Demonglass (13 page)

W
hen I came to, I was lying on one of the library couches near the big windows with a blanket on me, and Cal was holding my hand.

“Déjà vu,” I said as I watched silver sparks of magic race over my skin. He gave a tiny smile, but his eyes were trained on the rapidly closing cut on my palm. I looked past him and saw Dad standing at the end of the couch, his face etched with worry. Suddenly, everything came rushing back to me. The case, the book.

The missing page.

Dad gave a barely perceptible shake of his head, but I knew better than to say anything in front of Cal. Still, now that I didn’t feel like I was dying from blood loss, I felt every bit as disturbed about that missing page as Dad had looked.

Like he could read my mind—and for all I knew, he could—Dad said, “I want you to rest here for a little while, Sophie. Once you’re feeling better, we can discuss the ramifications of that spell in my office.”

“Must have been some hard-core spell,” Cal remarked as he gently laid my hand down on the couch.

“Yeah,” I said, my mouth feeling like it was full of sawdust. “Dad’s been working with me on controlling my powers. Guess I overdid it.”

Dad walked around the couch and, to my surprise, leaned down to kiss my forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “But I am also very proud of you.”

It was hard to talk around the sudden lump in my throat, so I just nodded.

“I’ll be in my office. Come see me when you’re feeling up to it.”

Once Dad was gone, I flexed my hand, studying the place where the gash had been. There was no sign of it, and I could swear that even my demonglass scar looked a little better. “Okay, so the ability to heal people has to be the coolest magical power ever,” I told Cal.

His lips quirked. “Yeah, well, I didn’t always think so.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s what got me sent to Hecate.”

I perked up. I’d always wondered how someone as straight-and-narrow as Cal had gotten sentenced to Hex Hall. “They sent you there for
healing
someone?”

“Making someone’s leg magically unbreak itself kind of draws attention to you,” he said.

“Yikes. I bet. So when you did it, was there a lot of screaming and pointing? That’s what happened to me.”

He laughed. “Yeah, she was nowhere near as happy to be healed as I’d thought she’d be.”

We were sitting so close that our hips touched. He smelled nice, like freshly cut grass and sunshine. I wondered if he’d been outside already this morning, or if that’s just the way Cal always smelled.

I was about to ask him more about this mysterious “she” with the broken leg, but he changed the subject. “So you’re learning to control your powers,” he said, studying me with those clear hazel eyes. “How’s it working out?”

“Great,” I answered, before I remembered that Cal thought I’d just been grievously injured during one of those lessons. “I mean, it’s really hard,” I amended, “but I think I’m getting the hang of it. Sure beats the idea of going through the Removal.”

“Does that mean the Removal is out?”

I ran my finger around the paisley pattern on the couch. “I think so, yeah,” I replied, leaning back against the cushions. The cut on my palm may have healed up, but I still felt pretty wiped out.

“I’m glad,” he said quietly. The space between us suddenly seemed smaller, and when he covered my hand with his, it was all I could do not to jump. It took me a minute to realize that he was just using more magic on me. I could feel the weariness running out of me as silver sparks ran along my arm.

“Better?” The sparks faded, but Cal didn’t take his hand off mine.

“Much.” Of course, all that tiredness had now been replaced by a weird jitteriness that had me shoving the blanket off my legs and standing up. “What does it feel like, doing healing magic?” I asked, moving away to stand near one of the big windows. The early morning sunlight sparkled on the dew-covered grass.

“What do you mean?”

Rubbing my hands up and down my arms like I was cold, I shrugged. “It seems like it would be super draining, closing wounds and bringing people back from near death.”

“It’s actually kind of the opposite,” he said, getting up off the couch. “It’s like…touching electricity, I guess. You’re handling someone’s life energy, so it’s intense, yeah, but there’s like this
charge
from it.”

“I’m not sure how I feel about you ‘handling my life energy,’ Cal.”

He grinned, and I was taken aback by how different it made him look. Cal spent so much time being stoic and solemn that it was easy to forget he even had teeth. “I’ll buy you dinner first next time, I promise.”

Okay, the grin was one thing, but that had definitely been flirting. Then, like I wasn’t thrown enough, Cal leaned down and picked up a potted African violet on the low table next to the sofa and brought it over to me. For a second, I wondered if this was his socially awkward way of trying to give me flowers, but he said, “Any Prodigium can do it, really. Not on the same level I can, but still. You just have to be patient.” He pushed the plant toward me, and I noticed a few brown spots on its velvety petals. “Wanna try?”

