Page 94 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

"Yes," I say instead. "That's my plan."

He doesn't answer. A moment later one of his shadows slides past Ren's legs and winds around my wrist, cool, and it stays there the rest of the way down.

The stairs end in a tunnel, the tunnel goes downhill, and then I smell the water.

The Well is the same as it was the day Nell went in, black and flat and perfectly still. It goes out into the dark farther than the lamp can reach, with no far shore or ceiling that I can see. The steps go down into it, wide and shallow, worn smooth in the middle by all the feet that came down here before mine, while the last few disappear under the surface and keep going.

Atlas sets the lamp on the top step. Its flame shows upside down in the water, perfect and still.

The cold comes up off the surface and gets inside my clothes.

And I can feel them all from here.

Every first-year with a rune in them, all over campus, asleep in their beds in Fulmen, Ossium, Vitae, Long Shot, and Bellamy Hall. I can feel every thread coming down from them, through all that stone above our heads and the crossing under Concordia, into the water right here at the bottom of the steps. Each one is thin enough to miss, but there are more of them than I can keep track of.

I take my shoes off.

I don't know why; it just seems like the right thing to do. I line them up side by side on the top step next to the lamp, the way my mom makes us leave them by the front door at home. Felix looks at them, then at me, and doesn't make a joke about it.

I walk down the steps into the water.

It's as cold as it was the day Nell went in, and it knocks the air straight out of me. It comes up over my ankles and hurts, then over my knees and my thighs, hurting worse, so cold it burns. I say a word my mom would ground me for, but I keep going until it's at my waist and I can't feel my feet on the stone anymore.

Atlas is right behind me, the way he said he would be. His arm comes around my ribs, solid and hot, and I can feel his storm under his skin, held down hard, the hair on my arms lifting.

Ren comes in beside me and puts his hand on my back over my heart, his blood magic sliding in to find my pulse and hold on to it. Felix and Callum stand on the steps at the edge of the water with the lamp between them.

I put my hands in.

The Well rushes into me so fast I can't breathe.

In the spring it came up gold, warm and bright and sweet. Tonight there's no light in it at all. It's so full it hurts, so full of magic that it presses up against the inside of my ribs and the backs of my eyes, and I can feel every girl the families ever walked down those stairs, all poured in together. The oldest ones are so faint I can barely feel them, worn down to almost nothing. The newer ones are still there, held fast and still themselves, the way you can feel someone asleep in the next room.

Nell is in it.

She's right there on top of all of them, the newest and the brightest. I feel her—everything she was learning on the roof with Atlas, the way she made the lights flicker when she sneezed. I feel how strong she got all summer with the Well growing in her, stronger every day, while I watched it happen and thought it was a good thing.

I check for her thread first, going through the bundle by feel, looking for anything that's still hers, anything I could untie and send back up the stairs. There isn't one. She isn't tied in the way the first-years are. The Well has her all the way through, and if I pull, I'll tear her apart.

I miss her so much it nearly bends me in half.

I put it away to feel later, and I find the threads.

They come into the water all together in a bundle, every first-year on campus, and down here they're tied off in a knot pulled tight, a hard cold snarl of someone else's magic sitting at the bottom of the steps. When I shut my eyes I can see it, the way I see threads: a grey knot the size of my fist, with fine lines running up out of it into the dark like the strings off Ma's birthday balloons, every one of them humming.

I find the end of one and pull it free. It comes loose like a stitch coming out of a seam, with a tiny give, and somewhere far above me a girl takes a deep breath in her sleep. I find the next one.

It's actually working. Up above us, all over campus, first-years are sitting up in their beds without knowing why, hands on their chests, feeling like they can breathe.

It's slow, though. The knot fights me for every thread. There are so many of them, and they've been on the kids long enough to settle in, so I have to dig in and find the next end by feel. The water is cold enough that my hands stop being hands and start being blocks of ice on the ends of my arms. The whole time, the pull keeps at me, patient, telling me to put it down. It tells me there's room for me here, that I've worked so hard, that no one would blame me.

"Where are you?" Ren asks quietly, right at my back. "Who's with you?"

"The Well." My teeth are chattering so hard I bite my tongue, and I taste my own blood. "You. Atlas. Felix and Callum on the stairs."

"Good. Keep going."

I keep going. One thread, then the next.