I was seconds from yelling out for help, when Amethyst’s hand shot out and gripped my arm.
“Don’t! Don’t say anything,” she begged, her voice once again her own and laced with terror. “If you tell anyone what happened, Ishtar will return. And she swears that if she has to possess me again to speak with you, she won’t leave my body alive.”
Chapter Nine
Iwas in a pickle.
I desperately wanted to expose that Ishtar had a means of breeching Spellcasters’ wards, and that the queen of Hell had said they’d wanted Alex and me to open the Hellgate. But I couldn’t because the story put Amethyst in danger.
Of course, there was always the possibility that Ishtar was bluffing, but the risk was too great.
Talking to Amethyst comforted me a little. Well,talkmight be too soft of a word. For the rest of Divination and during lunch, Amethyst clung to me. Her behavior caught the attention of Alex, Hunter, and Eva, and earned us some funny glances, but I couldn’t do anything about that. Telling Amethyst to back off when she needed reassurance would be cruel. And to be honest, the more snippets of conversation Amethyst and I shared, the better I felt.
“My parents have only taught me how to sense spirits and call them, because that’s more than half the battle when you first learn how to interact with ghosts,” she’d explained after Alex excused himself to use the restroom as we walked to our next class. “We didn’t discuss how to deter them at all. But you’d better believe I’ll be asking how to do that now.”
“Are spirit walkers and talkers easier to possess?”
“Definitely.”
“And are you the strongest spirit walker and talker in the academy?”
Amethyst’s cheeks grew red. “I haven’t spirit walked yet. And there are five Crucible students taking Spirit Walking and Talking, but it’s not in their blood the way it’s in mine.”
They should be thanking their lucky stars for that.
“What would happen if a ghost possessed someone else? Say, someone who’s resistant to ghostly energies?”
Amethyst’s eyes widened. “The ghost wouldn’t want to.”
“Why?”
“Because it would beterrible—for the person and the ghost. If the person wasn’t at all sensitive to spiritual energies, the ghost might even kill them.”
“Yikes.”
Silence hung over us as we neared the Conjuring and Transfiguration classroom.
Amethyst stopped as we reached the door. “We’re not saying anything, right? Like to anyone? Ever? She was serious when she threatened to come back, I could tell.” Her brown eyes bore through me.
“Not a peep,” I assured her.
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you. I know that this is as scary for you as it is for me, but the way she felt inside me—” She shuddered. “It wasn’t like how my parents described a regular ghost. Ineverwant to experience it again.”
I nodded, understanding her fear. If Ishtar ever made it to this realm, she’d possess me in a hot second. “I get it. We won’t say a thing.”
Together, we walked into Conjuring and Transfiguration to find that an array of small items dotted each desk.I sat down, and Amethyst chose the table next to me. Briefly, I wondered if she ever planned on leaving my side again, but I quickly vanquished the unkind thought.
I’d had months to come to terms with the possibility of a demon possessing me. But Amethyst had experienced a possession two hours ago. I needed to cut her some slack.
The owl hooted right before Alex rushed into the classroom alongside Eva and Hunter. He plopped down at my table, and our friends took the one next to him.
“What’s so funny?” I asked, gesturing to Hunter, who was laughing so hard tears leaked from his eyes.
Alex rolled his eyes. “We saw your friends, Heidi and Holly, in the corridor. Hunter hadn’t met them yet, and one—the blonde, I can’t remember which is which—basically fell in love with him.”
“That was Heidi. And?”
“And, since Hunter is the biggest flirtever,he used it to his benefit,” Eva rolled her eyes. “He regaled them with a story from last year—nothing serious—and then proceeded to scare the ever-living shit out of them when he told them about the Samhain Trial. The girls literally screamed when he impersonated the succubus, and ran away. Hunter thought it washilarious.” Eva’s lips quirked up in a way that told me she thought it was a little funny too.
