Charmfall (24 page)

Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like Scout was feeling the rhymes today.

She stood at the dry-erase board with giant black earphones over her ears, bobbing along to the beat of some hip-hop song she’d downloaded. Every few seconds, she’d lift up her marker and start scribbling something out, and then she’d immediately erase it again.

She had magical writer’s block. So far, she’d rejected “Break this circle, so our magic we can encircle!” and “Break this circle, or you’re a big fat jerk-el.”

Those were truly awful, but to be fair, not much rhymed with “circle.”

Hip-hop didn’t help. Switching to country didn’t help. Musical soundtracks didn’t help. Nothing helped until we found a station for Scout that played ragey alternative stuff. Those people were
angry
. But it worked. Scout draped the earphones from a corner of the dry-erase board, and we bounced around to the music until Scout got in the mood. And when the rhyme finally came, I wrote it down while she called it out.

“It’s a circle of fear,” she sang. “A circle of control. You wanna wreak havoc? Then you have to pay the toll. You take our power. You try to take our souls. But in this case, honey, it’s you who’s gotta go. We’re breaking your circle; we’re tearing up your goal, and most of all we’re taking back the magic that you stole!”

The room went silent.

For five full minutes, Scout walked back and forth in front of the board, fingers on her chin, mulling it over, deciding whether it passed some unspoken incantation test.

And then, finally, she spoke.

“Okay,” she said. “That’s our rhyme.”

Every Adept in the room let out a
whoop
.

We carefully wrote down the incantation on three different pieces of paper. I had a copy, Scout had a copy, and we gave the third to Daniel for safekeeping. But when it came time to pick the projectile—the thing we’d actually use to break the spell—we were at a loss again.

“If only we really had an arrow,” Michael said.

“Then we’d also have to have a bow and someone with really good aim,” Scout pointed out. “Too complicated.”

“What’s our plan to get into the pumping station?” I asked, and everyone looked at me. “The object we pick should be easy to get into the building, right? And easy to actually get into the circle?”

“Right,” Scout said with a nod. “We’ll want something inconspicuous. They aren’t going to want to let us into the building just because we ask nicely.”

“Pizza delivery?” Michael suggested.

“Or Chinese,” Paul said. “Lots of little containers to hide things.”

“I doubt a building of Reaper rejects are going to have takeout delivered to their secret headquarters.”

I looked down, and caught sight of the room key around my neck. I’d forgotten to take it off when I’d changed for the dance.

“They probably wouldn’t order takeout,” I agreed. I pulled the key off and held it out by its ribbon. “But they might talk to a girl with firespell who’s all confused about Adepts and Reapers and why they exist.”

The room was quiet for a moment.

“You can’t,” Scout finally said. “You’ve already risked enough this week.”

I shook my head. “Like it or not, I’m the only one they’ll believe. Fayden saw me talk to Sebastian, so she knows I’m willing to talk to Reapers. And I’m sure someone has filled her in about how I became an Adept and that I’m new to the scene. It makes more sense that I have doubts about Adepts than anyone else.”

“She has a point,” Daniel said.

“I don’t like it,” Scout said. “But it is a good plan.”

She held out her hand, and I handed over my key. Silently, she placed it on the top of the table, then sprinkled the concoction the twins had made—which looked like the gray stuff in the bottom of a vacuum cleaner—over it.

But nothing happened. The key just lay under its pile of gray fluff.

“Don’t you at least want to say some magic words?” I asked.

She gave me a dry look while wiggling her fingers over the tile. “Hocus pocus alamagokus.”

“Really.” My voice was flat.

“Abracadabra,” she said, this time with more flourish.

“Is something supposed to, I don’t know, spark up or something?” I asked.

“It’s pre-spell,” Scout said, tilting her head at the key. “I’d hoped it might at least light up a little, but until I’ve actually got magic again, none of my spells have juice. So it won’t trigger—it won’t spark—until it hits the circle.” She looked at me. “Repeat the incantation when you get in there, and then immediately throw the key into the circle.”

“What if she misses?” Michael asked.

