapter

Fourteen

Z ane drops Dylan off, then brings us home—and we beat Mom by at least an hour. When Aimee walks inside, I linger with him in the Jeep.

“Thank you for driving today.” I would’ve done it since Aimee doesn’t like driving in the city, but this was definitely better.

He smiles and it’s probably the nicest part of my day. “No problem. I don’t mind.”

The silence stretches and I should probably get out of the car, but I don’t’ really want to. I want to drag this out for as long as I can. “Do you want to come in? Maybe you’ll see something we can’t.”

He reaches to brush the hair off my face and smiles. “I would love to, but…” And he pauses, which makes me think he wouldn’t really love to at all.

When he doesn’t finish, I shake my head, humiliated. I just wish he would send out signals that didn’t make me think he wants me one minute and then doesn’t the next. “It’s okay. Forget I asked.”

“Hey.” His voice is low, almost a whisper, but it’s potent as fuck, starts a small fire in my belly. I could fall into the soft expression, the hint of a smile on his face. “I don’t want to forget you asked, but I don’t want the first thing that your mom knows about me to be that I snuck into her house so I could be with you.”

“You wouldn’t be sneaking. You’re walking in and out the front door.” He’s dated a lot. Probably has lines for every occasion, but I don’t care. I like this one. And I don’t want him to go. “I didn’t say I was inviting you to my bedroom. Just a couple friends sitting at the kitchen table working on solving a mystery.”

“Well, when you say it like that…” His grin spreads across his face and he climbs out of the car. I’m already out when he walks around to my side. “I was coming to open your door.”

“Oh.” A warm flush goes through me and if I was one of those Dear Diary girls this would get its own page. “I got it.”

“I can see that.” The smile doesn’t waver, not mine or his as he clasps his hand around mine.

When we walk into the house, Aimee is already at the table with her list-making supplies—papers, multiple-colored pens, sticky notes for footnotes—and she looks up, then at our hands, then back to her paper. “Well, okay then.”

I don’t know what she means, or if I should care. If it’s important she’ll tell me later. Otherwise, it’s just Aimee being Aimee, noticing things, and reacting to it in her subdued, mostly easygoing kind of way.

“RJ, maybe you should get drinks. We might be at this for a while.” She nods to the kitchen like I don’t know where we keep the drinks in this family, but I offer Zane a chair and head to the fridge. We don’t generally keep soda in the house, so our choices are water, tea, or some sort of juice that tastes more like cough syrup than juice.

I don’t bother asking Aimee. She only drinks water. I pour myself tea and poke my head out of the kitchen into the dining room where she’s set up. “Zane, we only have water or tea.”

“Tea’s fine.”

I smile. It’s another thing we have in common.When I deliver the drinks, he smiles up at me, and it could be nothing, but it feels like something. “Thanks.”

I want to do nothing for the rest of the night but stare into his eyes, watch him, and daydream about him.

Aimee kicks me under the table and shoots me a frown. “Are you two ready?”

The moment has passed. I shrug. “Sure.”

She’s the list maker. I’m just watching and hopefully contributing something worthy so I don’t look stupid in front of Zane.

Aimee knows everything I know, but I have no idea how long until Mom comes home, so I’m not quite brave enough to ask Zane up to my room. Yet.

Instead, I watch Aimee. She starts with a column for each girl’s name—Ariya, Margery, Rowen, and Aimee. She’s added her own name, and I cock a brow. “I thought we decided you were an opportunity more than a target.”

“But what if I wasn’t? We don’t know that I was random, or that I don’t fit a certain profile. We also don’t know why she took my magic and not yours.” If I didn’t know her better, I would say she was bitter. But this is Aimee. Calm, peaceful Aimee. I would be bitter, but not her.

I shrug. I don’t know the answer any more than she does. “She said I was different.” We probably should’ve set ground rules for what we were going to discuss in front of Zane, but we didn’t.

Aimee doesn’t look at me and instead, continues writing. “All the girls whose magic was stolen are students at the Institute.” She writes Institute under each of their names.“And they’re all girls. I don’t know if that makes a difference.”

“We should count it anyway.”

“Also, they’re all first-family members. Except Aimee. But she might have been an opportunity.” I repeat the theory and look at Zane while I speak. He nods then takes a long drink of his tea. “Maybe we need to see how many first families have daughters.”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“My family does, but Dylan’s doesn’t. Neither does Finn’s.” Aimee writes the information on a Post-it and marks the paper and the Post-it with corresponding digits. I look at Zane and we both smile. “Nobody really knows much about Hadley.”

When he sets the glass down, he runs his fingers back and forth along his jaw. “I dated all of them.” I glance at Aimee and she looks down again, but when I look at Zane he shrugs one shoulder.

“You dated Aimee?” I’m certain I would remember that.

He nods. “Second grade. She was the first girl I ever asked to be my girlfriend.” That meant I was in Kindergarten, before I knew anything about witches or magic. It’s when I thought my mom was going to take me and Aimee to visit Jurassic Park and I couldn’t wait to go.

But considering the last few days, I can’t believe she didn’t tell me. And that’s the part I don’t know how to handle. It isn’t like I would be jealous about something that happened way back then. Now that it’s come up, I don’t know what to do with it or if I should comment at all. It was second grade. A thousand years ago.

