Under a Spell uda-5 Read online

  “I ask again,” Will said as we approached the last room. “What exactly are we looking for?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. Just keep an eye out for anything that seems . . . off.”

  Will swung his light toward me, and I was enveloped in a bright yellow glow. I rolled my eyes.

  “You’re funny.”

  “You’re off.”

  “Upstairs.” I shined my light and took the stairs two at a time. By the time I crested the second floor my hackles had gone up. Something hung heavy in the air; there was a sort of buzz, a crackling electricity that hadn’t been there before.

  “Do you feel that?” I hissed over my shoulder to Will.

  He just wagged his head, eyes focused on me.

  My skin started to prick and I could feel the sweat start to bead at my hairline and over my upper lip. My heartbeat sped up, the thrum a solid ache in my chest.

  “There’s something here,” I whispered, shaking my head. I clawed at my chest and pressed my palm against my quick, steady heartbeat. I was finding it hard to breathe. My eyes stung, and every muscle in my body perked, then stiffened. I felt like I was walking into something—something cold, something with icy fingers that walked down my vertebra bone by bone—something evil.

  I paused and Will stopped behind me. I could feel his energy—warm and comforting—a hairsbreadth behind me.

  “There.” I didn’t know when I did it, but I had turned and was facing a door, my arm extended, index finger pointing.

  “We need to go in there.”

  Will obeyed wordlessly, slipping past me and pushing the door open. His hand went for the light switch, but I stopped him. “No.”

  I knew there was something in the room. I knew there was something that would be disturbed by the light. I clicked my flashlight off and Will did the same, the thin strips of moonlight coming through the window the only illumination in the room.

  “This is the art room,” Will said, looking around. “Haven’t we been in here before?”

  There were no desks in this room, just a circle of wooden easels surrounded by high stools. Some easels held canvasses in varying stages of completion, some were empty. There were half-canisters of paint, brushes scattered on a long table, nothing out of the ordinary. But still, something nagged at me.

  “There,” I said finally, pointing to a tiny scrape of white peeking out from underneath one of the easels. “Do you see that?”

  Will’s gaze followed the length of my finger, toward where I was pointing. “Nope.”

  I sighed, handed him my flashlight, and pushed the stool and easel aside. I could see another line now, thick, white, and arched, chalked on the floor. “You have to see that.”

  I saw him squint in the darkness, then sink down onto his haunches. “I have no idea what you’re pointing at, love. It looks like cheap linoleum to me.”

  I groaned and pushed a few more easel setups aside, sucking in a surprised breath when I had uncovered an entire half-circle etched onto the floor.

  “It looks like someone has made a chalk outline of a circle,” I said, pointing again and now walking beside the arch. “You can’t see it?”

  Will shook his head, eyes still fixed. “I can’t.”

  I frowned. “Help me push the rest of these out of the way.”

  He did as he was told, the look of confusion marring his features the whole time. “I’m sorry, I just don’t see what you’re seeing.”

  I stepped back and felt my mouth drop open. The front legs of the stools were set up on a large circle. The back legs of the easel were covering a slightly smaller inner circle, and inside that—a star.

  “It’s a pentagram.”

  Will swung his head yet again. “I’m sorry, Sophie, I just don’t—”

  I did a mental head slap. “It’s veiled.”

  “Huh?”

  I gestured toward the drawing. “It’s veiled. It’s been hidden—magically. I can’t—you know—I can see through that stuff.”

  Will looked at me, and even though I knew that he knew that one of my “special” abilities is that magic can’t be done on me—the characteristic also allowed me to see things hidden magically—I still felt weirdly exposed standing here in a high school classroom.

  “You can’t see it because it’s veiled.”

  Will put an arm around me and pulled me to him as if he felt my awkwardness—and wasn’t repulsed by it. The warmth of his body the length of mine was comforting.

  “So, it’s here.” I pointed out the loop. I leaned down, brushed my fingers over the line. “And it looks like it’s been drawn in chalk. Geez. It’s—it’s like the whole thing is vibrating.”

