Foretold Read online

  There are one hundred and thirty-seven locks on Ms. Fenice’s door.

  “Even if we figure out which key goes where, there are three combination locks, and this thing looks like a biometric thumb reader. What the hell is she protecting in there? Her doily collection?” Griffin gives the door a small kick.

  “Stop!” I look back at Pict’s pink door across the hall. “Someone might hear.”

  “Give me the keys.” Regan holds out her hand and thumbs through the iron ring. “This one looks like a super old skeleton key. This keyhole here looks like the oldest one. Maybe…” She tries to fit it to the lock. It goes in easily but doesn’t turn. “Ugh. This is hopeless. Where’s Bacchy?”

  “He’s on his way,” Griffin says.

  I take back the keys and try fitting them to locks with no success. I drop to sit on the ground and inspect the eight little acorn tumblers along the bottom of the door, spinning them to a random series of numbers.

  “What are you going to do?” Regan asks me.

  I lean my head against the door and bang it twice. Then three more times for good measure.

  “Made some headway, have you?” Bacchy booms. We all shush him at the same time, and he glances around. “Sorry,” he whispers. “Did you get it? Headway? She banged her head and—”

  “There’s no way we’re getting in,” I whisper-wail.

  “Let me see.” He takes the keys and inserts them willy-nilly. “This one looks like it’ll take your hand off.” Bacchy gestures to the bird beak lock. “And this dragonfly—”

  I scramble to my feet. “Dragonfly?” I stand and peer at the brass dragonfly lock, a keyhole resting between its shiny eyes. I grab the keys and start sticking them, methodically, into that keyhole.

  “What is it?” Griffin asks.

  “You think this has something to do with your dream?” Regan asks, catching on immediately.

  “Felda, Emina, and Gelisa said there was an undercurrent to the dream. ‘One key to see.’ And the other day when I asked Fenice about her locks, she said something about the best security system being a good deterrent.”

  “Deterrent… You think these are all dummy locks?” Griffin asks.

  “Clever,” Bacchy says, stroking his beard.

  I run through ten more keys. Please let this not be my trivia-obsessed brain looking for patterns. Please!

  A click sounds, followed by a thunderous rolling clank. I try the handle, and the door swings open.

  “You did it!” Regan shouts, before clamping her hands over her mouth. We jump up and down and mouth cheers to each other silently.

  “Best not get caught before you finish the thing,” Bacchy says from inside the door. I rush in after him, but we need a lookout.

  Regan volunteers. “My mentor is down the hall. I have an excuse if I’m caught. Go!”

  “It smells like the inside of my grandma’s purse exploded in here,” Griffin says when I close the door behind us. “Looks like it, too.”

  “Not every flower smells sweet,” Bacchy says.

  “Who said that?” Griffin asks absently.

  “I did. Just now. Cassie, I think your friend might be cracked,” Bacchy says.

  “No, man… I mean it sounded like you were quoting a book—never mind.”

  I open the chest I watched Fenice place the book in before I left.

  “I wouldn’t do that—” I hear Bacchy say a second before I hear the crash. Griffin bends to scoop up the jar of seeds he knocked over.

  “It’s not here.” I rifle through the contents of the chest, pulling books out frantically. “It has to be here!”

  We rummage through more chests and come up empty.

  “Guys, hurry it up! Classes are going to let out soon,” Regan hisses from the door. The door clicks closed behind her, the sound echoing like a starting pistol.

  “Where can it be?” I ask, panic creeping into my tone.

  “This closet is filled with dried leaves and flowers or whatever. No books here,” Griffin says from the sideboard.

  “Only book here is a ritual recipe book. Not what we’re looking for,” Bacchy says.

  I look over at Fenice’s desk. And sitting right smack on top of the light oak surface is a fat book. A dull green book. My heart thunders.

  There’s no way.

  I hurry to the desk.

  It is!

  “I found it!” I call out. My hands shake as I thumb through the text. “Halt the Harvest! This is the ritual!” Relief courses through me as I offer up silent thanks to the universe. “‘Stave off the foreseen reaping of a soul,’” I read. I turn the page. “Oh no. Oh no.”

