Charmfall (The Dark Elite 3)

“Maybe so, but it’s not me. It’s not who I am.” She lowered the dress and looked at me with a sneaky glint in her eye. “But it might be you.”

“Me? Oh, no.” I shook a finger at her. “First off, I probably don’t even have a date. And even if I did, I’m not wearing a three-thousand-dollar dress. Are you crazy? What if I spilled punch on it? What if I got a rip in it?” I pointed at the ground. “What if demon zombies burst out of the ground and get their, like, putrescence on it?”

“Putrescence?”

“Doesn’t that totally sound like something a demon zombie would have? You know, like, oozing from its pores and stuff?”

“That is heinous. But you have a point.”

“I always do. That dress is yours. It’s a gift from your parents. What if they found out I’d worn it?”

“And got zombie putrescence on it?”

“Precisely. They’d probably get me kicked out of school. Not that there wouldn’t be advantages to that. But, no. No. As much as I appreciate it, that’s a lot of responsibility.”

Scout looked at me for a moment, and then placed the dress back in the box. “Look, I’m not going to wear it, so it’s only going to sit here. If you decide you’re willing to take on the challenge, you let me know.”

“I won’t.”

Scout sighed and packed the box away again. “People always say that, you know. That they won’t succumb to the lure of the money.” Once closed, she shoved the box under her bed.

“Money isn’t everything.”

“No,” she said, sitting up again. “It’s not.” She hopped off the bed and walked to her closet. She opened the door, and pulled out a handful of clothes on hangers that still had the tags on them. “But sometimes parents confuse money with attention.”

“They bought you all that stuff?”

She tossed a long-sleeved silk shirt onto the bed. “They forgot my thirteenth birthday.” A tweed jacket—that was totally not her style—followed it. “They didn’t come to the beginning-of-year assembly.”

Scout threw shirt after skirt after jacket onto the bed until there was a pile of brand-new clothes—brand-new expensive clothes—there. “When they forget something important—or when they can’t make room in their schedule of polo watching and suntanning, they buy me things.”

My eyes widened when I caught the price of one of the shirts. “I guess ‘spare no expense’ is their motto.”

“Yep.”

I picked up the stack of clothes and handed them back to her. “And the green dress?”

“That’s probably an early apology since they’ll miss parents’ night.”

Even I was disappointed in that. Someday I’d like to meet Scout’s parents, the man and woman responsible for creating this totally brilliant, unique person . . . and then ignoring her.

“I’m sorry, Scout.”

“Eh,” she said, hanging up the clothes again. She may not have liked them, and she may not have worn them, and she clearly wasn’t happy about what they represented. But the clothes were still hanging in her closet, taking up space. She probably preferred to have her parents here, but I guess if she couldn’t have them, she kept their gifts as a substitute.

“You know,” I said, fingering the nubby tweed on the jacket, “some of these things aren’t bad. Maybe I’ll borrow them sometime.”

“Knock yourself out,” she said. And then her phone began to whine out a really loud piece of classical music that sounded a lot like buzzing insects.

“This is Scout,” she answered. When her eyes went wide, I assumed it was interesting news. “Okay. Thanks for letting us know, Kite. ’Bye.”

She put the phone down and looked at me. “You might have gotten your wish earlier than you thought.”

“Sebastian?”

“He’s in the store,” she confirmed. “Let’s get moving.”

* * *

We decided it was too risky to wait for backup, but we should let someone know where we were going. I wasn’t about to call Jason. If he wasn’t ready to talk, I certainly wasn’t going to call him first, so Scout called Michael and told him the plan.

We changed into dark street clothes and geared up, then snuck out the same cellar door through which I’d followed Veronica outside.

We walked quietly over to Gaslight, then crept along the edge of the building and peeked inside one of the storefront windows. At first, we didn’t see anything, but we could hear muted yelling from inside the store. After a couple of minutes we spied the source. Sebastian and Fayden emerged from an aisle.

She was in the lead, rolling her eyes in irritation, a Gaslight Goods bag in hand. She looked like she was making an emergency visit. Her dark hair was pulled into a messy topknot, and she wore her dark, cat-eye glasses. She wore a thin T-shirt, yoga pants, and flip-flops. She was very trim, so the outfit didn’t look bad, but it was definitely more suited to running errands in California than in Chicago.

Sebastian was behind her, dressed in clothes more appropriate for fall. But his gaze was narrowed at the back of her head, and he looked really, really unhappy.

“We may have just missed some fireworks,” I murmured.

“Apparently,” Scout said. “They’re heading for the door. Let’s get out of the line of sight.”

We scooted into the doorway of the pharmacy next door to Gaslight. When the bell on the Gaslight Goods door began to ring, we snuck a peek.

Fayden walked out first. Sebastian followed her. They made it to the end of the dark and empty block before they started talking.

“You need to chill, cuz,” Fayden said. “I told you this would all be fine.”

His eyes narrowed. “You lied to me.”

“No, the family just omitted a few things. My status in the DE isn’t your concern.”

“You don’t think I should know that another member of my family has magic?”

Her bag on her arm, she poked an escaping tendril of hair back into her topknot. “I think unless it affects you, it’s not really any of your beeswax.” She patted his arm. “Maybe this blackout is getting to you. But never fear. I think you’ll find, cousin, that your life is about to get a lot more interesting.”

She took a deep breath of chilly Chicago air. “A whole new world is about to open up.”