“She won’t miss.”

“I won’t miss.”

Scout and I answered simultaneously. She carefully dusted off the key, then handed it back to me. I put it on again and tucked it into my dress. I probably wasn’t going to get zombie putrescence on it, but magical ash and Reaper putrescence? Much more likely.

“As soon as we get our magic back, we’ll come rescue you.”

I nodded and blew out a breath, and hoped it worked just like that. But I wasn’t going to bet on it.

*  *  *

With Nicu having been excused to get to the dance, the Adepts of Enclave Three—except for their werewolf—popped back to street level through a secret shortcut Daniel knew about, and walked toward the pumping station. We stopped at the corner one building over. The pumping station looked the same as it had when we’d snuck out to look at it, the blue paper still covering the windows.

The key around my neck felt like a heavy weight—I was too aware of the magic it held and its importance to Adepts. I was going to have one chance to make this work. If I threw the key and missed, Fayden would undoubtedly figure out that I was up to something and put a stop to it. And if I missed—I’d have no magic.

I had to get this right, and that was a lot of pressure for a not-quite-sixteen-year-old girl. I couldn’t legally drive, but I had the fates of hundreds of people with magic in my hands. Awesome.

Luckily, the street was pretty empty, so if we had trouble dealing with Fayden, there were fewer bystanders to injure. But I tried not to think about that. I tried to focus on how relieved I’d feel if the circle was broken and everything was back to (relative) normal again.

“When,”
I reminded myself quietly. “
When
the circle is broken.”

But I was really nervous. Even my palms were sweaty. These kinds of things never went as well as they were supposed to.

I touched the key around my neck, then looked at Scout.

“You remember the incantation?”

I nodded. I’d repeated it over and over and over until it was second nature. “I remember. I’ll get it done.”

“Good girl,” she said, and wrapped her arms around me. “Be careful.”

“I will.”

I blew out a breath, and stepped into the darkness between the buildings. It wasn’t but thirty or forty yards to the pumping station, but the walk felt like forever.

Heart racing, I walked up the few steps and knocked on the door. It took two more loud knocks, but finally it squeaked open.

A girl with suspicious eyes and jet-black hair stared back at me. She looked down at my green and lace dress and clearly wasn’t impressed. “What?”

My heart was pounding, but I forced myself to smile. “I’m here for the tour.”

“Wrong time, wrong place.” She gave me an evil smile and tried to close the door again, but I stuck a foot in it.

“I’m pretty sure there’s a tour.”

The girl growled and opened the door just enough to step outside and glare down at me. “You have the wrong address, kid. Go make trouble somewhere else.”

“I have the right address. I need to talk to Fayden.”

She blinked at me, then stepped back inside and closed the door in my face. But before I could knock again, she opened it, and this time she was grinning.

It was a predatory grin, and it didn’t make me feel any better.

“Come in,” she said.

I walked inside and onto a metal balcony that overlooked the giant pipes. I jumped when she slammed the door shut behind me, and blinked from the glare of the circle, which made a low
thrush
sound every time it completed a rotation.

“You’re Sebastian’s friend.”

I turned around. The dark-haired girl was gone, replaced by Fayden Campbell. She wore the same black bodysuit Scout and I had seen her in earlier.

“And you’re his cousin. The Reaper.”

“I really don’t care for that name. It’s inaccurate. We borrow energy that replenishes itself. There’s no Reaping. But that’s not the point. Why are you here?”

I almost started to argue with her, and it took me a second to remember the part I was supposed to play.

“I’m not . . .” My voice sounded nervous, so I cleared my throat and started again. “I’m not sure about this Adept thing.”

Fayden arched a very carefully plucked black eyebrow. “Not sure about it?”

Play the role,
I told myself, and turned to lean against the railing that overlooked the well of pipes and pumps.

“They just give up,” I said. “I’m not saying I agree with what you’re doing, but that can’t be right, either, can it?” I looked back at her. “Can it?”

Her eyes narrowed, clearly not sure whether to take me seriously. “You tell me,” she said.

