The Passengers (Book #2)

ℑ 𝔑𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔯 𝔗𝔥𝔬𝔲𝔤𝔥𝔱 ℑ 𝔚𝔬𝔲𝔩𝔡 𝔖𝔞𝔶 𝔗𝔥𝔦𝔰

I push the heavy lunchroom door open. Wendy, Hyeri, and Seulgi sit at their usual table near the window, and I head straight for them.

"I heard Suzy has a total meltdown this morning about Sehun dating Jisoo," Jennie says loud enough for me to hear as I pass. I know I shouldn't, but I look at her.

The girls sitting with Jennie laughs. I catch Damon watching us from the next table.

Jennie soaks up the encouragement. "Apparently, she showed up at Jisoo's house today all weepy and—"

"You know what's a good story, Jennie?" Damon interrupts. "The one from last weekend when you got drunk, broke your high heel, and face-plan'ed right in a pile of—"

"Shut up, Damon!" Jennie snaps, turning instantly red.

"Oh, I though we were tellin' stories? I guess we're not," he says.

I smile my thanks to him, and he nods.

I sit down at the table with the Lineages.

"Dude, if this day gets to be too much, just say the word and we'll cruise out of here and eat donuts in my sound-proofed room until we pop," Wendy says.

I laugh. "I have no idea what you're talking about. It's all hearts and rainbows over here." I open up my lunch bag. "How likely do you think it is that Jisoo and Jennie will just drop this whole rivalry?"

"Not very much," Hyeri says. "As far as I can tell, Jisoo makes it personal mission to spread gossip."

"You're telling me. There's been an abnormal amount of whispers and looks today. I never thought I would say this, but I actually prefer getting questions about dead people." I unload my enormous Oh lunch onto the table.

"So . . . I have a theory about what happened—"

"Seulgi," Wendy warns.

"With Sehun this morning," Seulgi continues.

"Seulgi. Seriously?" Wendy's voice is rough.

Seulgi and Wendy stare at each other.

"Hyeri, what's going on?" I ask.

"Seulgi think Sehun's under a spell," Hyeri says. "But Wendy wasn't convinced and wanted to check it out before we said anything to you. She worries that you'll get upset if we're right. Or if we're wrong."

I look at Seulgi, my heart beating a little faster. "Wait. Really?"

"She's having one of her feelings, which aren't always right," Wendy says pointedly to Seulgi.

"I do have a feeling," Seulgi says. "And I've had a feeling that something wasn't adding up for a while now. I've known Sehun since we were in kindergarten, and the Sehun I know would never, under any circumstances, leave you stranded on the sidewalk. It's just not who he is. Plus, something doesn't feel right about him. I talked to him today. He seems . . . cloudy, I guess is the best way to describe it."

Could that really be what's going on with Sehun? Please let that be it. Wait, that's terrible that I'm hoping he's under a spell.

"You've said a couple of times that Sehun wasn't acting like himself," Seulgi says to me. "I saw him breakfast that morning at your house. And yeah, he was overly straight-forward, but not unbelievably so. But then there was that bracelet thing with Jisoo . . ."

My stomach somersaults. "Spells in objects. You don't think that's how he wound up under a spell, do you?"

"We've gone to school with Sehun all our lives, and we've seen him date girls before," Seulgi says. "He's calm and casual about it. Then all of a sudden, in a matter of a few days, he's head over heels for Jisoo, buying her a dance bracelet and blowing you off? We've never seen him like this. I spoke to Kang."

"More like cornered him," Hyeri says with a smile.

"And even he agreed that Sehun's Jisoo obsession is over the top," Seulgi says.

"Actually, Mrs. Oh said almost the same thing at breakfast this morning," I say.

Seulgi nods like I'm confirming what she already knows. "One of these things alone wouldn't be so strange, but all together they paint a really distorted version of Sehun. And when someone changes their personality overnight like that, I don't see another explanation except for a spell."

"Two things," I say. "First, how do we confirm if he's under a spell or not? Second, what does it mean if he is?"

"If he's under a spell," Hyeri says, "my two cents is that it's some kind of love spell. And the bracelet gives us a place to start from."

"I'm not following," I say.

"We might need to destroy the bracelet," Hyeri says. "Preferably burn it."

"So we need to steal it from him?" I ask.

"No," Wendy says. "From everything we've read, he'll have to give it to us willingly. For love spells to work well, some part of you has to want to participate. And until you choose to stop participating, the spell can't be broken. However, if he's under a spell, it's going to be hard to convinced him to give us that bracelet."