The Indigo Spell

window, but my phone’s display still showed a freakishly early hour. Someone knocked at my door, and I realized that was what had woken me up. I ran a hand through my disheveled hair and rose unsteadily from the bed.

“If she needs a geography tutor now, I really am going to Mexico,” I muttered. But when I opened the door, it wasn’t Angeline standing outside my door. It was Jill.

“Something big just happened,” she said, hurrying in.

“Not to me it didn’t.”

If she noticed my annoyance, she didn’t show it. In fact, as I studied her more closely, I realized she probably had no idea (yet) about what had happened between Adrian and me. From what I’d learned, spirit dreams weren’t shared through the bond unless the shadow-kissed person was directly brought into it.

I sighed and sat down on my bed again, wishing I could go back to sleep. The heat and excitement of the dream was fading, and mostly I felt tired now. “What’s wrong?”

“Angeline and Trey.”

I groaned. “Oh, lord. What’s she done to him now?”

Jill settled into my desk chair and put on a steely look of resolve. Whatever was coming was bad. “She tried to get him to sneak into our dorm last night.”

“What?” I really did need more sleep because my brain was having trouble understanding the reasoning behind that. “She’s not that dedicated to her math grade . . . is she?”

Jill gave me a wry look. “Sydney, they weren’t working on math.”

“Then why were they—oh. Oh no.” I fell backward onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “No. This can’t be happening.”

“I already tried saying that to myself,” she told me. “It doesn’t help.”

I rolled over to my side so that I could look at her again. “Okay, assuming this is true, how long has it been going on?”

“I don’t know.” Jill sounded as tired as me—and a lot more exasperated. “You know how she is. I tried to get answers out of her, but she kept going on about how it wasn’t her fault and how it just happened.”

“What’d Trey say?” I asked.

“I never got a chance to talk to him. He got hauled away as soon as they were caught.” She smiled, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “On the bright side, he got in a lot more trouble than she did, so we don’t have to worry about her getting expelled.”

Oh no. “Do we have to worry about him getting expelled?”

“I don’t think so. I heard about other people trying this, and they just get detention for life. Or something.”

Small blessing. Angeline was in detention so much that they’d at least have bonding time. “Well, then I guess there isn’t much to be done. I mean, the emotional fallout’s going to be a mess, of course.”

“Well . . .” Jill shifted nervously. “That’s just it. You see, first Eddie needs to be told—”

I shot up out of my bed. “I am not doing that.”

“Oh, of course not. No one would ever expect you to do that.” I wasn’t so sure but let her continue. “Angeline’s going to. It’s the right thing to do.”

“Yes. . . .” I still wasn’t letting down my guard.

“But someone still needs to talk to Eddie afterward,” she explained. “It’s going to be hard on him, you know? He shouldn’t be left alone. He needs a friend.”

“Aren’t you his friend?” I asked.

She flushed. “Well, yeah, of course. But I don’t know that it’d be right since . . . well, you know how I feel about him. Better to have someone more reasonable and objective. Besides, I don’t know if I’d do a good job or not.”

“Probably better than me.”

“You’re better at that stuff than you think. You’re able to make things clear and—”

Jill suddenly froze. Her eyes widened a little, and for a moment, it was like she was watching something I couldn’t see. No, I realized a moment later. There was no “like” about it. That was exactly what she was doing. She was having one of those moments where she was in sync with Adrian’s mind. I saw her blink and slowly tune back into my room. Her eyes focused on me, and she paled. Just like that, I knew that she knew.

Rose had said that sometimes in the bond, you could sift through someone’s recent memories even if you hadn’t actually been tuned into the bond at that moment. As Jill looked at me, I could tell she’d seen it all, everything that had happened with Adrian last night. It was hard to say which of us was more horrified. I replayed everything I’d done and said, every compromising position I’d literally and figuratively put myself in. Jill had just “seen” me do things no one else ever had—well, except for Adrian, of course. And what had she actually felt? What it was like to kiss me? To run her—his?—hands over my body?

It was a situation I had in no way prepared for. My occasional indiscretions with Adrian had come through to Jill as well, but we’d all brushed those off—me in particular. Last night, however, had taken things to a whole new level, one that left both Jill and me stunned and speechless. I was mortified that she’d seen me so weak and exposed, and the protective part of me was worried that she’d seen anything like that at all, period.

She and I stared at each other, lost in our own thoughts, but Jill recovered first. She turned even redder than when she’d mentioned Eddie and practically leapt out of the chair. Turning her eyes away from mine, she hurried to the door. “Um, I should go, Sydney. Sorry to bother you so early. It probably could’ve waited. Angeline’s going to talk to Eddie this morning, so whenever you get a chance to find him, you know, that’d be great.” She took a deep breath and opened the door, still refusing to make eye contact. “I’ve gotta go. See you later. Sorry again.”

“Jill—”

She shut the door, and I sank back into the bed, unable to stand. It was official. Whatever residual heat and lust I’d felt from being with Adrian last night had completely vanished in the wake of Jill’s expression. Until that moment, I hadn’t really and truly understood what it meant to be involved with someone who was bonded. Everything Adrian said to me, she heard. Every emotion he had for me, she experienced. Every time he kissed me, she felt it. . . .

I thought I might be sick. How had Rose and Lissa handled this? Somewhere in my addled mind, I recalled Rose saying she’d learned to block out a lot of Lissa’s experiences—but it had taken a few years to figure it out. Adrian and Jill had only been bonded for a few months.

The shock of understanding what Jill had seen cast a shadow over everything that had been sensual and thrilling last night. I felt like I had been on display. I felt cheap and dirty, especially as I remembered my own role in instigating things. That sickening feeling in my stomach increased, and there was no stopping the avalanche of thoughts that soon followed.

I’d let myself spin out of control last night, carried away by desire. I shouldn’t have done any of that—and not just because Adrian was a Moroi (though that was certainly problematic too). My life was about reason and logic, and I’d thrown all of that out the window. They were my strengths, and in casting them aside, I’d become weak. I’d been high on the freedom and risks I’d experienced last night, not to mention intoxicated by Adrian and how he’d said I was beautiful and brave and “ridiculously smart.” I’d melted when he’d looked at me in that absurd dress. Knowing he’d wanted me had muddled my thoughts, making me want him too. . . .

There was no part of this that was okay.

With great effort, I dragged myself from the bed and managed to pick out some clothes for the day. I staggered to the shower like a zombie and stayed in for so long that I missed breakfast. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t have eaten anything anyway, not with all the emotions that were churning inside me. I barely spoke to anyone as I walked through the halls, and it wasn’t until I sat down in Ms. Terwilliger’s class that I finally remembered there were other people in the world with their own problems.

Specifically, Eddie and Trey.

I was certain there was no way they could be as traumatized as Jill and I were by last night’s events. But it was obvious both guys had had a rough morning. Neither one spoke or made eye contact with others. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen Eddie neglect his surroundings. The bell cut me off before I had a chance to say anything, and I spent the rest of class watching them with concern. They didn’t look like they were going to engage in any testosterone-driven madness, so that was a good sign. I felt bad for both of them—especially Eddie, who’d been wronged the most—and worrying on their behalf helped distract me from my own woes. A little.