My cheeks flushed with heat. “I don’t know what you thought you saw, but nothing happened.”
“Really? Because it looked to me like they were fingering you until you came, and I have it on very good authority from half the girls in this school that’s notnothing.”
“I am sonottalking about this.”
“All I want to know is who you’ve chosen.” Ayaz whirled around to face me, a storm raging in his eyes.
“Who I’ve…?” I rolled my eyes. “I haven’t chosenanyone. I’mnotchoosing. I’mtryingto survive this fucking school. So for a tiny fraction of a moment, I got to pretend I was someone else. I wasn’t the gutter whore trailer trash defined by what I didn’t have, but one of those perfect girls who guys like you fall over to make happy. So yeah, it happened, but we haven’t talked about it. Quinn thinks it was all fun and games, and Trey has probably been scrubbing my smell out of his skin ever since. Why does it matter?”
“Because…” Ayaz screwed his face up. He caught sight of something, and quickened his pace, pulling away from me and shoving his way through a patch of brambles. “I see it just up ahead,” he called back.
Way to avoid the conversation.I hit the top of the ridge and saw it – the outcrop of rock on the slope of the hill, the crescent-shaped scar in the landscape that marked the place where I’d emerged from the cave.
The tremor started in my feet, shuddering up my legs so I staggered off-balance. I reached out to steady myself, but my fingers refused to grip the stone and I collapsed on my knees. I pressed my fingers into the scar on my wrist as a spark of fire licked behind my eyes.
“Hazel?” Ayaz spun around, his voice rising with concern.
“I can’t,” I whispered.
Ayaz knelt down beside me. “Then you’re going to die.”
“Maybe not,” I joked. “You didn’t.”
Ayaz narrowed his eyes, ignoring my comment. “Courtney and Ms. West and Trey’s dad are all going to win. You’re going to be swallowed by the god of the void, and be stuck at this stupid school until the world ends, and do you think they’ll let up on you once you’re one of us? No, they’ll devise grander tortures for you, kill you a hundred times and then bring you back just to kill you again. Is that what you want? Is that—”
Gritting my teeth, I shoved him aside and launched myself down the slope.
“Yay, Hazy!” Quinn yelled after me as I leapt over rocks and skittered around fallen branches. My feet kicked up dirt and rocks as they churned toward the entrance, even as my heart leaped into my throat and blood pumped in my ears.
I didn’t stop until the crescent of the cave swallowed me into its stygian gloom. Inside the entrance, sound bent in odd ways, bouncing off the rocks and making the space twist and contort. In the distance, water dripped. I pressed my fingernail into my scar in a vain attempt to stave off a flashback to the last time I was here.
The boys slipped down into the cave after me. Trey and Ayaz clicked on flashlights, the beams illuminating rows of stalactites like sharpened teeth guarding the mouth of the beast.
“It was this way.” I slapped my hand against the wall, leaving a handprint so we could find our way back. The guys fell into line behind me. No one spoke. I focused all my energy on not dissolving into a terrified heap.
Somewhere out there in the darkness lurked the slithering creature Courtney summoned to hurt me. Last time, it had tasted fire. If I were it, I’d be out for revenge.
After a time, we emerged into the sloping tunnel where the Eldritch Club had sprung their trap. In the wide beams of Quinn’s and Ayaz’s flashlights, it now appeared less sinister – an almost cozy space where the rocks formed small pools that trickled into the narrow ditch.
I shuffled along the slick rocks to reach the far wall. A large circle was drawn on the stone, with multiple lines and shapes inside it. It might not have been identical to that one Ayaz had shown me in Rebecca Nurse’s book, but it was definitely her style. Even though water channeled through the cave, the image was crisp and unbroken.
“See? It’s exactly where I remember it,” I called back to the guys. “You must’ve looked in the wrong place.”
Ayaz came up beside me. He frowned at the wall. “There’s nothing there.”
“Yeah, I don’t see anything,” Trey said.
“Whatever you’re smoking, Hazy, you should share.” Quinn’s arm snaked around my waist.
“You really can’t see it?” The sigil was almost the span of my outstretched hands, and very obvious.
Ayaz ran his hands over the wall. Where he touched the lines of the sigil, they rippled, the mark bending away from his fingers.
That’s impossible. Stone doesn’t move.I swiped my finger through the black line. It was like touching stone, because that was exactly what it was.
So then why did it move when Ayaz touched it?
Ayaz studied my face. “There’s nothing on this wall. I can’t even feel a trace of magic in the stone.”
