“No,” she said, looking bewildered. “That’s the first time she’s laughed since she came into my care.”
Dani dropped her crayon on the table and looked down at her drawing. What I’d thought were just random scratches across the paper I now saw were a series of interconnected and intersecting lines. It was nothing I could read, but it had to be deliberate. Again, I felt the flicker of something just out of reach, something I should’ve understood. I ground my teeth in frustration.
“What does your drawing mean, Dani?” Max asked.
No response.
He looked at me meaningfully.Your turn. I shifted uncomfortably.
“Dani, did you know the members of Phi Kat?”
No answer.
I opened to the picture of Dean Morren’s tattoo and slid my phone to her. “What about this symbol? Have you seen it before? Or this one?” I swiped to a picture of the marking over House Torlaine.
Her eyes flicked over the phone, and her grip on the crayon tightened. She scribbled harder than ever on her paper, hand flying over the page.
I pushed forward. “It’s all over campus. We can’t make heads or tails of it, but you know what it is, don’t you? It was in your notebook. Did you draw it?”
She held the crayon so tightly I could see tiny cracks running up its side.
Maritza’s voice hitched up an octave. “Maybe that’s enough for one day. I don’t want her getting all riled up.”
I bit my lip, a hazy memory surfacing of the dream I had featuring Dani, where she’d desperately wanted to tell me something. “What about … ‘Perhaps you will succeed, perhaps you will cause terror’?”
Dani’s eyes flashed, burrowing straight into mine. I saw what could only be called recognition in her eyes.
“What does it mean, Dani?”
Dani started rocking back and forth and muttering to herself. Her voice was too low for me to make out the words. Maritza backpedaled, knocking into the wooden manger scene.
The symbols on Dani’s paper were larger now. Big sweeping letters with circles at the bottoms. Now I could see the pattern formed by the interconnecting lines.
“Ring letters,” I said, tracing a finger over the lines. “I’ve seen these characters before. They say they’re the letters of angels.”
Dani stopped. Her eyes flicked up to meet mine so fast I nearly fell backward. She laughed, a guttural sound. “Or demons.”
Max took in a sharp breath. Maritza screamed, but we were so close now, so close to uncovering everything. If I could just—
“I know how the other students treated you,” I said, the words flying off my tongue. “Did they hurt you? Did you try a spell to get back at them?”
She scribbled faster, her crayon flying across the page. Over and over, she traced the letters, carving into the paper until she went straight through to the table.
“Cella,” Max warned.
“Tell me. Tell me what it means. Who did this to you?”
Her murmuring quickened. First just a whisper, then louder and louder. “Go on with your Magic spells and sorcery. Perhaps you will succeed,” she hissed, “perhaps you will cause terror. These books are banned. They are forbidden. Stray not from the path; wear not a ring; cross not your heart. Look not from the light.”
“I think that’s enough,” Max said, reaching for my hand.
“What do you think, Cella, would you like to join me?” she whispered, her fingers curling toward me. A grotesque grin spread across her face. Max lunged, wrapping an arm around my waist to pull me back.
“Cella, get out of here!”
“Do not speak of these things in the dark,” she said, her tone guttural yet saccharine. “They find you there.”
“What,” Max said, once we made it out of the cottage, “in the ever-loving fuck was that?”
