Chapter Eighteen
His lips felt good on mine and we kissed feverishly at first, quickly melting into each other. I didn’t even stop to think if it was a good idea; I just did it. Our lips parted as we got more comfortable with each other; he tasted faintly of black licorice, a candy I’d never really liked until now. I toyed with the idea of leading him upstairs to my room, but then thought better of it. First off, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be alone with him in a room with a bed on account of the fact that we barely knew each other. For all I knew, he could be a normal high school student by day and a psycho serial killer at night. A cute serial killer of course, but still.
Besides, there was no reason to head upstairs, anyway—we didn’t exactly need more privacy in a house that was already empty. I was its only occupant, and it wasn’t like anyone was going to come home and catch me making out with a boy I hardly knew.
Other kids my age would die for the opportunity to have their house to themselves so they could be alone with a cute guy, and here I was wishing my parents were around to catch me. Life could be really messed up sometimes.
I couldn’t keep my mind on what Asher and I were doing while I was thinking about my parents and what had most likely happened to them. Talk about a mood killer. So with the hand that had just been running up Asher’s chest I gently pushed him away until we were on opposite sides of the couch, staring at each other.
“What’s wrong? Are we going too fast?” he asked, out of breath. I seemed to be having the same problem.
“No. No, that’s not it,” I said, shaking my head.
“What is it, then?”
I couldn’t exactly say that I’d suddenly lost my appetite for him because he made me think of my dead parents. Not only would that make him as depressed as I was now, but if he asked what happened to them, I’d either have to lie and make something up, or tell him the truth and then attempt to explain what had been going on in my life lately. Neither of these options seemed viable to me. Not if I wanted to try to get back on track with Asher.
“I’ve sort of got a headache and I’m not sure when my parents are getting home,” I said finally. Technically this wasn’t a lie; I wasn’t sure when my parents would be home—if my dad was coming home at all. I knew I wasn’t telling him the entire truth, and I didn’t want to start a potential relationship based on lies. Technicalities . . . now, those were a different thing entirely.
“Do you want me to go?” he asked. I could tell by the sound of his voice that he didn’t want to. I smiled. He’d asked me this question once before and I didn’t have an answer for him then. Now I did. It might not have been smart, but . . .
“Not at all,” I said reassuringly. Then I stood to leave. I needed to take a minute to collect myself and try to put aside the thoughts of my parents, which had blocked me in the first place. “Hang out. Get comfortable. I’m just going to get some Tylenol and I’ll be back. Can I get you something to drink?”
Asher looked happy to hear that he wasn’t being kicked out of the house just yet and did as I suggested, snuggling back into the middle of the soft cushions. “Sure. I’ll take whatever you’re having.”
“Okay. The remote’s there if you want to look for something else.”
I gave him a smile I hoped would make up for the fact that I’d put us on ice for the time being and then retreated into the kitchen. The Tylenol was up in the corner cabinet and after shaking two out into my palm, I tossed them into my mouth and chased them with a swig of root beer. Truth be told, my head was throbbing—well, my whole body hurt, really. After everything that had happened yesterday, I knew that what the doctor ordered was probably just a good night’s sleep. But with any luck, I wouldn’t be going to bed anytime soon, thus the need for Tylenol. Snagging another can of soda from the fridge, I went to leave when something outside the window stopped me in my tracks.
But upon closer inspection, nothing was there. Nothing I could see, anyway.
The nights were so much brighter here than they were in the darkness of the woods. The weird thing was that I’d felt safer back in the isolation of the woods than I did in our suburban neighborhood. I’m sure it had something to do with the fact that I was constantly surrounded by a dozen other kids back at the cabin, and here it was just me and Asher. Not that I was complaining. It was just that I’d grown comfortable with having lots of people around me.
Strength in numbers and all that.
I looked around the backyard. Things were already starting to look bad now that no one was tending to it. The grass was an inch too long and a brownish color I’d never seen before. There was a pile of decomposing blackberries on the ground near the fence from where the neighbor’s bush had grown over the side. I turned to get a better view of the rest of the yard and as I did so, there was another flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. I leaned toward the window until my forehead hit the glass, and struggled to identify what it could have been.
When I still didn’t see anything, I chalked it up to an overactive imagination and exhaustion. What I’d seen was probably a squirrel or bird, or maybe even a leaf being blown across the yard. In other words, nothing I needed to worry about.
