Charmfall Read Online Free PDF Page A

more.
    “He’s a Reaper,” I said, putting the suitcase on the ground. “He was working on Lisbeth.” I pointed to the bench where she still sat, hunched over the arm.
    “Oh no,” Foley said, running in her skirt and low heels to the bench. She sat down beside Lisbeth, gently moved her head, and looked into each of her eyes. “Weak,” she said, “but she’ll manage.”
    Foley looked back at Lesley. “Go to my office. There’s a number on speed dial—it’s the first one on the phone. Call it. Tell the man who answers that I need him.”
    Without a word, Lesley nodded and ran for the door.
    Foley stroked a hand over Lisbeth’s face. She knew all about magic and Reapers and Adepts. Her daughter had been one, but she’d died in the line of duty.
    “It was bold of him,” she said, then looked over at me. “To be out in the open.”
    “Maybe they’re working on infiltrating the school. They’ve tried to take Scout’s Grimoire —her book of magic—before.”
    “I remember.”
    “I tried to get him away from her.” I shivered involuntarily, thinking of what I’d seen—the Reaper actually stealing her soul, one wisp at a time. “He was already in the middle of it.”
    “So I see. Why did you hit him with a suitcase? Why not use your own magic?”
    That was my question, too.

3
    I barely paid attention to the school as I passed back through it, from the dome in the main building, to the Great Hall where we studied, and then on to the dorms. I ran upstairs to the suite I shared with Lesley, Scout, and Amie and unlocked the door.
    I knocked on the door to Scout’s bedroom, but didn’t bother to wait for an invitation.
    Scout wore black pajamas and sat cross-legged on her small bed, an open book in front of her. Her hair was blond on top and dark underneath, and it was currently sticking out of her head in a million directions. She looked a little like a Goth pincushion, not that I was going to tell her that.
    Eyes wide, she yanked off a pair of earphones. “What’s wrong?”
    “A Reaper was outside—on campus—attacking Lisbeth Cannon. He was just sitting there, drinking her. And when I tried to firespell him, my magic was gone. It doesn’t work. At all. No firespell at all. And then Foley came, and she called someone, I don’t know who, and Lisbeth was unconscious.”
    “Whoa, slow down.” There was concern in her eyes, but also confusion. She patted the bed beside her. “Sit down, slow down, and tell me exactly what happened.”
    I filled her in on the Reaper’s attack and what I’d tried—and failed—to do.
    “He broke through the wards.”
    Scout had put wards, magical guards, on the giant door in the school’s basement that led to the tunnels. The wards were supposed to keep Reapers at bay, but the Reapers had at least one wardbreaker whose job was to break through those protections. Daniel Sterling, the leader of our Enclave, had recently helped Scout strengthen the wards to keep the wardbreaker out, but maybe that still hadn’t been enough.
    “Not necessarily,” I said. “Maybe she just let him in through the gate. It definitely looked like they knew each other.”
    “Maybe,” Scout said, but she didn’t sound convinced. She unfolded her legs, then hopped onto the floor. “Let me see your back.”
    I stood up, lifted up my T-shirt, and showed it to her.
    “Your Darkening is still there,” she said.
    “I’m still me,” I said, pulling my T-shirt down again. “I’m just me with nonfunctioning firespell. What about you? What was the last magic you worked?”
    “Uh, I turned off my alarm clock this morning.”
    “With magic?”
    She blushed a little. “It’s a new kind of spell. Hardly magic at all. Like a little appetizer-type thing. I was testing it.”
    “And it worked?”
    “If you’re not still hearing talk radio played at jet-level decibels, it worked.”
    “Your alarm is set to talk radio? Why?”
    “Because I hate it,” she said simply. “And that