Hexbound (22 page)

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Authors: Chloe Neill

BOOK: Hexbound
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Nobody ever said growing up was easy.
14
Scout could see something was wrong when I walked into class. But it was Brit lit, and Whitfield, our teacher, watched us like a hawk. She took it as a personal insult if we weren’t as enthralled by Mr. Rochester as she was. So she skipped the notes and conversation, and instead pressed a hand to my back. A little reminder that she was there, I guess.
When we were done with class for the day, we headed back to the suite, but I still wasn’t ready to talk about it.
“SRF?” she asked, but I shook my head. I was still processing, and there were things I wasn’t yet ready to say aloud.
We did homework in her room until dinner, and she let me pretend that nothing had happened, that my afternoon hadn’t been filled with questions I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to.
I took what Foley said about real tragedy to heart. I knew what she meant, totally got her point. But if my parents were members of the Dark Elite, how could things get worse than that? If they were helping some kind of medical work or research for the DE—if they were trying to help people who were hurting kids—how was I ever supposed to be okay with that?
I had no idea. So I kept it bottled up until I could figure out a plan, until I could figure out the questions to ask, or the emotions I was supposed to feel.
Eventually, we went to dinner. Like I predicted, you know what was worse than Thursday lunch at the St. Sophia’s cafeteria?
Friday dinner in the St. Sophia’s cafeteria.
We stood in line, trays in hand, for a good minute, just staring at the silver dish of purple and brown and white and orange mess, grimaces on our faces.
Without a word, Scout finally grabbed my tray, stacked hers on top of it, and slid them both back into the stacks at the end of the line. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to be a few inches taller with, like, crazy long legs, but there’s no way I hate myself enough to put that stuff in my body again.”
I didn’t disagree, but my stomach was rumbling. I’d skipped lunch for my SRF visit. “So what now?”
She thought for a second, then bobbed her head. “Mrs. M,” was all she said, and away we went.
I had no clue what that was supposed to mean. I still had no clue when she dragged me into Pastries on Erie, a shop a few blocks down from St. Sophia’s. (Thank God for Friday nights and a respite from the convent . . . at least during the daylight hours.)
One entire wall of the bakery was filled by a long glass case of cakes, desserts, tarts, and cookies of every shape and size. A dozen people stood in front of it, pointing to sweets behind the glass or waiting to make their orders.
“Pastries?” I wondered quietly. “I was hoping for something a little more filling.”
“Trust me on this one, Parker,” she whispered back. “We’re not buying retail today.” She waved at the tall teenager who was dishing up desserts. “Hey, Henry. Is your mom around?”
The boy waved, then gestured toward a back door. “In the back.”
“Is she cooking?” Scout asked hopefully.
“Always,” he called out, then handed a white bakery box over the counter to a middle-aged woman in a herringbone coat.
“Din-ner,”
Scout sang out, practically skipping to the beaded curtain that hung over the door in the back of the bakery.
I followed her through it, the smell of chocolate and strawberries and sugar giving way to savory smells. Pungent smells.
Delicious smells.
My stomach rumbled.
“Someone is hungry,” said a lightly accented voice. I looked over. In the middle of an immaculate kitchen stood a tall, slender woman. Her hair was long and dark and pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She wore a white jacket—the kind chefs wore on television.
“Hi, Mrs. M,” Scout said. “I brought someone to meet you.”
The woman, who was dropping sticks of butter into a giant mixer, smiled kindly. “Hello, someone.”
I waved a little. “Lily Parker.”
“You go to school with our Scout?”
I nodded as Scout pulled out a chair at a small round table that sat along one wall.
“Cop a squat, Parker,” she said, patting the tabletop.
Still a little confused, I took the seat on the other side of the table, then leaned forward. “I thought we were going to dinner?”
“Keep your pants on. Now, Mrs. Mercier is Henry’s mom. She’s also part of the community.”
That meant that while Mrs. Mercier wasn’t an Adept, she knew Adepts and Reapers and the rest of it existed.
“And,” Scout added, “she’s one of the best chefs in Chicago. She was trained at some crazy-fancy school in Paris.”
“Le Cordon Bleu,” Mrs. Mercier said, walking toward us with a tray of flatbread. “And she enjoys feeding Scout when her parents are out of town. Or when St. Sophia’s serves stew.”
“And when you add those together, you get pretty much always,” Scout said matter-of-factly, tearing a chunk from a piece of bread. “Warm, warm,” she said, popping it between both hands to cool it off.
“Which is pretty much always,” Mrs. Mercier agreed, smoothing a hand over Scout’s hair. “I have three boys. Scout did a favor for my youngest, so I do favors for Scout.”
I assumed that favor was why she’d become a member of the community.
Scout handed me a chunk of bread. I took a bite, then closed my eyes as I savored it. I think it was naan—the kind of flatbread you found in Indian restaurants—but this was hot, fresh, right-out-of-the-oven naan. It was delicious.
“Anything particular you’d like to sample tonight?” Mrs. Mercier asked.
Scout did a little bow. “You’re the expert, Mrs. M. Whatever you’ve got, we’d love to sample. Oh, and Lily’s a vegetarian.”
“You’re in luck,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the stoves behind her. There were pots and pans there, which must have been the source of the delicious smells. “We made dal with potatoes. Lentils and potatoes,” she explained. She put a hand on my shoulder and smiled kindly. “Is that okay with you?”
“That sounds really great. Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome. Any friend of Scout’s is a friend of mine.”
 
