The Circle Read online

  “Because you’re going to be so busy with your studies and stuff?” He plopped down on the floor next to my suitcase and unzipped it.

  “Yeah, something like that,” I said. Because I was going to be busy with revenge and all. It was kind of a full-time gig.

  Lev was pulling things out my suitcase and looking them over. “You should probably get rid of that,” he said about an orange t-shirt.

  “Um, sure, thanks for your unasked-for opinion.”

  “It’s completely the wrong color for you,” he said.

  I snatched it away from him. “I like it.”

  “All right,” he said. “Well, if you really want to keep something that horrible, then I can’t stop you.”

  “No, you can’t.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m kind of realizing why you don’t have a bestie already. You’re not a first year, are you? This wing is for upperclassmen.”

  “Year two,” he said, standing up. “And what do you mean? I don’t have a bestie because I don’t fit in here. I don’t even know about all this magic stuff, you know? I mean, it’s in my blood. I’ve got the abilities, but the whole community is kind of stuck in the dark ages. It’s gross.”

  “I do know,” I said. When Enid and I were younger, we’d made a pact that we’d never have anything to do with all this. We weren’t going to grow up and be witches. Whatever had happened to our parents, we’d been told it was because of their magical blood and their ties to the occultist community. We wanted nothing to do with it.

  But then, the summer that Enid turned sixteen, she changed. She was always sneaking out at night, going out and doing things that she wouldn’t talk to me about, and then she suddenly wanted to go to Hellespointe instead of a regular college. By the end of her first year, she was dead.

  Some part of me knew that the healthy way to deal with all of this would be for me to move on with my life without getting involved. I should mourn Enid, but find some way to say goodbye, go to a normal school and have my normal life. I knew that this world had killed everyone in my family. It was probably not going to do me any favors either.

  But, well, hell, I wasn’t doing the healthy thing.

  It hurt too much, the loss of Enid. She had been my best friend and my sister, and we’d grown up close. Losing her to this underworld, hidden away from society, it was too painful. Every time that I tried to do anything at all… to sleep, to eat, to go to the movies, it was as though I couldn’t move through the air. Everything was agony.

  But when I was focused on trying to find out what had happened to her, I could function. Revenge was the only way I could move on. Maybe there was something wrong with me, but I didn’t care. I needed to do this. For Enid’s memory. For my own sanity.

  Lev shook out a pair of my jeans. “These are nice.”

  “Thanks.” I snatched those away too. “Seriously, is this how you usually try to make friends? Barging into people’s rooms and going through their clothes?”

  He grinned. “Absolutely. You can tell a lot about a person from their clothes.”

  I rolled my eyes. I went over and picked up my suitcase. I took it into my bedroom area and began putting articles of clothing in drawers.

  “For instance, you’re probably destined to be an outcast too.” Lev was in the doorway to the bedroom. “The way you dress, you’ve got your own style. It’s bold. Sometimes it’s too bold, but I respect that.”

  “Oh?” I said. “Nineteen ninety two called. It wants its hoop earrings back.”

  He snorted. “Ouch.”

  I eyed him.

  He smiled. “Are we even now? I insulted you, you insulted me? We’re good, yeah?”

  I stared at him for a few moments, and then I let my shoulders drop. “Sure, whatever.”

  He wandered into the room, running his fingers over the wallpaper. It was a textured pattern, stained in some places, but the weathering gave it character. “So, I’m sorry, I’m not buying it.”

  “Not buying what?”

  “That you’re going to be so interested in your studies you won’t have time for friends. You just agreed that the whole witch and warlock community was gross and you don’t dress like someone trying to fit in. If you cared about doing well at school, you’d be towing the line.”

  “Maybe,” I said. I shoved one of my dresser drawers closed. “If you hate it so much, why are you here?”

  “Um, because I’m young and stupid and still finding my way in the world?” he said. He crossed the room to me and touched my ear.

  I shied away. “Hey.”

  “You’re not laced,” he said.

  I fingered the tiny jewel earring in my ear. It was a flashpiece. It enabled me to channel my own body’s energy to make magic. Magic had to come from somewhere. You could do sacrifices, but that was messy and difficult. Most occultists were demonlaced. It was a ritual that involved tying a demon to the witch or warlock, so that the person could siphon power from the demon. Demons were pure spirit, dark beings that could be summoned and controlled with spells.

  The flashpiece, on the other hand, meant that whenever I did magic, I depleted my own body’s energy stores, and I needed to make that up with food and sleep. Without a flashpiece, accessing enough energy to perform difficult spells was next to impossible.

  “You’re really not trying to keep up around here,” he said.

  “I don’t have to be laced,” I said.

  He snorted again. “Um, yes, you do. If you want to have a hope of mastering these spells, you need more power than your body can produce. You’ll kill yourself if you don’t lace. Believe me.”

  I licked my lips. “You know, you’re really very free with your opinions, Lev. And seriously, no one asked you for them.”

  He scratched the side of his neck. “You’re starting to sound a little hostile.”

  “I don’t know that I’m really in the market for a best friend,” I said, nodding meaningfully at the door.

