School Spirits (Hex Hall Novel, A) (18 page)

S
ince the school had been evacuated, we held the emergency meeting of PMS at Romy’s house. Romy’s mom had gone overboard with the snack options, laying out three different kinds of chips on the counter, as well as two kinds of soft drinks.

Once we’d gotten our food we followed Romy up to her room.

Romy immediately clambered onto her bed, sitting cross-legged in the middle. Anderson sat next to her, while I took the desk chair and Dex folded his long body onto a bright green beanbag chair.

“Okay,” Romy said, dusting crumbs off her hands, “I think we can all agree there’s some seriously crazy stuff going on at Mary Evans High.”

“I don’t know, Rome,” Dex said, crossing his ankles. “Hedgehog violence is a lot more common than you’d think.”

“What I still don’t get,” Anderson said, grabbing a handful of chips, “is why she went from floating some chalk to this whole reign of terror thing.”

“There never was a haunting before,” I said, finally getting it. “Floating chalk, locker doors opening, all of that was BS, just stories people told.” I was too freaked out and thinking too fast to even pretend I didn’t know much about the paranormal. “This is the only haunting Mary Evans High has ever had, and it’s because someone used magic and freaking summoned a ghost.”

All three of them stared at me, but I didn’t care anymore. This had gone too far, and after what had happened in the gym today, Mary would be stronger than ever. We didn’t have any more time.

I took a deep breath. It had come to this. “And I think I know who.”

I walked over to Romy’s desk and pulled out her bracelet, dangling it on one finger as my other hand fished in my pocket for the charm I’d found in the cave. “This belongs to you, doesn’t it?” I asked her.

Very carefully, Romy put her can of soda down. “Yeah. What are you saying?”

I could feel Anderson’s and Dex’s eyes on me as I said, “You run a ghost-hunting club, but you didn’t have any ghosts to hunt. So maybe you stumbled across a spell somewhere. Hedge magic,” I said. “You just thought you’d call up a couple of local spirits. Nothing too
dangerous, nothing that could hurt anyone. But hedge magic can be tricky, and something went wrong. And people
are
getting hurt, Romy.”

Her face was a mask as she took all of that in. Finally, she got off the bed and snatched the bracelet out of my hand. “That is my bracelet, and yes, that
is
my charm. But I lost it weeks ago. I certainly wasn’t hanging out in a cave, conjuring up ‘hedge magic.’ And what does that even
mean
?”

“It’s something—”

“Don’t say you read it on the Internet.”

“You
do
say that a lot,” Dex said, and for once he didn’t sound like he was joking. In fact, I could swear that was actual suspicion on his face as he watched me. “First the salt thing, now witches summoning ghosts…’”

Romy was looking at me weird, too. “What salt thing?”

Glaring at Dex, I said, “It was nothing. And besides, it didn’t work.”

“All this stuff did start happening when you showed up,” Anderson said, his voice very quiet. I threw up my hands.

“What the heck? You said you’d been investigating the Mary Evans thing since Mr. Snyder. And that was months ago.”

“There weren’t any hedgehogs trying to blow up the gym months ago,” Anderson offered.

“It has nothing to do with me,” I insisted, but even as I said it, a shiver ran down my spine. That was true. They’d had one incident before I came here. Now all hell had broken loose. Had I somehow unleashed all of this?

“You seem to know an awful lot about ghosts for someone who claims to not care about the paranormal,” Romy spit out.

Anderson was nodding slowly, and even Dex seemed troubled. “The thing with the salt,” he repeated. “The day after that, Beth ended up nearly becoming roadkill.”

“I was trying to trap Mary’s ghost,” I fired back. “Not help her kill Beth.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Anderson’s face went hard. “You saw her at the graveyard the night before Beth nearly got mowed down?” he asked Dex.

Dex nodded. “She did say she was trying to keep the ghost in the grave.”

“Which clearly didn’t work.”

“If I were trying to get Beth killed, why would I have saved her life?”

“Like you said, you didn’t want anyone to get hurt,” Romy said. “You felt guilty.”

“No, I didn’t!” I said. Or rather, yelled. Romy actually flinched. Trying to soften my tone, I added, “I didn’t feel guilty because I have nothing to feel guilty about. I didn’t call forth any ghosts. You did.”

“No,” Romy said through clenched teeth, “I. Didn’t.”

