Chapter Twenty
I watched as I got closer and closer to the ground in what seemed like slow motion and wondered what would happen when I hit. Would my bones crack instantly? I’d never broken anything before, although I’d always wondered how I’d managed to escape that rite of passage.
But if I was seriously hurt in this fall I might not be able to get myself—let alone everyone else—out of there alive. Maybe I’d be able to convince enough of the others to get out, so it wouldn’t turn into a total slaughter. This thought nearly made me sick to my stomach. Or maybe it was the fact that I was falling so quickly now that my insides felt like I was on a roller coaster. Either way, I wasn’t feeling too hot.
I was seconds away from going splat all over my living room floor when I clenched my eyes shut. Right as I was expecting to feel the floor come up to bite me in the ass, the strangest thing happened.
My body began to slow down, resisting gravity as if I were attached to an invisible bungee cord. And then I was being pulled sideways, arms and legs flailing as I tried to somehow navigate the flight. I had to open my eyes because I had no idea what had just happened. And what I saw didn’t make any sense.
The guy in the trench coat was still there, only now his eyes were following me as I flew across the room. He seemed oblivious to everything that was going on around us. Peter and June were taking turns shielding each other and knocking bad guys down, and Asher was in the middle of pounding on another guy near the front door. Sascha was still recovering from reviving me earlier, but Fallon had moved to her side, deflecting spells as they were thrown his way. The Cleri were too busy fighting others to go after the guy who currently had his black eyes trained on me. So he just stood there, smiling that eerie grin of his like he was actually having fun.
“Shifagin momentus!” someone yelled out, barely audible over the noise in the room. A few moments later, my body hit the soft cushions of the couch with an “oomph.” The landing may have been better than hitting the floor, but I still ended up having the wind knocked out of me and had to take a moment to get air back into my lungs. When I could breathe again, I jumped up from the couch and stood in a defensive stance. I knew I had someone to thank for making the couch move four feet backward to soften my fall, but there was no time. Trench-coat guy was steadily walking toward me, still smiling, which made me totally uneasy.
Just as he was raising his hand to cast yet another spell, I muttered the words to a bubble spell that trapped its caster in the safety of an impenetrable, circular force field. I felt the strength of the guy’s spell hit my bubble, but—thank God—it held.
This time, trench-coat guy’s mouth twitched even though the smile was still plastered across his face.
“I knew you’d be a worthy adversary,” he said, as if we were the only two there.
I watched with horror as Fallon knocked out a man who’d jumped over the couch to get to him and Sascha. Then he ran straight toward trench-coat guy. Just as Fallon was opening his mouth to let out a spell, Trench Coat flicked his wrist, tossing Fallon into the air like he was a rag doll. I screamed his name, but that was all I could do. Luckily, Asher turned around just in time to see Fallon coming toward him and reached out to help cushion his fall. The bad guy was still talking, as if he’d just swatted at an annoying fly.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you,” he said with an almost animalistic snarl. “Everyone else was just too easy to defeat. Or too damaged. Or too . . . predictable. I needed a challenge. And that’s where you come in.”
“Like you’re the first person to tell me that I’m challenging,” I said, sounding a lot more like myself than I had in days. The only problem was that it was taking all my concentration just to keep the bubble around me intact, and I needed to try and pull the others into it with me.
“Pretty and funny. That’s a powerful combination,” he said with an evil chuckle that would’ve sounded totally normal in a horror film. “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced. I’m Samuel, leader of this coven. And you’re Hadley.”
I was so surprised to hear him say my name that I nearly dropped the spell. “How do you know who I am?” I asked before I could stop myself. I immediately wished I could take it back. The last thing I wanted was for him to know he’d rattled me.
“Oh, dear girl, I make it my business to know who’s out there in our world. I’ve been watching you for quite some time now. You see, every magically inclined person lets off a sort of footprint—an enchanted calling card, if you will,” Samuel said, gesturing around the room. “Your kind of power screams across state lines. I’ve been following your work for years.”
“Some people would call that stalking,” I answered.
The fight was still going on around us, but we continued to focus only on each other. This wasn’t easy considering that I could see the others struggling to stay standing. And here I was, with my protective bubble keeping me safe. I began to step back so I could bring the others into it. By this time, Emory had woken up and was fighting her way over to Sascha.
