Page 39 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

"That's too much turmeric. Who taught you so much turmeric?"

"You did, Ma."

"I never did. Did you find curry leaves?"

"The closest store is a gas station."

"Then it's yellow rice. Fine, it's fine, eat it anyway." She leans in until the screen is mostly her nose and her reading glasses. "You look thin. What are you eating there? Are they feeding you at this internship?"

"There's a cafeteria." Nyxhaven does have one. I'm just not allowed in it anymore.

Dad's face crowds into the corner of the screen beside hers. "Kiddo! Quick one before your mother takes the phone back. What's the only letter of the alphabet that isn't in the name of a single state?"

I open my mouth, and nothing's there. Beside me, without a sound, Callum picks up a pen with his free hand, writes a Q on a paper napkin in his small slanted letters, and slides it next to the phone, still stirring with the other.

"Q," I say.

"That's my girl." Dad is thrilled. "How's the archive? They still have you on the microfilm?"

"Still on the microfilm." The lie comes out so easily that it makes me a little sick. "They've extended me through August, actually. There's a big project that has to be done before fall, so I can't come home this summer."

None of it is true except the part where I can't come home.

Ma's face falls. "Not even a weekend? Daddy can drive up. We'll take you for pancakes."

"Not even a weekend, Ma. I'm sorry."

"When you come home, I'm making you real lemon rice. And bring your friends. You never bring anyone home anymore."

"Bring a boy," Dad says, and Ma swats at him off screen.

Nell laughs before she can stop it, and every light in the kitchen flickers.

Ma squints past my shoulder. "What's wrong with your lights?"

"Old building." My heart is going so fast I'm sure she can hear it through the phone. "Ma, I have to go, the rice is burning. I love you. Love you, Dad."

The rice really is burning. I hang up, and Atlas reaches past me and pulls the pan off the heat while I stand there holding the phone.

For a moment no one says anything. Then Atlas asks, "Your dad does that every time? A quiz?"

"Every time, since I was little. Thursday was trivia night."

"Huh." He scrapes at the bottom of the pan, which is black. "When I have kids, I'm doing that. I'm going to call them every week with some stupid question about the Romans, even when they're grown and sick of me."

"Even when they're living in a house no one can see, lying to you about microfilm?" Felix asks.

"Especially then." Atlas isn't joking.

Nell has both hands pressed flat on the table, as if she can hold the lights down that way. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."

"It's fine," I tell her, and it mostly is.

"It isn't." Callum turns off the burner I forgot about. "That was a phone call. If it had been a warden walking past the hedge instead of your mother, we'd be packing tonight, and we would have nowhere to go, because there is nowhere on this continent my mother can't send someone. Every week Nell is stronger, and every week she is easier to feel from the other side of a wall." He looks at Atlas. "And you want to teach her more."

"I want to teach her to hold it." Atlas puts the pan down hard. "That's a different thing."

"She's stronger every day. You've seen it. Teach her to use it, and she gets louder still."