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Tentatively, she tries a second time. I glance at the rest of the room as she looks at the note, though there’s not much to see. Her roommate is clearly a fan of pink, but Adrienne’s side has no embellishments, no decorations. My heart sinks a little. There’s nothing in here that looks like her.
“Break the teeth? In the mirror? What the hell is this? Where’d you get it?”
“It was on your bed when I went back to your room. It also…it also came with this.” I hold the nail out in the palm of my hand.
Her eyes snap to mine, then the nail, then the note.
“…and Westcott sort of glamoured a Marionette to deliver a message to me, insinuating Mom and Calla were with him, trying to get me to go back, then made the guy jump off the roof,” I add in a rush.
Adrienne’s eyes bulge, and she slowly backtracks until she hits her bed and sits. “You should have started with that. You think this is from them?”
“Do those numbers mean anything to you?”
She frowns. “Volume—like Mom’s spell books?”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
She flips the note around her fingers then squints at the bloody fingerprint. “What was on this page?”
“Who knows?” I cross my arms and lean against the opposite wall. “The books are at the Carrington estate. At least, I think they are. They’re not at Auclair. Mom cleared out her stuff when she took off. Westcott has control of the entire first region now, and there’s a magical boundary up that no one can pass through.”
“Fuck,” she breathes. “And the teeth part?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Silence falls between us, and she runs her fingers over the blood on the card again. “It feels like Calla’s magic,” she whispers.
“I know.”
She holds my eyes, a determined line forming between her eyebrows. “So how the hell are we going to get this book?”
* * *
By the timedinner rolls around, catching up with Daniel turns into a group event. There’s a diner not far from the academy, about the same distance as Main Street from York.
I walk there with Adrienne, and the others are already waiting for us at a booth in the back. Daniel offers a wave as we approach, and Kirby and Monroe smile, but everything about it looks off, forced.
Adrienne and I slide into the remaining corner seats of the booth, though two chairs on the opposite side of the table are still empty.
“Beth and Wes said they’d swing by,” Daniel explains.
I try to catch Monroe’s attention, but she’s pointedly not looking at me. I catch the red rims of her eyes before she tilts her head, letting her hair obscure her face, and Kirby protectively grips her leg beneath the table.
“Is everything okay?” I murmur.
There’s an edge to Kirby’s round features I don’t think I’ve ever seen before, and she gives a minute shake of her head, the message in her eyes clear.Not now.
I nod slowly and lean back in my chair, my stomach twisting at Monroe’s body language—the rounded set of her shoulders and bowed head. What the hell could have happened to have her of all people looking like that?
The diner around us is quiet with only a few other patrons. The entire place is drenched in a red tint from the neon signs along the walls advertising things likeactuallyBloody Marys and spiked milkshakes.
“Have you guys been here before?” I ask, trying for a lighthearted, casual tone, but I think we all see through it.
“The hash browns are good,” offers Kirby.
I glance around the diner again. The closest person is sitting on one of the padded stools along the countertop, and there’s a booth of people along the smudged windows.
“They can’t hear us,” says Adrienne. I lift an eyebrow, and she opens her hand, revealing the blood pooled in her palm. “And if they look this way, they will feel an inexplicable urge to look somewhere else.”
