Charmfall (The Dark Elite 3)

Eventually he pulled back and kissed my forehead. “We should get back to school. Tomorrow morning awaits. And it’s a Monday.”

“Yeah,” I quietly said. There was no pretending I was excited about that. I mean, being an Adept was hard. But being a junior in high school was a completely different animal.

Jason called out Michael’s name, and after a moment he came jogging down the tunnel, water splashing at his feet, crimson on his cheeks. It wasn’t hard to guess what he and Scout had been doing a couple of passages away.

“You ready?” Jason asked.

Michael nodded. “As I’ll ever be.”

“Then let’s hit the road. It’s waffle day in the cafeteria tomorrow, and I don’t want to sleep through it again.”

Michael rubbed his hands together. “And that, my friend, is why I love Mondays.”

That was the only reason to like a Monday, if you asked me.

“I’ll text you tomorrow,” Jason told me. I squeezed his hand.

Michael gave me a little wave. “See you later, Lily.”

“ ’Bye, guys.” I watched as they moved down the tunnel, trying not to get panicky about my werewolf boyfriend returning to the family who wanted to pick a bride for him. Was it wrong that I totally wanted to lecture his cousins?

Fear heavy in my heart, I tucked my hands into my pockets and walked down the passageway until I found Scout.

It was good to have a best friend, even if neither one of us was in a chipper mood as we walked back to the dorms. Turns out Michael had asked Scout about her dress for Sneak. I’m sure he asked only because he was excited, but she didn’t have a dress and got panicky about “being a girly-girl.”

As we walked down one dark tunnel after another, I filled her in about Jason and his possible disappearance.

She looked about as excited as I felt. “You ever have those days where you wish your life was like a keyboard with an ‘undo’ button? You could just hit the button and rewind recent events, go back to the way stuff was before?”

“More often than you can imagine,” I said.

“Can’t we just skip Sneak?” she asked. “It’s not like we don’t have other stuff to worry about.”

“If you don’t go with Michael, he’ll have to find someone else to go with, and I know you wouldn’t like that. What if he had to take Veronica? Or Mary Katherine?”

“He wouldn’t dare,” she said through gritted teeth. She was so easy to bait.

“So we’re going to Sneak,” I said, linking an arm though hers. We’ll get you a dress, and me a dress, and we’ll be good to go.”

“Will we look more awesome than Veronica and M.K.?”

“Yes. Because we have souls. And brains. And senses of humor.”

“And personalities.”

This time, we did a fist bump. The boys were right; it was kinda fun.

“At least we don’t have to deal with parents’ night, too.”

Surprised, I looked over at her. “Parents’ night?”

Her expression fell. “Oh, crap on toast. I totally forgot to tell you about parents’ night, didn’t I?”

“That would be ‘yes.’”

“The night before Sneak, all the parents come in and have dinner with their kids. It’s not an official event or anything—that has something to do with insurance.” She shrugged uncomfortably. “My parents don’t come.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me because my parents are God knows where?”

She just frowned. “Sorry.”

I shrugged, but it hurt. Not because she hadn’t told me, but because she was right. I knew where they wouldn’t be—having dinner with me the night before Sneak. They wouldn’t be asking me how school was going. They wouldn’t be checking out my room, or asking me about Jason, or lecturing me about how late I should be staying out or whether I was spending enough time on homework.

I wouldn’t be telling them about magic and Adepts and firespell and Reapers—assuming they didn’t already know. (I was a little suspicious about that.) I wouldn’t be complaining about Enclaves and sanctuaries and Darkenings and vampires and the tunnels beneath St. Sophia’s.

Maybe that was for the best.

Even if it was for the best, misery loved company. “Why don’t your parents come?” I asked Scout.

She shrugged. “They have their roles, and I have mine. My role is staying put at St. Sophia’s and not interrupting them. Their roles are using their money, traveling, being ‘the Montgomery Greens.’”

“That’s your dad?”

She nodded. “My mother doesn’t even hardly use her name anymore. She’s just ‘Mrs. Montgomery Green.’” She shrugged. “I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t want to have a kid and then stick her in a private school where I didn’t have to see her or know who she was. But they came from money, and both of them went to boarding school. It’s how they were raised. It’s normal for them.”

It was clear she wanted more, that she longed to know her parents—and for them to know her. But she also seemed to accept that they were who they were, and they were unlikely to change.

I had parents who wanted to be involved but who, for some mysterious reason, couldn’t. She had parents who could be involved but, for some mysterious reason, didn’t want to.

Sometimes, people just didn’t make any sense.

“I wonder if I should even tell them about parents’ night,” I finally said, glancing over at her. “Will I feel better or worse when they tell me they want to come but can’t?”

“That’s a question for the ages, Parker.”

I made the decision quickly, stopped in the middle of the tunnel, and took a second to send my parents a text message. At least I knew they’d be here if they could.

Lost in our thoughts, we walked silently back to St. Sophia’s, then froze.

The basement was shielded from the tunnels by an antique, heavy metal door. There was a giant flywheel that locked it, and a metal bar that added a little extra security. It didn’t do much to keep out Reapers with magic, but it did keep out the nastier creepy-crawlies that occasionally trolled the tunnels.

But tonight, the door was cracked open, light from the basement shining through. Now there was no magical barrier at all to whoever—or whatever—tried to sneak into the school.

My heart began to thud. “Who?” was the only question I could manage.