Page 79 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

Everly sits forward in her chair. Her anger comes down the bond so hot that my shadows lift off the rug towards her, all of them at once, and I don't call them back.

"I'm not going to get tired." She doesn't raise her voice. "You can put it back on them, and I'll take it off again. Every kid you put it on, I'm going to find, and I'm going to sit on the floor with them all night and take it out, and when you put it back, I'll do it again. And while I'm doing that, I'm going to find a way to stop you for good, so you can't do this to anyone ever again. You took Nell. You don't get any more of them."

My mother looks at her for a long moment. I've watched grown men leave this office close to tears under that look. Everly holds it, and her chin doesn't move.

"I believe you'll try," my mother says. "Girls like you always do."

"Girls like her have a habit of walking back out of the dark after you've all agreed they're dead, Mother," I say. "You might bear that in mind."

Her cup stops on its way to her mouth. It's the first time in my life I've seen her hand do anything she didn't tell it to.

I sit there and look at her. She doesn't apologize. She never has, not to me or to anyone I've ever watched her speak to. She didn't come down the steps at the gates to explain anything to me, either. She's explaining now, which means she wants something.

My cup has stopped steaming. The shadows in her corners have chilled the tea.

"Why are the families' children exempt?"

She looks at me as if I've asked her why the sky is up. "Because they're ours. Their families paid for that spell in blood."

I knew it already. Noah told me the night before enrollment. I came anyway, though, because I wanted to hear her say it out loud.

Josie is from Ohio, and she talked about her mother's beagle the whole night Everly was unwinding the rune out of her. The boy from New Jersey cried until the sun came up. The other night the Tempest girl from Vermont held Ren's hand so hard she left marks. Brittany's list of names runs down one page of her notebook and onto the next, and not one name on it is ours.

I put my hands flat on my knees under the edge of the desk, where she can't see them.

"Then I'm not one of yours anymore," I tell her. "Noah says you've had my room closed up. You might as well have them take the bed out while they're at it."

"Come home, Callum."

She doesn't soften her voice. She says it the way she'd tell me to sit up straight.

"You and your boys and the grimoire. All of you. I can protect you—I'm the only one who can. The wardens answer to me, the families answer to me, and when it comes to it, the Well answers to me too. Whatever Helena is planning, you don't want to be standing next to her when she does it."

God help me, I still want to say yes. I sat on the bench outside this door for years, kicking my heels, waiting for her to come out and tell me I'd done well, and I want that even now. She just told me she had Nell drained, and I still want it. I hate myself for that.

"No," I tell her. "You've just told me over tea that you had a girl drained until she walked into the Well, and that you'll do the same to a whole class of children whenever it suits you. I know what your protection costs, Mother. I've watched you collect on it my whole life, and I watched Nell pay it from the stairs."

"Think about it," she says.

"I have." I stand, and my chair scrapes the floor, loud in the quiet office. Everly stands with me.

She looks up at me from behind the lamp with the same expression she gave me the morning she expelled us, the one I still can't read. She doesn't call for the wardens, at least.

We walk out of her office and down the marble stairs, past the warden on the steps, who looks through us again. My shadows rise off the grass to meet us, and I let them wander wherever they like all the way across the quad. I keep my hands in my blazer pockets so no one can see them shake.

Halfway across the grass, Everly pulls one of my hands out and holds it, shaking and all, the rest of the way home.

Atlas is sitting on Concordia's front steps when we come up the path, with his elbows on his knees and the air around him crackling so hard that the lamp over the door is buzzing. He stands up when he sees us and looks me over from head to foot, then at Everly's hand around mine.

"You're cutting it fine," he says.

"It isn't midnight," I point out.

"It's close enough that I'd already picked out which window." He jerks his chin at the door. "Did she poison the tea?"

"We didn't drink it," Everly tells him.

"Smart." Atlas holds the door for us, and the lamp over it stops buzzing. "Felix kept telling me he could see you walking up these steps. He's been insufferable about it."