  He shrugged. “Okay. But if you change your mind, I’m right across the hall. And for the record, I like you. You’re totally mysterious.” He winked, and then he skipped out the door.

  * * *

  I felt a little bad for dismissing Lev. Maybe he was a overly opinionated, but I figured he was harmless. Besides, manners weren’t exactly prized amongst occultists. I should cut him some slack. I even thought about going next door and talking to him, maybe apologizing.

  But I didn’t, because I really wasn’t here to make friends.

  And with what I was going to get into, I wouldn’t be doing him any favors getting him mixed up with me. It could be dangerous. Whoever had hurt my sister might very well hurt me.

  So, I busied myself with unpacking, figuring I might as well chance it. If I had to move again, well, I’d deal. I didn’t have that much stuff.

  I called my aunt and uncle, who had raised Enid and me since we were kids. They were on my mother’s side. My mom had been a witch, but she hadn’t been born into an occultist family, not like my dad. My dad’s entire line had been wiped out, though, except for my sister and me. Everyone—my dad’s family, my dad, and my mom—had been killed in a magical war by the opposite side. This world was dangerous.

  My aunt and uncle didn’t even know about magic, so as far as they were concerned, I was at some nice private college, the same one where Enid had gone. They thought I’d come here to feel close to her. They thought it was sweet. They had no idea.

  Everyone in the school was issued an ID card that also had meal plans programmed into it. I could use the card to buy things in the small little store downstairs in the dorm or I could go to the dining hall. I didn’t want to see anyone, so I went to the store and got a frozen pizza. I made it in my oven, ate it, cleaned up, and went to bed early. I was going to need all my strength if I was going to make it without being laced.

  And I would have to, because being laced, it wasn’t something I could risk. It was kind of a permanent deal. Sure, you could unlace from whatever demon
you were tied to, but you needed to relace right away, or it was pretty likely you’d die of withdrawal symptoms. Once you’d been laced to a demon, your body structure was permanently altered. You could not live without a demon attached to you.

  No way was I doing that to myself.

  Anyway, despite what Lev had said, it had to be possible, because Enid had never laced.

  Well, Enid hadn’t made it, had she?

  But she hadn’t died from complications from not lacing. She’d been beaten to death. Her body had been covered in bruises and cuts. Her lips had been swollen and burst. Her skin had been mottled with all the discoloration from all the times she’d been hit and kicked.

  Thinking about it now made me so angry that I didn’t know what to do with myself.

  It took a long time to fall asleep.

  When I woke up, it was still dark outside, and there was someone in bed with me.

  I let out a little cry, trying to scramble out of bed, a spell on my tongue.

  But thick, nicotine-scented fingers closed over my mouth. “Shh.”

  Phist.

  Holy fuck, I’d known he would come back. And of course he would have come in the middle of the night. Why he had to climb into bed with me, though, that I wasn’t sure. This guy was twisted.

  “Suther,” he said, his voice a dark whisper at my ear. I could feel the heat of his body pressed into me. He was spooning me, pressing into me from behind. “I don’t like you.”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” I said, but his hand was on my mouth, so it came out muffled.

  He seemed to understand anyway. He laughed a little. “There is something about you that’s appealing, though, I have to admit.”

  Screw this. I bit down on his finger and screamed out a spell. Power in my hand, sparking. I reached back and seized his thigh.

  He grunted. “Motherfucker,” he muttered, as the magic arced into his skin.

  I got out of bed, retreating to the corner. I glared at him.

  He sat up, and he was still in a tank top, but now it was paired with a pair of plaid pajama pants. His feet were bare. He set them on the floor. He should have looked vaguely ridiculous in pajamas. At least, he should have looked vulnerable. But he didn’t. He was a hulking mass in the darkness, a threat. He rubbed his thigh where I’d gotten him. “You want to know what I find appealing?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “You’re so untouched,” he said. “Sweet. Innocent.”

  I let out a high-pitched laugh. He didn’t know anything about me.

  “You’re different than all the other girls at Hellbent Academy.” That was the informal name that students gave Hellespointe. “I almost feel sorry for you. Almost. I couldn’t ever feel real sympathy for someone like you.”

  I sighed. “Okay, what is your plan? To show up in the middle of the night and talk me to death?” It might work really well. Without sleep, I’d never have the energy to do magic. The little bit I’d done to him was affecting me a bit more than it should. I needed to recharge.

  “I never said I wanted you dead.” He dragged his fingers through his stubble. “I just want you gone.”

  “Never going to happen. I’m staying.”

  “Why can’t it be enough for you? Your cushy home with your caring aunt and uncle and your scholarship to the university in Johnstone? Why do you have to be greedy? Why do you need magic too?”

  “That’s not why I’m here.”

  “You’re all the same,” he said, getting up off the bed. “Every single one of you, no matter what you say. Even Enid. You have any idea what happened to your sister?”

  “A little bit, yeah,” I growled, and now I was advancing on him.

  “You want that to happen to you?’

  “You threatening me? You really think that I—”

  He lifted his hands above his head and there was a bang. Power gathered above his head like black smoke.