  “What? What is it?” Griffin asks as they rush over. He spins the book toward him. “Shit.”

  “What’s the problem?” Bacchy asks. “Cripes, grab the pages and let’s be on our way!”

  “Bacchy, man… it’s…” Griffin shakes his head. “Had to be a Magnitude Five Dark Mirror. Cripes is right.”

  Bacchy reads over Griffin’s shoulder. He shrugs. “I don’t see what the problem is. You said you have a dark mirror for the ritual your aunt gave you. Saving your young beau’s life is more important than that Bedlam mission of hers.”

  I open Fenice’s drawer and close it five times. When I look up, Bacchy and Griffin are staring at me. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.”

  “What? What is it?” Bacchy asks.

  “Cassie used that mirror a few days ago. When she did the Bedlam ritual,” Griffin says.

  “Heart of the Coil,” Bacchy says. “It’s the only way.”

  “What’s that mean?” Griffin asks.

  “Guys! Someone’s coming!” Regan calls from the door. “Hurry!”

  Damn it! Damn, damn, damn, damn! No time to copy it all down now. I rip the pages out, feeling a brief and fiery burst of guilt for book desecration, and we set the room to rights. I pull the door closed behind me and shove the key into the dragonfly lock. The mechanism clanks closed, and our Aeromancy instructor runs past us a moment later, looking as windswept as always.

  “What’s the Heart of the Coil?” Griffin asks Bacchy.

  Bacchy pulls at his pointy beard. “Only two things are dark enough, powerful enough, to create a Magnitude Five Dark Mirror. A mirror charged with a Gloaming Moon eclipse… or one charged in the darkest place a scryer can venture short of death: the Heart of the Coil.”

  “This Heart of the Coil thing is good news, then!” Griffin says. “Right? You don’t have to wait seven years for an eclipse to charge your mirror. We can just pop into the Coil and charge that sucker now.”

  “Can’t. The Coil is wound tight. Got to wait until the Coil Walk, when it unfurls,” Bacchy offers. “Then there’s the finding of the thing. Only person I know for sure has been there, at least from what they say, is Samara Trefoil.”

  “Okay… so we talk to the nutjob, figure out how she got there, and we find the Heart when we do our Coil Walk. We can take a little detour on our way to Laurel Plain,” Griffin says.

  Regan looks contemplative. “Yeah, but what if the Heart is what made Samara a nutjob?”

  Bacchy whistles. “It's a tall order, but it’s probably the only thing available to you, Cassie. I’ve asked around—if anyone has a Mag Five, they aren’t telling.”

  “I can’t walk the Coil,” I say, shock melting away and rapidly replaced with desperation.

  “What are you talking about? Of course you—you can’t stay at Theban without walking the Coil!” Regan says.

  “I wasn’t planning on staying. I was going to save Colin and leave,” I say. Regan looks wounded. “It’s not what I want to do. My OCD. My catastrophic thinking. All of it. It would be dangerous for you in there with me! Look what happened with Samara Trefoil. Pict said—”

  “Do you want to save Colin? Yes or no?” Regan demands.

  “Of course I do!”

  “Then you need to stop worrying about us. We’re a team. We’ll be going into this thing with our eyes op
en,” she says. “Right?”

  Griffin hesitates. But when Regan narrows her eyes, he says, “Right! No, I'm all in. For sure. I was just thinking… there’s no way we can tell Noah. I know he’s your… whatever, but you can’t tell him.”

  “That’s not fair to Noah,” I say, my voice quavering, “or anyone.”

  “If you love Colin, then you don’t have a choice,” Regan says. “Griffin and I will take care of getting the stuff we’ll need for the Coil Walk. You concentrate on performing as much of this ritual as possible, and save the part that needs the dark mirror for when you’re in the Coil.”

  “Happy to help with whatever you need,” Bacchy says.

  Pict approaches. “What is this motley crew doing outside my door, Ms. Morai?”

  “They were… we were training! For the Coil Walk.”

  “Delightful. With these shining specimens of scryerhood by your side, you’ll race right through to the Laurel Plain in no time.”

