“No one,” I said, trying hard not to seem irritated. It wasn’t Jenna’s fault she’d interrupted me in the middle of talking to a ghost, a ghost who wasn’t supposed to be able to communicate at all.
“Where have you been?” Jenna asked as I slumped on my bed. “I was worried.”
“It’s been a really long afternoon,” I answered before launching into the Tale of Casnoff’s Office again. Unlike Cal, Jenna had a lot of questions, so the story took a lot longer to tell. I left out the part about Cal and I being betrothed. Jenna was already practically wearing a Team Cal T-shirt. I didn’t want to give her any more ammunition. By the time I was finished, I felt too tired even to go down to dinner, usually my favorite time of day.
“England,” Jenna breathed when I was done. “How awesome will that be?”
I laid an arm over my eyes. “Honestly, Jen? I have no idea.”
She tossed a pillow at me. “It’s going to be superawesome. And thank you.”
“For what?”
“For letting me come too. I thought maybe you’d want some time alone with your dad.”
“Are you kidding? You were the deal breaker, my friend. No Jenna, no England. Those were my conditions.”
She smiled brightly, shaking her head so the pink stripe in her bangs fell over one eye. “I’m not sure that island is big enough for the two of us. Oh! Do we get to use some sort of sweet witchy transportation to get there? Like, a traveling spell or a magical portal?”
“Sorry,” I said, forcing myself to get up and change. After all, my uniform still had the distinct odor of Nasty Pond. I would need at least a thirty-minute shower before going to bed tonight. “I asked Dad. We’re taking a plane.”
Jenna’s face fell. “That’s such a…human thing.”
“Look on the bright side,” I told her, tugging on a clean Hecate-blue skirt. “It’s a private plane, so at least it’s a rich-human thing.”
That cheered her up, and we started planning our entire wardrobe for the summer as we made our way toward the dining hall.
But once our plates were filled and we were sitting at our usual table, Jenna’s face grew serious. “Sophie,” she said.
“What?”
She pushed her food around and seemed to be debating what to say. Finally, she just decided to be blunt.
“Archer’s in England.”
The piece of ham I’d been chewing turned to sawdust in my mouth, but I forced my voice to be light as I said, “Allegedly. I’m not sure the word of two warlocks—who were drunk off their butts, from what I hear—can be taken as fact.” Except that that hadn’t been the only sighting. There was the werewolf who’d seen a guy matching Archer’s description when The Eye raided a den in London. And the vampire who’d fought with a young dark-haired Eye three months ago a few blocks from Victoria station.
Mrs. Casnoff had a file on Archer in her bottom desk drawer. Her desk was protected from spells, but apparently not from nail files and elbow grease.
“Anyway,” I said to Jenna, lowering my eyes to my plate. “That sighting was months ago.”
“It was last month,” Jenna corrected, and her tone suggested I had known that. “And people have been saying he was in England since he disappeared. I overheard those two witches in Savannah.”
“It’s a big island, Jenna,” I said. “And even if Archer is there, I seriously doubt he’s anywhere near Prodigium. That would be stupid. Archer’s a lot of things, but he’s not an idiot.”
Jenna turned her attention back to her food, but when her green beans had made their third circuit around her plate, I pushed my dinner away and said, “Spit it out.”
She put down her fork and looked into my eyes. “What would you do, though, if you did see him?”
I held her gaze for as long as I could. I knew what she wanted me to say. She wanted me to tell her that I’d turn him in to the Council—who would almost certainly execute him—or maybe even that I would kill him myself.
For the first time in a long time, I let myself remember Archer, really remember him. His brown eyes and slow smile. His laugh, and how I felt when I was with him. How his voice sounded when he called me “Mercer.”
The way he had kissed me.
I lowered my eyes to the table. “I don’t know,” I finally said.
Jenna sighed, but she didn’t say anything more about it. After a moment we started talking about the trip again, and I made Jenna laugh by wondering aloud if there was such a thing as vampire high tea. “And when you ask for Earl Grey, you actually get Earl Grey,” I summed up, sending Jenna into another fit of giggles.
I felt better as we left the dining hall, and Jenna must have too, since she looped her arm through mine to walk up the stairs.
But the thought she’d put in my mind refused to die, and I fell asleep that night seeing Archer’s eyes and hoping with most of my heart he wasn’t in England.
Even as a not so tiny part of it hoped that he was.
chapter 4
Three weeks later, I left for England.
Mom and Mrs. Casnoff walked down to the ferry with the four of us late in the afternoon. Mom’s eyes were red, so I knew she’d been crying, but she tried to seem cheerful as she helped Jenna and me load our luggage. “Make sure you take lots of pictures,” she told me. “And if you come back using words like ‘queue’ or ‘lorry,’ I’ll be very upset.”
We stood on the deck, the sea breeze ruffling our hair. Jenna had already claimed a bench in the shade, and Cal was talking in a low voice to Mrs. Casnoff. I saw her look over his shoulder at me, and wondered how she felt about me leaving for the summer. She was probably pumped, or as pumped as Mrs. Casnoff got. God knows, I’d brought nothing but trouble to Hecate Hall.
I also wondered if I should have told her about Elodie’s ghost. Actually, Iknew I should have. If I’d told her about Alice when she first appeared to me, maybe Elodie wouldn’t be a ghost. It was a thought that had burned at the back of my brain for months, and here I was making the same mistake all over again.
Before I could think about that any more, Mom wrapped her arms around me. We were about the same height, and I could feel her tears at my temple when she said, “I’m going to miss your birthday next month. I’ve never missed your birthday.”
My throat was so tight that I couldn’t speak, so I just hugged her closer.
“Sophie,” Dad said, appearing at my elbow. “It’s time to go.”
I nodded and gave Mom one last squeeze. “I’ll call lots, I promise,” I told her as we pulled apart. “And I’ll be back before you know it.”
Mom wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand and gave me one of her dazzling smiles. Dad drew in a sharp breath next to me, but when I glanced over at him, he had turned away.
“Good-bye, James,” Mom called after him.
Cal, Jenna, and I stood at the railing as the ferry pulled away from the dock. Mrs. Casnoff stood on the shore, watching us go, but Mom was already walking back into the woods that surrounded the beach. I was glad. It was a miracle I hadn’t started sobbing already.
The ferry chugged out into the brown water. Over the trees, we could make out the very top of Hecate Hall.
“I haven’t been away from this place since I was thirteen years old,” Cal said softly. “Six years.”
I’d never asked Cal what he’d done that had landed him at Hecate Hall. He just didn’t seem like the type of guy to do the dangerous spells that usually got warlocks sent to the school. He’d decided to stay on after his eighteenth birthday, although I’d never been clear on whether that had been by choice. But the farther we got from
