Page 20 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

Everly takes my hand, her fingers cold and her palm damp, and squeezes once before she does anything else. Then she takes Atlas's hand with her other one while the other two link up behind, Ren holding on to Atlas's sleeve, Callum at the back with a hand on Ren's shoulder and his shadows still wrapped around us all. She walks us towards the place I can't see.

The grey stone appears out of nothing, a photograph developing in a tray, then the tall dark windows and the ivy, and the iron-banded front door.

It opens before she even touches it.

Nell is standing in the foyer in a big grey sweater with the sleeves pulled down over her hands. Brittany's behind her with a flashlight pointed at the floor, a stuffed fox sitting on her feet and a raven on her shoulder. The foyer smells of dust and old radiators and, faintly, of chicken soup.

"I knew it'd be tonight," Nell says, and smiles at us.

It's a sweet smile, warm and easy. Everything else tonight has come with a flash—the dog, the steps, the soup. I saw that sweater coming, but I can't see anything that happens to her after tonight. When I look for her future, there's nothing there. Every time I've hit a blank like that before, it meant death or something with a lot of power was standing in the way, and my stomach goes cold. I keep it off my face.

Brittany looks us over, crowding in the doorway wet and muddy from the wall: Atlas's collar stiff with old blood, my knees soaked through, Callum with a leaf in his hair he doesn't know about. She looks at Everly last, her mouth going tight, and for a moment I think she's about to cry, which I've never seen and really don't want to. Then she clicks off the flashlight.

"You're late. I said don't do anything stupid."

Everly stares at her. "You can see this place."

"Yes," Brittany says.

"Brit."

"Not tonight." Brittany turns around and starts up the stairs, the fox trotting at her heels and the raven riding on her shoulder, looking back at us with its glass eyes. "I'm not talking about it tonight. Come on. I made soup."

Atlas looks at me.

"Chicken noodle," I tell him, and follow her up.

8

EVERLY

Concordia is the same old building, with dust on the armchairs in the common room, the high windows black with night, and the spiral stair at the back winding down towards the Reliquary and everything under it.

I feel the magic rise under me before I'm halfway across the foyer. It's the hill all over again, just bigger, so strong I have to put a hand on the wall to stay upright. On the hill the magic ran past under my feet. Here it gathers in one place and stays. It must have been under here the whole time, and I couldn't feel it until the guys were tied into it.

Ren has his palm flat on the wall beside mine, fingers spread, listening to the floor. "The lines all come together under this building."

"So we're standing on top of a⁠—"

"A crossing. The biggest one on Helena's map—every line she drew runs into it."

The guys feel it too; I don't even have to ask. Atlas's hair is standing up off his forehead, and the bulb over the stairs brightens every time he breathes in. Callum's shadows have come out on their own and are curling up the banister, slow and lazy, ivy climbing a fence. Felix is grinning at nothing with his head tipped to one side, and when he catches me looking, he doesn't stop.

"Soup," Brittany announces from the stairs, without turning around, and we follow her up.

Brittany's soup is chicken noodle out of a can, heated on the stove in Concordia's kitchen, and it's maybe the best thing I've ever eaten. I say so more than once, until Brittany points her spoon at me and threatens to take it back.

We eat it sitting on the floor of the study room upstairs, in a ring on the threadbare rug, out of mugs and coffee cups and one cereal bowl that Atlas claims because it holds the most. Someone's even set up a lamp in the corner on an extension cord that runs off down the hall to God knows where.

Loki, the fox, goes around the circle on his stiff little legs getting noodles from everyone, and since he can't eat them, he carries each one carefully to Brittany's lap and leaves it there. She lets him, and by now there's a small pile of noodles in her lap.

Poe watches all of us from the top of a bookcase. Herbert stayed behind in his tank at Bellamy.

"He doesn't like to travel," Brittany informs me, in the voice of someone who has had this argument with a spider and lost.

Nell sits next to me with her knees pulled up under the big grey sweater, eating slowly. Now and then she stops with the spoon halfway to her mouth and looks at the floor, as if she's heard her name called from downstairs, then blinks and goes on eating.

Ren's watching her too. He's sitting across the circle with his mug in both hands, looking up from it at Nell over and over, and through the thread between us I feel what he's hearing.