Page 74 of The Witch They Crave

Because someone in this room knows, and it isn't me, and I’m sick of always being in the dark.

I throw up a sarcastic wave as I take the stairs out of his lair two at a time. After a short cut across the quad, I make it to the dining hall just in time.

Nellie's at her usual table, the corner one, halfway through a sandwich with a textbook propped against the salt shaker. She's not expecting me, so when I drop into the chair across from her she startles hard enough to nearly take the book down with her elbow.

"Oh my God." She slaps a hand flat on the textbook to stop it sliding. "You can't just—warn a person. I almost lost my whole sandwich." But she's grinning, already shoving her tray sideways to make room for me like I've got a standing reservation. "What are you doing here? You never surface before one."

"Escaped early. Long story."

"You look like hell."

"Wow. Thank you."

"I mean it lovingly." She tears her orange in half and pushes the bigger piece at me without asking. "Eat something, you look like a ghost that skipped breakfast. Sit. Talk. Distract me from thermodynamics, I'm begging you."

I take the orange. Peel a segment. And for a second it's just this—the two of us, the din of the hall, the plain comfort of being amongst friends. I've been living in a house where I’m walking on egg shells, worried about the intentions of my overly generous host.

It’s nice to relax with her. Let all that fade away.

Which is why I dive straight into it. I wasn't going to. I was going to ease her in, perhaps tell her that this is happening to a friend of mine. But Nellie’s too sharp to believe that and she’s sure as hell not judgmental.

"Can I ask you something… witch to witch."

Her eyebrows go up. She sets the bread down. "Always."

"Have you ever felt something that… wasn't yours?"

She frowns. "You're going to have to be less cryptic, babe."

"Okay. Say I'm with someone. And I feel something—and it's real, it's mine, except it's too big. Bigger than what I actually feel, like it's been turned up past where I set it. Or I'll feel something aimed back at me that I know I'm not making." I turn her water glass a quarter-turn on the table, trying to find the shape of what I’m trying to say in words that don't sound insane. "It's like there's a—a channel open. Between me and someone else. And I can't always tell which side a feeling started on anymore. Mine bleeds into theirs, theirs bleeds into mine, and it all comes out the same color."

Nellie's watching me carefully now. The teasing's gone out of her.

"And this morning, in training—" I stop. Start again. "There's an exercise where Aamon puts his magic against mine to check it. And it used to be like two separate things touching. And today I couldn't find the line. I couldn't tell where he stopped and I started." I make myself say the last part. "It's happening more. The feelings. The—bleed. And I don't know if that's normal, or if I'm losing it, or if it means something."

She doesn't answer right away, which is how I know she's taking it seriously and not just soothing me. Nellie soothes fast when it's small. When it's big she goes quiet first.

"I don't know," she finally says. "I've never heard of anything like that. Two signatures blurring—" She shakes her head. "That's not a thing I’ve ever heard of." Then, decisive, the way she gets when there's a problem to solve: "But my mom might. If it's the kind of thing that got left out of the sanitized curriculum, that's exactly her wheelhouse. Let me call her. I'll tell her what you told me and see what she says."

"Nellie—"

"I'm won’t use your name. I'll say it's for a friend, she won't push." She's already scrolling to Odette's contact, that stubborn set in her jaw. "Cal. If something's happening to your magic, you want to know what it is. You of all people want to know what's in your own head."

She's right. I've survived this long by always knowing exactly what I'm feeling and why. If I can't trust that anymore, I've lost the one thing that keeps everyone around me safe.

And "a friend" won't fool Odette for a second. That woman reads between lines for a living. She'll know exactly who Nellie's asking for.

But I don’t really have a choice.

"Okay," I say. "Ask her."

"Okay." She sets the phone face-down on the table—she'll call after, when it's quieter, not here in the middle of the lunch rush—then her face shifts into a different kind of worried, and I know before she opens her mouth that we're not done. "While we're on hard things. Has Shandy said anything to you? Or done anything that—" She stops. "You've been around her more than I have this week."

Something in my stomach tightens. We've both been circling this since the night at her place—since she said the words venom dependency out loud and I couldn’t even wrap my head around the idea.

"Nothing she'd let me hear." I turn my glass. "But she flinched when Tess grabbed her arm in the corridor Monday—hard, like it hurt, then covered it. Sleeves down to her knuckles the whole time, and we're past the point where it's about the cold." I hesitate. "And she does the thing where she's warm and present for about ten minutes and then she's just—gone. Behind her eyes. Somewhere else. Then she comes back and pretends she never left."

Nellie's face does something complicated. "So I'm not making it up."