“Yup. That was how they ended the war. Allwitches retainsome power over the mainland, plus they get their annual quota of sixteen fifth-year graduates, to be summoned back to the mainland if a Dark Witch war erupts. The Echelons never let decisions go to the Allwitches, though. The Council will compromise by giving you a punishment.”
I thought of the man who was in prison for Libel. “Like a brand?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes it’s a hand.”
“Ahand?”
“Leland will buy you a mechanical one.”
“That’s not better!”
“It isa littlebetter,” she said.
I put my head down on the table and tried to think about what I could do to help myself but came up with nothing.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
EMBER
Fear the Counterpart who does not love you.
— Helen Blackburn, Echelon to the
School of Mental Magic
The morning of my trial, Leland messaged to remind me I couldn’t take the flask or magic-suppressing cuffs into Odessa Hall, which meant I needed to start drinking moonale now, and burn off whatever I could with a run. Skye ran the hills with me, and afterward, I changed into the top and pants Leland acquired for my first visit to the palace. Then I sat on Helen’s couch, nauseous, trembling, picking at the white rice Skye cooked, and trying to forget where I was.
I withdrew into my head, latching on to a memory from the time I donated blood, shortly after Dad’s accident. Blood had flowed out of my arm and into what looked like a photocopy machine. I watched the square tile ceiling, breathing calmly. Then time passed, blood kept flowing, and I was sure the machine was never going to stop, and whoever had the code to stop it had forgotten. I counted. Fifty dead bugs were trapped in the fluorescent ceiling light buzzing overhead, and the only thing I could think to do to take my mind off the lightheadedness wasto start the count over again.
It happened suddenly. My head was heavy, my sweat was cold. I said to the nurse, “I’m going to faint.” And then I did.
The blood bank didn’t let me leave for thirty minutes, after I’d chewed a stick of Juicy Fruit gum. Even then, I wasn’t sure I should’ve been driving. But I got in my car, driving slowly, carefully, and made it home.
I’d just pulled into the driveway when my phone rang. It was Gray, asking if I wanted to meet him at The Cheesecake Factory, so I turned my car around.
“Reflexes!” Skye yelled, just before something ball-shaped struck me in the back of the head. A partially peeled clementine bounced off my skull and hit the couch. “Additionally. An adult witch claiming to be an ant is here.”
“An ant?” I glanced at the door and found Sabrina standing there. “Oh,” I said. “My aunt.”
Skye pinched her fingers together, demonstrating something small. Like an insect. “Ant.”
I’d explain it to her later.
“Child!” Sabrina said, her flushed face scribbled with worry as I met her on the porch. Skye tried following me to the door, like she followed me most places, but I curved my lips in a wry smile and shut the door on her.
Outside, my eyes darted back and forth, scouring the yard and the trail into town for Aunt Sinora, but Sabrina had come alone, wild-eyed and leading me to assume the worst.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Run.” She pointed at the rolling green hills with a long, crooked finger, her long, loose curls blowing wildly in the breeze. “Run for the hills or burn them down.Run.You have to run now.”
“You want me to run?” I shook my head in confusion. “From the trial?” An hour remained before I was supposed to be atOdessa Hall.
In a sudden shift of emotion, Sabrina looked up at the cedar ceiling and clasped her hands behind her back, innocently whistling as the top of Sinora’s head crested the hill behind her. Sinora held her long skirt in her hands, lifting it an inch to keep it from dusting the damp ground as her broad shoulders swung her forward.
“Sabrina!” she scolded. “Stop scaring her!”
