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When we get back to the house, Alfie's the first one in. I nearly walk smack into the door as he closes it back. I'm confused until I hear him talking to Willow, but Eddie doesn't and he opens the door. Joy walks right past us with nothing more than a wave, but Willow's still there.
"Fabian," she says, sounding concerned. "Are you all right?"
"I'm..." Fabian glances at Alfie. "Fine. Thank you."
"Is it very sore, you know, your ..."
I share a strange look with KT, not liking how this conversation was beginning to sound. "Your hand, dude!" Alfie shouts strained. "He's been in the hospital so long," oh, that explains it, "he's completely forgotten what he..."
"Right!" Eddie shouts. "Your hands!"
Eddie hits his hand and Fabian lets out a fake pained groan. "Oh, my hand! Yes, it's my hand."
"So, well, um," Alfie says quickly to Willow, "you're gonna be late for school, so I'll just walk you over."
"This place is always so exciting," Willow muses. "Bye, roomie!" she adds to me.
"Oh, kill me now," I murmur to KT as she grabs my hand to go upstairs and freshen up. I tell her she can take the shower first, as I wanted to see what Willow had done to my poor bedroom. KT utters a thank you before running into her room to get her clothes and I go into mine, preparing to see a rainbow of things.
To my surprise, it's not horrible. A bit worse than the major pink I was used to with Amber, and a sharp contrast from the soft purples of Mara's stuff and the light blues of mine, but... it's not horrible, just looking at it. It's probably worse when Willow's actually here. Mara probably got her ear chatted off last night. I can't believe Willow Jenks is my new roommate.
—
The first person I look for when I get to school is Jerome. We were late for breakfast so I haven't had a chance to see him. I finally find him in the lounge, a notebook and a mathematics textbook on his lap. I sit on the couch next to him, questioning, "Forget to do your maths homework?"
Jerome immediately closes shut the notebook in the textbook, throwing his hand on top of it. He looks over at me, sighing. "Ashley, where've you been? You never got back to me last night."
"Sorry, my phone died," I apologize, showing him my half-charged phone. I charged it while I was waiting for KT to get out of the shower so I could take one and while I was taking mine. "And I had no service." Not a lie, technically. "So, flamingo balloon animal?"
"Nonexistent," he answers me. "I popped all of the balloons."
"I knew you would."
"Yeah, I knew you asked for it on purpose."
"Then why'd you pop all of the balloons?"
"What use do I have for pink balloons?"
I shrug and smile, lightly kicking his ankle. "So, I hear you tricked Willow into hugging Victor. That must've been a sight."
Jerome smiles proudly. "It was. He hated it. But it was a distraction to get that key back from him. Patricia said it was yours and she was holding onto it for you." I nod. "Sorry about... getting it confiscated. Willow scared me, I accidentally pushed Patricia, it fell out of her hands."
"Not your fault," I respond. "I'm just glad you got it back. Believe me, you have no idea how glad."
"You wanna show me?"
"Not now. Maybe tonight."
Jerome chuckles and nods. "It's a date, then. Anyway, you shouldn't have missed open day yesterday. Atticus Monroe pushed me onto the stage with my unfinished balloon animals while Willow was reciting some poem she wrote. And I think I saw him messing with the sound controls while Mara was singing."
"Okay, well, I can see him sabotaging Willow's skit," I remark, "but not Mara's. Well, maybe Mara's. You sure it was him?"
"Yeah. But I thought he and Mara broke up and that's why."
"No, she told me they're back together. The song was about him."
Speak of the devil, and he'll appear. Atticus Monroe himself suddenly sits down next to me, and I look at him weirdly. He's literally never spoken to me once in my life—I mean, aside from the time he tried to ask me out. That was my first year here and I don't really count it because A) he called me 'Aussie girl' and B) Alfie dragged me away before he could get more than four words out. "Hey, it's Abby, right?"
"Ashley," I correct warily, sharing a glance with Jerome. "Is there a reason why you're talking to me?"
"Yeah, so, is it true Mara and Willow are your roommates now? Like, all three of you? Them? Together?"
"Is it true you tried to sabotage their acts at open day yesterday?" I retort. "Yeah, for the record, you ever use Jerome or anyone in Anubis House as a proxy like that again, you're not gonna like what happens to you."
Atticus rolls his eyes as Jerome snickers. "Whatever. So, Mara and Willow? Roommates? What do they talk about? What'd they say to each other last night?"
"I don't know, I was with Fabian at the hospital while he was getting his hand checked out."
"Which one's Fabian?"
I scoff lightly, saying to Jerome, "Doesn't even know his girlfriend's friends."
"Girlfriend?" Atticus repeats.
