“I want to be with my friends,” Iris replied, hooking her arm through Greta’s.
Greta nodded. Binx nodded, too.
“Of course. But if you change your minds, let me know. And I’m here anytime you need to talk. My door is always open to you… and to Ridley, too, when she returns. I’m so sorry about all this.”
The girls said goodbye to Mrs. Feathers and walked out of her office. They heard the door closing softly behind them. The hallway was empty except for Becky the cafeteria lady and Seth Zeloski, who was always tardy for who knew what reason.
Iris blew her nose into her wad of tissues. “I think I’m going to need another emergency appointment with Dee Ranger. Do you guys think—”
“Calumnia,” Greta said in a low voice. “Okay, we can talk now.”
“Sorry,” Iris said. “Do you guys think Mrs. Feathers believed us? About Penelope not being a witch, even though she totally was? And was she looking at us funny, like she suspected that we might be witches, too, which we totally are, and maybe we should go back in there and cast a memory-erase spell on her? Or maybe a please-stop-suspecting-us spell? Does Callixta have one of those?”
“Forget about the yoga-ball lady; we have more important things to deal with,” Binx said dismissively. “So I think we can say for sure that a witch killed Penelope and then used magic to make it look like a suicide… and used magic to do that other weirdo stuff, too. But why would a witch kill another witch?”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Greta agreed. She clutched at something at her throat—her raw amethyst pendant, probably, which she always kept hidden under her clothing. “Do you think…” Her knuckles whitened as she curled her hand into a fist. “What about those shadow messages? Do you think Div and I are next?”
“No!” Iris blurted out.
“I mean…” Binx said at the same time. Greta and Iris both looked at her, horrified, so Binx shifted gears. “Look, whatever this person is planning, we need to find them ASAP. Do we for sure think the Antima are involved?”
“Why would the Antima be teaming up with witches, though? They hate us, right? I mean, not us specifically, but our kind,” Iris pointed out.
“Yeah, but those shadow messages sure sounded like they came from the Antima, so there’s that,” Binx mused.
“Did Penelope get a shadow message, too?” Iris asked.
“I don’t know,” Greta said. “Binx?”
Binx shrugged. “I’ll ask Ridley if she knows. Except, wouldn’t she have told us? I mean, that’s kind of major.”
Greta frowned. “Unless Penelope swore her to secrecy.”
“Okay, I’ll text her. Again.” Binx pulled out her phone and began typing.
Greta began typing on her phone, too. “I’m texting Div. Our covens need to meet and figure this stuff out before…”
Her voice trailed off as she fought back fresh tears. Binx knew exactly what she meant.
The meeting of the two covens was set up for noon. As Greta and Iris headed off to their respective homerooms, Binx decided to stop in the girls’ bathroom to decompress and collect her thoughts. She felt as though she’d undergone a mental system crash, and she wasn’t ready to face the day.
Luckily, the bathroom was empty. Leaning against a sink, Binx scrolled through her phone. Still nothing from Ridley.
She typed:
Hey are you getting my texts?
No response.
Are you okay??? I’m worried about you.
Still no response.
Why did Neo cross the road?
That didn’t work, either.
Binx sighed and stepped back from the sink. She caught her reflection in the mirror: sleep-deprived, circles under her eyes, a pallor not unlike Baklora the Bloodless, whose witch army was forever storming castles in search of the elusive Chromalian Cure. Which was no surprise, considering that Binx had barely slept in days… not after what had happened.
Last night, for example. She’d awoken at two a.m. and tossed and turned for an hour before giving up on sleep altogether. She’d gone to her computer, tried to play Witchworld, and stopped after a few minutes (the violent melee at Gasterly Point wasn’t amusing). Then, unable to help herself, she’d meandered through the Internet, revisiting Penelope’s social media.
Her full name was Penelope Rue Hart, and she would have been sixteen in October. A junior league tennis champion, a competitive gymnast, and a member of the local dressage team (a quick Google search had revealed that “dressage” had to do with horses, not dresses). An only child (just like Binx, unless she was inclined to count the smelly, noisy, infant half brother, which she wasn’t).
When Binx had clicked over to Penelope’s YouTube channel, she’d been shocked (well, maybe not shocked but disappointed in the human race) that her subscriber base had tripled over the weekend. Her other accounts (her Instagram and her Twitter,) had insanely high numbers, too. Nothing like a young girl’s untimely death to explode interest in her content.
Binx had noticed, too, that a bunch of randoms had posted disgusting comments. Like: R.I.P. in Hell, Witch… Magic cant save u now… and One less to deal with LOL. All with the hashtags #stopwitchcraft and #antima.
Seriously?
She’d had to use every ounce of restraint in her body to not engage with these haters… or send them a powerful cyberspell through the Internet and fry them into oblivion. (She didn’t actually have a spell like this in her arsenal, but she was more than motivated to invent one. Bring. It. On.)
Penelope’s Instagram had included photos of her and Colter—hanging out at the beach, watching a baseball game, sunbathing by a pool. In one of them, Binx noticed a little heart-shaped birthmark just above her bikini top. Her Instagram had tons of photos of her dog, Socrates, who was a big poodle with curly white fur and enormous brown eyes. Binx wondered