  “Martin Pict!” Bacchy says. “We need to find you a nice lady friend. Or a man friend? Either way. Improve your temperament a bunch. Take it from me. Don’t have one now. I’m miserable! Had one before. Much happier. Course, I was always soused at the time so who knows if I was really happier or just didn’t know I was unhappy. Could have been—”

  “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. I’m sure you can continue that conversation with yourself elsewhere?” Pict lets himself into the office. “Ms. Morai, inside. Your workbook awaits.”

  Chapter 29

  The light in Samara Trefoil’s room is blinding, the furnishings sparse. The walls occasionally quiver, but the space around us does not change. Regan, Bacchy, and I approach the slight figure lying on the cot. We heard her feeding tubes had been removed, but she’s still hooked up to some manner of monitor and IV.

  “Melusine said we only have a few minutes. Make them count,” Bacchy whispers.

  “Samara,” Regan calls. “Sorry to bother you… we’re hoping you can help us.”

  Samara explodes from under her covers and scrambles onto all fours, yanking the machinery attached to her tubing. Her hair hangs in her face. The filth has been washed away, but her eyes seem to look inward as much as out, to her past as much as this present.

  “No sneaking,” she hisses.

  “Easy, now. We’re all friends here,” Bacchy says. “Just want to ask you a little question before your nurse gets here. That’s all.”

  I feel a pang of guilt, slipping in to ask someone so unwell to dredge up their worst memories. “Samara… I’m so sorry to bother you, but I need to know. Did you really find the Heart of the Coil?” I ask softly.

  She scrambles backwards. “No names, no games. Don’t play with your food.”

  “What does—” Regan starts to ask.

  Lucidity flashes in Samara’s eyes. She brushes her hair from her face and eyes us warily. “Who are you? Why do you want to know about the Heart? No one should ever—”

  “I need to find it. It’s the only way I can save someone.”

  “Save someone?” she scoffs. I watch the sanity slip from her gaze again, like blinds being pulled, her eyes going unfocused. “I’ll play. I’ll play.”

  We glance at one another, and I try again. “How can I find the Heart?” I ask. A thought occurs. “What did it feel like? Being there?”

  “Step back, step back!” she shouts. We leap back practically as one. She resumes her whispering, “Backwards. Then forward. Dark, so dark. Dark likes dark. Deep and deeper. Despair there. Despair here. Inside there. Inside here.” She knocks on her head violently, then whisper-sings, “Heart finds you.” It’s all we get out of her before a memory resurfaces. “I’ll play! I’ll play!” she sobs. She shrieks, tearing the tubing at her arms.

  “Easy now, love,” Bacchy says. “You’ll hurt your—”

  Samara leaps at Bacchy, knocking him over. Regan and I cry out as she tries to race from the room, but Griffin is there to block her way, grabbing her around the waist.

  “I need to go back,” she wails. “It’s calling to me.”

  We help get Bacchy back on his feet. I can’t tear my eyes away from that slight figure as Griffin deposits her onto her cot. She crumbles onto her blankets immediately.

  “Let’s away before you’re caught,” Bacchy says. “Poor girl. Melusine is going to have my head for this.”

  Someone had the idea to decorate the Coil Walk entrance with balloons and glittery pep rally signs. The crowd at our back cheers. Another group waves as they enter the Coil.

  “Strap on your water bladder, Cassie. Here…” Regan reaches behind me and attaches a vest-like contraption filled with drinking water.

  “Too bad we can’t bring an extra real bladder to hold all that liquid in. Not sure what we’re supposed to do if nature calls,” Griffin says.

  “Probably like real camping. But let’s hope we’re through to Laurel Plain before we have to find out,” Noah says. His eye patch is dark across his face.

  “We can replace ‘does a bear crap in the woods’ with ‘does a scryer shit in the Coil?’” Griffin says, leaning down to fill his cargo pants with supplies.

  “You guys are gross,” Regan says.

  “Guys? Don’t lump me in with him.” Noah leans down and gives Regan a gentle kiss, a brush of his lips. Angry Noah is lying dormant at the moment.

  Griffin straightens. “I need more jerky. I’ll be right back.” He stomps off through the clusters of Coil Walk teams.