“There’s that wit again,” old black eyes said. “You know, I could use someone with similar talents in my group. Join my team and we could be unstoppable.”
“I’m a cheerleader. I’m already a part of a team, thank you very much. And to be honest, you’re not exactly my type. You know, being evil and all.”
He narrowed his eyes at me and took a few steps in my direction. I involuntarily took a few steps backward, feeling the desperate need to get as far away from him as possible. When Samuel saw me move, he stopped in his tracks. He reached up to rub his jaw as he thought about his next move.
“I have a feeling you’ll change your mind,” he said, his eyes growing even darker than they’d been a minute earlier. The blackness in his irises swirled like a storm growing deep within him. “Bridget did. In the end, anyway. You will too.”
It hit me with the force of a slap even though I was still under my spell’s protection. Samuel? Bridget? Could it possibly be true? Was this sadistic witch really Samuel Parris? But that was impossible because that would make him over . . . three hundred years old. No way was this guy over the age of forty. Either that or he’d aged really well. And if that was the case, I was going to make it my mission to figure out how to bottle the secret and become rich and famous after creating my own skin care line.
But right now I had more important things to worry about. I needed to get all my friends out of the house without taking another trip to the hospital. A look around showed that they were still on their feet—even Fallon after Asher’s great catch—but people were starting to slow down. Emory had finally reached Sascha and was helping her up, while Peter and June had joined Asher and Fallon in fighting off the rest of the baddies left in the room. We needed to leave before everyone got so tired that they started making mistakes. Because mistakes led to injuries.
I had to stop this bizarro one-on-one convo with this possibly undead witch ASAP so we could get the heck out of here.
“Funny, I heard she wanted nothing to do with you in the end.” I didn’t divulge how I knew this, but stated it as fact. “Speaking of traitors, how did it feel to betray your own coven? I mean, I’d be afraid that any coven I built after that would either never fully trust me or would eventually do the same thing to me. Glad I don’t have to worry about that.”
He was silent for a moment, seemingly mulling over what I’d said. Was he holding himself back from going off on me? I was taking a huge risk by talking to him this way; I had no idea whether he was who he said he was, but either way, he had his own army, and it didn’t seem like they were going to stop until they’d gotten rid of us all.
Another reason we had to get out of there right away.
Samuel had a whole gang of people standing between the two of us now, but maybe I could use his numbers against him. Making a split-second decision without even knowing if it would work, I said a few words under my breath and thrust my now solidified ball of a force field toward the closest of Samuel’s group. Just as I’d hoped, the gelatin-like ball picked up speed and sucked the first guy in and continued to pick others up as it turned into a huge orb of bad guys hurtling straight for the leader of the pack.
Samuel was able to dodge the human bowling ball at the last minute by diving behind an overturned recliner, but it didn’t matter. The distraction had still managed to give us plenty of time to slip away and out the front door without any more damage being done or anyone else getting hurt.
I was the last one out, and as I went I tossed a sludge spell behind me, the sidewalk turning into a sort of sticky tar mess so that anyone who followed us would stick to the ground. Eventually they’d get out of it—either the goo would break down when the spell wore off or if the guy was smart enough, he’d take off his shoes and go barefoot—but by then we’d be long gone.
“Get in your car!” I yelled, surveying the group to make sure we had everyone. Emory and Fallon carried Sascha, since she was still looking a little out of it from earlier. Peter and June followed quickly behind them. For now, the whole group appeared to be intact.
“Asher, over here!” I motioned for him to follow me the few blocks over to where I had parked and had the car unlocked before he’d even reached the passenger side. Jumping inside and hot-wiring the car with a few choice words (I’d left my keys somewhere in the house during all the drama), I then slammed my foot down on the gas and the car lurched forward, peeling out as we made our exit. I met up with the other car a few blocks away, before we all got back onto the highway to head to the cabin. Every few seconds I’d glance back to make sure they were keeping up.
Once we’d been driving for at least twenty minutes, I finally allowed myself to let up on the gas and trust that, for the time being, we weren’t being followed.
For now.
“What the hell was that?” Asher asked once I’d stopped driving like I was in the Indy 500. The sound of his voice breaking our silence startled me as I’d been pondering what our next move should be. I started to answer, but he cut me off. “And don’t give me that crap about magician gangs. Magicians or not, that was magic back there. You guys were doing actual spells. But not fun ones like making cake appear out of thin air or guessing cards. That was a battle. The kind you don’t walk away from.”
