The Awakening Read online

  Agnes looked away at the double meaning of my last word, no doubt remembering the warning I’d given her about never borrowing some of my magic again.

  At this, Roo sat up straighter again. “Wraiths?” she said, and her voice lowered. “They attacked you, too?”

  “You both were attacked by wraiths.”

  We all turned toward the speaker. Headmistress Talia approached, her long skirts flowing around her ankles, hands lost in the wide folds of her sleeves. She fixed her sharp gaze on me, studying me as if seeing something the rest of us could not.

  “Miss Buttsworth,” said the headmistress, “would you mind giving me a moment with Reini and Rooni, please?”

  Agnes glanced between us before taking her leave, casting me a final look before exiting the infirmary.

  Once she was gone, Headmistress Talia studied Roo and me a moment. “How do you feel?” she asked me.

  “Fine.”

  She nodded. “Not many survive an attack from wraiths, and yet, the both of you prevailed.”

  “Why were we attacked by them in the first place?” Roo asked.

  “They intended to drain you of your magic, I’m sure,” Headmistress Talia answered, speaking as plainly as if commenting on the weather.

  Upon seeing our expressions, she continued, “Wraiths are the one creature—other than another witch—who are capable of such. I would wager Evelyn sent them.”

  “You told us we were safe here at the Academy,” Roo said, her tone accusatory. “How did they get in? How’d they get past the wards?”

  “You’re sharp, Roonie,” the headmistress said. “Sharp enough to cut if you’re not careful.”

  “They’re reasonable questions,” I said.

  Headmistress Talia nodded, raising her pointed chin as she observed us through her cat-rimmed glasses. “Indeed they are. I’m still looking into how the wraiths got in, but I suspect that Evelyn’s power is growing, and soon there will be no wards strong enough to keep her out.”

  The headmistress reached into her large sleeve and removed a small pyramid-like item. She waved a hand over the top of it, and a translucent newspaper article appeared in the air just above it, sort of like a hologram. It shimmered, the headline bold and apparent.

  FOURTH WITCH FOUND DRAINED IN PAST MOON CYCLE

  “The fourth?” Roo said.

  Headmistress Talia nodded gravely. “In the past month, I’m afraid. But Evelyn has been collecting magic in earnest for the past year, and I’ve attributed a minimum of twenty drainings to her in that time.” She cleared her throat, meeting our eyes. “And a few before that as well.”

  “Our mother,” I said.

  The Headmistress made the sign of the Goddess and nodded, tucking away the pyramid thing.

  “And Aunt Meera,” Roo added.

  Another nod.

  I watched my sister as the headmistress made her confirmation, watched the way her hazel eyes darkened imperceptibly to anyone but me. Whatever thoughts were going through Roo’s head, they were not nice ones.

  “She needs to be stopped,” Roo said, and I got the feeling that stopped was not the word she’d wanted to use.

  “She does,” said Headmistress Talia. “And I’m working on it. The last time I tried… Well, things did not go as planned.”

  “What happened?” Roo asked.

  “She drained me of over half my magic.”

  Roo and I fell silent as these words hit us. Though the headmistress was not one to show emotion, at least not since I’d known her, I could tell that even speaking of this was hard to do.

  “She needs to be stopped,” Roo repeated.

  I nodded slowly. “Yeah, but if Mother Eve has drained that many witches, our mother and aunt among them, and taken half of your power…” I looked at the headmistress. “Are there even any witches alive capable of stopping her?”

  A chill raced up my spine as the Headmistress only looked at us, the expression on her face an answer in itself.

  17

  “Nope,” I told Roo once we were back in our dorm room.

  Her pretty face scrunched up. “What do you mean, ‘nope?’”

  “I mean, no, we are not going to face off against some crazy ass witch hell-bent on draining other witches of their magic.”

  “Rey, she killed our mother. She killed Meera!”

  I glanced around, telling Roo to keep her voice down. We were alone in the room at the moment, but that didn’t mean someone couldn’t overhear us.

  “We don’t know that,” I said. “Honestly, we don’t know if anything we’re being told is the truth.”

  Roo blinked at me like I was the crazy one. “We were there when Mother Eve attacked Aunt Meera—Remember? The person who basically died saving us?”

  I nodded. “Yes, I do remember, Roo. I remember how Mother Eve killed her as easily as I would kill an ant. I know that our mom couldn’t stop her, and neither could Headmistress Talia, who were both much more experienced witches than us. Why in the world would we even stand a chance against her? How is that even something we’re thinking about?”

  Roo tossed her hands up, staring at me from her bed, adjacent to mine. “How can we not think about it? It seems to me that we better start thinking pretty hard, because whether we want to face her or not, Mother Eve seems set on getting to us.”

  “What is it you think we’re going to do?” I asked. “Kill her?”

  Roo didn’t say anything for long enough that I scoffed.

  She threw her hands up again. “I mean, if it’s her or us.”

  “I have no plans of being in any such situation.”

  “Oh, really?” Roo said. “Did you plan on Pa dying? Or being a witch? Or traveling halfway across the country to join some secret supernatural academy? Did you plan on any of this?”

