Page 19 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

"Felix, I swear to God⁠—"

The groundskeeper hasn't seen us yet, because he's got a flashlight in one hand, the leash in the other, and his face in his phone. The dog's ears are up, though, and its tail has stopped moving. Any second now it's going to bark, and I don't even need my sight for that; I've met dogs.

I put my palm flat on the wall. The stone is cold and wet with dew, and the magic is right there under it, way more than I'm asking for. I don't have a die out because I don't need one anymore, which kind of feels like cheating at a game I invented.

I just think, that dog would rather be somewhere else, and the ground hands me a future where that's true—and it comes out of me so much bigger than I meant that it knocks me back a step into Ren.

Every dog in the county probably wants to be somewhere else now. The Lab sneezes, turns around, and tows the groundskeeper back the way they came, hard enough that he stumbles and swears. Their footsteps fade. Somewhere off towards town, faint across the fields, other dogs start barking at nothing.

"Huh." Ren's right behind me, one hand on my back to keep me upright. He's been right behind me since the motel, since I told him the twelve percent didn't go away on the hill, and it's stupid how much lighter it is to have one person who knows that.

"Didn't mean to do that much," I tell him. "I'm still getting used to the size."

"Don't let Atlas hear you say that," Everly whispers, and climbs the wall.

Atlas makes a strangled noise from the top of it. I'm grinning so hard my face hurts, and down the thread between us Everly's shaking with it too, even though she won't let a sound out of her mouth.

I go up last, on slick stones with numb fingers. Halfway up, my boot slides out of its crack and I'm left hanging there by my hands, swinging, with the whole of Nyxhaven on the other side of the wall and the ground looking a hell of a lot farther down than it did from the car.

Then Everly's hand closes around my wrist from the top. She hauls on me with both arms, her face screwed up with effort, until I scramble the rest of the way and tumble over onto the wet grass, flat on my back.

"Graceful," she whispers, leaning over me.

"I meant to do that," I tell the stars.

She laughs out loud before she can stop herself, and Callum hisses at both of us to shut up.

She doesn't move, though. She's kneeling over me in the wet grass with her hair falling down around my face, still grinning, and her hand is still wrapped around my wrist.

What I want to tell her is that I'm glad it's her face I'm looking up at. I've wanted to say it all week. It gets as far as my teeth, and then I get a flash of myself saying it, with no odds on it, and I can't see where it goes, so I don't say it.

"You've got mud on your nose," I tell her instead.

"So do you." She wipes it off with her thumb. Then she leans down and kisses me, quick and warm, in the dark at the bottom of the wall, with Atlas swearing under his breath right beside us. Her mouth tastes of cold air, and for a moment I don't see any futures at all. I just see her.

"For luck," she whispers.

"Luck isn't real," I whisper back. "Trust me, I'd know."

She grins down at me. "Then it was just a kiss." And she gets up and holds out her hand.

Callum hides us across the quad.

His shadows rise out of the grass when he asks for them—getting them to stay where he puts them is another story, and watching Callum Bolingbroke try to herd them is maybe the best entertainment I've had all year. They spill over all of us, thick as a blanket pulled up over your head.

Then one of them starts drifting off towards the library on its own, and Callum has to reach out and drag it back, swearing under his breath in Latin, which he only does when he's really upset. But they hold. Inside them the night goes soft at the edges, the lamps blurred, the air close and smelling faintly of turned earth.

We walk straight through the middle of Nyxhaven in the dead of night, wrapped in dark. We pass the fountain, shut off for the season, and the steps of the administrative building, where I stood last fall with a fresh ward mark on my hand and smiled at Catalina as if I were having a lovely time. Along the back of the library the steps are wet and shining under a lamp, and there it is: the flash from the car.

Then we walk past a warden.

He's standing under a lamppost at the corner of the path with his black robe pulled close and the red lining showing at the cuffs, bored out of his skull and stamping his feet against the cold. His knife is out, his thumb is bloody, and every so often he shuts his eyes and feels around the quad for magic, the way Brittany said. We walk right past him, close enough that I could just reach out and flick his ear.

He doesn't so much as twitch the whole time we pass. He just stands there frowning at nothing with his eyes shut. I've never loved a man more.

I can't see Ren in the dark, but through the bond his grin is enormous, a bright jolt. Atlas's comes through next, rougher, then Everly's, and for a few steps all of us are walking across Catalina's quad grinning like idiots inside a blanket of Callum's shadows—except Callum, who keeps a straight face. His grin comes through the bond, though, smaller and quieter, and that one I like best.

The space beside Callister hasn't changed. I look at it and my eyes slide off, the same as always, to the hedge, to the path, to the dark windows of Callister House next door, to anything else. I know there's a building there—hell, I've been inside it—but I still can't look at it for more than a second without thinking about something else, and the something else is usually just lunch.