Ayaz nodded. “There probably are more, too. It would explain why he treated some humans different from others. Remember the pirates who hid their loot in the caves? The god turned them insane. He tried to give power to Parris but that backfired. But Rebecca Nurse had enough power to stop Parris, even though it killed her. Perhaps it’s something in the female genome.”
That explains why only non-Edimmu women can see the fire flaring in the sigils.
“When you unleashed your power, Hazy, you acted like a… a starter ignition. Your power is fire – maybe you’re the light he needs.” Ayaz drew loops and swirls radiating out from the location of the first pillar. “Look at this; this is the placement of all the sigils I know of around the school. If we account for a few we haven’t found yet, and join them together, they form two giant sigils – one made by Parris, the other by Rebecca. Parris’ sigil incorporates the entire school.The building itself is a sigil– one designed to keep the god trapped within the wreckage below. Only every renovation made to the building probably makes the god weaker. Rebecca’s sigil is laid over top of it, and it must come from the god itself because it places three points at its focii.” Ayaz jabbed his finger at the pillar in the auditorium, then pointed to the center of the gym, then finally to the grotto in the pleasure garden.
“The three pillars?” I asked. Ayaz nodded.
“And I’m betting if you did the same thing again in these locations, you’d call up the pillars. What has sunk will rise. The god’s spaceship will be ready for launch. He could take all his children home.”
That’s perfect.We could send the Eldritch Club to another planet. They would go far away, back to the god’s own universe. Our planet would be safe.
“I’ve been moving around that boundary sigil,” Trey pointed out. “Do you think that’s weakened Parris’ sigil?”
“I’m almost certain it has.” Ayaz tapped his chin. “And there is something else… your friend said there was nothing unique about our DNA? No weirdness that set us apart.”
“Nothing.”
“If we were truly the start of a new race, we’d see evidence of that on a cellular level.” Ayaz the artist looked to Trey for confirmation. Trey nodded.
“That’s my understanding. But I’m not a geneticist. We can ask Deborah to confirm.”
“Good. Yes, we should do that. Because if our genes haven’t changed, the only thing I can conclude is that the god’s power is keeping us in this… stasis? That was probably something Ms. West was experimenting with. The god seems to be immortal, and the power he gave to our parents made them age slower. So his power makes us the Edimmu. If we can fix his spaceship and send him back to his home…”
“…we’ll turn back into ordinary teenagers,” Quinn cried.
“Either that, or drop dead,” Trey finished.
The four of us exchanged a glance. For the first time in a very long time, true hope flickered her warmth upon us. Weknewwe’d cracked open the final mystery of Miskatonic Prep. We had a way forward, a plan.
Now we just had to figure out how to repair an ancient spaceship made of stone that existed nowhere else on earth.
No problem, right?
None of the boys seemed daunted by the task ahead of us. Quinn rubbed his hands together with glee. “Sounds like fun. What’s the first step to freedom?”
“We’ve got to activate the two remaining pillars,” Ayaz said. “Easier said than done, since we don’t know how Hazel activated the first one.”
“I do have an idea,” I said. “I got angry and I lost control of the fire. The god was able to creep in under my defenses and become part of me. Like the Deadmistress said, I became the conduit for his power, and he used me to call the pillar that he couldn’t call himself.”
Ayaz’s face looked like an expectant puppy. “So you could maybe do it again?”
“Hazy? Get angry. Highly unlikely.” Quinn cracked up. I punched him in the arm.
“Yes. I could do it. I’m not even sure it needs to be anger, just whatever emotion stokes my fire.”
“And what else stokes your fire?” Quinn waggled an eyebrow. I punched him even harder.
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“Can we find out now?” Quinn’s arm slid around my stomach, pulling me against him.
“Keep it in your pants, Quinnanigans.” Trey turned the map toward him, studying the lines with a frown. “We’ll get the one in the gym when the parents come for graduation. It won’t be hard to make you angry then. That only leaves the one in the grotto.”
“How are we going to get that one?” Ayaz asked.
“The one thing Miskatonic Prep students know how to do better than anyone else on earth,” I grinned. “We’re going to party.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
