Firespell (The Dark Elite 1)

Fortunately, I didn’t embarrass that easily. On the other hand, I couldn’t exactly correct her. If I threw “secret basement room” at these girls, there’d be a mad rush to find out what lurked downstairs. That wasn’t going to help the Adepts, so I opted to deflect.

“How lame do you have to be to push a girl down the stairs?”

“I didn’t push anyone down the stairs,” she clipped out.

“So you had nothing to do with my hospital visit?”

Crimson rose on her cheeks.

It was mean, I know, but I had Adepts to protect. Well, one nose-ringed Adept to protect, anyway. Besides, I didn’t actually make an accusation. I just asked the right question.

As school bells began to peal, she nailed us both with a glare, then turned on a heel and stalked away, a monogrammed leather backpack between her shoulder blades.

I’m not sure what, or how much, the brat pack had spilled around school about my “fall” and my clinic visit, but I felt the looks and heard the whispers. They lasted through the morning’s art history, trig, and civics classes, girls in identical plaid lowering their heads together—or passing tiny, folded notes—to share what they’d heard about my weekend.

Luckily, the rumors were pretty tame. I hadn’t heard anything about bizarre rooms beneath the building, evil teenagers roaming the hallways, or Scout’s involvement—other than the fact that people “wouldn’t be surprised” if she’d had something to do with it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one at St. Sophia’s who thought she was a little odd.

I glanced over at her during civics—punky blond and brown hair in tiny ponytails, fingernails painted glossy black, a tiny hoop in her nose. I was kind of surprised Foley let her get away with all that, but I thanked God Scout stood out in this bastion of über-normalcy.

After civics, we headed back to our lockers.

“Let’s go run an errand,” she said, opening her locker and transferring her books.

I arched a skeptical eyebrow.

“Perfectly mundane mission,” she said, closing the door again. She adjusted her skull-and-crossbones messenger bag and gave me a wink.

I followed as she weaved through girls in the locker hall, then through the Great Hall and main building to the school’s front door. This one was an off-campus mission, apparently.

Outside, we found the sky a muted steel gray, the city all but windless. The weather was moody—as if we were on the cusp of something nasty. As if the sky was preparing to open on us all.

“Let’s go,” Scout said, and we took the steps and headed down the sidewalk. We made a left, walking down Erie and away from Michigan Avenue and the garden of stone thorns.

“Here’s the thing about Chicago,” she began.

“Speak it, sister.”

“The brat pack gave you the Sex and the Windy City tour. The shopping on Michigan is nice, but it’s not all there is. There’s an entire city out there—folks who’ve lived here all their lives, folks who’ve worked here all their lives, blue-collar jobs, dirt under their fingernails, without shopping for thousand-dollar handbags.” She looked up at a high-rise as we passed. “Nearly three million people in a city that’s been here for a hundred and seventy years. The architecture, the art, the history, the politics. I know you’re not from here, and you’ve only been here a week, and your heart is probably back in Sagamore, but this is an amazing place, Lil.”

I watched as she gazed at the buildings and architecture around her, love in her eyes.

“I want to run for city council,” she suddenly said, as we crossed the street and passed facing Italian restaurants. Tourists formed a line outside each, menus in hand, excitement in their eyes as they prepared to sample Chicago’s finest.

“City council?” I asked her. “Like, Chicago’s city council? You want to run for office?”

She nodded her head decisively. “I love this city. I want to serve it someday. I mean, it depends on where I live and who’s in the ward and whether the seat is open or not, but I want to give something back, you know?”

I had no idea Scout had political ambitions, much less that she’d given the logistics that much thought. She was only sixteen, and I was impressed. I also wasn’t sure if I should feel pity for her parents, who were missing out on her general awesomeness, or if I should thank them—was Scout who she was because her parents had freaked about her magic, and deposited her in a boarding school?

She bobbed her head at a bodega that sat kitty-corner on the next block. “In there,” she said, and we crossed the street. She opened the door, a bell on the handle jingling as we moved inside.

“Yo,” she said, a hand in the air to wave at the clerk as she walked straight to the fountain drink machine.

“Scout,” said the guy at the counter, whom I pegged at nineteenish or twenty, and whose dark eyes were on the comic book spread on the counter in front of him, a spill of short dreadlocks around his face. “Refill time?”

“Refill time,” Scout agreed. I stayed at the counter while she attacked the fountain machine, yanking a gigantic plastic cup from a dispenser. With mechanical precision, she pushed the cup under the ice dispenser, peeked over the rim as ice spilled into it, then released the cup, emptied out a few, and repeated the whole process again until she was satisfied she’d gotten exactly the right amount. When she was done with the ice, she went straight for the strawberry soda, and the process started again.

“She’s particular, isn’t she?” I wondered aloud.

The clerk snorted, then glanced up at me, chocolate brown eyes alight with amusement. “Particular hardly covers it. She’s an addict when it comes to the sugar water.” His brow furrowed. “I don’t know you.”

“Lily Parker,” I said. “First year at St. Sophia’s.”

“You one of the brat pack?”

“She is mos’ def’ not one of the brat pack,” Scout said, joining us at the counter, as she poked a straw into the top of her soda. She took a sip, eyes closed in ecstasy. I had to bite back a laugh.

Lips still wrapped around the straw, Scout opened one eye and squinted evilly at me. “Don’t mock the berry,” she said when she paused to take a breath, then turned back to the kid behind the counter. “She tried, unsuccessfully, to join the brat pack, at least until she realized how completely lame they are. Oh, and Derek, this is Lily. You two are buds now.”