“Okay, fine,” I said, so frustrated I wanted to shake her. “You didn’t. Some other person came in here and stole your bracelet and started doing spells all over the place. The point is, we need to stop it. This ghost is dangerous, Romy. And you can’t stop her with a blinking box and a tinfoil hat.”

Romy swung an accusatory glare at Dex. “Stop talking about the hat.”

“
That’s
what you’re choosing to be upset about?”

“If our blinking boxes and tinfoil hats are so stupid to you, Izzy, maybe you shouldn’t be in PMS anymore,” Anderson said.

I was surprised at how much that stung. And even more surprised that Dex stayed quiet. When I looked over at him in the beanbag chair, he was staring at the carpet, chewing his thumbnail.

“Fine,” I said, wishing my voice hadn’t wavered. “Go ahead. Deal with the crazy, murderous ghost on your own. I was just trying to help.”

“We don’t need your help,” Romy said, and to my horror, my eyes started watering. Before the group could see that, I grabbed my backpack and, with as much dignity as I could muster, walked out of Romy’s room,
closing the door behind me.

The walk to my house didn’t take long, but with every step, I got angrier and angrier. This is what happened when you get involved with regular kids. Stupid kids, who summoned a ghost and probably were going to get killed by it. And that was fine. That’s what happened when people messed with stuff that was way over their heads. So sue me for trying to step in and use, oh, I don’t know,
a thousand years of bloodline and experience and training
to keep them safe. Let them wear their tinfoil hats. And let Dex—

The tears nearly spilled over then, but I stopped just outside my front door and took a deep breath. No. I wasn’t going to cry over him.

Them. Whatever.

Mom’s car was parked in the driveway, so I called out for her when I went inside.

“In here,” she answered from the kitchen.

I walked down the hall, and was surprised to find Maya standing next to the sink with Mom.

“What are you—” I started to say, but before I could get out any more, Mom turned to me. She wasn’t smiling, but her eyes were practically shining. “It’s Finn,” she said. “We got a lead on Finn.”

“W
hat?” was all I could say.

Moving quickly, Mom grabbed her jacket from a kitchen chair. “A girl just a few counties over disappeared last week. Same as Finley. Got involved with a coven of dark witches and vanished.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice. The news was great, better than anything we’d gotten so far. But it didn’t seem like much. For some reason, when Mom said she had a lead, I thought it would mean…more. That we could have Finley back tonight.

I suddenly wanted that more than anything in the world. Finn and I had fought, and maybe we’d never painted our nails together, but she hadn’t lied to me. She hadn’t summoned ghosts and then called
me
a freak.

“Anyway, Maya is going to stay here with you until I get back. Should be later tonight, maybe early tomorrow morning.”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” I said, but Mom waved that off.

“Not now, Izzy. With everything that’s been going on, I’d rather you didn’t stay here alone.”

“Besides,” Maya said, moving to the stove, where she was boiling something that smelled like rosemary and death, “we’ll have a big time. I can braid your hair, teach you a few incantations…”

I gave the least enthusiastic “Yay” of all time.

“As soon as I get back, we’ll deal with your hedge witch friend, and then we can get home,” Mom said, startling me.

I whirled around to face Mom. “You know? How?”

Flipping her hair over the collar of her coat, Mom glanced out toward the hall. “Torin is not always completely useless.”

No, but he
was
completely slimy and untrustworthy. “He shouldn’t have told you,” I insisted. “This is my case, and I’m handling it.”

“It was your case when it was a run-of-the-mill haunting. Or figuring out what kind of Prodigium that boy was. Which you never did, apparently.”

“I was working on it,” I told her, but Mom frowned.

“It’s time to put an end to this entire case, Iz, and you’re too involved. As soon as I get back, we’re finishing it. Besides, it’s getting dangerous.”

“It hasn’t been
that
dangerous,” I said, conveniently ignoring the whole pyromaniac hedgehog thing.

But Mom shook her head. “You’re done. If we
can’t put a stop to this haunting now, it’s only going
to get worse. The more afraid people get, the stronger that ghost will become, and the stronger she becomes, the more people she can hurt. If we’re not careful,
this will become a cycle that pretty much can’t be stopped.”

“How will you stop Mary?” I asked Mom, and her eyes slide from mine.

“Stay here with Maya, and when I get back, we’ll fix this.”

“
You’ll
fix this, you mean,” I muttered.