I looked at the droopy violet and snorted. “Thanks, but that poor little flower looks like it’s suffered enough.” Wiggling my fingers, I added, “I’m way better at the blowing-stuff-up part of magic. Healing is probably beyond me.” Sure, I’d managed to make water pink and change Nick’s clothes yesterday, but healing seemed a lot harder than that. Not to mention that my mind was still on that jagged piece of paper, and how Dad had covered up our stealing the grimoire.

Cal nudged my arm with the pot. “You said you were working on controlling your powers. No magic requires more control than healing. Try.”

I thought about protesting that I was too worn out from the spell with Dad earlier, but the truth was, thanks to Cal’s magic, I felt better than I had in days.

And I’m pretty sure he knew it.

I took the terra-cotta pot. “What exactly do I do?”

Cal curled his fingers around mine and raised my left hand to the brownish flower. There was a callus on his thumb that should have been irritating against my skin.

“In a lot of ways, healing is like any other magic. You concentrate on what you want to change, and you make it happen.”

“Or, in my case, explode.”

Cal just shook his head and said, “But when you’re healing something living, you have to take it into account, too.”

“And I do that how?”

Cal’s fingers tightened on mine, and my heart thumped in response. The library felt very quiet and very still around us. “You’ll feel it.”

I swallowed, which was hard to do what with my mouth suddenly drying out. “Okay.”

I closed my eyes and felt my magic traveling up from the bottoms of my feet. So far, so good. I thought about those brown spots on the petals, all the while keeping Mom’s face firmly lodged in my brain.
Heal
, I thought, feeling too self-conscious to actually say the word out loud. The flower stirred under my hand, but when I cracked my eyelids, it looked as brown as ever.

I closed my eyes and took more of those deep breaths Dad was so fond of, thinking that it was no wonder Prodigium were always getting their asses handed to them by humans. I mean, every time I had to do an intense spell, there was all this focusing, and relaxing, and picturing, and breathing…. It wasn’t exactly the most effective battle strategy against something like The Eye.

I should’ve known better than to think about The Eye, though. As soon as the name popped into my head, my control shattered.

And so did the terra-cotta pot.

Black soil rained down on my feet, and the purple flower drooped even further. I could have sworn it actually bobbed accusingly at me.

“Ugh,” I groaned, as Cal quickly scooped the jagged pot out of my hands. “Sorry, but I warned you I was destructo-girl.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, even as his hand curled protectively around the plant. “You almost had it.” He glanced down, probably to survey the damage. “Oh, wow,” he said, surprised.

I wiped my dirty hands on my jeans. “That bad?”

“No, it’s not that,” he said. “Look.”

He held the pot out to me. The flower was still awfully droopy, but just behind it were two other smaller, non-droopy flowers. And these were vibrant purple, without a brown spot to be seen. “Whoa. Did I make those?” I asked.

Cal nodded. “You must have. So much for destructogirl.”

I gave him a rueful smile. “Yeah, well, shiny new flowers or not, there’s still a broken pot, and a very sad old violet.”

“Maybe,” he said with a nod. Then he paused, and I could tell that whatever he was going to say was really important. There was even a chance he might use more than five words to say it. “Or maybe your magic isn’t that destructive after all. The rain of Doritos, the bed thing, this…Maybe it’s just that you
create
too big, you know?”

When I could find my voice, I said, “Cal, that might be the nicest thing anyone’s said to me since we got here.”

He twirled one of the naked roots between his fingers, and didn’t meet my eyes. “It’s true.” Then he glanced up and gave one of those half smiles I was really starting to like. “And it’s also true that I need to find another pot for this guy. I, uh, guess I’ll see you at dinner.”

“Great. We can pick out our colors.”

“What?”

“For the wedding. I’m thinking melon and mint. Supposed to be really hot next spring.”

Cal laughed out loud, the first time I’d ever heard him do that. “It’s a plan. See ya, Sophie.”

“Later,” I called after him, suddenly struck by a pang of sadness. Archer had called out, “See ya, Mercer,” at the end of nearly every cellar duty. I’d never hear him say that again.