  The chalked circle looked almost animated—thicker, deeper than it should be, and almost as if the line itself were pulsing.

  “It’s definitely magiked. This isn’t just a few kids playing with chalk.” My stomach started to roil and the heat broke out again, all over me. “This is big, Will. There’s more to this.”

  “Well, of course there is, love—”

  “No. No. I mean this.” I gestured to the circle. “There’s more to this. Here. Now.” I looked around the room. “I can feel it.”

  “Okay.” Will’s gaze swept the room. “So how do we deal with a ‘feeling’?”

  I chewed my bottom lip, then pulled my cell phone from my pocket.

  “Tupperware, toads, or finance, this is Lorraine.”

  “Hey, Lorraine, it’s Sophie.”

  “Sophie! You must have heard about the new salad spinners. They are ex—”

  “No, thanks. I have a salad spinner, actually.” Not that I’d ever used it. “I’m calling about a spell.”

  I heard Lorraine suck her teeth—whether she was angry about losing a potential salad spinner sale or the idea of imparting her witchy wisdom to me, I wasn’t sure. I continued on anyway.

  “I’m standing in front of a pentagram, chalked into the floor. But it seems like something—like something is underneath it, maybe? It’s like it’s pulsing.”

  “Ooh.” Lorraine sounded interested. “It’s active.”

  “Like in use right now?”

  “Not necessarily right now, right now, but recently, likely. Or there is another more active one underneath it. That happens sometimes especially when legends of hallowed grounds brings out the fake teen witch crowd.” She didn’t bother to hide the disdain in her voice.

  “Well.” I pinched my bottom lip as Will pulled out a stool and perched himself on it. “If someone were to draw something on the floor and then erase it, is there some kind of spell that would bring it back up?”

  “Um, like an anti-Mr. Clean spell or something? That’s not really what we focus on—”

  “No. If someone were to draw a pentagram on the floor and then clean it up. Like you said. Maybe one stronger than the other.”

  “Oh! Oh, of course. Anytime a circle is drawn in the earth it leaves a faint magical outline.”

  “Thank you! Will doesn’t believe me.” I glared at him as he bit his thumbnail, looking wholly uninterested.

  “That’s because he probably can’t see it. If a pentagram has been used magically, it’s veiled.”

  “Okay.” I paced the perimeter of the room. “This one is really bright—to me, at least. Is there some kind of spell that could restore the other circle?”

  “Oh, sure.” I imagined Lorraine pressed back in her chair, scratching her hellacious cat Costineau between the ears. “Super easy. You’re going to need four orange candles, some dust from the floor, and an eight-inch string.”

  I bit my lip, looking around the classroom. “I have two flashlights—one is almost orange, dust from the floor and”—I scanned, then brightened—“one of Will’s shoelaces?”

  “What?” Will snapped to attention. “These are my good shoes.”

  “Good shoes don’t have laces,” I hissed. Then, to Lorraine, “Will any of that work?”

  “It’s not perfect, but probably close en
ough. Place the flashlights torch-side-up on the opposite points of the circle. Sprinkle the dust in the center.”

  I relayed the instructions back to Will, who growled at me, stomping around the room in one shoe, but did as he was told.

  “Now you’ll need to take the dust and the string—or shoelace—and go stand in the center of the circle.”

  A flutter of nerves rippled through my stomach as I crossed the threshold of the pentagram and found its center. “Okay, now what?”

  “Sprinkle the dust and repeat after me: Goddess Hectate, bringer of all we know, chants of the past bring a dazzling glow.”

  I slowly circled, dusting, and repeating Lorraine’s chant.

  “Now take one end of the string, and let it flow out as you circle, chanting.” Lorraine cleared her throat and I did the same, pinching the string between my forefinger and thumb.

  “Goddess footsteps shall never be stopped, bring me wisdom so I too may walk.”

  I stopped, Will’s shoelace flopping to the ground at my feet. “Nothing happened.”

  “Give it a second,” Lorraine said before hanging up.

  “Well, that was quite a fun show,” Will said, striding into the circle and snatching back his shoelace. “But—”

  He paused, openmouthed, as a rumble emanated from the floor. I could feel the vibration through the soles of my shoes; it was as if hundreds of students were running through the halls.

