"Maybe it's because they know I can't escape? Or maybe having to look at the dude they've been flaying alive every day is punishment for the other students. Either way, I'll take it."

Archer turned back to me, and that familiar grin flashed over his face. "Come on, Mercer. Me, you, the cell ar. What could go wrong?"

CHAPTER 20

A few days later, I found myself back in the cell ar. But this time, I was involved in an activity way more fun than cataloging magic junk.

"What happened to the promise of making out in castles?" I asked as Archer and I pulled back for a breather. I was leaning back against one of the shelves, my hands clutching Archer's waist. Over his shoulder, there was a jar of eyeballs staring at me, and I nodded toward it. "Because, see, things like that? Kind of a mood killer."

He glanced at the jar and then turned back to me, waggling his eyebrows. "Really? I find it has the opposite effect." Giggling, I elbowed him in the stomach and pushed myself off the shelf. "You're sick." He smiled and ducked his head to kiss me again, but I skirted around him. "Come on, Cross, we came down here for a reason, and it wasn't fooling around."

Smirking, Archer folded his arms over his chest. "May not have been your reason, but-" I cut him off. "No. Don't distract me with your sexy talk. We need to search this place, and that spell Elodie did will only last so long." Elodie had swooped into my body at the cell ar door, doing a quick spell to unlock it. She hadn't even looked at Archer, much less said anything. And the second the lock clicked open, she'd vanished.

The smirk disappeared from Archer's face, and he actually looked kind of sull en.

"Are you honestly that bummed about not hooking up right now?" I teased.

But he was deadly serious when he shook his head and said, "It's not that. It's Elodie."

"What about her?"

Archer rolled his eyes. "I don't know, Mercer. Maybe it's that I'm not completely crazy about the ghost of my ex-girlfriend occasionally inhabiting the body of my current girlfriend."

I backed up another step and ran into another shelf. Something fell off and thunked against the dirt floor. "Whoa, I'm your girlfriend now?" Archer shrugged. "We've tried to kill each other, fought ghouls, and kissed a lot. I'm pretty sure we're married in some cultures." Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. "Whatever. Look, the fact of the matter is, I don't have any magic right now. Elodie does. If her occasionally using me as her puppet means that I have powers again, then I'm fine with it. And you should be, too. My body, my ghost, and all that." There was obviously more Archer wanted to say, but in the end, he just nodded and said, "Fine. I'll deal." Something about the way he said that irritated me, but I let it slide. "Okay, so where should we start?" Archer unbuttoned his cuffs and began rolling up his sleeves. "Well, Jenna said Lara's been down here, what? At least three times this week?" I nodded. "Yup. Never brings anything down here with her, never has anything when she comes back up."

"Okay," he said, blowing out a long breath. "So whatever she's doing, she must be using one or more of the artifacts already down here." I glanced around at the jam-packed shelves. "So let me get this straight: She's doing...something. With some stuff. That's somewhere."

"That pretty much covers it, yeah," Archer replied.

"Yay for vague," I muttered, shrugging off my blazer. I tossed it on the nearest shelf and grimaced as a puff of dust and grime rose in the air.

"Ugh, gross. Would it kill the Casnoffs to do the occasional cleaning spell? I swear to God, everything in here is covered with a least an inch of..." My words trailed off as a thought occurred to me. From Archer's sudden grin, he'd apparently had the same idea.

"Bet if you've been using an artifact at least three times a week, it's pretty dust-free," he said.

"So we look for the least disgusting shelf. Easy enough."

Or at least that's what I thought. For about twenty minutes, Archer and I walked around each and every case, looking at every slot. I saw a few items I recognized from cell ar duty (a red piece of fabric, some vampire fangs in a jar), and some things I was pretty sure I'd only ever seen in nightmares. What I didn't see was a clean shelf. Even the artifacts themselves were covered in dust, which was weird. Because they were magic, the items in the cell ar moved around by themselves all the time. They usually didn't have time to gather...A thought suddenly occurred to me.

I stood on my tiptoes to look over the bookcase. "Cross."

His head popped up a few shelves over. "What?"

"Check out the magic crap."

He shot me a look. "Oh, is that what we're supposed to be doing? Because I've just been drawing hearts and our initials in the dirt."

"Hilarious," I deadpanned. "What I mean is, why are all the jars and boxes and stuff covered in dust, too? I mean, they move around all the freaking time, right? They shouldn't be in one place long enough to get dusty."

"Good point." Archer's eyes scanned the shelf in front of him for a moment before he said, "Here we go," and pulled out a large glass jar.

Inside, I could just make out a pair of white gloves. I remembered them; they flew, and Archer and I had once spent nearly half an hour chasing them around the cell ar. It had taken both of us to force the gloves into that jar.

Now Archer unscrewed the lid and dumped the gloves on top of the shelf. They lay there, completely still, and I couldn't shake the feeling that they'd died.

