I’m worried this might hurt me. Or worse.
Kai glowers, but doesn’t protest. Morgan looks smug.
I turn to my best friend. “You wouldn’t suggest I be the one to talk to Vivian if it was dangerous for me. Right?”
“Right,” Morgan says. Pauses. “Well…” She purses her lips. “I don’tthinkshe’d do anything to harm you. I really, truly don’t. But full disclosure is that I don’t know. So it’s more of an…informed consent kind of thing.”
“Magic doesn’t work like that,” Kai says darkly. “It literally does not have boundaries, Morgan.”
“Okay, but?—”
“Itdoesn’t, and you know it,” Kai cuts her off sharply. “Stop trying to equivocate, okay? Lying about how it works isn’t helping your case. I may have my differences with the Catholic church, but you ask me, they had a good reason to burn you people at the stake.”
“Kai.” Kingston, this time. “Too far.”
Morgan, seemingly unbothered, tosses her ponytail. “You wish.”
From there, we decide on logistics. Time and date—the next full moon, three days from now. Apparel, accessories—Morgan will prepare and bring, and Kai will back the fuck off. It’s all as suddenly mundane as planning a surprise birthday party.
But there’s still something gnawing faintly at the back of my mind, the whole time, something I don’t want to shine the full light of my consciousness on but that I can’t banish entirely.
What if she says it anyway?
What if we manage to talk to Vivian, toget an answerfrom her, and that answer is justGwenna has to die?
What would I do?
WhatwillI do?
Out loud, though, I say nothing. Only listen.
“So that’s it,” Callahan’s saying. “That’s all we have to do to talk to her?”
Morgan lifts a shoulder. “Basically. Like I said, the biggest hurdle is just convincing her to appear in the first place. We’ll stack the deck and then hope she plays ball.”
“And until then, we should…” Lanz prompts.
Morgan gives him a blank look.
“How should I know? Go…” She makes a little shooing gesture. “…play with swords, or whatever it is you do in your spare time. I’ll see you at the lake.”
SEVENTEEN
GWENNA
On the fourth day,dawn returns.
I open my eyes to light,sunlight,streaming through the gauzy curtains in my room, watery and weak but undeniably there. And I almost fall to my knees and weep.
Classes resume. Everything snaps back to life, people chattering and gasping overcreepy as hellandfinallyandfelt like we were in a horror movie.When I get to my Art History class, usually sleepy and slow-paced, it’sbuzzing: faces animated, gossip flying. Even Ponytail Brett seems to have lost his usual mannered composure.
“That was so weird, right?” he murmurs, to me or to no one in particular. “This is all so freaking weird.”
I can barely focus to take notes, as if anything about the late Bronze Age could matter now.Although maybe it does, I think dully.Maybe there’s some magical key or amulet or something the Lady will want me to find.
That’s all I can really think about. The full moon. That night.
When darkness falls, around four or so, I’m in the study with Callahan, and I canfeelthe anxiety clenching around my stomach.
