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THE BOOK OF SPELLS

This could not be real I wasn’t actually standing in the basement of a centuries-old chapel faced with a dusty, leather-bound spell book I felt like I’d just stepped into a Nancy Drew novel and taken over as the heroine Tentatively, I reached out to touch the cover, but before I could, the book was snatched away

“You have to be kiddingup the heavy book Her dark, windblown hair was fanned out over her shoulders and her face was red with fury “This is why she sent us here? A spell book?”

My heart caught as she waved the antique tome around like it was no more valuable than an out-of-print dictionary “Noelle—”

“You knohat I’ to do with this, Grand to track you doherever you are right now and smack you upside the head with it!”

“Noelle, just … calo psycho on me now”

She hesitated but threw the book back down onto the podiuhed painfully

“Oh, I’ her cashht Because I’ht in a snowstorm to find an old book!”

She threw the scarf over the back of a chair and unbuttoned her wool coat Apparently her anger washer hot

I walked over to the podius There, in handwriting I’d recognize anywhere, were the words Property of the Billings Literary Society

Elizabeth Willias School for Girls back in 1915 I had spent so s Literary Society book, I could probably copy her script by now I felt like I’d gotten to know her since reorganizing her secret society at Easton Academy I knehat colors she liked to wear, how she was fiercely loyal to her friends, how she loved living away from home But now I felt as if I didn’t know her at all Because nowhere in the BLS book had she ever e volule word

Noelle stored e titled “The Purity Spell”—then quickly flipped the pages forward and back

“What’re you doing?” I asked

“Checking to see if it’s one of those hide-a-key book things,” she said “You knoith a big chunk cut out to hide soh and sla Unbelievable”

She started across the roo the ends around both hands and pulling it taut “You co?”

“Where?”

“Back to campus,” she said i any more of my time up here”

“You’re not gonna take this with you?” I asked, gesturing at the book

She rolled her eyes and popped one hip “Do I look like Sabrina the Teenage Witch?”

I clucked randmother …,” I said hesitantly I’d only just found out that Noelle and I were half sisters—that her dad wasoff ue “She wanted us to find it Maybe there’s more to it than you think Maybe there’s … I don’t know … so in there she wants us to read”

“Fine then” She slid the book off the podium and started for the stairs “Happy now?”

“Ecstatic,” I said sarcastically

I followed her up the winding stairs toward the deserted chaplain’s office above, a sparsely decorated room that hadn’t been used for dozens of years Noelleunder her breath, clearly annoyed, but as we closed the bookcase door behind us,I wanted to knoas in that book—to knohat it had to do with Elizabeth Williams

Noelle yanked open the office door, and we both heard a tentative creak corabbed her forearht Why would anyone be up here? Noelle looked over her shoulder at me, eyes wide, and I attempted to s