Hexbound (The Dark Elite 2)

“Quiz Club,” they simultaneously said.

I had to bite back a snicker, and got a nasty look from Scout.

She walked closer and prodded Lauren’s cheer shoe with a toe. “How did you get through the door?”

“How do you think? Your wards are crap.”

“It was locked the old-fashioned way.”

“Hello?” said the second girl. “I’m a gatekeeper? I pick locks?”

Lauren made a sound of irritation. I got the sense she wasn’t friends with her uncheerleadery teammate. On the other hand, Reapers probably didn’t care much about friendship when teaming up for infiltrations. They were evil, after all. Being BFFs probably didn’t figure into it.

“Frick,” Scout muttered. “I didn’t know they had a gatekeeper.”

“Clearly,” snarked out the apparent gatekeeper.

Scout rolled her eyes. “Let’s recall who’s spindled on the floor and who’s standing victoriously over you, shall we? Geez. There’s a hierarchy, ladies.”

“Whatever,” Lauren said petulantly.

“Yeah, well, you can ‘whatever’ this, cheer-reaper.” Scout began to clap her hands and stomp her feet in rhythm, her own little cheer. “Hey,” she said, “it’s getting cold in here. There must be some Reapers in the at-mo-sphere.”

Lauren made some really offensive suggestions about Scout’s mom. Did she cheer with that mouth?

“I’m going to ignore those very classless suggestions about my parentals,” she said. “Why don’t we go back to my first question? Why were you trying to break into St. Sophia’s?”

“We didn’t just try,” said the gatekeeper. “We accomplished .”

“Two feet inside the door hardly qualifies as accomplished, mi amiga. Unless you’d like your mouths hexbound as well, I suggest you talk.” Scout held up her hands and closed her eyes and began to recite some magical words. But since those words were “abracadabra” and “mumbo jumbo” and “hocus pocus,” I guessed she was playing chicken.

“You know why we’re here,” the gatekeeper quickly answered, her voice squeaking in her effort to get out the words.

“Me and my Grimoire?”

“Like you’re so freakin’ special,” Lauren muttered.

Scout squared her shoulders. “Special enough. My Grimoire is out of reach, and even if you got me, I’m sure as hell not going to go willingly. Did you two think you could just walk in here and carry me out?”

Lauren laughed. “Um, yes? Hello, hypnosis power?”

Scout moved closer and peered down at Lauren. “Ah, there it is,” she said, pointing down at Lauren’s neck. I took a closer look. Around Lauren’s neck was a small, round watch on a gold chain.

“Have you ever seen those old movies where some evil psychiatrist hypnotizes someone by swinging their watch back and forth? She can do that.”

“Huh,” I said. “That’s a pretty narrow power.” Not that it made me any less happy that her hands were bound. These two seemed like the type to write “loser” on your forehead in permanent market once they’d gotten you down.

“Very narrow,” Scout agreed with a wicked grin. “And you know what they say about girls with very narrow powers?”

“What’s that?”

Scout paused for a minute. “Oh, I don’t know. Honestly, I didn’t think we’d make it all the way through the joke.”

Lauren did a little more swearing. Gatekeeper girl tried to join in, but she just wasn’t as good at it.

“I don’t know what that means,” I admitted. “How can someone be dumber than a baguette?”

“It means you’re stupid.”

I thought back to my nearly perfect trig homework. “Try again.” But that just reminded me that we had class—including trig—in a few hours. Exhaustion suddenly hitting me in a wave, I worked to get us back on track. “What do you want to do now?”

Scout looked back at me. “Well, we’re in the convent, and they’re in the convent. That’s two too many people in the convent.”

Five minutes later, we were dragging two squirming girls through the vault door and into the corridor behind it—and out of St. Sophia’s. They were hard to move, not just because they were fidgety, but because every time we gripped them near the shoulders they tried to bite us.

“Isn’t there a better way to do this?” I wondered, standing over Scout. “I mean, if you’d knocked them completely unconscious they’d be a lot easier to move.”

“Yeah, but we’d be leaving them completely at the mercy of whatever else might roam the tunnels at night. And that would be such a Reaper thing to do.”

Lauren growled.

We finally managed it by dragging them by their hexbound feet into the tunnel. But it wasn’t pretty, and the swearing didn’t get any better. Neither of them—especially not the cheerleader—was thrilled to be dragged through five or six feet of underground tunnel on their backs.

When they were on the other side of the door, Scout put her hands on her hips and looked down at them. “And what did we learn today, ladies?”

“That you suck.”

Scout rolled her eyes. I raised a hand. “While we’re here, I have a question.”

“Go for it, Lils. All right, cheer-reaper and gatekeeper—”

“I’m in the band.”

“Sorry?”

“You call her cheer-reaper, I figure you should call me by my title, too. I’m in the band. I play the French horn.”

Scout and I shared a grin.

“’Course you do,” Scout said. “Okay, cheer-reaper and French hornist, my friend here has a question for you.”

“Thanks,” I offered.

“Anytime.”

I turned toward them. “Have you two seen anything weird in the tunnels lately?”

“Oh,” French horn said, “you mean the rat thingies?”

I blinked. I hadn’t thought it was going to be quite that easy. “Well, actually, yeah. You know anything about those?”

The French horn player huffed. “Well, of course we do. We—”

She was interrupted by Lauren’s screaming. “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!” And she didn’t stop there. She kept screaming and screaming. Scout and I both hitched back a little, then shared a wary glance. That kind of noise was surely going to attract attention.