  I saw Will’s mouth move, but any word he spoke was drowned out in the chanting wail that shook the walls of the art room. I couldn’t make out one single voice or one single word; each blended into the others, creating a din so solid and loud that it pressed against my chest like a weight. A hot wind shot up, too, circling us.

  I felt Will’s hand slice through the air and grip me around the waist, pulling me so that my hammering heart was pressed up against him. A light kicked up—then a thousand lights—circling us and moving in time with the din.

  “Oh my God, Will, look!”

  The pentagram on the floor was slowly, painstakingly being formed. A line of chalk arched into the circle. Another one, slightly larger, moved faster. Star upon star upon star etched itself into the ground.

  The etching sped up, the wail hitting an ear-splitting crescendo as the thunder of unseen footsteps shook every bone in my body. And then, as quickly as it had appeared, the sound, the movement, the hot wind, the chalk, all disappeared.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  I stared down at the circle around us. The lines were thick, heavy, well defined. My throat was suddenly dry and I tried to swallow, tried to talk, but my tongue was plastered to the roof of my mouth. Finally, I was able to point a single shaking finger toward the floor.

  “It was them.”

  What seemed like hundreds of pentagrams—one on top of the other—were outlined around us. Some were exact, some were slightly skewed, but each had a point that formed a direct line toward the bay.

  “You can see them too then?”

  Will circled slowly, once hand clenched around his jaw. “Of course I can. There must be at least a hundred here. What is this? What is this room used for?” He gaped at me. “What the hell kind of classes do they teach here?”

  I scanned the macabre graffiti, my stomach clenching with each new line. “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure the only electives they offered when I was a student were jazz band and home ec.”

  When my phone rang, I went light-headed and Will dodged for the door. “It’s only my phone. Were you taking off?”

  Crimson washed over Will’s cheeks. “I was securing the door to save you.”

  “Right. Hello?”

  “So, did it work?”

  It was Lorraine, and once my heart dropped out of my throat and into my chest, I spoke. “Yeah. Maybe a little too well.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “There are pentagrams everywhere. The spell illuminated at least sixty—maybe more.”

  Lorraine paused for a beat. “Really?”

  “Really. What does that mean?”

  “It means that you’re definitely not dealing with a couple of kids messed up with the occult. You’re dealing with a legacy, Sophie.”

  I clicked the phone shut and looked at Will. He swallowed slowly. “So?”

  “Lorraine says we’re dealing with a legacy.”

  “A legacy? What does that mean?”

  I picked my way across the room, careful not to step on any of the fading lines on the floor. My entire body ached and my skin felt pinpricked and tight. My heart dropped down to a normal beat, but the thuds were heavy and hard. “It means that Cathy Ledwith wasn’t the first. And, unless we stop this, Alyssa Rand won’t be the last.”

  I drove home with the heat blasting and the radio off, Will’s taillights shining bright in front of me. Everything felt wrong—I felt wrong—and I tried a series of deep-breathing techniques I had seen on some late-night yoga set infomercial. Everything was churning in my head—was it the students or was it the school? Had other girls gone missing, girls we didn’t know about yet? Who—or what—was to blame?

  I was just starting to feel normal again when I crested the third-floor steps of our apartment.

  “Christ.”

  And there it went again.

  “What is this?” Will asked.

  The little strip of public property between our apartment and Will’s was set up like a waiting room, complete with a stack of long-expired magazines, my living room set, and the half-dead spider plant I had been trying to revitalize since the Bush administration. It would have been a nice little setup if I didn’t have to throttle the arm of the couch and clear the coffee table to reach my front door, or, if it had been, you know, inside my apartment as it had been when I’d left this morning.

  “Good luck with all that,” Will said with a smug smile before disappearing into his furniture-on-the-inside apartment.