Normally, that would’ve gotten me a sharp “Isolde!” and a remark about talking back. But to my surprise, this time, Mom just crossed the kitchen and laid her palm against my cheek. “You’ve done great here. You’ve proven yourself, and I am proud of you. But it’s time to walk away now.”

The last time Mom had touched my face I’d been ten years old and she’d thought I had a fever. That must’ve been why I just nodded and said, “Okay.”

Mom dropped her hand with a little smile. “Good.”

Turning to Maya, she lifted a canvas bag off the table. “I’ll call from the road.”

“Bring her home, Ash,” Maya said, stirring her
concoction.

“I’m going to try,” Mom replied, and with one last look at me, she was gone.

As soon as the front door closed, Maya opened a
cabinet and began pulling out a couple of bowls. “You want some?” she asked, gesturing to the stove.

“Um…no. I’ve got something to do.”

Before she could offer me anything else—eye of newt tea, bird’s feet stew—I took off to the guest room.

Once the door was shut behind me I marched over to Torin’s mirror, smacking the frame as hard as I could. He stumbled, falling against the bed. “What in the world are you doing?”

“Don’t.” I pointed at him. “I wanted to figure out what to do about Romy on my own. I trusted you.”

“And I was only trying to help,” he insisted. “You could’ve been hurt, and for what? A trio of ungrateful children? They turned on you, didn’t they.” It wasn’t a question.

His words stung, but I tried not to let it show. “They didn’t turn on me. They had every reason to suspect I was a freak because hey, news flash, I
am
a freak. It doesn’t make them ungrateful. It makes them…smart.”

Torin frowned. “Isolde—”

I reached out and covered his mirror, suddenly tired and sadder than I’d thought possible.

After trudging up the stairs I spent the rest of the afternoon putting my few belongings back in the duffel bag, and watching the last few episodes of
Ivy Springs
, season three. But somehow, even Everton and Leslie finally getting together (and riding off in a hot air balloon, which may have been even weirder than the episode where Leslie dreamed she and Everton were on the
Titanic
) still couldn’t cheer me up. Once it was dark, I decided to go down to the kitchen and talk to Maya. Hopefully, she was done cooking.

She was humming when I walked in and puttering with the sad little basil plant Mom had bought at Walmart. It had been sitting, pathetic and abandoned, on our windowsill for a while.

“No bird’s feet, I’m guessing?” Maya asked as I walked in.

“Fresh out,” I told her. Now that the kitchen no longer smelled like Evil Magic, I thought I might try to cook some dinner. Maybe carbs would cheer me up where
Ivy
Springs
had failed. As I pulled out a box of macaroni and cheese, Maya gave a cheerful smile.

“No matter,” she said, heading for the fruit bowl
in the middle of the table. I’d just done the grocery
shopping a few days ago, so there were several apples and a couple of bananas in there. My pasta forgotten, I watched as Maya picked up two apples and one banana and laid them on either side of the basil plant. Muttering something under her breath, she held on to the little pot of basil, and the leaves began to turn green and bright. But as they did, the apples and banana shriveled, going brown.

Once the basil was as perky as it could possibly be, Maya reached up and took off one of the several silver hoops in her ears. “That’s…bizarre,” I said at last.

“Hedge magic!” she trilled with a little shrug.

I scowled. Real magic, hedge magic, all of it apparently led to the same place: with everything crappy and awful. But it wasn’t just that. Something was bothering me. It made sense that Romy was the one summoning ghosts, whether she’d meant to or not, but there was still this little niggling doubt in the back of my mind. Romy was a terrible liar, but she’d looked genuinely confused and hurt in her bedroom today. And there hadn’t been any guilt in her face when I’d shown her the heart charm, just puzzlement.

“Maya,” I said as she continued to cluck over the plant, “let’s say you have a hedge witch summoning ghosts, and the one she’s summoned is all big and scary and dangerous.”

Maya turned back to me, her eyes sad. “Honey, most of the time, you can just get a witch to send the ghost back herself.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, I sat the box of pasta on the counter. “That’s what I’d been thinking—”

“But,” Maya interrupted. “This is not a normal case. The ghost is too powerful. By this point, the only way to stop that ghost is to sever the connection with the witch who did the summoning. Hedge witch, ‘real’ witch, it doesn’t matter. Stop the witch, you stop the ghost.”

I tore open the box of macaroni even though I was far from hungry anymore. “And by stop, you mean…”

“Kill, yes.” She touched one of the charms around her neck. “It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way of it.”