  She had a point, but it was all just too much. It wasn’t even that I was afraid for myself—I was—but I couldn’t stand the idea of Roo being anywhere near Mother Eve. I’d lost everyone else I loved, and I couldn’t stand the thought of losing her, too.”

  Whatever expression was on my face must have given this away, because Roo sighed and stood, crossing the two feet to my bed and taking a seat beside me. She slipped her arm around my waist and rested her head on my shoulder.

  “The only way we can do it is together, Rey,” she said.

  I nodded. On this point, we agreed. The only way we were going to make it through any of this would be together.

  “You know I’ll stand with you always,” I said, and had a sinking feeling in my gut that this was somehow predictive, somehow sealing.

  “Good,” Roo said. “That’s all I need to know.”

  I looked at her from the corners of my eyes. “Was it ever in question?”

  She smiled—not the smile I remembered from our childhood, the one that could cast away shadows in even the darkest of rooms—but the one I’d seen her wearing lately, the smile that was tinged with sadness.

  “We never talked about dad,” I said.

  Roo stiffened beside me. “What’s there to talk about? He’s gone.”

  “I don’t know… Our feelings and emotions toward it all?”

  “I’m sad. You’re sad. What else is there?”

  “How are you so okay with it?”

  Roo shrugged. “I think because of what I can do, I have a different relationship with death than most people.”

  I had to swallow to get out the question I’d been wondering about, but hadn’t found the nerve to ask. “Have you…talked to him since it happened?”

  Roo shook her head and covered my hand with her own. “He moved on very soon after it happened, Rey.”

  “Where do they go afterward?”

  Roo sighed. “I don’t know… Hopefully somewhere better than here.”

  That brought up another touchy subject I’d been meaning to broach. “Are you okay?” I asked. “You don’t seem like yourself lately. You seem almost…depressed.”

  Roo chewed her lip.
“I just have this feeling like we’re missing something, like we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don’t trust anyone here. I don’t trust anyone anywhere, I realized. Except for you. You’re all I have, and when I think about that, it seems kind of sad to me… Lonely, you know? To only have a single soul in all the world you can trust, who you really care for. I mean, we’re surrounded by people here, a whole sea of them, but I feel totally alone, like an island.” She shook her head. “Do I sound crazy?”

  I offered a half smile. “You sound more human than you have for a long time, actually. I thought I was the only one. I thought that none of this was affecting you.”

  “Oh, it’s affecting me. You and I just have different ways of showing it. You like to talk about your feelings. I like to drown them in exercise and hold them inside.”

  “Until they explode?”

  Roo smirked.

  “The Headmistress,” I said, “you don’t trust her.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Roo answered anyway. “No, I don’t. But I already told you, you’re the only one I trust.”

  We fell silent for a bit.

  “So… you and Agnes, huh?” Roo said. “You guys best friends now?”

  I snorted. “We had to work together. Why? You jealous?”

  “I’m always jealous.”

  I laughed. It was true. Roo and I were closer than most sisters. We were best friends and soulmates, and a little jealousy came with the territory.

  “She’s not so bad, I guess,” I said. “She made me see things from her perspective, made me realize that it’s probably not easy being her.”

  Roo scoffed.

  “I mean it,” I said. “She’s not a small girl. She’s huge, actually, and kind of mean looking, and she can’t really help that.”

  “Yeah, well she can help being a bitch.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know how I’d be if people just assumed the worst of me because of how I look. Like the other day in brews class, she wasn’t the one who added the Triproot to my brew.”

  Roo’s brow furrowed. “How do you know?”

  “She told me.”

  “And you believed her?”

  I shrugged. “She really didn’t have a reason to lie, and also, after I choked her with my magic, I think she was too afraid to lie to me.”

  “Wait, you did what?”

  I winced at the memory of how I’d lost control a little, of how good it had felt to let my magic take hold. “It was an accident…sort of. But…” I trailed off.

  “But you liked it,” Roo finished for me.

  This wasn’t a question, either, but I nodded in response.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m afraid I know exactly what you mean.”

  I kissed her forehead, not bothering to tell her that that’s what I was afraid of, too.

  “They posted the list!” Candy said to Roo as she sat down across from me.

  We were having breakfast in the dining hall the following week, and I stopped picking at my hash browns to look up. “What list?” I asked.

  Candy nodded at Roo.

  “The list for the Sphera team,” Roo told me. Then she turned to Candy. “Did I make it?”

  “Don’t you want to go check yourself?” Candy asked, barely suppressing a big smile.

  Roo shook her head. “Just tell me.”

  “Yes!” Candy said, as if the answer had been narrowly contained. “You made it! You got shooter, too!”

  Roo smiled—a real smile, and the sight of it warmed a place in my heart that I hadn’t realize had been freezing over.

  “Yes!” she said. “That’s the one I wanted.”

  “I got blocker,” Candy explained. “And I’m just happy I made the team. The competition was tough this year. Oh, and practice is everyday after fifth period, by the way.”

  “But we eat dinner after fifth period,” I said.

  Roo smiled at me, knowing that I didn’t like the idea of not getting to see her at suppertime.

  Candy, none the wiser, shrugged. “The Sphera team eats after. No big deal.”