It sucks that we miss people like that. You think you’ve accepted that someone is out of your life, that you’ve grieved and it’s over, and then bam. One little thing and you feel like you’ve lost that person all over again.

I thought about him sitting in the corn mill, waiting for me. What had he wanted to tell me so badly that he’d risk his life to say it?

I tightened my fingers around one of the jagged shards of pottery so hard that I nearly drew blood. “It doesn’t matter,” I murmured. The whole Archer thing was beyond done. And, I reminded myself with a glance upstairs, I apparently had way bigger problems than a messed-up love life.

D
ad’s office was actually one of the smaller rooms at Thorne. Inside was pretty nice, though. There was a cherrywood desk and ivory carpets, plus comfortable leather chairs and sturdy-looking bookshelves. He also had nice view of the river.

Dad was at his desk when I opened the door, doing what all British people do when they’re freaked out: drinking tea. I leaned against the door frame. “So…this sucks, right?”

He waved me into the office. “Close the door behind you.”

Once I had, Dad opened one of the desk drawers. The grimoire looked even worse in the bright light of his office, but there was still a sense of menace coming off of it that made me want to cross my arms over my chest.

“I glamoured another book to look like the grimoire, and remade the glass,” Dad said to my unspoken question. “Still, I’ll need to get it back soon. The glamour won’t hold forever.”

He threw the book onto his desk, where it landed amid all the paper. “I’ve looked through it three times already. The possession ritual isn’t in here.”

Gingerly, I lifted the book and opened it. I’d felt the magic coming off of it even when it was in its case, but I still wasn’t prepared for the wave of power that hit me. It felt like when you stick your face out the window of a fast-moving car. My lungs burned and my eyes watered just looking at it. My stinging eyes scanned the first page, but there were no words I could make out, only strange and unfamiliar symbols.

Still, I recognized one of them. It looked a lot like the mark Dad had put on the Vandy’s hand when he’d banished her.

Before I could even turn the first page, I dropped the book back on the papers. “Holy hell weasel,” I breathed.

Dad nodded. “Now you see why I had to let you do the majority of the heavy lifting while opening the case. There was no way I could have used that much magic
and
had the strength to search for the ritual.”

“Now you tell me.” I sank down into one of the leather chairs opposite Dad’s desk. “How did you even know what you were looking for? There aren’t any words in this thing.”

“It wasn’t easy. Even I didn’t realize how powerful this book is.” He opened the front cover, and I winced; but since I couldn’t see the pages, I didn’t feel the magic this time. Dad, however, visibly shuddered. “This grimoire was written in the language of angels.”

“Shouldn’t that be, like, harp music or chanting, and not hard-core hieroglyphics?”

Dad either wasn’t listening to me, or he chose to ignore that. “What I don’t understand is why just
that
ritual was taken,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Of all the rituals, why that one?”

“And when did someone take it?” I added.

Dad blinked at me like he’d just suddenly remembered I was in the room. “What?”

“That book has been in that cabinet since, what, 1939? 1940? So did someone rip that page out sometime over the past seventy years, or was it torn out before the grimoire was even locked up?”

“I hadn’t thought about that.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Curiouser and curiouser.”

Startled, I glanced at him. “I say that sometimes.”

Even with his face tight with worry, Dad managed to look a little amused. “It’s from
Alice in Wonderland
. Appropriate, don’t you think?”

Yeah, except that our rabbit hole was a heck of a lot darker, I thought.

I pretended to study the bookcase in the far corner. I’d expected boring books about Prodigium history or shifter economy, and there were a few of those, but I also noticed some recent fiction, as well as several Roald Dahl books. Dad went up in my estimation another notch.

“Do you think whoever—or whatever—raised Daisy and Nick had that piece of paper?”

“They would’ve had to.”

I turned back to him. “And that’s bad.”

“Worse than bad.” He leaned forward. “Sophie, Virginia Thorne raised a demon to use as a weapon. I can only think that whoever raised Nick and Daisy had similar motives.”

I blew out a breath. “Dad, this is a total cluster…um, a mess.”

He flashed me a wry smile. “I think the word you were about to use is probably the best summation of the current situation.”

“So what do we do?”

“There’s nothing we can do right now except wait and see how it all plays out.”