“You get lost in there or something?” Asher called from the living room.
Taking one last look at my yard, I backed away from the window and turned to where my guest was waiting. My very cute guest, who seemed to like me. Well, enough to make out with me, at least.
When I got to the room, I tried to hide my smile as I saw Asher cuddled up under my mom’s fuzzy red blanket. He’d wrapped it around his body and up and over his head like Little Red Riding Hood. Between his innocent expression and the fuzzy material framing his face, he looked absolutely ridiculous.
And I so wanted to kiss him again.
“You are such a geek,” I said as I walked over to him and placed our drinks on the coffee table. Plopping down on the couch next to him, I pulled my legs up to my chest and cocked my head to the side. “Are you cold or do you just like the look?”
“Well, I definitely think I can pull this off,” he answered coyly. He moved slightly closer to me. “But I might be a little cold.”
“Oh, yeah? Well we can’t have that, can we?” I leaned toward him and began rubbing his arms through the blanket to try to warm him up.
“I’m still cold,” he said slowly. “Hey, I’ve got another idea of how you can warm me up.”
“Oh, right. Subtle, Asher. You may be a good kisser, but you’ll have to take me out on a date before I do whatever you’re thinking,” I said, feeling myself start to blush. Because the truth was, I was thinking it too. Maybe not tonight, but possibly (hopefully) sometime in the future.
“I was talking about kissing!” he exclaimed, feigning shock. “Why don’t you get your mind out of the gutter.”
I snorted and crossed my arms over my chest.
“Okay, well then there is something else you can do for me,” he continued.
“I’m not doing that, either.”
“You can tell me exactly what happened back at the mall yesterday,” he said, suddenly serious.
My smile faded and my mouth went dry. He had brought up the one subject I didn’t want to talk about. I knew it was naive to think that maybe he’d forgotten all about it, but after spending this whole time without mentioning the fight, I thought we were going to just pretend it never happened. But now he was bringing it up and I had no idea what I was going to say.
So I said the first thing that came to my mind.
“Okay, we can kiss,” I said quickly, and moved toward him.
Asher leaned away from me and placed his hand in between us. “No way—you’re not getting out of this one,” he said. “Now what was with you going all G.I. Jane and running headfirst into that fight? It looked like—”
“It was a gang fight,” I said quickly, blurting out the lie before I had a chance to think about it.
Asher blinked at me. “How could you tell they were a gang? They didn’t look like gang members. Some of the people were old. Like thirty or something. And things were sparking,” he said. Then he lowered his voice like he was sharing a secret with me. “I think some weird stuff was going on. I don’t exactly know how to explain it—”
“They were a gang of magicians,” I said. Even as I said it, I wanted to kick myself. What an incredibly stupid answer. Where the hell was I going with this? It’s not like he’d believe magic was real, and that people were casting spells on each other, in public no less. “I mean, I read in the paper a few weeks ago that there are gangs out there who use the kinds of tricks that magicians use to distract their enemies. That’s probably what you saw.”
No way was he going to fall for this. No way.
“Do they have gangs for everything now?” he asked incredulously. It seemed like he was actually pondering the idea.
No. Way.
“I guess so,” I mumbled.
“But that still doesn’t answer why you ran in there,” Asher said, turning the spotlight back on me. To my dismay. “You could’ve been hurt or something. They could’ve sawed you in half. It’s not like you’re some kind of secret superhero or something . . .”
“Um, I don’t know why I did it,” I said, starting to chew on my bottom lip, but then stopping when I realized I was taking off my lip gloss. “It was just my first instinct, I guess. I thought maybe someone could use my help.”
“Well, did they?”
I looked down at the ground guiltily. “Yeah, they did.” I immediately made a mental note to call the hospital and check in on Jasmine and Jinx once Asher was gone.
“Well, I’m glad you’re okay, Hadley.”
“You too,” I answered.
At least there was that. Somehow Asher had managed to disappear during the fight and avoid the kind of damage that was inflicted on the rest of my coven. Come to think of it, I couldn’t remember seeing Asher at all during the fight. Which was weird because he was right behind me when I first got to the courtyard; I had no idea what had happened to him after that.