Mrs. M plated up a heaping mound of rice topped by the saucy lentils and chunky potatoes, and brought us glass cups of dark, rich tea that tasted like cinnamon and cloves. She pulled up a chair as we ate, crossing her long legs and swinging an ankle, arms crossed over her chef jacket, as Scout filled her in on our last few weeks of adventures. The dinner was amazing—even if stew hadn’t been our only other option. And it felt
normal
. Just the three of us in the kitchen of a busy bakery, eating dinner and catching up.
It was clear that Mrs. M loved Scout. I’m not sure what specific thing had brought them together—although I assumed the youngest Mercier had been targeted by a Reaper and that Scout had helped. That was, after all, the kind of thing we did in Enclave Three.
When we were done with dinner, Mrs. Mercier walked us back to the front of the bakery. The workday was over, so the bakery was closing up. The OPEN sign on the door had been flipped, and Henry stood in front of the case, spraying it with glass cleaner and wiping it down.
Mrs. M gave Scout a hug, then embraced me as well. “I need to get a cake ready for tomorrow. Take back some snacks for yourselves and your suitemates, if you like.” She disappeared into the back room, leaving me and Scout staring at a good twenty feet of sugar-filled glass cases.
“Holy frick,” I said, trying to take in the sight. I wasn’t really even hungry, but how was I supposed to pass up a choice like this? I thought of my dad—it was just the kind of decision he’d love to make. He probably would have spent ten minutes walking back and forth in front of the case, mulling over flavors and calories and whether such-and-such would be better with coffee or wine.
A stop at a doughnut place usually took twenty minutes, minimum.
Scout looked equally serious. Her expression was all-business. “Your mission, Parker, should you choose to accept it, is to select an item from the bakery case. It’s a difficult choice. The perils are many—”
“You are such a
geek
,” Henry said, the glass squeaking as he wiped it down.
“Whatever,” Scout said, tossing her head. “You’re a geek.”
“Mm-hmm,” he said doubtfully. He put his bottle of cleaner and a wad of paper towels on top of the bakery case, then walked around behind it. “All right, doofus. What do you want for dessert?”
Scout leaned toward me. “Whatever you get—I’m eating half of it.”
“Good to know,” I said, then pointed at a sandwich made of two rings of pastry stuffed with cream and topped with almonds. “I’ll take one of those.”
“Excellent choice,” Henry said. “You have better taste than some people.”
Scout snorted.
Henry packed it in a small white box, taped it closed, and handed it over with a smile. Then he turned to Scout. “And you, little Miss Geek? What do you want?”
“I am not a geek.”
“Okay, dork. What do you want?”
This time, Scout stuck out her tongue, but that didn’t stop her from pointing to a small tart that was topped with fruit and looked like it had been shellacked with glaze. “Tartlet, please,” she told Henry. He boxed one up for her, and after teasing her with the box for a minute or two, finally handed it over.
“You kids have a great weekend,” he said, as Scout and I headed for the door.
“You, too, geeko.”
The door chimed as we walked through it and emerged back into the hustle and bustle of Chicago. Couples heading out to dinner and tourists getting in some final shopping hurried up and down Erie. Even though the workweek was officially over, the city didn’t seem to slow down. I wondered what it would take for Chicago to be as quiet and calm as my small town of Sagamore . . . and I bet freezing winter winds and a few inches of snow probably did that just fine.
“They’re good people,” Scout said as we crossed the street.
“They seem great. The youngest son—”
“Alaine,” she filled in.
“Was he a Reaper target?”
She nodded. “He was. He went to school with Jamie and Jill. They tagged him when he was pretty far gone—depressed all the time, not interacting with his family. And how could you
not
interact with that family? They’re awesome.”
“They seem really cool,” I agreed. “And Mrs. M clearly loves you.”
“I love her back,” Scout admitted. “It’s proof that sometimes people come into your life you didn’t expect. That’s how a family is made, you know?”
Having been dropped off by my parents at a school I wasn’t crazy about—and having met Scout on my first day at St. Sophia’s—I definitely knew. “Yeah,” I said. “I get that. You and Henry get along pretty well.”
“Ha,” she said. “Henry’s a secret geek. He just doesn’t want to admit it. He watches every sci-fi movie he can find, but wouldn’t tell his friends that. He plays baseball, so sci-fi isn’t, you know, allowed or whatever.”
We walked quietly back down the block, pastry in hand.
“Are you ready to talk about whatever it is you’re not talking about?”
I trailed my fingers across the nubby top of the stone fence around St. Sophia’s. “Not really.”
“You know I’m here for you, right?”
“I know.”
She put an arm around my shoulders. “Do you ever wish that sometimes the world would just stop spinning for a few hours to give you a chance to catch up?”
“I really do.”
She was quiet for a second. “At least we have dessert.”
That was something, I guess.
 
It wasn’t until hours later, when Scout and I were in her room, listening to a mix of music from the 1990s, that I finally felt like talking.
“Jump Around” was blasting through the room. Scout sat cross-legged on her bed, head bobbing as she mouthed the rhymes, her
Grimoire
in her lap. Since my plans to sketch the SRF still hadn’t worked out, I sat on the floor adding details to a drawing of the convent, filling in the texture of brick and jagged stone while I picked at my pastry. And Scout had been right about that—maybe it was the whipped cream (the real kind!), or maybe it was the sugar (lots of it), but it did help.
I finally put my sketchbook away, put my hands in my lap, and looked up at her. “Can we talk about something?”
She glanced up. “Are you going to break up with me?”
“Seriously.”
Her eyes widened, and she used the remote to turn off the music. “Oh. Sure. Of course.” She dog-eared a page of her
Grimoire
, then closed it and steepled her fingers together. “The doctor is in.”
And so, there on the floor of her room, I told her what I’d seen in the SRF, and what I’d learned in my follow-up visit to Foley’s office.

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