School Spirits (Hex Hall Novel, A) (15 page)

“O
kay, so if everyone will just look at their handout, we can get started.”

Romy, Dex, and Anderson watched me with varying degree of “WTF?” stamped on their faces as I stood at the front of the portable classroom, dry-erase marker clutched in my hand. I’d called an emergency meeting of PMS that morning before class, so we didn’t have much time before the bell rang. The sooner I got them on board with this idea, the sooner we could stop Mary.

“When did you have time to make handouts?” Dex finally asked.

“That’s not important. The important part is highlighted halfway down on page two.”

There was a rustling of papers as they all flipped to that section. “This…this says ‘On Witches, Ghosts, and Summonings.’” Anderson stared at me with wide dark eyes. “Summonings? Are we dealing with, like, exorcist-level stuff here?”

“Not exactly.” I turned back to the whiteboard and began writing. “Okay, so Mary Evans’s ghost was summoned by a witch. I’m not sure why, but that doesn’t matter so much right now. The main thing is to find out
who
raised her.”

Behind me, I heard Dex say, “Um, Professor Brannick, I have questions. And they are legion.”

“I’ll take questions at the end.”

“I was joking,” Dex murmured, but I was on a roll. “So, ghost summoning is not that hard if you know where to do it. And there are two places where a witch could’ve summoned Mary Evans. One, the place where she’s buried, and two, the place where she died.”

I turned to face the other members of PMS. “Now we know where Mary is buried, and according to the legend, she died in the cave where she used to meet her teacher. If you’ll flip to page three, you’ll see I’ve attached a map of where I think this cave probably is. Tomorrow night, we’re going to split up and go to those places. Dex and Anderson, you take the grave, me and Romy will take the cave.” I paused. “Hey, that rhymes. Anyway, once we figure out who raised Mary’s ghost, we can figure out why, and we can stop it. And now I’ll take questions.”

Three hands went up.

I called on Dex first. “Um, yes. We have this friend, Izzy Brannick? She’s about your height, has your color hair, and she is a normal, sane-type person. And you, Crazy Lady, seem to have replaced her. Can we have Izzy back now please?”

Rolling my eyes, I pointed at Romy. “Next.”

“Actually, I kind of want you to answer Dex’s question. Seriously, Izzy. What is going on with you?”

“Just trying to be a…a productive member of PMS. So are we all agreed? Friday night, the boys deal with the cemetery, the girls handle the cave.”

“Um,” Anderson said, flicking his hair out of his eyes, “I, uh, was wondering if I could be paired up with Romy instead. No offense, Dex, it’s just…”

Dex held up a hand. “None taken.” Then he gave an exaggerated leer. “I’d much rather spelunk with Izzy, anyway.”

I knew that spelunking meant exploring caves, but I glared at Dex like he’d said something inappropriate.

“Now see, there’s the Izzy I know,” he teased, and I suddenly found myself smiling back. Ugh. I was clearly losing it.

Shaking my head, I rattled my own handouts. “Okay, so me and Dex take the cave; Romy and Anderson, you’re on grave duty. We’ll be looking for anything that suggests a ritual has taken place. Candles, burn marks, funky smells…”

“Salt all over the grass,” Dex said under his breath, but neither Romy nor Anderson paid him any attention.

“So…witches,” Romy said, frowning at the paper.

“Yes. Well, witch, singular at least.”

She looked up at me, squinting behind her glasses. “Pointy-hat-wearing, broomstick-riding witches.”

“They don’t actually do any of that stuff. At least most of them don’t. Some of them like to be retro every once and a while.”

Anderson lifted an eyebrow. “And you know this because?”

I glanced over at Dex. “I read a lot. On the Internet. And also I went to this fancy all-girls’ school, and we had a whole class on…witches.”

When the three of them just continued to stare at me, I added, “It was a really progressive school. Anyway, tonight, PMS patrol, cool?”

“I don’t have anything better to do tonight,” Anderson said, draping his arm around the back of Romy’s chair.

Her dimples deepened as she tried to hide a smile. “Me neither,” she said.

“You know I’m always up for weirdness my Nana won’t approve of,” Dex said, clapping his hands together. “Speaking of, since you’ll have to ride with me tonight, Izzy, why don’t we get off the bus together this afternoon? You can meet my Nana.”

“Right,” I said. I’d been meaning to do that, and while I wish I’d found time to see if any of those magazines had articles like, “Meeting His Nana: What Does It Mean?” there was no time like the present. “That…yeah, sure, that’ll be fine.”

