There was a long pause before he answered. “I was supposed to watch you, yeah. They thought it was weird that Atherton would send his own kid to Hecate, so we wanted to keep an eye on you. No pun intended.”
He kept doing that, using “we” and “they” interchangeably when he was talking about The Eye. Not like I could blame him for being all schizo. It had to be bizarre to live two lives for as long as he had.
He pushed himself away from the tree. “So yeah, you were part of the job. Don’t get me wrong, Mercer, I like you. You’re smart, fluent in sarcasm, and, Bad Dog incident aside, pretty kick-ass at magic. And it’s not like you’re hard to look at.”
“Be still my beating heart.”
“But to answer your question, no part of the Archer Cross you knew at Hecate exists. That day in the cellar, I kissed you back because it was my job to stay close to you. If that’s where you wanted to take things, then that’s where I was going to go. I kissed you because I had to. Not exactly the hardest assignment I’ve ever had, but an assignment nonetheless.”
I stood there absorbing his words like blows, my heart aching. But it wasn’t what he said that made me feel like I’d been punched in the chest.
It’s that I knew he was lying. That speech came out way too quickly and way too smooth, almost like he’d been practicing it in his head. The same way I’d been practicing what I’d say to him if I ever saw him again.
I couldn’t even begin to handle that right now, so instead I just said, “Okay, then. Yay for honesty. Now that we’re done with the confessional part of the evening, why don’t you tell me why we’re here.”
There was another pause, then he started walking again. I followed, leaves crunching under my feet.
“Like I said, Hecate Hall has always made The Eye nervous.”
“Why? Are they allergic to plaid?”
I thought he might laugh, but instead, he said, “Think about it, Mercer. One place where Prodigium round up their most powerful members? Don’t tell me that’s not suspicious.”
That had never occurred to me. I’d always just thought of all us at Hecate as giant screwups, but in a way, Archer was right. We’d all been sentenced to Hex Hall because of spells that were powerful and dangerous. I thought of Cal saying I created “too big.” Wasn’t that what just about everyone at Hecate had done?
Still, the idea that the place I’d called home for nearly a year was actually some evil farm for powerful Prodigium was unsettling to say the least. “Hecate isn’t like that,” I said weakly, almost more to myself than to him.
“Isn’t it? Do some kind of illumination spell.”
I raised my hand, and within seconds, a glowing orb of bluish light had appeared. It lit up the surrounding area, and I gasped. This section of forest looked like a meteor had landed here. We were standing at the edge of a crater that was about eight feet deep and thirty feet in diameter. All around us were flattened trees, lying broken like matchsticks. The trees that were still standing were scorched and blackened.
But it wasn’t just that. Dark magic, darker than anything I’d ever felt, crackled over everything. It was like the whole area was marinating in it. It seeped up from the dirt under my feet, and I could practically taste it in the air.
There was a large flat rock at the base of the crater with something carved into it. I wiggled my fingers and the orb grew larger and brighter until I could see the markings.
I’d only seen writing like that one other place—the grimoire.
“Now you see why I wanted to show you this,” Archer said quietly. “Whoever is raising demons is doing it here. At Hecate.”
chapter 30
“This is bad,” was all I could manage to say.
“Yeah, I kind of picked up on that too.”
“No, I mean really bad. Like, to a level I didn’t know badness could reach.”
Archer crouched down near the lip of the crater, the flickering blue light playing in his eyes. “It gets worse.”
“What, does this pit also eat kittens? How much worse can it be?” I stared at the flat rock, blinking at the power radiating off the markings.
“Ever since I left Hex Hall, I’ve been looking into the history of the place. In the past eighteen years, six students have disappeared from the school.”
I finally tore my gaze away from the depression and turned back to Archer. My knees were weak, and my stomach churned with dread, but I made myself play devil’s advocate. “That’s not that many. Have you ever been to a big human school, Cross? Some of those places lose six kids in, like, a week.”
“Sophie, two of those kids were Anna and Chaston.”
I knew he was serious because he hardly ever used my first name, and then I just went ahead and let my knees do their thing and give out. I thumped onto the ground.
“After the attacks, they both vanished,” Archer said.
“No,” I said, thinking of Daisy that night at Shelley’s. How she’d kept insisting that The Eye couldn’t be there. “No, their parents came to get them.”
Archer stood up and moved closer to me. “Did you ever see them?” he asked quietly. “Did any of us?”
I racked my brain. Mrs. Casnoff had told us that their parents had come for them, and they were taking the year off. They were supposed to come back after the summer.
But no. I’d never seen either of them—or their parents—after Alice fed on them.
“I visited their parents,” Archer continued. “All four of them were under some heavy spells, Mercer. They were convinced their daughters were spending the summer at Hecate. Said they talk to them once a week. But none of our guys have been able to locate either Chaston or Anna anywhere.”
My brain was spinning. Demons, missing students…
Why had my life suddenly become a Nancy Drew mystery from hell?
“Okay, but that would mean…” I could hardly say the next words. They seemed unbelievable to me. “That would mean Mrs. Casnoff is in on it, and if that is the case, my dad would know something about it.”
“Not necessarily,” Archer said. “Hecate Hall and Graymalkin Island are completely Mrs. Casnoff’s domain. Your dad signs off on all the kids who’re sentenced here, but past that, he leaves it all to her.”
Way to be screwed over by delegating, Dad.
I stood up and paced a few feet around the basin. “So you think Chaston and Anna were taken so they could be made into demons?”
“It seems to fit. Daisy and Nick are both teenagers; so was Alice back in the day. Maybe Mrs. Casnoff figured they’d be easier to turn because they’d already been up close and personal with the dark side.”
“Why, though? Why would Mrs. Casnoff, of all people, be raising demons?”
“It might not be just her,” Archer suggested. “After all, her sister works for the Council. Their father used to be the head. I think this goes way deeper than we can even guess.”
I kicked a clump of dirt, and it tumbled down the sides of the crater, landing on the slab. For a second, I thought I saw something move, but it was probably just a trick of the light. “Cross, my dad thinks if he can catch the people who changed Nick and Daisy, he can get them to reverse it, and stop a war between The Eye and Prodigium. But if it’s the Casnoffs who are doing this?”
Archer stood up, dusting his hands on his pants. “Yeah. As we’ve established, it’s bad.”
“So…why did you want to show me this? You guys could handle this on your own. Why risk getting kicked out of your He-Man Monster-Haters Club?”
“Because wecan’t handle this on our own. At least I don’t think we can.”
“You said yourself you already have some Prodigium working with you. Why not go to them?”
“We have a handful,” he said, frustration creeping into his voice. “And most of them suck. Look, just consider it a peace offering, okay? My way of saying I’m sorry for lying to you. And pulling a knife in your presence, even if it was just to open a damn window to get out before you vaporized me.”
Most girls got flowers. I got a dirt pit used for demon raising. Nice.
