Page 45 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

"Knox."

"Bolingbroke." I get the iced tea out of the fridge and drink it straight from the pitcher, mostly because I know it bothers him. He watches me do it and doesn't say a word, which means he's got more on his mind than my manners.

I sit down across from him. "What?"

"She held all four on the roof this morning," he says. "I felt it in the study with the door shut."

"Yeah. She's good." I put the pitcher back in the fridge, and I can't keep the grin off my face.

"She's loud." He turns his mug a quarter turn on the table. "You're teaching her to hold it in, and she's learning, and she's still louder every week."

The grin goes. "So what, you want me to stop?"

"No. If you stop, she brings the house down. I want you to understand what happens if my mother finds out."

I wait.

"Wheeler drained her all spring. I don't know yet whether my mother told him to, but I'd be very surprised if she didn't. Either way, my mother knows exactly what Nell is." His voice stays perfectly level. "What I hope she believes is that Nell came out of the Well with nothing left in her, crawled off somewhere, and will die in a ditch without anyone having to lift a finger. She's put her out of her mind. If she learns that Nell came out of it stronger than anyone on this campus, she'll want her back. My mother doesn't let go of anything she thinks belongs to the Well."

"Then she doesn't find out." I say it like it's that easy, because I want it to be.

"She'll try to find out through someone. She won't come over the wall with wardens. She'll come with a reason and a kind word, and she'll come through whoever is closest to the girl." He doesn't look away from me. "That's you."

That pisses me off, and I let it. "You think your mom's going to sweet-talk me into handing over a kid I've been teaching on the roof all summer?"

"She talked me into reporting on all of you, and I wasn't a stupid child."

I remember. Everything any of us said in front of him went straight to her, and I hated his guts for it. Back then, I nearly put Everly in the ground with a bolt of lightning, so I'm not sure I get to hate anyone for long.

"Okay," I say. "So what do I do?"

"If anyone asks you about Nell, anyone at all, a warden or a Storm Daughter or my mother herself, you tell me what they said, word for word. I'll tell you what it means."

I lean back in my chair and look at him. "And if she comes through you?"

He's quiet for a long time. "Then you stop me. However you have to."

I look at him across the table, this guy who grew up in a room with the curtains shut learning how to be her, sitting in the dark in his pressed shirt telling me how to stop him.

"She's not getting Nell," I tell him. "And she's not getting you back either, so you can quit planning for it."

Callum doesn't answer. He picks up his tea, finds it's gone cold, and drinks it anyway. After a minute the shadow comes out from under his chair and lies down across my bare foot, cool and heavy.

"Your shadow's on my foot."

"I'm aware."

I leave it there.

Brittany's new row at the bottom of the fridge schedule says EVERLY'S SOCIAL CALENDAR, and my box has been empty for days. Ren took her for pancakes. Felix brought her home sunburned with a basket of peaches. Now Brittany's drawn a little question mark in my box, which I'm pretty sure is a threat.

I don't have a car, and I don't know any farmers. But I know what her hands need. After I've been throwing sparks at her on the roof, she sits down against the chimney and blows on those little pink burns, and I feel like shit about it every time.

So I ask Callum for a piece of shadow.

He's at the kitchen table with his tea again. He asks what it's for, I tell him, and he looks at me so long I figure he's going to say no. Then he puts his hand on my shoulder, and a piece of his shadow slides off him and into mine. I look down at the floor, and my shadow's darker than it was a second ago, and cold where it touches my feet. It's a new trick since the hill. Felix borrowed a piece for the peaches. It joins my own shadow and stays there until I call it up, and then it covers me, and anyone looking sees dark and nothing else.

"Bring it back dry," he says.