My mind raced to come up with an explanation that would be less crazy than the truth, but in the end nothing I could make up would sound any saner. And I was sick of lying to Asher. It somehow felt wrong. Like, if I was trying to start a relationship with someone, I didn’t want to base it on a plethora of lies. After everything he’d just seen, I doubted he’d believe me anyway. Better to come clean and deal with the consequences later. Even if it turned out that Asher wanted nothing to do with me or my crazy life.
I hoped all this didn’t scare him off for good.
My stomach twisted into knots as I prepared to do what I knew I had to. “Asher, I’m a witch,” I said, saying each word carefully like it might help the meaning sink in. “I come from a long line of witches. My mom could do magic. My grandmother, too. As far as I know everyone in my family tree has had some ability to cast.”
I left out the fact that my super-great-grandmother was the first witch to be executed at the Salem witch trials and was quite possibly the most powerful witch of all time. And that it looked like the apple didn’t fall far from the tree in my case. It didn’t seem important to the story, and I was nervous about overloading him with too much heavy information all at once. That discussion was more of a fifth-date kind of topic.
“You were right that it was a battle, Asher. And those guys back there? They’re the bad guys. Really bad guys. They’ve been hunting down other covens for centuries, wiping out anyone who could threaten their rise to power. And now they’ve found us. The people who helped us out at the house tonight are members of my coven, the Cleri. Just over a week ago the Parrishables—those are the bad guys—they attacked our parents at a coven meeting and burned the place to the ground, with everyone still in it.”
I chanced a look over at Asher but he wasn’t saying anything.
“After that, those of us who were left went on the run, escaping to the only place I knew would be safe. And then we started to train. We hid and we trained, trying to perfect all the spells that we’d been taught by our magic teacher. But it wasn’t enough. Because when they found us at the mall, they ended up putting two of my friends in the hospital. One even had to have emergency surgery.”
Now I was unloading everything on him. All the stress and upset I’d been letting build up inside me in order to shield it from the others came spilling out. It was hard not to choke on my words when I thought about Jinx and her injuries, but I kept going. I had to.
“Then I found out from one of Samuel Parris’s goons that it’s really me that they’re after, and if the Cleri hadn’t been with me that day, they never would’ve gotten hurt. So I left. Figured they were better off without me. But it was all a bad idea—well, good because I ran into you, but bad because of that total slasher scene back at my house.
“Now it looks like we’ll have to go back to the cabin where the rest of the Cleri are staying, because so far it’s the only place that the Parrishables haven’t been able to find us. And on top of that, I’ve pulled you into my witch fit and put your life in danger too! Asher, you’re the last person I’d ever want to get hurt and I’m not sure if you should even be around me anymore, but I also don’t know if it’s safe for you to be out there by yourself now. I don’t know what to do.”
I looked over at him again, scared that he’d call me a psycho and jump out of the moving vehicle just to get away from me. But his butt stayed glued to the seat and his face remained neutral, both reactions I hadn’t been expecting. I waited patiently for him to say something. Finally, he cleared his throat and broke the uncomfortable silence.
“So, you’re a witch,” he said in a way that was like, “So, you’re seventeen” or “So, you’re a redhead.” It brought a feeling to my heart that was indescribable. He didn’t care that I was a witch. Or that I did magic. Or that I was different.
I’d told him my big secret and he hadn’t gone running for the hills. My mind boggled at the fact that he seemed to be taking it all pretty well. I never would’ve expected it.
“So, what next?” he asked, settling back into his seat, more at ease than I would’ve expected of someone who’d just found out that witches existed.
“That’s it? You’re okay knowing that they’re after us and all?” I asked, surprised but happy. “I mean, I’m kind of a liability right now. Trouble seems to follow me around these days.”
“Oh, you’re trouble all right,” he said with a smile. “But like you said, they’ve already seen me, and it won’t be any better out there fending for myself than here with you. Besides, I trust you to keep me safe; I’m sort of not ready to let you go just yet.”
This made me blush and I was thankful that it was dark in the car. Taking my hand off the wheel, I placed it on his and linked our fingers.
“So don’t,” I said.