“Oh.” It’s the only word I can come up with.

Aimee clears her throat and looks from me to Zane. “Yes, well, I don’t know that any of these things are more than coincidence or not, but I think you should be careful.” She purses her lips and won’t meet my gaze. “Maybe you shouldn’t see each other until we know that dating Zane isn’t a part of it.”

I shake my head. This is the first guy who ever looked at me the way he does, and I don’t care if there’s a line of syphoners waiting for all the women who have dated Zane.“No, I mean, maybe, but she tried to take my magic.” Maybe it just wasn’t powerful enough for her. “She couldn’t.”

“Maybe she was at capacity? She stole Ariya’s magic and then mine, so maybe she didn’t have space for yours. I don’t know if that’s a thing or not. But if it is, she might come back for you.” Aimee tilted her head as if she was trying to convince me.

Zane glances at me then at the list. “Aimee might be right, RJ. I mean, I don’t want to be the reason you get…syphoned.” I hope it’s disappointment making him frown. But damn Aimee for bringing it up.

“It’s way more likely that being part of first families is the reason.” That’s only logical. “Unless you have some syphoner woman scorned out there.” I glance at Zane. He smiles and shakes his head. “So obviously it’s about the power of the first families, right?”

Aimee shrugs. “Maybe.” But then she nods. “You know, when she was coming for me, I could feel her magic. It was like…when we do magic together.” She wags a finger back and forth between us. “There’s a flow between us . It was like that.” I nod. I always feel that flow, but when the syphoner tried to take my magic, I didn’t. I didn’t feel anything but a slight annoying tug.

I meant to tell Aimee earlier, but with the club and all the things we found out there, I forgot. “I talked to a professor in class today. A sub, actually. And she said that all magic leaves a footprint or some tell-tale piece of the magic behind. She called it a signature .”

Zane tilted his head at me, and the light hits him in a way that makes him look as if he is glowing.

For a second, I am too captivated to do more than stare, but then Aimee kicks me under the table. He’d been talking. “What?”

“Zane asked you how we find it?” Her voice is sharper now, like she’s pissed off that I wasn’t paying attention.

Fuck. I knew there was something else I needed to find out in class. “I didn’t ask.”

Aimee is silent for the biggest part of a minute, and I don’t know if being without her magic is changing her, but she’s usually much more calm than the energy she’s putting into the universe right now.

She glances at each of us. “I feel like it was someone who could have studied magic at the Institute. I think that’s how she knows how the person she’s stealing from will react. When she was coming for me, I tried to throw a spell. But she pushed it off. Then another.” Aimee traces the woodgrain on the table with her fingertip. “Honestly, it felt like she knew everything I was going to do, like she has the same training we have.”

I can almost see her mind working, thinking of classmates and adding them to her mental list or discounting them.

“Wouldn’t we have recognized her?” We’d each been at the school for five years and while I didn’t talk to everyone, I knew most of their names and faces. I see a lot because I’m quiet and I don’t belong to any particular crowd there.

Zane shakes his head. “Not if she used a glamour.” Well, that certainly complicates things.

“Then it could be anyone.” And I’m not kidding. Our suspect pool just grew by about the entire witch population.

Aimee nods and frowns again. She looks at me, but it’s more as if she’s looking through me. “First, even though I knew what she was doing, the touch was nice, comforting, like she wanted me to know she didn’t want to do it, but that it would be okay.” Her gaze isn’t on something in this room but something in her mind, a memory, maybe a vision even, but I doubt it.

“I just remember being suddenly very tired.” But it was because of the spell not because she had managed to take any of my magic. And I don’t want Aimee to think fondly of any part of what happened. Comforted or not. “You’re only okay because Mom had a potion.” I don’t like thinking of what could’ve happened to Aimee. I could have lost her. And that is no little thing for me.

“At my folks’ house, in the vault, there’s a bunch of books about the first families.”

“The vault?” I’ve never heard of anyone but banks having a vault.

He nods. “I could take you there.”

Aimee is shaking her head but when Zane looks at her, she stops and smiles, like she doesn’t want him to know she doesn’t want me to go. “RJ, Mom’s going to be home soon and she’ll be worried if you aren’t here.”

“I think Mom would want me to do whatever I can to figure out how to get your power back.”

Aimee shakes her head. She’s frustrated with me and I’m not sure I understand why.“We know how. We have to kill the syphoner.”

Aimee, who is all about peace and love, isn’t going to be altogether happy about having to kill anyone, but she’ll do it or stand by and let it be done if it means she gets her power back.

She won’t be the same after. And I don’t want that for her. Or for me. But I would rather be the one who has to do the killing so she doesn’t have to suffer through that.

I nod and smile wider. She’s arguing for no reason. I’m going to go to his house with him anyway. “Yes, but we don’t know how to find out who the syphoner is. One of the books might help.” I couldn’t speak any sweeter if I was made of chocolate and sugar.

“RJ, I think it’s a bad idea.”

I look from Aimee to Zane and back again. “That’s why you’re not invited. Just tell Mom I’ll be home later.” And that’s my final word on the subject.