Page 190 of Sigils & Spells

She barked again, with more insistence and peaked her nose out from under the red blanket. Another bark.

“Okay, I’m coming.'' Instead of standing, I crawled over to the bed and lay on my stomach where Alice had disappeared. I lifted the edge of the blanket. The backpack. The one Alice had been wearing when she’d been turned into a sugar glider. They’d taken mine once Lyrei knocked me out.

Alice pushed on the bag and chittered at me.

“Oh. Hell yeah.” I grabbed the bag and then Alice, put them both on the surface of the bed, and sat back on the plush mattress. I unzipped the bag and pulled out some water and snacks. I didn’t realize how thirsty I was. I took three massive gulps before I realized we should probably save the water.

I poured a little into the cap and offered it to Alice, who put her tiny paws on my hand as if to steady it and lapped up the water.

I pulled a bag of crackers from the depths of the bag before zipping it back up and stowing it once again under the bed.

“It seems like she’s just going to leave me in here until I have to eat the apple.” I said, pulling out one cracker for myself and one for the sugar glider. Did sugar gliders eat crackers? And did it matter if they didn’t because she was actually a human? I wasn’t sure and didn’t have time to rethink before she took the cracker and started nibbling on it.

“We have snacks and water, so if we spread them out, that can last a few days, but I don’t want to be here for a few days. We need to figure something out.”

But what was there to figure out? Escape? There wasn’t a feasible escape plan for us. I could wrack my brains all I wanted but for me and Alice, getting out of here just wasn’t possible. I pushed the thought to the back of my mind and focused on the crackers, but I couldn’t forget it. There was nothing else to think about, but every time I tried to come up with a solution, a big knot of dread twisted in my chest, almost making me dizzy.

I couldn’t eat any more crackers. I set the bag down on the bed, and looked at my hands. I wanted to curl up and disappear. Every cell in my body screamed at me to do something, anything to help Minho and Ruby without enslaving myself, but I couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything.

I felt tears well up in my eyes.

“Damn.” I took a breath, and looked up at the red canopy over my head, willing the tears swimming in my vision to subside.

Hands touched my shoulders gently, and I looked down to see Alice, human again, and sitting across from me on the bed. I opened my mouth as if to say something, but the words never came out. I closed my mouth again, and Alice moved her hands to my face, holding it.

“We’ll figure something out, Julian.”

“I don’t know if we can.”

“Don’t talk like that,” she squished my face a little between her hands, so my lips puffed out like a fish. The movement of my face loosened a tear from my eye and I could feel it run down my nose. “If you talk like that, I’ll start thinking like that and we can’t have that. I have to believe it will be ok. And I’ll do anything in my power to make it ok.”

“How?”

“I don’t know right now.” her gaze, and the sturdy certainty in her dark eyes were unwavering. “Refusing to believe good outcomes are possible is the first step to giving up. And I’m not giving up, and neither are you. There’s got to be something we haven’t considered. I don’t care how stupid you think you are, we can figure this out together.”

I frowned, and pulled her hands away from my face, but didn’t let them go. “I never said I thought I was stupid.”

She raised her eyebrows at me, and I flushed.

“Okay, fine. Yes, I tend to think I’m stupid.” I felt my cheeks redden. As much as I’d never learned to shut up, the inner workings of my brain wasn’t something I usually broadcasted. I’d never shared that with anyone, that certainty that I was the dumbest person in every room, and no one really needed me for anything important. “I don’t think I’m smart enough for college and I don’t think I can get us out of here. But how did you know that’s how I felt?”

I was still holding Alice’s hands where I’d pulled them from my face. She smiled a little and moved her hands to lace her fingers with mine. She squeezed our hands together.

“I don’t know.” she looked down at our intertwined hands. “I’m not normally good at reading people, but you’re an open book to me, Julian.”

“Really?” I found myself smiling a little too, despite everything. “I’m normally good at reading people, but you’re an enigma.”

“Not going to college does not make you stupid, Julian,” she said and squeezed my hands again, so tight it almost hurt before easing the pressure and smiling at me. “Tell me something about yourself you don’t normally tell people.”

“I feel like there’s not much to know about me.” I shrugged. I couldn’t look her in the eyes anymore. The light wasn’t strong enough for me to see the mahogany color of her irises, instead they looked black, reflecting the amber light from the lanterns.

“So you also assume you’re shallow and uninteresting. Is that why you act the way you do?”

“How do I act?” I frowned.

“I’ve only known you for a bit, but you live so loudly. You party and work at a Rodeo bar. You take up your space, and you make jokes even in the most serious moments, and…” she trailed off. “And you saved that girl.”

I blinked. “What?”

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