I flipped back through the book, looking for any chapters about The
Eye getting past protective spells, but everything I read said that The Eye didn't use magic, just brute force.
Later, after I'd snuck the book up to my room, I showed the picture to
Jenna.
I thought she'd be interested, but instead she barely looked at it before turning away and climbing into her bed. "L'Occhio di Dio doesn't kill like that," she said as she turned out the lights. "They're never secretive, or anything. They want people to know it was them."
"How do you know that?" I asked.
She just lay there, and I thought she wasn't going to answer me.
Then, out of the darkness, she said, "Because I've seen them."
Two days later I started cellar duty.
I should say upfront that I have never been in a cellar in my life. In fact, I can see no reason why anyone should ever go into a cellar unless there is wine involved.
This cellar seemed particularly unwelcoming. For one thing, the floor was just hard-packed dirt, which . . . ew. The air was cool despite the heat outside, and it smelled musty and damp. Add to that the high ceiling with its bare lightbulbs, the one tiny window that looked out on the compost pile behind the school, and the endless shelves of dusty junk, and I suddenly understood why a full semester of cellar duty sucked so bad. Not only that, but the Vandy had decided to be especially evil and give it to us three nights a week, right after dinner. So while everyone else was hanging out in their room, or working on one of Lord Byron's epic essays, Archer and I would be cataloguing a bunch of crap the Council thought was too important to throw away but not important enough to store at Council headquarters in London.
Jenna had tried to cheer me up that morning, saying, "At least you have it with a hot guy."
"Archer isn't hot anymore," I'd fired back. "He tried to kill me, and his girlfriend is Satan."
But I have to admit that as we stood beside each other on the cellar steps and listened to the Vandy ramble on about what we were supposed to do down there, I couldn't help but sneak sideways glances at him and notice that, homicidal tendencies and evil girlfriends aside, he was still hot. As usual, his tie was loose and his shirtsleeves were rolled up. He was watching the Vandy with this bored, vaguely amused look, arms crossed over his chest.
That pose did most excellent things for his chest and arms. How unfair was it that Elodie of all people got that as a boyfriend? I mean, where is the justice when--
"Miss Mercer!" the Vandy barked, and I jumped high enough to nearly lose my balance.
I clutched the banister next to me, and Archer caught my other elbow.
Then he winked, and I immediately turned my attention back to the
Vandy like she was the most fascinating person I'd ever seen.
"Do you need me to repeat anything, Miss Mercer?" she sneered.
"N-no. I got it," I stammered.
She stared at me for a minute. I think she was trying to come up with a witty put-down. But the Vandy, like most mean people, was dumb, so in the end, she just sort of growled and pushed between me and Archer to stalk up the stairs.
"One hour!" she called over her shoulder.
The ancient door didn't so much creak as scream in pain as she pushed it closed.
To my horror, I heard a loud click.
"Did she just lock us in?" I asked Archer, my voice sounding way higher than I'd intended.
"Yep," he replied, jogging down the steps to pick up one of the clipboards the Vandy had left precariously perched on a row of jars.
"But that's . . . isn't that illegal?"
He smiled but didn't look up from his clipboard. "You've really gotta let go of charming human issues like legality, Mercer."
He looked up all of a sudden, his eyes wide. "Oh! Just remembered something."
He put the clipboard down and fished in his pocket for a second.
"Here," he said, walking over to me and pressing something light into my open hand.
I looked down.
It was a wad of Kleenex.
"You're a jackass." I tossed the tissues at his feet and stomped past him. My face was flaming.
"No wonder Elodie's your girlfriend," I muttered as I picked up the clipboard. I made a big show of flipping through the pages. There were twenty in all, with about fifty items listed on each. My eyes skimmed over some of them, noting things like "Noose: Rebecca Nurse" and "Severed
Hand: A. Voldari."
I ripped off the top ten pages and handed them to Archer, along with a pen.
"You take this half," I said, not meeting his eyes. Then I walked over to the shelf farthest from him, the one right under the little window.
He didn't move for a moment, and I could tell there was something he wanted to say, but in the end he just sighed and walked over to the opposite side of the room.
For about fifteen minutes we worked in total silence. Even though the
Vandy had spent forever explaining the job to us, it was actually pretty easy, if ridiculously tedious, work. We had to look at the items on the shelves and then find them on the sheets of paper and write down which shelf they were on and what slot on that shelf they were in. The only thing that made it difficult was that none of the items were labeled, so it was sometimes hard to figure out what they were. Like, on Shelf G, Slot 5, there was a scrap of red cloth that could've been "Piece of Cover, Grimoire: C. Catellan" or
"Fragment of Ceremonial Robe: S. Cristakos."
Or it could have been neither of those things and something on
Archer's list. It would've gone faster if we'd worked together, but I was still pissed off about the Kleenex thing.
I squatted down and picked up a tattered leather drum. My eyes scanned the list, but I wasn't really seeing anything. I knew I shouldn't have cried in front of him, but I couldn't believe he'd be enough of a jerk to make fun of me for it. Not like we were best buddies or anything, but that first night I felt like we'd bonded a little.
Apparently not.
"It was a joke," he said suddenly. I whirled around to find him crouched behind me.
"Whatever." I turned back to the shelf.