Dex leaned forward, his blue eyes bright. “So let’s do this. PMS’s first witch hunt!”

The bell rang, and the four of us hurried to gather up our stuff and get back into the main building. The boys loped off ahead while Romy and I hung back a little.

“Anderson was in that picture,” she said, worrying her thumbnail between her teeth. “If I’m right, and Mary’s after the descendants of certain people—”

“There were lots of people in that picture, Romy,” I said, looping my arm through hers. I still hadn’t found
the appropriate time to do a hip bump, but arm-looping felt right. “And Anderson is going to be fine because we’re going to find out what’s causing the haunting and put a stop to it. Besides, Mary’s nice enough to leave us little warnings when she picks a victim. If anything
freaky happens to Anderson, he’ll tell us, and we’ll
know.”

That didn’t seem to make Romy feel better, so I tightened my arm in hers. “Or hey! Maybe she’s done with the whole revenge thing. Maybe it was just Snyder’s and Beth’s relatives she was pissed at.”

That theory lasted until second period. Just after P.E., Romy and I were standing by her locker when there was suddenly an explosive
bang
from farther down the hallway.

“The hell?” I heard someone squawk as a cloud of gray smoke began pouring out of a locker.

“Anderson?” Romy cried, but it wasn’t Anderson standing in front of the Exploding Locker. It was Adam, his face a mask of fear and annoyance.

Rushing down the hall, I grabbed his arm. “Are you okay?”

Irritated, he threw off my hand. “Yeah, fine. Just some jackass put a firecracker or something in my
locker.” Waving the smoke away, he peered inside, and I leaned over his shoulder to do the same. All that was left of Adam’s textbooks was a smoldering pile of ash.

“All right, people, make a hole,” Mrs. Steele said, pushing students out of her way. Grimacing, she took in the mess. “First someone’s car malfunctions, now lockers are exploding? What has gotten
into
this place?”

Behind her back, my eyes met Romy’s. Apparently, Mary was far from done.

“O
kay, please do not be alarmed by our yard situation,” Dex said as I followed him up the driveway. “Nana is
a fearsome cook but a truly dreadful gardener. It is known.”

Dex exaggerated about a lot of things, but the state of his yard was not one of them. Even though it was late February and nothing was exactly blooming, every bush and blade of grass in Dex’s front yard was brown and crispy-looking. Even the pear tree looked in danger of keeling over.

But the house itself was pretty. Nicer than ours and a little bigger, there were cheerful yellow curtains in the windows, and when Dex opened the front door, I froze and took a deep breath.

I don’t know what heaven smells like, but if it doesn’t smell like freshly baked cookies, I will be really disappointed.

Seeing my rapturous expression, Dex grinned. “This way,” he said, tugging me into the kitchen.

A woman in a light blue sweater and a pair of what I’m pretty sure could be described as Mom Jeans—Nana Jeans?—was pulling a tray of cookies out of the oven as we walked in.

“Dex!” she cried happily. And then her eyes swung to me. They were the same bright blue as Dex’s, and they nearly matched her sweater. “And who is this?”

“Izzy, my Nana, Nana, my Izzy.”

I shot Dex a glare as his Nana put the tray of cookies on the counter. “Oh, my!” she exclaimed, flapping her hands. “Dexter, if you’re going to have company, especially such lovely company, you need to warn your Nana! I look a
mess
.”

She actually looked pretty nice, in my opinion. Her hair, like Dex’s, was black and curly, with only a few touches of gray at her temples. Glasses perched on the edge of her nose, fastened to a sparkly chain draped around her neck. As she reached out and enfolded
me in a hug, I caught a whiff of vanilla and baby
powder.

Basically, Dex’s Nana was the Perfect Grandmother. When she pulled away, she even patted my cheek. “Oh, aren’t you a pretty thing. Dex said you were, but it’s nice to see he didn’t exaggerate for once.”

My cheeks flamed at that, and next to me, Dex nudged my ribs. “If anything, I undersold her, didn’t I, Nana?”

She swatted at his arm. “Now, Dexter, you’re making her blush. Come on and grab a couple of cookies, and tell me all about yourself, Izzy. What a sweet name. Is that short for Isabelle?”

“Isolde,” I told her, scooping up a cookie from the tray. Dex sat down on a gingham-covered stool and patted the one next to him. I sat, taking a bit of my cookie. It was everything I had hoped it would be and more. I wondered if Dex’s Nana would consider adopting me.

