Page 8 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

"Then it keeps what they gave it, and they live out their lives without magic." She shrugs. "The ground won't hand power to someone who'd use it to kill or torture or maim. That's why the families put their school on top of a Well. The Well never cared what anyone did with it."

I think of the guys, of Atlas's hands shaking on the steering wheel and Callum pulling his shadows over a dying girl so she wouldn't be alone. "They're not like that."

"Then they have nothing to worry about, except the pain."

"How much?"

"A lot." She doesn't blink. She says it the way my dentist says a little pressure. "Afterward, their magic will come up from the ground instead of down from the Well. It'll be slow at first, and it won't feel the way it used to, to them or to you. And it'll be wild. Some days it'll do more than they ask, and some days it won't listen to them at all."

I groan. "Atlas can barely make his listen now."

"Then he'll have to learn." She takes an orange from the windowsill and starts peeling it with her thumbnail, in one long strip. "But it will at least keep them alive. Their magic needs somewhere to go, and having nowhere to go is what's killing them."

"You told me the Well would let everyone go, and you were technically right," I tell her bluntly. "I need better than technically this time."

"Then here it is, plainly," she says, just as blunt. "Giving it to the ground won't kill them. Waiting might. Every night you spend up here deciding whether to trust me is another night the storm-boy bleeds."

Slowly, I say it all back to her: the hill, the ground, the long night, and the magic that won't always listen. She nods at every piece without correcting me once, and when I'm done she says, "Yes. That's all of it." I know she's telling the truth about that much.

It's a good plan, maybe just because it's the only one I have.

"And what do you get out of it?"

"Nothing."

I wait. She eats a piece of the orange and makes a face at the cold tea while the radiator bangs under the window. Out past her shoulder, through the old wavy glass, I can see the 4Runner in the lot with Atlas's head tipped back against the rear window, and I know without seeing it that blood is running down into his collar again—and that he's telling the others it's slowing down.

"Bullshit," I tell her.

She shrugs. "When I was a girl, we got one orange each at Christmas, in the toe of a stocking." She holds up the peel, still in one piece. "The first thing I did when I got out was buy a whole bag of them, and I've eaten almost all of it. That's what I've wanted, little grim. That's all."

It's the first thing she's ever told me about herself that wasn't about the Well. I hate that it makes me feel sorry for her.

"You didn't look surprised when the Well came for me," I say through my teeth. "You looked like you were waiting for something."

"So were you." She sets a piece of orange on the saucer in front of me. "It felt good, didn't it? When the Well's magic came up into your hands."

My face goes hot. I haven't told anyone that, not even Ren, who would have heard it in my heartbeat if he could still hear heartbeats. I don't answer her.

"That's all right," Helena says gently. "It felt good to every girl who ever went down those stairs."

The radiator bangs again. I don't touch the orange.

"Believe me or don't," she goes on. "For now, you only have to bring them."

That's the trouble: everything she's said is true. I'd stake my life on it, and I'm about to stake all four of theirs. But she's leaving something out, the same way she left out what the Well would do to me, and I know it.

I look at her hands on the closed notebook and think about grabbing it and running down the stairs. She's older than my grandmother, and she's buttoned her cardigan wrong, so I'm pretty sure I could take her. That's exactly what she'd want me to think. I think about Atlas's blood on the bathroom sink, and Callum waiting for me to open doors for him, and Ren listening for his heart in the dark.

The meter can't have run out yet, but I hear feet on the stairs, heavy and fast, coming up two at a time.

"We'll come tomorrow night," I tell her, standing up. I leave the orange where it is.

"Good." Helena opens the notebook again and picks up her pencil, as if I've already gone. "Bring blankets. It's cold on the hill."

4

CALLUM