School Spirits (Hex Hall Novel, A) Read Online Free PDF

it to Mom. When I was done, she seemed satisfied, although I had a feeling I’d have to do it again before school tomorrow. “Anything else you want to talk about?” Mom asked, and I shook my head.
    “You good for the rest of the night?” Mom was already glancing down the stairs.
    “Sure,” I told her. “Go…do your thing.”
    Mom’s “thing” was locking herself in the spare bedroom and poring over books and journals and weird magical documents. I wasn’t sure if she was searching for something that would help us on this case or just boning up on her General Monster Research. And there was that little part of me that wondered if she was looking for clues about Finn, but I never asked. I didn’t even know where any of that stuff had come from. It had just started showing up at the house right after we moved in last week. From more of Mom’s “friends,” I guessed.
    Once I was in my room, I sorted through the DVDs, trying to decide which one to watch first. The one with the girl who falls in love with an alien sounded the most interesting, but I figured it, like the Secret Twin Murder Show , wouldn’t be that useful. So in the end, I picked the show about the poor girl who transfers to the rich-kid high school, Ivy Springs .
    The cover was pretty boring, but by episode three, I was so into it that I didn’t even notice Torin in my mirror until he cleared his throat. Frowning, I reached out and clicked pause right before Everton, the rich boy, told Leslie, our impoverished heroine, that he had feelings for her. “What?” I snapped at Torin.
    “Just checking in on you. You could be a little thankful, you know. Getting out of my own mirror requires considerable power on my part.”
    “First of all, no, it doesn’t,” I countered. “You zip in and out of those things all the time. And secondly, I would be thankful if I wanted to talk to you, but I don’t, so I’m not.” I had too much on my plate right now to deal with Torin. Especially since I was still irritated about the dream invasion.
    “That is unkind,” Torin sniffed. In the mirror, he was sitting on my bed. Mom had let me pick out a new bedspread yesterday, but I’d been so overwhelmed by all the patterns and the flowers and the pop stars that I’d ended up picking a plain green blanket that looked almost identical to the covers I’d left behind.
    Ignoring Torin, I started the show up again. Everton confessed his love, Leslie swooned, and just as they
were about to kiss, Torin piped up, “Those two seem insipid.”
    I shot a look at him. “Shut up.”
    “I mean it. And doesn’t that lad have another girl? This can really only end badly for everyone involved.”
    In spite of myself, I smiled a little. “I guess I should get used to this kind of drama.”
    Torin smiled back. “Certainly scarier than staking vampires, isn’t it?”
    I wondered what it said about me that watching a teen soap opera with a four-hundred-year-old warlock felt, well…normal.
    “I don’t know why I’m doing all of this,” I said, not taking my eyes off the screen. “Or why Mom is going to all this trouble. If there’s a ghost here—and I kind of doubt it—it won’t require my going to this school for, like, months or renting a house. We could just get in, get out—”
    “Isolde, do not be so dense.” In the mirror, Torin was leaning back on his hands, ankles crossed. “Your moving here has nothing to do with any ghost. Granted, there’s a chance a haunting is happening at Betty Crocker High—”
    “Mary Evans,” I corrected, but he blew a hank of blond hair out of his eyes and shrugged.
    “But clearly, Aislinn’s true motivation here is to let you experience a taste of regular human life. She’s gruff and difficult, that woman, so of course she’d rather die than tell you, ‘Oh, Isolde, guilt over your sister’s disappearance has left me swimming in a veritable sea of angst—’”
    “Stop it.” Standing up, I flipped off the