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“Good lord,” I whisper, so pissed off it wouldn’t surprise me if smoke came out of my ears.
“She always came to us during parties and crashed into us,” Sindri says, “or grabbed our hands and tried to pull us to dance with her.”
“Lots of touching,” I breathe. “I wonder… Maybe all she needs is physical contact to siphon you. Did you feel tired afterward?”
“After a party?” Sindri lets out a bark of laughter. “Are you kidding me? Who wouldn’t?”
I sigh. “Right. Question now is, how did she manage to sink her hooks into Jason back then if the rest of you remained immune?”
“They say most witches have an affinity to one element,” Sindri says. “Which may be why Ophelia managed to enchant Jason even back then. Her affinity could be to the earth.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Ashton says. “They say the Queen Witch will rule over all elements. She will be the fifth element. Their heart. Their center.”
Theirheart. For some reason, that rings a bell. Hadn’t Sindri’s desk spoken of a heart?
“And Ophelia’s power is too great for her to be a common witch,” I whisper. “So what gives?”
“I’ve scoured the library.” Ashton runs a hand through his hair. “I’ve found nothing else on the topic. I need to pressure my sister to find out more, but with Toby in the hospital I haven’t dared push.”
“I said I’ll ask the elders, if that’s what you’re about to say next,” Sindri mutters under his breath. “First chance I get.”
“Sin, no.” I turn to him. “Please. The desk said you shouldn’t.”
“Maybe it’s my destiny to go against my desk’s wishes.” He winks at me.
“That’s not funny.”
“It is, a little,” Ashton says with a grin. “No man or woman born, coward or brave, can shun his destiny.”
“More Homer?” Sindri groans.
“That’s definitely not funny, Ash,” I say.
“No,” he admits, “it isn’t.”
I sigh. “If you believe in destiny, that is.”
“Do you?” He turns toward me.
“I believe nothing is impossible,” I whisper. “After all, I am here.”
“Yes, you are.” Sindri rolls on his side toward me, his eyes heavy-lidded. He strokes my leg.
“With you guys,” I continue. “With magic. With a sort of undefined mission. If you’d asked me a month ago if I thought this might happen, I’d have laughed.”
“That question of coincidence was never answered,” Sindri says thoughtfully. “Ophelia was a student here, a clingy, annoying student who may have been siphoning our magic, and then she went AWOL as strange surges in the magic began to affect us. You said you came to avenge your cousin, but Ophelia claims she never said anything bad about us. Why did you assume that we were the reason she was hurt?”
“Her diary,” I whisper. “I found it when she was brought back home. It had your names in it and comments that convinced me that you were behind what happened. It also has strange symbols scrawled all over it.” I start to get up. “Can you read magical symbols? You do, don’t you? Let me show it to you.”
Sindri sits up, too, as I hunt for the diary. I’ve always kept it under my pillow but when we pulled the mattress to the floor, it hadn’t been there. Maybe in the closet… Maybe in a desk drawer…
Nothing. It’s nowhere to be found. Frustrated, I flop back down on the mattress. “It’s gone.”
“Someone took it,” Sindri says.
I pull on my hair. “But why? Who would know?”
“You didn’t tell anyone about it?”
