Page 31 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

The death magic is another story. It was always the harder half of Mors for me, the half I practiced twice as long to keep up with, and since the hill it comes easier than the shadows ever did. I don't need my stylus for any of it. I can feel the dead now, everywhere I go: every living thing that ever died near where I'm standing, the birds under the hedges and the mice in the walls and the old trees that came down in storms, and further back, people. I always assumed that if I could ever feel them, they'd be cold and frightening. They're warm. Sitting in this study at night, with all of them around me, is the least alone I've been in my life.

The study is at the front of the second floor, over the foyer. Someone built the desk in here a century ago and never meant for it to be moved, and most of the shelves hold nothing but dust.

The summer heat has soaked into the stone walls and stayed there, so I've propped the window open on a book, which lets in the smell of cut grass and does nothing at all about the heat. I'm in shirtsleeves with the cuffs turned back neatly, which is the most undressed I allow myself outside of a bedroom.

I pull the puddle back onto the blotter and begin again. My mother could hold a square through an entire breakfast while she read the paper.

The door opens behind me.

Everly is wearing one of Atlas's T-shirts, which comes down to her knees, and her hair is wet from the shower, leaving dark patches on the grey cotton at her shoulders. She smells like the oatmeal soap Ren keeps buying, and her feet are bare. She leans in the doorway with her arms folded, watching me fail, and the square picks that moment to go soft at the corners and slide off the blotter onto the floor in front of her.

"You're going to give yourself an aneurysm."

"It won't hold." It's lying on the floorboards by her bare feet, refusing to come back.

"So stop making it hold."

"That isn't how magic works," I tell her, which is what I was taught, word for word.

"It's how this magic works." She comes in and nudges the door shut behind her with her heel. "You heard Ren. It's easier if you just stop forcing it."

"Easier isn't the point."

"Then what is?"

"Control." It comes out sounding just like my mother. "My mother sat me on the nursery floor with the curtains drawn and had me lay my shadows out in lines, cold and straight, and hold them until she said I could let go. If one slipped, we started over. She used to say control is what separates a Bolingbroke from everyone else in a room."

Everly looks at me for a long moment. "How old were you?"

"Too young to read." I say it the way my mother would, as if it were a credential.

"Okay." She lets out a breath. "I'm going to have a lot of opinions about your mother, and I'm saving them for later."

I straighten the blotter, though it didn't need straightening.

"That's your tell." She nods at the blotter. "Felix keeps a list of your tells."

"Felix should mind his own business," I say, and straighten the blotter again before I can stop myself.

"Felix has never minded his own business in his life. It's kind of his whole personality."

She comes around the side of the desk, and the shadow gets to her before I do. It slides off the floor where it fell, across the boards and up the back of her bare calf. She shivers and grins, but doesn't push it away. It winds once around her ankle and settles there.

"It likes me."

"It isn't supposed to like anyone." My shadows never have.

"Too bad." She sits on the edge of the desk in front of me, between my hands, and the blotter crumples under her. "I like it back."

I'm still in the chair. The T-shirt has ridden up her thighs where she sat, her skin is pink from the hot water, and a drop of water is running down the inside of one knee. I follow it all the way to the hem of the shirt.

I should say something sensible. I should tell her it's late and none of us are sleeping enough, and that having nowhere to be in the morning is no reason to stay up. Instead I put my hands on her knees, which are warm and still damp. She opens them for me, and I stand up between them and kiss her.

She kisses me back, her hands going into my hair and pulling. She tastes of toothpaste. My cock is already thickening against the inside of my trousers, embarrassingly fast, before I've even done anything more than taste her mouth.

The shadows come up off the floor all at once.

I didn't call them. I feel them go without me, out of the boards under the desk and the dark corners of the room. They wrap around both of us—over her shoulders and down my back, around my waist and her hips—holding us together. Everly gasps into my mouth.