Page 40 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

"She's already loud. You want to know what happens to a grimoire no one ever bothers to teach?" Atlas doesn't raise his voice, which is how I know how angry he is. "I watched it happen in my mom's kitchen."

No one says anything to that. Callum's shadows, which have been nosing around the table legs all evening, go flat against the floor.

"I'm not suggesting we leave her as she is," Callum says finally, more gently than I expect.

"Then what are you suggesting, Bolingbroke? We shut her in a room with the curtains drawn till she learns to sit still? Worked out great for you."

Callum doesn't flinch, but his shadows do. They pull in under his chair.

"Can I just say," Felix cuts in, "as the only person at this table who used to know how things end, that I'd put real money on Callum stirring that pot for the rest of his natural life. Look at that wrist. That's a wrist that's been waiting for risotto its whole life. We should let him have this."

Callum ignores him with great dignity. "I'm suggesting that no one outside this house ever learns what she can do. Not anyone we meet, not anyone we trust, and not Helena, wherever she's got to."

"I'm right here, you know," Nell says.

We all look at her. She's gone pink, but she doesn't look away. "I want to learn. I don't want to be the thing in this house that breaks the lights."

Then everyone looks at me, which still surprises me every time it happens.

"Atlas teaches her," I say. "Mornings, on the roof, where it can go into the slate. And Callum's right. No one outside this house hears a word about her, ever."

Atlas nods, and so does Callum. They look at each other across the burnt rice, and for a second I think one of them is going to say something nice, but neither of them does.

We eat the rice anyway. It's terrible. Afterward I go up to my room and turn to the back of my notebook, where I keep the lies, and write the new one under the others: Internship extended through August. Big project. Can't come home.

The next morning Atlas takes Nell up on the roof, and after that the roof is theirs before breakfast, because someone has to teach her to hold it in before she brings the house down.

When I ask Ren about it, we're out in the garden after dark, alone. The roses are heavy and sweet in the warm air, the bugs are singing, and the lamp in Nell's window on the second floor has just gone out. He's sitting on the edge of the dry fountain with his elbows on his knees.

"It's the lines," he says. "She's sitting right on top of the crossing, and she's been here all summer. It's feeding her."

"It's feeding us too."

"Not like that. No one gets that much stronger that fast. You didn't, and you're the strongest person I've ever touched."

"So what is it?"

"I don't know." He rubs his face. "I keep listening for that second heartbeat, Ev, the one the Well put under hers. I listen at breakfast and again before bed, and I listen when she walks past me on the stairs. There's just hers. I don't know what's making her louder, and I hate not knowing."

I sit down next to him on the cold stone and put my hand on his back, between his shoulder blades, and through the thread between us I can feel how tired he is of listening.

Ren doesn't forget anything anyone says in his hearing, and he heard Ma on the phone. A few days later he wakes me before it's light, crouched by my bed with the keys to Brittany's 4Runner in his hand.

"Get dressed," he whispers. "I'm taking you for pancakes."

The 4Runner has been sitting under a tarp on the farm road outside the north wall since the night we came back, collecting pollen, and it takes some coaxing to start.

Ren drives with both hands on the wheel at exactly the speed limit, south past farms and a town I don't know the name of, until the sun is up and he pulls in at a diner beside a truck stop off the highway. It's a long, low building with red booths, a counter with stools, and a pie case by the register.

"Is this far enough?" I ask him.

"No one from Nyxhaven eats out here. I checked the map."

The waitress calls me hon and fills our mugs before we've finished sitting down. Ren orders blueberry pancakes. I order the chocolate chip ones with whipped cream, because Ma isn't here to tell me that's dessert, and I pour on a truly irresponsible amount of syrup while he watches me and says nothing at all, which is how I know he's happy.

He's quieter than usual, though. His fork is resting on his plate, and his head is tipped a little to one side, the way it goes when he's listening.

"Is it loud for you in here?" I ask.