Page 112 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

I was almost to the library when someone yelled my name.

It was Josie, running across the grass in a Nyxhaven hoodie, and behind her came the twins from Delaware, holding hands, and the boy from New Jersey, who looked like he might cry again. She stopped in front of me, out of breath.

"We wanted to catch you before we left. My mom's coming this afternoon with the beagle." She pushed her hair out of her face. "Thank you. We know it was you. Not the lights going out, no one knows what that was. The other thing. The cold thing in my chest."

The boy from New Jersey said thank you too, very fast, and then he did cry a little, and one of the twins patted his back without letting go of her sister.

I wanted to tell them I didn't get everyone. There were names on Brittany's list I never reached, and a girl in a grey sweater I didn't save. I opened my mouth to say so, and Josie hugged me before I could.

"You're welcome," I said into her hood. I let it be true, just this once.

When she let go, she looked over her shoulder at the fountain. The boy with the gap in his front teeth was sitting on the rim with her duffel bag at his feet, turning a ritual knife over in his hands that doesn't do anything anymore. He waved at her, and she went pink to the ears.

"He's carrying my stuff to the gate," she said. "Don't make it a thing."

"I would never."

She ran back to him. He picked up her bag and smiled with the gap showing, and she said something that made him laugh, and they walked off towards the gate together, bumping shoulders. Everyone else on that quad thinks I broke their school. The handful who know what I actually did came across the grass to tell me so.

Brittany told us about the cars last night at the kitchen table, reading it off her notebook as if she were taking minutes, and about Noah's message: Catalina knows I kept something.

Callum didn't say anything for a while. Then he said, "She'll want it," in his flattest voice.

"She can fuck right off," Atlas said, and that was pretty much the whole meeting.

Catalina frightens me, and I'd be stupid if she didn't. Just thinking about her gloved hand lifting on those steps makes my stomach knot up under Atlas's arm.

She walked down to the Well alone and nearly took Callum from me, and now she has every family with a name in the ledgers sitting in her office, and nothing left to lose. I lay awake for a while after the meeting asking myself the question I don't like: what if she's right about me, and I get tired before she does?

But I've been afraid of her since my first week here, and I'm done letting that decide what I do.

Ren shifts against me in his sleep. I put my hand over his, over the spark, and leave it there.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand. I have to reach over Atlas to get it, and he grumbles into my hair.

It's Ma. Dad found an orchard by us that's open through October. Are you coming home or are we finally coming up there?

Then, right after it: He wants you to know the Honeycrisp apple was invented in Minnesota. There will be a quiz.

I've been putting them off since the summer. The list at the back of my notebook has run onto the inside of the back cover. But Nyxhaven is closed until further notice, and I'm expelled anyway, so there's nothing left to tell them I'm too busy for.

Coming home, I type. I'm bringing people.

The dots come up and go away and come up again. PEOPLE??

I'll explain when I get there.

I won't be able to explain, not really. But I can bring them home, where Dad will quiz them about apples and Ma will feed them until no one can move.

Atlas has one eye open and is reading over my shoulder. "Your mom going to feed me?"

"She's going to feed you until you beg her to stop. Then she's going to keep going."

"Okay," he says, as if I've promised him something. He shuts his eye again, but his arm tightens around my stomach. I don't need the bond to know how much he wants a table like that, loud and crowded, with someone's mom putting more rice on his plate when he isn't looking.

Ren is awake too. His thumb moves on my chest. "Can we stay a while? At your parents'."

"As long as you want."