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It was on the tip of my tongue to say that it must be our two necklaces drawing us together…but somehow that didn’t seem true. Certainly the key with the Blood stones throbbed and burned every time I was near him—as it was now—but it didn’t control my emotions, or his, I didn’t think.
“I…I don’t understand why either,” I said in a low, breathless voice. “But…I want to be with you, too. Even though I don’t completely trust you.”
He shrugged, the intensity leaving his face to be replaced by the cool, indifferent mask he so often wore.
“Yet another reason to do your little spell, I think. Maybe we can both get some clarity as to why we feel so strongly drawn to each other.”
Then he folded my fingers around the strand of his hair and took my arm so we could continue on our way to the Dining Hall, as though nothing had happened.
39
“So he didn’t even care when you told him what you needed it for?” Kaitlyn asked, wide-eyed when I recounted this story to her and Emma later on that evening. Avery was in the other room getting his scrying tools ready. He had told us everything had to be just right in order to cast this particular spell.
I shook my head.
“No—in fact, he said he wants to know why he feels so strongly for me. I’d like to know too,” I added. “I mean, he looks like a male model and I’m just so…ordinary.”
“You are not!” Emma said indignantly. “With that gorgeous auburn hair and your big green eyes!”
“Not to mention your creamy, perfect skin,” Kaitlyn said quietly. “You’re really pretty, Megan—don’t sell yourself short.”
“Thanks guys, but I honestly wasn’t fishing for compliments,” I said. “I’m being serious. I’d say I’m about average—especially compared to some of the girls in this school that Griffin could date. I mean, look at the Faes! They’re all blonde and gorgeous and perfect…”
“Nobody can stop looking at them,” Emma said dryly. “And that includes the Faes themselves. If there is a group of more self-obsessed people in the world, I don’t know who they are. The whole bunch of them are like Instagram influencers who all decided to enroll at Nocturne Academy to take Biology and English Lit classes. Hash tag Blessed. Hash tag WokeUpThisWay,” she mocked.
“Emma’s right—they’re pretty but they’re as shallow as a puddle,” Kaitlyn said firmly. “Maybe Griffin wants some substance, which you certainly have.”
“Well, look at the Nocturnes then,” I pointed out. “They’re just as perfect as the Faes, only they have that Ice Queen kind of aura around them that makes them even more mysterious. And I’m betting they have substance too,” I added.
Emma shook her head. “He’s being shunned by his own kind, right? So dating them is out.”
“Well, I guess he could always date a Drake,” Kaitlyn remarked dubiously. “Though none of them are ever very friendly.”
“You’re all forgetting about the Edict,” Avery said, coming into the room at last. “Griffin can’t date or hook-up with anyone outside his own kind without breaking it.”
“But isn’t he breaking it by being with Megan?” Kaitlyn asked doubtfully. “By marking her?”
Avery nodded. “Of course—which is exactly my point. If he’s going to break the most sacred Other law we have, he could have broken it with anyone. But he chose you, Princess Latimer.” He nodded at me, one eyebrow arched. “And now we’re going to try and find out why.”
“It’s not like we’ve really broken the Edict,” I pointed out, feeling uneasy. “I mean, it’s not like we’re Blood-Bonded or anything.”
“Not yet, anyway,” Avery remarked, grinning. “Now gather round, children—it’s time to do a little scrying.”
He was carrying a vast silver bowl in both hands, carved all over with intricate markings. The bowl had been polished until it shone and I could tell it was a cherished artifact.
Avery sat it carefully down in the middle of our small coffee table and went back for a silver pitcher carved in the same unknown symbols as well as a few other implements. Then he beckoned for us all to join him around the coffee table.
We came to kneel around the bowl, bringing cushions to protect our knees from the cold flagstones.
“This is the ceremony of scrying—the finding out of truth or future events through the medium of water, which is one of the most powerful earthly elements we possess,” Avery lectured quietly. “I will not call the corners for this spell, but I will invoke the Goddess in my incantation. I need your full and complete concentration as we go forward.”
We all nodded our assent and Avery nodded back, apparently satisfied.
Slowly, with great reverence, he lifted the elaborately carved pitcher and poured water into the silver bowl until it was about half full, being careful not to splash.
“Come closer, coven-mates,” he murmured. “Let us look into the water together.”