Archer moved to another shelf, and after some rummaging around, pulled out an old drum, its skin mildewed and ripped. "There's no magic left in this either," he said, holding it up for me to see.

Turning in a circle, I took in all the magical knickknacks, feeling their...well, quietness. "There's no magic in any of them," I told Archer. "Can magic just...drain out?"

He came around to stand next to me. "I've never heard of that happening, but who knows? It's weird though, that's for sure."

"Weird stuff happening at Hex Hall. Who'da thunk it?" I said lightly, but my heart sank with disappointment. I'd been so sure we'd find something down here that might stop whatever the Casnoffs were up to. I don't know why I'd thought it would be so easy.

Archer hooked an arm around my neck, pulling me in so that he could brush his lips against the top of my head. "We'll figure it out, Mercer," he murmured, and I pressed my cheek closer to his chest.

We stood there for a long moment before he said, "You know, we still have like, half an hour down here. Seems a shame to waste it." I poked him in the ribs, and he gave an exaggerated wince. "No way, dude. My days of cell ar, mill, and dungeon lovin' are over. Go castle or go home."

"Fair enough," he said as we interlaced our fingers and headed for the stairs. "But does it have to be a real castle, or would one of those inflatable bouncy things work?"

I laughed. "Oh, inflatable castles are totally out of-"

I skidded to a stop on the first step, causing Archer to bump into me.

"What the heck is that?" I asked, pointing to a dark stain in the nearest corner.

"Okay, number one question you don't want to hear in a creepy cell ar," Archer said, but I ignored him and stepped off the staircase. The stain bled out from underneath the stone wall, covering maybe a foot of the dirt floor. It looked black and vaguely...sticky. I swallowed my disgust as I knelt down and gingerly touched the blob with one finger.

Archer crouched down next to me and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a lighter, and after a few tries, a wavering flame sprung up.

We studied my fingertip in the dim glow.

"So that's-"

"It's blood, yeah," I said, not taking my eyes off my hand.

"Scary."

"I was gonna go with vile, but scary works."

Archer fished in his pockets again, and this time he produced a paper napkin. I took it from him and gave Lady Macbeth a run for her money in the hand-scrubbing department. But even as I attempted to remove a layer of skin from my finger, something was bugging me. I mean, something other than the fact that I'd just touched a puddle of blood.

"Check the other corners," I told Archer.

He stood up and moved across the room. I stayed where I was, trying to remember that afternoon Dad and I had sat with the Thorne family grimoire. We'd looked at dozens of spells, but there had been one-

"There's blood in every corner," Archer called from the other side of the cell ar. "Or at least that's what I'm guessing it is. Unlike some people, I don't have the urge to go sticking my fingers in it."

I lowered my head and screwed my eyes shut. "I know what this is. I read about a spell that used blood in the four corners of a room." I pictured the grimoire, saw my fingers turning the pages. "It was a holding spell," I finally said. "The blood turned the room into a cage, but it took a crazy amount of magic. One witch couldn't do it alone, because it would drain all her power." I looked up, and Archer met my eyes. "Unless the witch could drain magic from something else," I said.

Archer glanced around the cell ar. "Or a lot of some-things."

"Well, that's one mystery solved," I said, rising to my feet. "Of course, now the question is, what is Mrs. Casnoff holding down here?"

"And where?" Archer added, but I shook my head.

"I know the where," I told him. "At least I think I do. The holding spell works like a kind of magical net. The blood in the corners grounds it, and the spell itself arches over the room."

We both glanced up, like we were expecting to see shimmery threads arcing across the ceiling. But there was nothing except the usual dusty beams.

"The spell is at its strongest in the center of the room," I added. "So whatever you want to hold, you wanna put it as close to dead center as you can."

"You must've been awesome at Memory as a kid," Archer mused.

I shrugged. "When you're perusing a book full of the most powerful dark magic ever, you pay attention." Our gazes fell to the center of the room, where there was nothing but one of the cell ar's bazil ion shelves. And under that shelf, drag marks in the dirt.

We both moved to either end of the shelf. It took a minute (and a couple of impolite words from both of us), but we managed to move it several feet over. Then we stood there, breathing hard and sweating a little, and stared at the trap door in the floor.

"Whatever's down there," Archer said after a moment, "it's hard-core enough that Casnoff went to all this trouble to hold it. Are you sure you want to do this, Mercer?"

"Of course I don't," I said, grabbing the iron ring affixed to the trap door. "But I'm gonna." I yanked at the ring, and the door came up easily. Cool air, smelling faintly of dirt and decay, wafted up. A metal ladder was bolted to the side of the opening, and I counted ten rungs before it disappeared into the blackness below.

Archer made a move to step into the hole, but I stopped him. "I'll go down first. You'll just look up my skirt if I go after you."

"Sophie-"