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He tugged it out and unfolded it. Quickly, he read the words scrawled across it, drowning out the noise of the others still preparing and talking.
It was a goodbye letter signed by Cyra.
Darien flipped it around, showing the others in the room. “Where’d this come from?”
“It was in Loren’s planner,” Travis said. “She dropped it that day she came to the house. I meant to give it back to her, but I forgot.”
Darien turned the letter back around, reading it again. “Ignite me, Phoenix,” he read aloud. “That’s a weird way to sign a letter.”
Ivy walked over and read over his shoulder. “Wait…”
Darien glanced at her. “What?”
“I’ve seen Dallas using this paper,” she murmured. “See these little stars down in the corner here?” She showed Darien.
The others gathered around.
“What about them?” Darien asked.
“It’s enchanted paper. It’s a brand new thing that’s all the rage in schools right now. They’re looking to ban it.”
Ignite me, Phoenix…
Darien took a lighter out of his pocket and sparked it. All eyes were on him as he lit one corner of the letter.
The paper caught quickly, flames spreading all the way up to the top corners. Darien went to the fireplace in the library, everyone following on his heels, their confusion tangible. He crouched down on the hardwood floor and laid the paper down flat in the ashes. The ashes were old; they only ever lit the fireplaces on cool nights, and only when Max wasn’t at the house. Max hated fire.
The letter didn’t burn. It didn’t even curl or blacken. Instead, once the flames had passed over the whole sheet of paper, the fire went out, new words now covering its surface.
Darien read them quickly, eyes flicking over the paper. The more he read, the sicker he felt.
Someone had forced Cyra to write this letter. Someone had made her write it, so her sudden absence wouldn’t draw attention from the people who cared about her.
What the person who’d made her write it hadn’t anticipated was the letter being written on enchanted stationary.
This wasn’t a goodbye letter. It was a cry for help.
66
The spells over the school went out.
The sudden absence of magic was a feeling Loren would never get used to. It made her feel stripped down to her core, as if her skin, along with her clothes, had been peeled away.
There had been plenty of times throughout her life when the spell systems experienced blips, kind of like how electricity could surge, causing the lights to dim for a fraction of a second before returning to full brightness.
Tonight was different. As she waited in the communal bathrooms on the same floor as the House of Salt, her wavy hair partially dried after the shower she’d taken to scrub all the hairspray out, she realized the spells weren’t coming back on.
Wearing only her pajamas and sneakers with no socks, she shouldered her bag of clothes and hurried out into the hallway.
The school had dissolved into utter chaos. Students were everywhere, bodies jostling her, elbows nearly hitting her in the face. The voices of different professors rose above the din as they directed everyone, not toward their dorms, but toward the safety shelters.
With the spells out, and the Blood Moon climbing higher in the sky, there was no telling what could happen. Whenever a Blood Moon rose, every demon in Terra was called out of their dens to hunt, as if hypnotized, their eyes redder than the moon. Even the Nameless, the most dangerous of all creatures, were allowed to venture beyond their limits until the sun came up. Piling into the shelters was the safest choice.
But where were Dallas and Sabrine?
Loren felt like a fish attempting to swim upstream as she pushed past the students that were all heading toward the shelters.
She couldn’t see them.