  I groaned and grabbed my door, flinging it open. “Nina, what the hell is go—”

  “Shhhh!” I was met by a chorus of angry hisses and then the business end of a megaphone as Nina yelled, “Cut!” directly into my face. She pinched her icy, bony fingers around my elbow and yanked me into the kitchen, which had miraculously gone from cozy mess to break room chic: our mismatched collection of hand-me-down mugs with unappetizing statements—Carrie for Prom Queen, The Problem Is Gonorrhea—had been replaced by an orderly heap of stolen straight-from-the-UDA Styrofoam stand-in mugs and brown paper napkins stamped with the Starbucks logo. Our sugar bowl was stuffed with pilfered packaged sweeteners and coffee stirrers, and bottled water bloomed from an ice bath in the sink. There was a hastily arranged basket of individually wrapped snacks that I recognized—basket, bagels, and all—from the Red Cross station on Second Street.

  “What is all of this?”

  Nina swept an arm toward the cleared out living room. “Auditions.”

  I scanned the room and frowned. “Auditions? For the UDA commercial?” I rolled up on my tiptoes and eyed the woman pacing my living room. She couldn’t have been under five feet nine inches tall or over eighty pounds. She took short, careful steps, smacking a sheaf of papers against her bony hip as she spoke soundlessly, her eyes bright and batting, engaging the struggling kitten on my Hang in There! poster.

  “Who is that?”

  Nina produced a clipboard from somewhere and thrummed through a stack of eight-by-ten black and white glossies. “Um, that is Stella MacNeir. Don’t you just love her?”

  I pinched my bottom lip. “What department does she work in? I don’t think I’ve ever seen her. Is she new?”

  “Uh, new like just off Broadway.”

  I raised my eyebrows, impressed. “Like, Broadway, Broadway?”

  “Like Broadway at Kearney, San Francisco.”

  “That’s Big Al’s porn shop.”

  Nina leaned through the kitchen–living room pass-through. “Thank you, Stella. We’re going to wrap up for the day. We’ll be in t
ouch.”

  “Wait. You’re auditioning people for the UDA commercial who don’t work at UDA?”

  “I need the best, Soph.”

  I gaped as Stella slid into a neon-pink leopard-print jacket and slipped one of my Frescas into her knock-off handbag before she slunk out the door.

  “That’s the best?”

  Nina looked casually over her shoulder as though Stella would reappear, perhaps in even more thespian-slash-sex-store-worker glory. She looked back at me, using her index fingers to rub tiny circles on her temples. “Look, it’s been a really long day. And we need Stella. You know how many actual Underworld employees show up on film? Two. Two! And one of them is a centaur. So as you can see, outsourcing this part was necessary.” Nina’s face suddenly brightened as her eyes slipped from the top of my forehead down to my toes.

  “Unless . . .”

  I stepped backward, mashing my hips against our cheap Corian counter. “No. Oh, no.”

  Nina framed me with her hands and grinned so widely, I could see the tip of her fangs and the tops of her gums. “Oh, you’re perfect.”

  “No. I know what you’re thinking and no. No, no, no.”

  Nina’s arms dropped to her side and she pushed out her swollen lower lip. “You have no idea what I was thinking.”

  “I’ve lived with you way too long, Neens. I know exactly what you’re thinking and the answer is a giant, loud, resounding, no. Scratch that—a no way in hell.” I hopped up on the counter and plucked a mostly wrapped muffin from the Red Cross stash and eyed Nina, who said nothing.

  “You were going to ask me to be in your commercial,” I said then, fishing for a bottle of water to wash the sawdust muffin crumbs out of my trachea. “Right?”

  “I was not!”

  I paused, water bottle midway to my parted lips. “You weren’t?”

  “Oh!” Nina clapped a hand over her candy-pink lips as her eyebrows dove together in a sympathetic V. “Oh, now you’re sad! Don’t be sad! I can’t believe I hurt your feelings. I didn’t mean to do that.” Nina paced dramatically while I looked on in wide-eyed confusion.

  “Oh, honey, you know what? You’re too important to me. I am going to put you in my commercial. You deserve, probably more than anyone, to be in this commercial. If anyone should be the voice, the image of the Underworld Detection Agency, it’s you. It’s Sophie Lawson.”