  I coughed.

  He gritted his teeth, straining to contain the power he’d just summoned.

  I had a moment to be afraid and then he threw it at me.

  The blackness hit me in the stomach and propelled me back into the wall.

  And then, just like that, I wasn’t in a dorm room at Hellespointe anymore. I was lying on the lawn outside my aunt’s and uncle’s house, panting, feeling as though I’d just been flattened by a steamroller.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I gritted my teeth and got to my feet.

  Where I’d landed, the grass was dead, a circle of brown, flattened blades. Shit. The power it took to do something like this, it was staggering. I didn’t know anyone who could transfer so much matter so far, let alone something alive. Moving things through space and time, it was tricky business. A lot of times, things didn’t come out on the other side all in one piece.

  I coughed.

  And then, glowering, I trudged into the house.

  I didn’t want to wake up my aunt and uncle, so I used the phone in the den, which was the furthest from their bedrooms. I called a cab.

  It picked me up thirty minutes later, and it was a fifty-minute drive back to the school. When we got there, I made the cabbie wait while I ran upstairs and got him the exorbitant amount of money it had cost to get me back here. I was practically wiped out now. I’d have to hit up an ATM. Money wasn’t an issue, not now that I was eighteen and I had access to the trust my parents had left me and Enid. Still, I didn’t want to blow what they’d left me. I didn’t know how long I would have to rely on it.

  Now that I wasn’t going to a regular college, I’d basically kissed goodbye any chance of getting a normal job on a normal timetable.

  After paying for the cab ride, I made sure my door was locked and I put a magical charm on it, too, not that I was sure how long it would work, considering it had to pull power from me while I was asleep. If I wasn’t conscious, did the spell hold up?

  I fell asleep right away, exhausted.

  When the alarm went off the next morning, I felt like death warmed over.

  Great, just how I wanted to spend my first day, feeling sleep deprived and not able to do magic at the best of my ability. I resolved to come back for a nap after morning classes.

  The curriculum at Hellespointe was something that they called student led, which meant that there weren’t typical classes with lectures and tests and books and that kind of thing. Instead, course work consisted of individual problem solving, designed to teach students everything we needed to know about various aspects of magic.

  There were a few exceptions to this and they were all required for first year students. My morning was filled with three basic classes—Spell Structure, Potions, and Magic History.

  In the afternoon, I had only one class, and it was the one that everyone in the school was required to take. All years of students were crammed into a big lecture hall, and we were all going to be assigned our semester project, the big problem-solving thing that would teach us about magic. After doing eight of these, one each semester, a person was considered a master of magic and graduated. They weren’t necessarily cumulative. In other words, each year didn’t build on the skills of the year before. They could be done in any order.

  Upon arriving in the classroom that afternoon, I looked out at the fifty or so students who made up the entire population of the school. I saw Phist right away, surrounded by a cluster of guys in leather and girls hanging off of them. The Black Circle, presumably.

  I also saw Lev, who was on the aisle about midway down. He waved at me.

  I waved back. And then I didn’t sit next to him. No use encouraging him.

  After about five minutes, the professor of the course stepped up to the front of the classroom. The professors alternated “teaching” the class, which didn’t involve a lot of hands-on instruction. All of the professors would be available to us as resources, but—from what I understood—they rarely gave out answers. Instead, they tried to steer us in the direction to discover the answers for ourselves. The
philosophy of that was that it meant that the knowledge was better retained that way. I figured they were right, but it also sounded hard.

  The professor who taught was the person who would be grading our projects as we went along. We had to turn in progress every few weeks. That was to keep people from procrastinating and trying to do it all at the last second.

  Our professor this semester was Dr. Mommoch. He held up a hand and the class quieted.

  “Welcome back, everyone. Your semester project is transmogrify.”

  A few whoops from the Circle, and several groans from other parts of the room.

  Dr. Mommoch held up a finger. “All collections of debts from betting should be conducted after class disperses, if you please. Now, what we want from you is a completely functional creature that has been created, merged, and given life through magic. The means of accomplishing this is up to you. The shape and function of the creature is up to you. This project will be completed in pairs. As my assistant hands out the assignment sheet, I will call out the names of the pairs. We have assigned first year students with upperclassmen, as usual, in order that they might learn from the upperclassmen’s experience.”

  I sat back and waited for my name.

  When it was called, I decided that the universe hated me.

  I was paired with Blake Mephistopheles.

  Perfect.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “You’re here,” Phist said. We were standing outside the classroom and he was lighting a cigarette. “I was hoping you got my message. Maybe you didn’t understand. I want you to leave and never come back.”

  Overhead, stately oak trees made a canopy against the sky, their green leaves pointing at the sidewalk where we stood. We were surrounded by the brick buildings that made up Hellespointe Academy. The scene was positively scholastic, but I was feeling homicidal. If I thought I’d stand a chance against him, I’d kill him now.

  “How are you standing after doing that kind of magic?” I said tightly. “Sending me that far away? You should have fried out your lacings channeling that much power. You’d have to rest and repair for days.”