“How pretty,” she said. She moved to the giant stainless steel fridge and pulled out a carton of milk. “Wasn’t there a famous story about an Isolde? Something beautiful and tragic?”

“Tristan and Isolde,” Dex said before I could answer. “And quite frankly, I’m hoping the romance of Dexter and Isolde ends up with a lower body count.”

Nana tittered, and I brushed stray crumbs of cookie from my mouth. “There is not a romance of Dexter and Isolde,” I said, but I caught myself smiling anyway. Then I remembered. Dex was not just some boy, and I was not just some girl sitting in his Nana’s kitchen, eating the most wonderful cookies ever created by woman. He was some kind of Prodigium, and I was here to find out what.

And even if there hadn’t been that, romance between me and Dex was totally out of the question. I tried to imagine taking him home to Mom, introducing him as my boyfriend. Brannick women were always very careful about the men they chose. They had the bloodline to think about, after all, which was why they tended to pick warriors. Soldiers, Navy SEALS. My grandfather had even been a Green Beret.

Whenever Mom had talked about Finley’s and my dad, the one word that always came up was “strong.” Dex couldn’t even jog around the football field without his asthma flaring up.

And it wasn’t just that. How would Mom react to a boy who was so purely…decorative? Sure, Dex had salted a grave, but he’d taken his nice coat off first.

I shook those thoughts off. They were unproductive and pointless. Instead, I smiled at Nana and said, “So you and Dex moved here from New York?” I thought as far as questions went, it was fairly harmless. But I didn’t miss the way Nana stiffened slightly. “We’ve lived a little bit of everywhere. And I’ve told Dex that the important thing is the future, not the past.”

She stroked his hair. “He’s here now, and that’s all that matters.”

Dex smiled at her, but there was something kind of puzzled about it. Maybe he thought her answer was as weird as I did, but it almost seemed like more than that. It was the same look Finn used to get when she couldn’t remember where she’d put her crossbow. (That happened a lot more often than it should have, if you asked me. You should always know where you’ve left deadly weapons.)

“Nana’s right,” Dex finally said, slapping a hand on the counter. “As Shakespeare said, ‘Don’t look back, you should never look back.’”

“That was a Don Henley song, dear, but it’s an excellent sentiment nonetheless,” Nana said, patting his hand. Weirdness passed, she smiled at me again. “Izzy, will you be staying for dinner?”

If the rest of her food was as good as her cookies, I’d be an idiot not to.

Dex answered for me. “She will be. And then we’re going to go out for a while, if that’s okay with you.

Nana’s face creased into a frown. “Are you sure that’s a good idea, sweetie? Your asthma has been so bad lately—”

But Dex just waved that off. “I’m fine. It’s the time of year or something. Asthma season. But I have my trusty inhaler”—he pulled it out of his coat pocket, shaking it—“and the Fair Isolde to protect me if need be.”

When Nana didn’t stop frowning, Dex dropped the act, leaning in closer to her. “I’ll be fine, Nana,” he said, his voice softer. He laid a hand over hers, and his bracelet caught the light. “You worry too much.”

She touched the silver links around his wrist. “I’m your grandmother,” she said. “It’s allowed.”

Watching them together made me smile, and started this kind of warm, blooming feeling in my chest. Not only was Dex cute and smart and funny, but he loved his Nana—

And that’s when something occurred to me. Dex’s Nana. She was related to him by blood. That meant if he was Prodigium, then so was she. That’s how that worked; there was no skipping generations, no freak human kid born to Prodigium parents.

There were no vibes coming off of Nana, and she’d hugged me. Touched my cheek. I hadn’t felt anything. Not even the slightest hint that she was Prodigium. Still, just to be sure, I leaned forward and said, “That’s a pretty ring.”

Just as I’d hoped, she pushed her hand toward me so that I could get a better look. As she did, I caught her fingers.

Nothing. Not even the slightest tingle.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” she said. “I got it from one of those home-shopping shows. You know, the ones that come on late at night and make silly old ladies like me spend more than they should.”

I laughed harder than necessary, trying to cover my confusion. Nana wasn’t Prodigium, so Dex couldn’t be one either. But if that was true, what the heck was I feeling? No matter what everyone kept saying, I knew that little hum of magic when I touched him wasn’t just hormones.

I turned my head and looked at him grinning at his Nana, his silver bracelet winking in the sun, his coat just impossibly, stupidly purple.

Or did I just want Dex to be Prodigium because the idea of liking him was a lot scarier?