“I’ve talked to Sebastian about it. He thinks everything is gray—not just black or white—that I’m being brainwashed by the Adepts. But I don’t know what to believe. When I lost my magic, I figured out that you were responsible, and that you can turn magic on and off again. I like that idea.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she said.

She wasn’t buying it. My mom had once told me that the best way to make friends wasn’t to tell them about yourself, but to ask them about themselves. So I changed tactics.

“So this circle thing. It turns off magic?”

She looked over at it, admiration in her eyes. She was proud of what she’d made. “It provides control over the distribution of magic.”

“So you can be in charge of everyone?”

“So that we can be in charge of ourselves. We are superheroes. We have powers. We can do important things in the world. But not the way we currently exist. Right now we hide from the world. The majority of the Dark Elite eke out an existence while Adepts take the moral high ground. We waste our energies on internal battles fought by teenagers in tunnels. But with this, we become unified again.”

“So instead of people making their own decisions about magic, you get to make them on their behalf?”

“That’s vastly oversimplified.”

It seemed accurate to me.

“The Scions are old-school leaders,” she said. “They don’t direct. They don’t lead. They don’t do anything new or interesting. They follow old rules and use old tactics. Jeremiah is the reason I left for California. ‘Join us or leave,’ he’d said. What kind of option is that? Who does he think he is?”

Her words were coming faster now, and her tone was more intense. There was no doubt she believed what she was saying.

“I did some research. Studied, with my friends, the way of magic.” She looked back at me. “There are so many things we can do that he doesn’t even know about. But was he swayed? No.” Her eyes narrowed. “It’s time for him to know what it’s like not to have control. To have someone else be in charge for a little while.”

“So are you doing this to teach him a lesson, or to make life better for members of the Dark Elite?”

She scowled. However mixed her motives may have been, she didn’t like my pointing that out. “My plan, little girl, is magical socialism. We all have a role to play. We will all contribute equally, and we will all have a little magic to use as we will.”

While she talked, I nudged a little closer to the railing, judging the distance I had to throw the key. It was at least forty feet. Could I get it that far? I wasn’t sure.

I looked back at Fayden. “That’s all well and good, but you haven’t exactly figured out how to do that, have you? I mean, you clearly know how to take magic away—but you haven’t yet figured out how to give it back.”

Her expression darkened. “What do you want?”

I’d hit a nerve. Her patience with me wasn’t going to last much longer. I was getting close to crunch time, when I was going to have to throw the key. But before I did, since I had only one shot, I thought I might as well ask her to be rational.

“I want you to turn this thing off and give our magic back.”

“Fat chance of that.” Our conversation apparently over, she took a step forward. I took my chance, reared back my arm, and prepared to throw the key as hard as I could—but something grabbed my hand.

I looked back. It was the dark-haired girl, and her fist was wrapped around mine.

Frick
.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“My room key,” I said, snatching my hand back. “I was going to, you know, throw it at her as a distraction.”

The dark-haired girl growled. Fayden had better instincts.

“Let me see that,” she said, taking another step closer.

“I would really rather not,” I said, peeking over the rail at the pipes below. The drop was a good ten feet. Just far enough that I might make it . . . or I might not. But if I did, I’d have better access to the circle.

What a horrible night to wear a borrowed dress and three-inch heels.

Fayden took another step closer and held out a hand. “I’m going to need you to give me that key right now.”

I wrapped the ribbon around my hand, entwining it in my fingers so I wouldn’t drop it when I fell.

“I don’t think so,” I said. I put a hand on the railing, and I jumped.

19

I
’m not going to lie—it hurt. The pipe was made of metal and the top was round, so I hit it on my knees and then rolled halfway off. The pain startled me enough that the key skittered from my fingers.

“Get her,” Fayden yelled from the balcony. Two of her minions made a run for it.

Grimacing, I pulled myself back onto the pipe, then crawled forward to find the key. It had fallen between my pipe and another, and I had to dig my fingers between them to find it. I’d just barely managed to get a finger around the ribbon when a shot of firespell exploded above my head.