My feet were bare, and when I looked down I saw my bright red toenails. A lump rose in my throat. “She made a mistake. She did a dumb thing, but she shouldn’t have to pay for it with her life. There has to be some other way.”

When I glanced up, Maya was wringing her hands. “What?”

“It’s just…” she broke off, huffing out a breath. “Oh, your mama would kill me if she knew I was even whispering about this, but…there’s maybe one way. To sever the connection without severing your friend’s jugular.”

I pushed the box of macaroni away. “Yeah, I’m going to need to hear about that.”

“But it’s dangerous and potentially unstable, and is really one of those tricks best left to those Pro-whatchamacallit witches.”

Leaning forward, I pressed my hands on the counter. “Maya, whatever it is, I’ll try it.”

She filled me in on what exactly the ritual would require—and do—and while by the end of it, my heart was pounding and my eyes were huge, I agreed that it sounded a lot better than letting my mom run Romy through with a dagger.

“Okay,” I said, pointing at Maya. “You go get
the supplies you need, I’ll call Romy and get her over here.”

But when I dialed Romy’s cell there was no answer. She was probably avoiding me, and I couldn’t blame
her. Luckily, I had her house number too, and I dialed that.

Romy’s mom answered, and when I said who I was, she sounded surprised. “Oh! Izzy. I thought for sure you’d be out with the rest of them.”

My heart lodged somewhere in my throat. “The rest of who?”

“The club. Romy said you’d called a special meeting tonight.”

“Oh, right,” I said, even as my grip threatened to shatter the phone. “I totally spaced. Could you remind me where it is?”

There was a pause, and then Romy’s mom sighed and said, “God, Izzy, you are going to think I am the worst mother, but I honestly don’t remember.” She gave a little laugh. “Such is life with triplets, I guess.”

I did my best to laugh back, but I couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. Hanging up with her, I hesitated only the briefest second before dialing another number.

It picked up on the first ring. “Izzy?”

“Dex,” I said, but before I could get anything else out, he rushed in.

“Izzy, I’m so sorry about what happened this afternoon. You know I—”

“DEX!” I said again, and mercifully, he stopped
babbling. “Are you with Romy and Anderson?”

I could hear him sigh. “No. After you left, I may have quit the club. Very dramatically, I should add, complete with—”

I liked Dex. A lot. Heck, maybe I even more than liked him. But in a crisis, he was not exactly user-friendly. “Do you know where they were going tonight?”

“Yeah,” he answered immediately, and I nearly sagged with relief. “They were going to the cave. You know, the one where we—”

“Right, right,” I hurried on. “Okay, I think I’ve worked out a way we can stop Mary Evans without hurting Romy.”

“I was unaware Romy getting hurt was ever on the table.”

“It’s not,” I said, looking over my shoulder to where Maya was throwing every canister of salt we had into a duffel bag.
At least I hope it’s not
.

“Do you want me to meet you there?”

There was no time to think, but I still hesitated, just for a little bit. I did want him to come with me. Because no matter how things went tonight, once everything was over, I’d leave Ideal. This was probably my last chance to see him.

“No.” It came out like kind of a croak, and I cleared my throat. “No, there’s no need for you to come. I just need to make things right with Romy.”

“Okay,” he said, his voice lower than usual. “Izzy—”

I hung up. Whatever he was going to say next would probably just make all of this harder than it was. Besides, Maya was ready and I needed to go.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the bag and holding out my free hand. “If you’ll just give me your keys—”

But Maya blocked the front door, hands on her wide hips. “No way,” she said. “I promised your Mom I’d watch you, and letting you run off to fight a hedge witch and a homicidal ghost is probably one of those things she’d frown on. Besides, you’ll need my help with the ritual.”

Reminding myself that decking old ladies is wrong, I took a deep breath. “Maya, I appreciate that, but my friends are in danger, and I have to help them. On my own.”

But instead of being impressed with what I thought was a pretty stoic delivery, Maya laughed. “You Brannicks are always saying that.” She dropped her voice an octave or so. “‘I have to do this alone. This is my sole duty. I cannot accept help.’” Shaking her head, she said, “But you don’t do it alone. You
never
have. There’s always people like me, or that weirdo you keep in a mirror, or these kids at your school.”

Leaning forward, she took me by the shoulders. “You aren’t alone, Izzy. You or your mom or, when we find her, Finley. And whether you like it or not, you need help. And you’re getting it. So get your skinny little butt in my car, and let’s go kick some ghost ass.”