  Regan runs her hand over Noah’s close-cropped hair and reaches down to help him put on his pack.

  Bacchy approaches and shoves the cups I asked him for into my hands before enfolding me in a bear hug, nearly upending the contents. “Be well, Cassie of the Cuff.” He rushes off, complaining of dust in his eyes before I can thank him.

  I turn to Noah and press one of the cups into his hand before I lose my nerve. “Cheers.” I clink my cup against his. “Ginger cider for the road. Didn’t want you ‘groaking’ mine.”

  He looks up at me for a breathless moment before handing it off to a crestfallen Regan, resuming his careful inspection of his pack straps. Griffin returns and I hand my cup off to him, deflated.

  Pict paces nearby. His jaw moves as he grits his teeth. He finally does what I know he's been waiting to do all along: bursts into a flurry of last-minute guidance. “Ms. Morai, I must make it clear that despite your strides toward improving your mental health, you should not risk moving backwards in the Coil. You don’t know what the cost of doing so will be. Moving side to side isn’t prohibited, but I’d rather you not risk that, either. At most, you can pivot around on a planted foot. Control your thoughts every second of every minute. I cannot stress that enough. Use the methods we discussed. You don’t want to be a danger to the others. You’ll be tired. It will be less than a day out here, but it’ll feel like more in there. Pace yourself. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Ration your food and stay hydrated. Sleep when you can, but always have someone keep watch. Pour out a salt circle whenever you stop. Also, remember, you absolutely do not want to employ dream scrying—did you follow my instructions? Each of you have the Somnum Sand I told you to get? Spread it wherever you plan on sleeping, and it’ll prevent dreams—”

  I nod. Counting as he speaks.

  “Are you listening to me, Ms. Morai, because—”

  “Yes! I’ve got it! I know all of this,” I cut him off. “It’s sweet you’re worried about me, though.”

  Pict narrows his eyes. “Don’t die, don’t get anyone else killed, and don’t embarrass me.”

  “You once told me my dying would embarrass you, so isn’t that redundant?”

  Pict walks away, and I grin at his back. My momentary amusement doesn’t last.

  You’ll be a danger to yourself and others.

  We approach the pre-Coil Walk checkpoint. Agatha Triggs pulls my bag toward her and begins pawing through my supplies. She pulls out my mirror and runs her hands over it, examining it. The
re’s nothing remarkable about the mirror, but it almost feels like anyone handling it will know where I plan on taking it and what I plan to do with it after.

  “All clear. Take your position on the starting block,” she says.

  I join the others from my group. Griffin reaches into a pocket and pulls out a protein bar.

  “Shouldn’t you save that for the Coil?” I ask.

  “I’m hungry now.”

  “Cassie.” I noticed Sebastian earlier, standing near the entrance, answering questions from some of the initiates. He approaches now, his face blanked of emotion. “Remember to use your gut. Think about how it’ll feel to make it through to the Laurel Plain. I’ll be there waiting. You can do this.”

  I heave in a breath. “If anything happens…”

  “Nothing will.”

  “No, but if something does…” I search the room, but my aunt isn’t here. Shocker. “Don’t let Aunt Bree be the one to tell my dad. Please?”

  He stares at me for a long while before giving a short nod. “I called his mom, by the way. Theodore’s.”

  “What?”

  “I—you said that your aunt called her. I figured after a call from Aubrey Morai, the poor woman deserved a follow-up from someone with a little bit of—”

  “A soul?” I ask.

  “I was going to say empathy.” He glances up at one of the sparkling signs taped to the stone archway.

  “How was the call?” I ask, though I know the answer.

  “She cried. Of course,” Sebastian says. “She said it wasn’t natural to lose a child. I can’t imagine… I told her what you said, about Theodore planning a trip out to see her. She worried about his life before he… went. If he was happy. I told her he was popular here. Told her about your cupcakes for his birthday. Bacchy told me about them, when they found a few at Theodore’s desk after… Anyway, she wanted me to thank you for being his friend and taking care of him on his birthday. She said that it brought her comfort.”

  A tear slips silently from the corner of my eye, followed by another. Sebastian catches the third. He looks down at his finger.