Page 78 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

Everly walks me to the front door the next evening. She reaches up to straighten my collar, which doesn't really need straightening, and holds on to it with both hands before she lets go. Then she steps in close beside me, and I pull my shadows up over both of us.

We cross the quad inside my shadows, her shoulder against my arm. One of them drifts off towards the fountain on its own, and I have to reach out and haul it back over her.

There are wardens by the fountain and at the foot of the administrative building's steps, black robes with the red lining showing at the cuffs. The one on the steps looks right through us as we pass.

The building is mostly dark, and our footsteps are louder on the marble stairs than I'd like. I grew up in this building more than I grew up in my mother's house; when I was small I did my homework on the bench outside her office, kicking my heels against the wood until her secretary told me to stop.

Everly glances at the bench as we pass it, then at me, and I feel her work out through the bond what kind of childhood that was. She takes my hand and doesn't say anything about it.

Her door is open, with a lamp on inside.

She's alone behind the desk with her gloves on and a tray in front of her, a pot of tea and three cups.

Everly sees the three cups a moment after I do, and the jolt of it comes down the bond into my chest. The window behind my mother is black. The lamp makes a small warm circle around her hands while her shadows fill the rest of the room, sitting in the corners the way they have in every room she's been in for as long as I can remember, cold enough that I expect to see my breath.

"Miss Grey." My mother doesn't sound surprised. "I wrote alone to my son, so I assumed you would come. You've never once done what this school asked of you. Sit down."

She pours before either of us has sat down and sets the cups on their saucers in front of the two empty chairs. Earl Grey, the bergamot rising off it in the steam. It's what she drinks in the evenings, and what she used to give me, weak and with milk, when I was small enough to need two hands for the cup.

We sit. Neither of us drinks it.

"You look well," she says.

It's the closest thing to praise she's given me since I was a boy, and I feel my back straighten in the chair before I can stop it.

"Noah said the same thing," I tell her.

"Noah is right about most things." She lifts her cup and sips. Her gloves are grey kid leather, and I've never seen her take them off to drink tea. "Your shadows have gone wild. I saw them from across the courtyard on enrollment day. I taught you that shape, Callum, and I would know it anywhere, and I have never once seen it off its lead."

I look down. One of my shadows has slid off my shoulder while I wasn't paying attention. It's lying across her rug now, stretched towards the desk and the lamp, loose at the edges. I call it back. It takes its time about it, and she watches it the whole way.

"Is that why you asked me here?" I keep my voice level. "To talk about my shadows?"

"No." She sets the cup down on its saucer without a sound. "I asked you here because you're my son, and I wanted you to hear it from me." Her eyes move to Everly. "And because I would rather say the rest of it to Miss Grey's face than have it carried home to her secondhand."

So she tells us, in order, the same way she gave us our expulsion in this office, with no more feeling in her voice than if she were reading out the minutes of a meeting.

"The Well has been dying since before you were born. You knew that much. You didn't know how fast." She turns her cup on its saucer. "Every year it needed more, and every year the families had less to give it. Then you walked into the water, Miss Grey, put your hands in it and pushed the gold back down, and every mage on this campus felt it turn over. Half the second-years dropped their spells in the middle of practicals, and nothing cast cleanly again before the end of term. Then Helena Grimoire walked out of the dark, alive, after we'd all agreed she was dead, and went into the hills, tied my son and his friends into the ley lines, and started making grimoires strong."

She says Helena's name as if it were the name of a disease.

"That woman wants grimoires on top, and everyone else on their knees asking them for magic." She folds her gloved hands on the blotter. "It was going to be her world or ours. I chose ours."

"So you fed a girl to the Well," I say.

"Yes." She doesn't even put her cup down to say it.

"Her name was Nell." Everly's voice shakes on it. "Nell Fortuna. She was halfway through a book."

"I know what her name was." My mother doesn't look away from her. "I had her drained until she walked down to the Well on her own, in the spring. This time the Well only had to call her."

"And you put a rune on every first-year whose family isn't one of ours," I say.

"Yes."

"And you've let us take it out of them. You've known where we meet for weeks."

"Yes." She turns to Everly. "The wardens came to me the first week. They knew about the boathouse, and they had the Vitae girl's name, and they asked my permission to stop you. I told them no." She turns her cup a quarter turn on its saucer. "You take it out of one child a night, Miss Grey. The sphere is still in my office. I can have every one of them put their hands on it again in an afternoon, whenever I like. So I told them to let you tire yourself out." She looks down at Everly's hands, red and stiff in her lap. "It seems to be working."