  “When is the first game?” I asked. “Can I come?”

  “It’s next week,” Candy answered, “and of course you can come.” She glanced around at the others. “You all have to come and cheer us on.”

  I’d been coming to Roo’s sporting events since she was old enough to wear a jersey, so if she was going to be playing, I was definitely going to be cheering.

  The thought of playing on a team again seemed to lift Roo’s mood, which, in turn, lifted mine, and by the time we left the dining hall I was feeling pretty good. When I got to defense training that morning, I was actually ready to work out.

  “Why are you so happy?” Raz asked upon seeing me.

  I pretended not to notice the way the sun glistened off his perfectly tan skin. “Because I get to see you,” I said.

  The look on his face made me laugh out loud. “I was just kidding,” I said. “Relax.”

  “I am relaxed.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Let’s just commence with the torture, shall we?”

  “We’re doing something different today.”

  “Oh, really? Like, what?”

  “Follow me.”

  Raz started off without waiting to see if I’d follow, so I jogged a little to catch up with him. “Does everyone at the Academy take some kind of How to be Unnecessarily Cryptic course or something?” I asked.

  He raised a brow, handsome face turning only partially toward me. “What do you mean?”

  I sighed. “Never mind.”

  Erasmus led me across the field where we usually trained and toward a line of pine trees. When we reached the woods and continued onward, I paused.

  “Are you taking me somewhere to murder me?”

  “As much as the prospect intrigues me,” he said, “not today, princess.”

  My jaw fell open. “Did you just make a joke?”

  He stopped in his tracks. “No joke.”

  My heart skipped a beat. His face was deadly serious, his eyes a darker shade of blue than usual.

  I realized just then that I really was alone with him, hidden in the cover of the trees. He was at least twice my size, large enough to toss me across the earth if he so chose.

  At this thought, my magic thrummed in my veins, reminding me that I was never alone, never utterly defenseless.

  “You thinking about your magic?” Raz asked, pulling me out of my thoughts.

  I blinked. “How’d you know?”

  He shrugged.

  My cheeks heated as I wondered if he’d been watching me closer than I’d realized during our time together. I mean, I’d certainly been sneaking little glances at him whenever I could—there was no way to help it. He was the type of handsome that was too obvious to ignore.

  “You’re staring at me strangely,” he said.

  I scoffed, looking abruptly away. “No I’m not.”

  “You’re not now, but you were before.”

  I groaned. “Can we just get it on?” My cheeks flared instantly red. “I mean, get on with it!” I corrected. “Can we get on with it?”

  Somehow, I resisted the urge to face-palm myself. I tried to act cool with this Freudian slip while simultaneously hoping that the ground would open up and swallow me whole.

  For the first time since I’d met him, I could’ve sworn that the shadow of a smile crossed Erasmus’s face, but it was gone before I could be sure. He removed his bow and quiver from his back and jerked his chin, beaconing me toward him.

  “Have you ever shot one before?” he asked.

  I stared at the fabled bow, shook my head.

  Raz pointed to a tree twenty feet away, there was a crude target drawn on its trunk in white paint. He held the bow out with his left hand, showing me how to grip it. “Now you try,” he said.

  For whatever reason, I was nervous, but I gripped the handle the way he’d shown me, holding it aloft. His strong hands fell on my shoulders, turnin
g my body so that I was in the correct position. With him so close, his familiar scent surrounded me, and I drew a slow breath of salt water and pine.

  “You have good posture,” he said.

  I gasped. “A joke and a compliment all in one day?”

  “Concentrate, princess.”

  Right. I adjusted my hold, sighting the target as Raz nocked an arrow.

  “Relax your grip… You’re going to use your back muscles, not your arms. Good. Now pull the string all the way back to your chin and release in one smooth motion.”

  I let the arrow fly.

  It didn’t go anywhere near the intended tree.

  “Welp,” I said.

  Raz handed me another arrow. “Try again… What?”

  I shrugged. “It’s just… nothing.” I nocked the arrow.

  “Speak your mind, princess.”

  I drew the string, let the arrow fly. It was closer to the target this time, but still didn’t hit the tree.

  I reached for another, but Raz held them out of my reach. “You don’t see the point,” he said.

  It was not a question, but whatever look was on my face answered for me. “It just seems so… archaic.”

  “You might not always have your magic, princess.”

  “Stop calling me that, and why do you think that?” My eyes narrowed. “What makes you think I’ll lose my magic?”

  Instead of answering, he fixed his gaze toward the target, indicating the conversation was over.

  “Try again,” he said.

  18

  “Where’d you get that?” Roo asked.

  I laughed, turning so that she could see the back of it. “I made it, duh. You like?”

  Roo’s face lit up. “Of course I like it. But you’re a dork, in case you didn’t know that already.”

  Looking down at the homemade jersey I’d managed to whip up, I grinned. It was green and black, the school colors, and had Roo’s number on the front and back.

  “It looks like a twelve-year-old made it,” Genie commented from where she was relaxing on her bed.

  Roo stifled a giggle and offered me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Gotta go,” she said. “Coach wants us there early. I’ll look for you in the stands.”