I tapped my fingernail. I’d never been very good at concealing my emotions, and fear was practically making my internal organs shake. Whoever had that ritual could technically raise a whole army of demons if they wanted to. And if Prodigium had that on their side in a war against The Eye? I fought back the image of Archer lying broken and bloody at the feet of some demon, of all that horror spilling out into the human world as it had before. Trying to keep my voice light, I said, “Well, waiting is lame-sauce.”

“I’m not sure I know what that means, exactly, but I think I share the sentiment.” Dad put the grimoire back in his desk, closing the drawer with a soft click.

I hoisted myself out of the chair. “Dad, do you really think finding out who did this can stop a war from coming?”

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. He was looking at me, but I got the feeling he wasn’t really seeing me. “I hope so.”

As far as reassurances went, it wasn’t great, but it would have to do.

I was almost to the door when Dad said, “Before you go, Sophie, would you tell me why you’ve been carrying a Saint Anthony’s medallion in your pocket for the past two days?”

“Huh?” Then I remembered the coin Archer had given me. Reluctantly, I pulled it out of my pocket and handed it to Dad. “It’s just something I found. How did you know I had it?”

He turned it over in his fingers. “I could sense the magic.” He glanced up at me. “Saint Anthony’s medallions are very powerful objects. Witches and warlocks used them in the Middle Ages, usually if they were travelling. You could give them to someone and use them to telepathically show your location. Very useful if you got lost or captured, both of which happened quite often in those days.” He flicked it back at me. “I’m actually not surprised you found one. We have dozens in the cellar at Hecate.”

Well, that explained it, then. Secret demon hunter
and
thief. Man, did I know how to pick ’em.

I entertained the idea of going back to bed, but when I opened the door to my room, I discovered Nick and Daisy waiting for me. Nick was holding the picture of my mom, while Daisy lounged on my bed, flipping through my copy of
The Secret Garden
.

“Is this your mom?” Nick asked. “She’s a hottie.”

While Nick no longer set my teeth on edge, I still wasn’t crazy about him—or Daisy for that matter—pawing through my stuff. “What do you guys want?”

Nick whistled through his teeth as he placed the photograph back on my nightstand. “We were just coming to check on you. Heard you got hurt doing a spell today.”

“Oh,” I said. “Uh…yeah, I was practicing with Dad. But I’m fine now.”

Throwing himself down on the bed next to Daisy, Nick folded his arms behind his head. “Ah, yes, all the breathing and focusing stuff.”

“Such a waste of time,” Daisy murmured, tracing her finger over an illustration of Mary Lennox wandering the halls of Misselthwaite.

I let that go. “Well, as you can see, I’m fine. Thanks for worrying about me.”

Nick made quite the production of getting off the bed. “I think we’re being dismissed, my love,” he said to Daisy before pulling her to her feet.

“But we didn’t get to talk to Sophie about the party,” she said, a hint of whine in her voice.

“What party?” I asked.

Nick smiled. “Your birthday party. Apparently, the Council is throwing quite the shindig.”

Thanks to all the moving around Mom and I had done, I hadn’t had a birthday party since I was eight years old. That had been at Chuck E. Cheese. Something told me the Council had something more elaborate in mind.

“They don’t need to do that,” I said, shoving my hands into my pockets. “Especially with all that’s going on right now.”

Nick flashed me a wolfish grin. “That’s Prodigium for you. Very ‘fiddle while Rome burns.’”

Daisy looped her arm through his. “Besides, it’ll be fun. They’ll go all out for—” She broke off suddenly, and her smile turned into a grimace of pain. All the blood seemed to drain from her face, turning her ivory skin ashen. She dropped her head, and Nick caught her elbow.

“Daisy?”

Her hands clutched the footboard of my bed, and she took several deep shuddering breaths. Then she raised her head and opened her eyes. I half expected them to be violet-red, like Alice’s had been the night she’d killed Elodie, but they were her usual light green. “I’m fine,” she said, but her voice was tight. “Just a little…magic flare-up. Nothing to worry about.”

Nick’s face creased with worry, but Daisy waved him off. “I’m fine,” she said again, steering him toward the door. “Now let’s let Sophie get some rest. She looks a bit rough.”

I couldn’t have looked any worse than Daisy, but I didn’t say anything as she and Nick left. Only once they were gone did I catch that familiar scent of burning wood in the air. But this time, it was no hallucination.

There, in the footboard of my bed, were two singed and smoking handprints.