Nadia finished, “So I’m asking you to believe in me right now. Let me work this out. If I had anything to do with what’s happening to you—I’ll know soon.”
He nodded. “Today? This week?”
Right away, Nadia wanted to say, but already people were starting to mill around in the hallways—only a few, but enough that she no longer felt safe to experiment in the lab uninterrupted.
But there was something she might be able to try even in the middle of class—quiet, simple, something nobody would even notice her casting—and she needed to do this right away, during the next class period they shared.
She looked back at Mateo and gave him the most encouraging smile she could manage. “Sometime during chemistry.”
“Obviously we need to review how to write a lab report,” the Piranha said as everyone began assembling their materials. “I’ve put an outline on the board, which should prove useful to those of you who have learned how to read. This is apparently a minority.”
Nadia had finally been assigned a lab partner, which would have been bad news for her today no matter what. The fact that she’d been stuck with that slimy Jeremy Prasad made it worse. She didn’t care what Verlaine said; as far as Nadia was concerned, the view wasn’t worth it, no matter how hot he was.
“She’s such a bitch,” he said as he handed Nadia the sodium bicarbonate for their experiment.
“The Piranha?” Nadia shrugged. She kept glancing over at Mateo, who looked as exhausted as he had this morning, though apparently it was comforting for him to be near Elizabeth. Every time their eyes met, he smiled. They must really be in love. How awesome for them. “Basic teacher snark, if you ask me.”
“She shouldn’t talk down to us. Somebody should teach that woman her place. We pay her salary.”
Nadia wondered how many checks Jeremy had written to the school board lately. “We’re supposed to write down our impressions of all the equipment and materials for the experiment.”
“We get to write down our impressions of baggies? This is supposed to be a good use of our time?”
“If you do that part, I’ll do the harder stuff later,” Nadia promised. Not that Jeremy deserved a break, but she had better things to do.
Once again she turned her attention to the power she sensed underfoot. The burial was deep underground; that meant she was unlikely to be able to get to it through non-magical means. Which meant that if she wanted to use magic to get the buried thing out again, she would be taking it out sight unseen, with no idea what the source of that powerful magic was. That was an extremely bad plan. Possibly whoever had buried this … whatever … had had a very good reason.
And yet—she was tempted. Nadia itched to discover it, even if it were likely to blow up in her face like Pandora’s box.
To have power—real power—beyond anything Mom had ever known, to be able to stand up and say, See what you walked away from? I’m stronger than you. Stronger than anyone. You shouldn’t have left me behind.
Nadia blinked, shook her head. The shudder of vengeful fury that passed through her was gone in an instant, but the uneasiness it left behind lingered.
And she realized—that fury hadn’t entirely been her own. It had belonged, in part, to whatever lay beneath the lab.
Now Nadia understood that mysterious presence as she never had before. It did not merely wait there: It lurked. It seethed. It longed to break free—
—and wreak vengeance.
Vengeance on what, she didn’t know. She no longer wanted to. The only thing she understood was that it couldn’t be directly causing any devastation in Captive’s Sound; it lacked that power, and she was grateful.
Whatever lay imprisoned beneath the school had been put there for good reason. The entity she sensed was buried beneath any retrieval, and they were safe from it, and that was actually all she needed to know for now.
Besides, at the moment, her attention should be focused on whatever she’d done to Mateo.
It wasn’t as if she could cast any elaborate spells right here in the middle of class. But something basic might be effective, if Mateo’s problem was what she suspected.
If he was cursed—truly cursed, the inheritor of a dark magic hundreds of years old—then that meant he might potentially react to magic in a different way. Nadia wasn’t exactly sure how that would work, but it seemed plausible.
And a basic spell of liberation might make the magic … unstick.
Well, it was worth a shot, anyway.
Nadia’s fingers found the small ivory drop at her bracelet, and she put the ingredients together:
Helpless laughter.
Washing away what cannot come clean.
A moment of forgiveness.
The first two were easy —
Her thirteenth birthday party, when they put a pair of Cole’s Pull-Ups on her best friend’s Boston terrier and they all got hysterical, rolling on the floor.
Taking her first shower in the new house, three in the morning after the wreck, mud under her fingernails and a piece of car glass in her hair, feeling like it would never, ever all rinse clean.
But forgiveness? Nadia dug deep.
Weeks of wondering if Dad had driven Mom away, if there had been an affair or something Nadia hadn’t known about, all ending the moment she tiptoed to the kitchen late at night and glimpsed her father bent over the table, his head in his hands, so miserable that she knew, just knew, he hadn’t seen any of this coming.
It was enough. She felt the spell swirling outward, invisible but powerful—
—really powerful—
“You know what?” Jeremy said loudly. “I’m sick of this.” With that he shoved all the lab equipment off their table; it fell to the floor with a crash.
“You know what I’m sick of?” The Piranha put her hands on her hips. “You. All of you. This entire school. I could be in yoga right now instead of trying to pour information into the sieves you call your brains.”
Several students started laughing. One girl started crying. Another reached around her own back and unfastened her bra through her sweater, groaning in relief as it went slack.
What the—
Another girl and a guy started making out. So did two guys in the far corner. Jeremy started tearing up his chemistry book, ripping pages out in hanks, then shredding them one by one. The Piranha kicked off her shoes and took a one-footed position that Nadia remembered from her own yoga class as Tree Pose.