“Where did you go during the fight, anyway? I was kind of worried you’d gotten hurt when I couldn’t find you,” I said, lowering my voice.
“You thought the evil magicians had kidnapped me?” Asher asked with a chuckle.
“Go ahead and laugh, but that fight was intense. A lot of people got hurt, you know,” I said sincerely. “I’m glad you left before they got to you, too.” I wasn’t accusing him of bailing. In fact, being that he wasn’t magically inclined like me, it was much better that he’d taken off. He would’ve been so out of his league if he’d jumped in.
“Well, it looked like you had everything under control,” he said.
He obviously hadn’t stuck around long enough to see much, because I’d never had anything under control. That’s what I’d wanted everyone to believe, but I’d just been trying my best to get everyone out of there alive—myself included. For someone who was used to excelling at pretty much everything, the fact that I’d failed at keeping everyone safe was incredibly frustrating.
Before I could dip back into another funk—one that I couldn’t pull myself out of—I tried to change the subject. Attempting to put as much magical persuasion into my words as possible, I silently willed Asher to forget about earlier and focus on right now.
“Let’s talk about something a little more . . . sexy,” I said, giving him a suggestive smile.
He smiled back. “Like?”
“Like how hot you look in that furry red blanket,” I said, giggling.
Asher rolled his eyes and pulled the blanket tighter around his face. “Wait, this is what does it for you? Are you sure you’re not just trying to hide something from me?”
I leaned toward him boldly, until my lips were once again touching his. The butterflies in my stomach began to flutter and my head started to swim with feelings I’d never experienced. As our kiss deepened, Asher pulled me closer until I was lying flat against his chest on the couch. My brain started to question my heart over what was right and what was safe. What was I doing here, in my empty house, with a mere high school boy, when so much was already going on? Logically I knew that starting to date a relative stranger was potentially dangerous, but maybe that was part of what attracted me to him. The fact that it was the opposite of what I should’ve been doing might be the very reason I was doing it.
After all, I had an ancient evil coven out to get everyone I was close to. If I really cared about Asher, I wouldn’t be pulling him into my web of violence and death, right? I’d encourage him to go home and stay far, far away from me instead.
But I didn’t want him to go. I wanted to be there, pressed up against his chest, becoming familiar with the way he kissed. So I kept kissing him.
Almost as soon as I’d resolved to keep going, a scratching sound pulled me out of my make-out sesh. I tried to figure out what it was while continuing to kiss Asher. I ran my fingers through his spiky hair and grabbed a hunk of it, pulling his face tighter to mine.
There it was again. A scratching sound barely loud enough to discern, but now I knew I hadn’t imagined it. This time I stopped what I was doing and strained to hear where it was coming from.
“What? Was that wrong?” Asher asked, looking concerned.
“No. Shhh,” I said, touching my fingers to his lips to keep him quiet.
We sat there like that in silence. The house creaked like older structures sometimes do, but that wasn’t anything unusual. I could hear water dripping from the sink in the kitchen and it was making me need to pee. But besides that, the house was still.
There was nothing out of the ordinary, from what I could tell.
“Guess it was nothing,” I said, taking my fingers back from their place on Asher’s lips. I shrugged and leaned back in to kiss him again.
“I think you’re amazing,” he murmured between kisses. I started to smile as he said it, because I’d been thinking the same thing about him. I couldn’t believe that I was actually considering dating a high school guy. I’d be breaking my own rules if I kept in the direction I was going with Asher. Then again, would anyone really care except for me?
I was still considering this when suddenly my world exploded in light and pain.
Next thing I knew, I was on the floor in front of the couch, my head pounding. I felt something wet trickle down my forehead and drip into my eye. Wondering why I was sweating, I reached up and wiped at my brow. When I pulled my arm back, blood covered my hand.
What the . . .
Looking to my left, I could see that Asher was on the ground as well, only he seemed to be asleep. But he didn’t look peaceful. People who fell asleep usually looked peaceful and that’s not what this was.
He looked . . . dead.
Still confused and now worried about Asher, my eyes darted around the room for some sort of explanation for what had just happened.
And that’s when I saw them.
Several figures stood in the doorway, looking ready for a fight. As I watched, more appeared from the kitchen area, surveying the scene. Before I had a chance to yell out, they were already rushing toward me, spells flying.