Page 130 of Bound By Fury

I’m being unfair. I know that.

Missy slides into the bench across from me. “You’re freaking everybody out.”

I wince. “Thanks.”

She steeples her hands against the table. “You know, I’ve been wondering what your goal is.”

I just stare at her.

Her voice starts out light but quickly transforms into something much harsher. “You walk around here like some sort of poltergeist. Every day you seem less and less like yourself—or at least of the girl you were when you first got here. It’s starting to feel a little… familiar.”

She doesn’t have to say it. We both know what she means.

“You say that like depression is a choice.” Am I really depressed? Or is it something so much stranger than that? Grief. Not just for Gigi or for Kai. But for twelve witches, for my magical ancestors. I wrap my hands around my mug, using it as a prop to occupy my growing anxiety.

She tilts her head down, her eyes never leaving mine. “Are you? Depressed?”

I shrug. And it’s not quite a lie.

She leans back against the booth. “If you were in trouble… you know you could, like… If you needed something or someone to help you… or talk to…”

Her face is marred the same way mine is. Like Malachi’s, and even Daisy’s. Dry skin and sallow eyes, an anxious, vibrating energy.

What the hell is this school doing to us?

“You know what, Missy?” I say, leaning forward and pulling my lips into a facsimile of a smile. “I really appreciate that. But I promise I’m fine. Everyone can stop worrying about me.”

She frowns. “That’s what Fiona said, too.”

There’s something uneasy about the look in her eyes. Something I don’t quite recognize on her. When it hits me, I struggle against the lump in my throat.

Fear.

She tucks her hair behind her ears as she scoots out of the booth. “I’m going to be keeping an eye on you, Scott. Just in case.”

“You do that,” I say as I watch her turn and push through the door. Before she rounds the corner, she turns to look at me over her shoulder, tension blooming at the back of my neck when she meets my gaze.

A pit forms in my stomach as her words ring back to me like an omen. That’s what Fiona said, too.

When I finally drag myself out of the café, I’m met with a lilac sky and chilly October evening. Four pairs of beady eyes trail me as I trudge past the hedge maze and toward my dorm. Once or twice I check my surroundings, searching for the source of the sparks skimming over my back, but like always, there’s nothing but shadows.

When the sun has set and I finally crawl into bed, I slap my phone on the charger and commence my nightly doomscroll. I click through Daisy’s story. A picture of me with a giant dead leaf in front of my face. Her chipped nails holding a boba. A video of two Canada geese fighting over a bag of Takis.

Missy’s story only has one photo.

Her face squished next to Fiona’s. Fiona’s fingers pinching Missy’s cheeks into a fish face.

I hold the image down as I sit up, my heart hammering in my chest. I turn the brightness all the way up, the blue light straining my eyes painfully.

On Fiona’s wrist, an opal bracelet shines in iridescent beads against her brown skin.

I hop down from my bed and open the jewelry box I keep tucked in the bottom of my sock drawer. I push aside the letter from Gigi and a clump of tangled necklaces.

The bracelet I found at the guest cabin after homecoming.

Mine mine mine mine, Fiona’s ghost whispers to me as I rub the small stones between my fingers.

FORTY-ONE