Intrinsical - Lani Woodland [81]
“How come your grandpa and dad didn’t tell you about this? How come you had to read it in Neal’s journals?”
Brent shrugged. “Not sure.”
I watched as five stones floated through the air and then became a pair of eyes and the buttons on the snowman’s chest. Brent stood and examined our little snowman. “It needs a good nose.”
I stood up, looking for something that would work while Brent made a mouth with two leaves.
“It was supposed to protect me,” I said, positioning an orange flower above his green lips. Sitting back down in the snow I examined our masterpiece. I didn’t really see it, though; my mind was still on my necklace. I wished I had it on now so I could examine it more carefully. I found it odd that, from another country, my grandmother had sent me a present that was tied not only to my death, but to the mystery of Pendrell itself. “Maybe the necklace did work.”
Brent turned to me, stunned. “How exactly do you explain that?”
“Well, it allowed me to the see the mist and save you, and it protected me that time it tried to attack me. Well I guess you helped that time, too. That is what all that frantic hand waving was about, right?”
“That frantic hand waving is a highly polished form of defense that saved your butt.”
“Anyway, as I was saying, it allowed me to save you, protected me and probably even made my Waker genes finally develop. The plant is supposed to protect pure spirits—” I blushed at the compliment I had just implied about myself. “—from being hurt by evil ones. I never really thought about the plant inside the necklace actually working, but it does seem that the necklace really helped me.” I scratched my collarbone where my necklace should have been and bit my lip. “Now that I think about it, Thomas couldn’t even touch me when he was pretending to be you . . . until I took it off. And if I hadn’t been so heedless of my grandmother’s request to wear it all the time, I might still be alive.”
“Or,” he countered, “it led you to your death by letting you leave your body and attracting the mist’s attention in the first place.”
“Or maybe it’s just helping me see connections that I haven’t figured out yet. My grandmother is a smart lady.”
Brent didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. I could feel how strongly he disagreed with me. He was silent for a while and I could hear him thinking. “Yara, do you believe in fate?”
“I suppose it depends on the context.”
“This plant. It can’t be coincidence that your great-greatgrandfather worked here and that this plant your family uses in their spiritual work also ends up here. I’m willing to bet he’s the one who brought it to the school. You said he was a science teacher, right?”
I nodded, starting to see where his line of thinking was going.
Brent continued, “Your family knows so much about herbs, it must have been him Christopher chose to teach him about the plant. Even though the plant eventually died, it still managed to somehow imbue its magical powers into the soil. Then you arrive here decades later, a girl who’s been raised with this stuff, who’s special even among those who are already considered special. It’s no wonder you astral projected so soon and so powerfully. I don’t think you could have stopped it even if you wanted to.” I blushed. He either didn’t notice or had the grace to pretend not to. “And you bring your unique gifts and a necklace infused with this plant to school,” he continued, pacing around. “Maybe you’re tied to all of this somehow.”
“My grandma didn’t want me to come to Pendrell. Grandpa always swore there were evil things happening here. My parents didn’t listen. I didn’t listen.” I bit my lip considering. “But if he was so sure, why didn’t he do anything about it? I mean couldn’t he have fought it?”
Brent looked at me like I had missed an important piece of information. “Didn’t you say only the girls in the family could see ghosts?” I nodded. “Maybe he knew there was something going on, but didn’t know where to look.”
I stared at him, shocked and open-mouthed. It all made sense; everything fit. How did I feel, though,