"Yeah, Mara," Jerome answers for me. "Remember? Tiny, nerd, too good for you?"
"Neither of you are any help," Atticus grumbles, jumping back up and leaving the lounge.
I look over at Jerome. "What was that about?"
Jerome shrugs. "It's Atticus Monroe."
—
After spending another five minutes catching up with my boyfriend in the lounge, the bell rings, indicating that classes are about to begin. After our first class, the very mathematics class I accidentally distracted Jerome from finishing his homework for (he did get in trouble for it, which kinda sucked, but it's not exactly the first time he's gotten in trouble for incomplete homework), I join some of my fellow Sibuna-members in the hallway, informing them immediately, "Atticus Monroe thinks my name is Abby and he wouldn't be able to pick Fabian out of a line-up. What's up with you guys?"
Fabian shakes his head. "I can't work out why it didn't work," he tells us. "I mean, we must have gone wrong somewhere, but where?"
"I can't believe you've lost the body," Patricia says, which reminds me that this is the first time we've all seen each other long enough to talk about this. I forgot about Denby taking the tank back. Just the sheer weirdness of Mara's boyfriend coming to talk to me about Mara and Willow being my new roommates made me forget about the very real threat of evil.
Eddie and Alfie come over to us as KT says, "What are we going to do now?"
"Guys, come on," Eddie says, discreetly taking the bracelet out of his pocket. "Look, we still got this baby, right? And we've got the descendants, both of them. We stole Frobisher-Smythe once. We can do it again. This time, we'll do the ritual right. Right?"
"I guess," Fabian says.
"Come on, guys. Sibuna it."
I raise my hand to my eye, chorusing Sibuna with them.
—
Patricia sits next to me in biology, stating, "So, Atticus Monroe thinks my name is Pamela. He came up to me earlier and said he was worried about Mara rooming with Willow about how chatty she is and how much Mara would hate it. He wants me to convince Willow to switch rooms with me."
"Well, I'd prefer you as a roommate again," I say, "but why does he think you'll do it?"
"He offered me cash."
"Oh, that explains it. Are you going to do it?"
"Already done," Patricia says. "She wanted to stay because it's Amber's room, but I may have convinced her that Amber hated that room and rooming with Mara. She agreed, so guess you're my new roomie, old roomie."
I nod slowly. Well, that's unexpected. I was just beginning to accept that my new roommate is unbelievably perky and the human embodiment of a unicorn, and now my new/old roommate is unbelievably pessimistic and the human embodiment of a spider's web. Ah, well, this'll be fun. "Pamela?" I ask her. Patricia nods. "So, I'm Abby and you're Pamela. How's he get us mixed up but he gets Willow's name right?"
Patricia gives me a shrug. "He's not that bright. At least he's gotten the first initials right."
As I chuckle, Alfie sits at our table and the other three of Sibuna at the one next to us and class begins. Shortly thereafter, Denby comes in and joins Sweet at the front, which is never good. My eyes narrow at them as Sweetie says, "We are planning a wonderful bill of celebrations at the end of the week to mark the importance of the total eclipse."
"Students will work in small groups," Denby adds, "to study the science, nature, traditions, and customs of the solar eclipse."
"As ever, we will need help with the—"
Willow shoots her hand straight up into the air. "Ooh, ooh, pick me, pick me!"
"—organization, Miss Jenks, very good."
Willow smiles happily. "What I don't know about the sun and the moon isn't worth knowing."
"Well, Miss Jenks," Sweet instructs, "your first task will be to coordinate everyone into their 'eclipse groups.'"
"Ooh. Do I get to decide who works with who?"
"No, Willow, you do not."
"Everyone," Denby comments as Willow's shoulders slump, "will work in the groups and on the tasks selected for them. Please see Willow for details," she adds, handing a stack of papers to her.
"And Jerome," Sweet says, "you will be working with Patricia, Alfie, and Ashley." Jerome turns from his seat next to Mara to wink at me, and I roll my eyes. "And Willow, you are with Mara." Out of the corner of my eye, I see Atticus looking very alarmed. Awesome, anything that gets him off his game is a win for us. I look over Willow's shoulder to see if I can see who he's paired with—Joy and someone from Isis House.
"We're incredibly fortunate, for this will be a total eclipse, very rarely witnessed. We will be able to see the entire sun going black."
My eyebrows furrow. That sounds... familiar. Black sun. Dark son. Dark sun...
"And hard work," Sweet says as I glance at Fabian, "will be rewarded with... extra credit! So get to it, hmm?"
I lean closer to Patricia and Alfie, lowering my voice so Willow won't hear. "The entire sun going black," I repeat to them. "Dark sun. That's what we missed. We have to do the ceremony during the eclipse. We have less than three days to get this together."