Charmfall (The Dark Elite 3)

“Not really the time for humor.”

“Sorry. I’m nervous.”

I nodded my head, completely understanding the emotion. I was freaking out too, and not just because we might soon be facing down Reapers again. As if last night hadn’t been enough.

What if we were also facing down Sebastian? What if he was part of a team sent to destroy our rooms to find the Grimoire? What if I’d been totally wrong, and he was even worse than I thought he was? What if helping me had all been a plot to get closer to me and Scout . . . and her spellbook?

He was right. I’d never really be able to trust him. I’d never really be able to ignore the possibility that I was being played and he really was as bad as everyone else thought. The first question in my mind would always be “what if,” and I didn’t think there’d ever be a good answer. Especially not if I found him rifling through my stuff.

Oh, God—what if he was rifling through my underwear drawer?

I didn’t hear my name until Scout shouted it. “Lily!”

“What?”

“Where were you just then?”

“You don’t want to know.” I gestured at the door. “Are you ready to go?”

“We have no magic, no weapons, and a school full of dragon ladies on high alert. ‘Ready’ doesn’t really cut it.”

“Actually, we aren’t completely unprepared.” I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. “It’s broad daylight, and any Reapers would be trespassing. Even if we can’t nail them magically, we can nail them with the law.”

“That totally deserves to be a line in an action movie. I mean, a really crappy action movie, but still.” When I rolled my eyes, she held up her hands. “I know, I know, inappropriate timing. Let’s do this. First sign of trouble, you dial nine-one-one. Got it?”

“Right behind you, Tex.”

We slowly pushed open the door to the dorm building, then walked inside and held it until it closed slowly behind us. We stood inside for a moment, just looking and listening.

And for a moment we didn’t hear anything . . . but then we heard rustling and shuffling that didn’t sound like dragon ladies looking for fire or St. Sophia’s girls returning to their rooms.

“They’re up there, aren’t they?” I asked, my stomach beginning to ball with nerves.

“It sounds like it.” She looked back at me, fear in her eyes. “We have to do this, don’t we?”

I squeezed her hand, faking a confident smile I didn’t really feel. “We do. But we can do it. I promise.”

She blew out a breath, and off we went.

We trekked up to our floor and peeked into the dim hallway. Our door was open, a beam of light shining into the hallway. We could hear rifling and throwing of objects even down the hall. That was when our moods changed.

“You know what?” she whispered. “I was scared. But now I’m really ticked. Who do these people think they are?”

“Infallible, apparently.”

Scout harrumphed, and we tiptoed down the hallway to the suite door. She pointed to herself, and then she pointed up. She pointed at me, and then she pointed down. I think she was telling me to go low, and she’d go high.

I nodded, and just like two totem pole heads, we peeked into the room.

The suite was in shambles. Every bedroom door was open, and our formerly organized belongings were thrown about everywhere, including little bits of pink from Amie’s room that were mixed into the rubble. It looked like her stuff had bled into the room. Either they didn’t know whose room was whose, or they had a suspicion that Scout had hidden her Grimoire in there. As if.

And on the floor in front of my doorway was the fractured remains of the crappy—but important—ashtray that Ashley, my best friend from my hometown in New York, had made for me. One big hunk and a lot of shards and crumbs were all that was left of a treasured memento.

I probably could have cried a little, but instead I got even angrier.

We couldn’t see the Reapers, but it sounded like there were two of them—one in Scout’s room and one in mine. I glanced down at the floor of the suite and looked for a weapon. There was a pink golf club on the floor—expensive-looking and surely Amie’s.

I crept inside and picked it up, then held it like a baseball bat. Scout did the same thing with a silver desk lamp that had probably been in Lesley’s room.

“All right, buttwipes!” she yelled out. The noise stopped immediately. “We’re here, and the cops are on their way. You aren’t going to find what you’re looking for, so I suggest you find your way out of our rooms before we move in with our crew to bust some heads!”

“Our crew?” I silently mouthed to Scout. She just shrugged, but I took her point. We probably weren’t much of a threat on our own.

“One, two, three!” she mouthed, and then let out a loud whoop and charged toward her room. Sucking in a breath, I did the same thing toward mine, and stared in shock.

There was a cheerreaper in my room—a Reaper in a green and gold cheerleading uniform, complete with blond ponytail and bow perched right at the top of her head.

Lauren Fleming, a Reaper who’d tried to sneak into the school before, was standing in the middle of the room, a pair of my quilted patent leather boots under one arm, the remains of the rest of my stuff at her feet.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked, raising the golf club.

She snarled at me like a crazy little Chihuahua. “Get out of my way, peon.”

“Yeah, that’s nice language. The cops are on their way, so you might want to put down the boots. If you leave now, since you clearly aren’t going to find what you’re looking for”—the expression on her face proved that was true—“we might manage to not beat the crap out of you for breaking in here.”

“Whatever,” she said, then hurled the boots at me. I half turned to dodge them, then swung out with the golf club. I missed, and took a chunk of stone out of the wall. Lauren darted around and plucked books from my bookshelf, then began hurling them at me. I batted them back with the golf club, but missed my history book and winced when it hit me in the shoulder.

Lauren saw her chance and tried to slip past me into the common room. I managed to swat her back with the club, but the shot didn’t land very hard. She took off out of the suite and down the hallway. I ran out and pulled out my camera, snapping a picture of her back before she took the stairs.