Page 75 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

"It counts."

Brittany interviews each of them first at the kitchen table, with a cup of tea in front of them and Herbert in his tank at her elbow. The night I bring in a Tumult girl with chipped green nail polish, Brittany clicks her pen and doesn't even say hello.

"How long have you been tired?"

The girl blinks at her. "Um. Since the second day, maybe? I thought it was the dining hall food."

"It's partly the dining hall food." Brittany writes something down. "Have you told anyone?"

"My mom. She said to take vitamins."

"Who's your roommate?" Brittany asks, pen already moving.

"Priya? She's Fulmen, she's really nice. She's not tired at all, which is honestly kind of annoying."

Brittany finds Priya's name on the list and draws a small star next to it. The girl looks over at the tank, where Herbert has turned all eight of his eyes on her.

"Is that spider watching me?"

"He's an excellent judge of character," Brittany informs her, completely straight-faced. "He likes you. Ev, she's good to go."

No one ever argues with Herbert, mostly because so far he's been right about every single one.

Then I take them, one a night, plus a second if the next kid is small and new and the rune hasn't had long to settle into them. Ren holds the hearts. Whenever my fingers go stiff, Callum or Atlas takes my hands between his and holds them until I can feel them again.

Felix heads out onto the quad before dark to keep the wardens looking the other way, then comes back at dawn, grey and quiet, to sit in the doorway. Brittany writes the names down.

After a while, one of Callum's shadows starts waiting in the doorway at dawn before Felix gets back, lying across the floorboards where he always sits. The first time, Felix sits down on it without looking. Then he looks down, and then over at Callum.

"Is this for me?" His voice is hoarse from the cold. "Callum. Are you keeping my seat warm?"

"It goes where it likes," Callum says, without looking up from my wrists.

Felix doesn't get up, though, and the shadow doesn't move out from under him.

Before long, Atlas and Callum have started arguing about my hands.

"It's my turn," Atlas tells Callum one night, halfway through a Tumult boy from Oregon, when I stop to shake out my hands. "You had her hands last time."

"You're welcome to try and take them," Callum says, without letting go. "You've been trying to take something of mine since the day we met, and you've yet to manage it. I was here first."

"You've been first at everything your whole life, Bolingbroke," Atlas says. "Try sharing for once. It won't kill you."

"Oh, this is wonderful." Felix has come back early, and he's sitting in the doorway with his chin on his knees, grinning for the first time all week. "They're fighting over who gets to hold your hands, Ev. In front of a child."

"I'm eighteen," the Tumult boy says, without opening his eyes.

"Her heart rate goes up every time you two start," Ren says. "Keep it down, please. I'm trying to hold his steady."

Atlas sounds much too pleased. "It goes up?"

"For both of you," Ren tells him. "Exactly the same amount. I checked."

I keep my eyes shut and keep unwinding, and I don't tell any of them to shut up, because the truth is I like it. It's the first time this house has sounded like us since the courtyard. Callum's grip on my hands loosens a little, and Atlas's thumbs move once on my shoulders, and neither of them says another word about it.

At the end of the week, Brittany sits down across from me at the kitchen table and turns the notebook around so I can see it.

There's a long list of names down the left side of the page. A few of them have lines through them: Josie's at the top, then a boy from New Jersey, then a pair of twins from Delaware who came in together and held hands the whole time. The rest don't. The list runs all the way down the page and onto the next one, and the one after that. I keep staring at it like that's going to change anything. It doesn't.