When I woke the next morning, I turned on every light in the room and the volume on my headphones all the way up. Bear hadn’t come back last night. Max had texted saying he couldn’t get the stubborn dog out of his truck, that Bear didn’t even want to come into the building. I’d filled a bowl up with treats and left it outside, in hopes maybe he’d smell it and come back.
I sat at my desk and opened the book to a passage.
For the waters of kind, although possessing of prolonged and proper nature, notwithstanding that which belongs to the Air …
The birds outside were chirping, and the sun was so warm out the window.
… the segments could only bend; rejoice, for the bearer only has but to call …
My eyelids drooped. My head started to ever so gently lean against the table …
… shattered will the gemstone and gathered luck flee if any stones are carried hence …
Right before I fell asleep, my eyes slammed open.
It’s a spell.
It was a freaking spell.
That was why I couldn’t understand the lines, why it kept putting me to sleep. It was draining my energy. My eyes flicked back to the open page.
A spell for gathering luck?
Though I hadn’t attempted any of the spells or “recipes” that S listed throughout the Book of Autumn, it was understandable, given that it was a book literally chock-full of Magic, for some of the residual Magic to try to latch onto me through the text.
I would just have to be more careful. “I’ll read in shorter segments,” I murmured aloud. “Have less physical contact with the book.” That meant no more sleeping with it, obviously.
The croak of my voice startled me. I’d started speaking to myself while I was in my dorm room since I’d been spending so much time in here lately. It made me feel a little more comfortable in a space that I didn’t feel exactly at home in. And since Bear had been gone, it had made me feel less alone.
I closed the book and stowed it in the locked trunk beneath my bed.
S’s Magic was some of the most advanced I’d ever seen. I started cataloguing the spells I found. Here were the things I understood so far:
Pages 47–56:An extremely long-winded description of the significance of numbers in the great mysteries of the world, starting with the monad and dyad, to the decad, thought to be an extremely significant number.
56–57:Astronomy, star maps, where and how to pull power from the stars.
I’d just started cataloguing a lengthy study on the Magical properties of plants that S’s teacher had learned from Magi in Egypt when Max knocked on the door. I could tell from his aura that he was annoyed.
He sat down on the bed beside me and tossed a balled-up piece of paper into the air. “Look out, world. Cella’s ready to crack the case. Leaving that dunce of hers behind. Max who?”
My eyes narrowed. “Well, one of us has to actually work on it. Might as well be me.”
He stared at me. “I don’t like what this book is doing to you.”
Heat crawled to my neck. My head ached, and my eyes were sore, and all I could feel was Dani’s hot breath on my skin. “Of course you don’t! Because you don’t ever want me to be doing anything without you. Well, this time it’s not about you, Max. This book is what’s going to fix her, and I’m not sorry if I’m actually here trying to figure it out while you’re off wasting time.”
“I don’t trust the book, Cella. I didn’t say I didn’t trust you,” he said quietly.
Hot, angry splotches spread across my cheeks. My words came out breathless and sharp. I shoved the book at him. “Here, you want to help so bad, have at it. Swoop in to save the day, like you do every time.”
On my way down the hallway, I could barely see straight. I nearly ran into a girl coming out of her room. My fingers clawed at the side of the wall. “Are you okay …?” someone asked.
“I’m fine,” I snapped, but they just kept coming down the hall. A whole group of them following doggedly after me like a group of devoted followers.
I reached the door of House Torlaine. I shoved it open out into bright, much too bright sunlight, and then—I was falling.
How did I—
