Chapter Twenty-Four
I lay in bed awake, waiting for the rest of the house to come back to life. It’s a funny feeling, being the only one up while everyone else is asleep; everything’s quieter. It’s easier to hear yourself think. I’d always had the theory that you can’t get bogged down with the stress of life when you’re still in a horizontal position and those around you are snoring and dreaming. It had been a long time since the house had been quiet like this and I reveled in it.
I got to know the way Asher sounded when he slept. He breathed slowly and evenly, and he barely moved at all. I’d been told by friends who’d shared beds with me at slumber parties growing up that I was a thrasher, possibly due to my active dreams. At one point Trish refused to ever share a bed with me again.
But Asher was a calm sleeper. Not that I was watching him in a creepy kind of way. More like observing him as I waited for him to wake up. At one point, I could barely see him breathing, and I got so paranoid thinking that he might have died in the middle of the night that I pulled my compact off the bedside table to find out. Luckily, the mirror fogged up when I placed it near his mouth and I was able to relax, knowing I hadn’t lost him, too.
As soon as I began to hear others move around the house, I decided it was probably an acceptable time to leave the comfort of my bed—and Asher. But I didn’t want to ditch him. I knew from my dream what that could feel like.
There was work to be done before I could wake him, though. No way was I daring to breathe on him with my morning dragon breath. Nuh-uh. But getting up would mean moving around in bed, which could possibly wake Asher before I was ready, so I had to take a few shortcuts to achieve morning perfection.
Casting my freshening spell, I sucked in deeply, tasting the minty flavor as it played across my lips. With that out of the way, I turned to the next order of business: changing this mess into a success.
“Renewbus freshimo perfecto,” I whispered.
I didn’t need a mirror to know that my hair was transforming into waves that would glisten in the light. Various shades of concealer and makeup were appearing on my face, covering my flaws and highlighting my natural beauty. When I was sure I was boy worthy, I knew it was time to do what I had to do.
It was time for Asher to wake up.
“Quivable divanish.”
I stayed as still as I could as the bed shook like a mini-earthquake. It felt a little like sitting in a vibrating chair—there was just enough movement to shake you out of whatever dream you were having. And that was exactly what it did to Asher.
“Whaa?” he asked as his hands flew to grip the comforter. I, however, acted like it was Asher who’d woken me up.
“What’s wrong?” I asked in my most sleepy, I-just-woke-up voice.
Asher was looking around the room now, his head flipping from side to side as if he could find the culprit that had suddenly awakened him. When he finally realized we were alone in the room and nothing was out of place, his eyes dropped and rested on me.
“Huh? Nothing. I must’ve been having a weird dream or something,” he muttered.
“What about?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” he said, shaking his head. His eyes roamed over my face as he noticed my morning glow. He smiled lazily. “Wow. You’re really not a Hyde, are you?”
“A Hyde?” I asked, confused.
“You know, there’re those girls who look great during the day, but when you see them first thing in the morning, you realize in reality they don’t look anything like the person you fell asleep next to. You go to bed with Dr. Jekyll and wake up with Mr. Hyde.”
“Girls don’t like it when you compare them to psycho monsters, Asher.” I said it like I was serious, but then let my mouth fade into a grin.
“I just mean that some girls wear so much makeup that you’re surprised when you see what they really look like. And you’re not like that. You really are gorgeous all the time,” he said, turning over onto his side and propping himself up on his elbow. “Your girlfriends must hate you.”
I burst out laughing. Not a great delivery, but I could tell he was trying to give me a compliment. “Only part of the time,” I responded.
“Sounds about right,” he said. Then, without hesitation, he leaned forward and gave me a soft kiss. I happily kissed him back, grateful that I’d had the foresight to freshen up. But the sound of someone running down the hallway pulled me out of my fairy-tale make-out session.
I sucked on his lower lip lightly before falling back onto my pillow. “Everyone’s getting up. We should probably do the same.”
Asher reached over and wrapped his arms around my waist and rolled us until I was lying on top of him. “Let’s just stay in bed for the rest of the day. The others can get along without you for a few hours.”
I shook my finger at him, but didn’t get up just yet. The offer was tempting—part of me wanted nothing other than to stay right there, enveloped in our little love cocoon—but I had work to do. Because the truth was, I wouldn’t be around to enjoy these kinds of moments if the Parrishables wiped me out the next time we met. So right now, Asher had to come second.
“Have you met these kids? If I leave them alone too long, they’ll burn the cabin down, leaving smoke signals for our enemies,” I said. “So come on, get up!”
I threw the covers back and hopped out of bed.
“Ugh,” Asher groaned, watching me cross to the bathroom. “You’re really kicking me out?”
“Yep! Now go clean up and get dressed—because although I’m beautiful and smell like roses in the morning, you don’t seem to have those powers,” I said jokingly, and gave him a wink. “I’ll meet you downstairs in fifteen and we’ll eat breakfast together, okay? And if you’re good, I may be up for another slumber party tonight.”
“Fine,” Asher said, sounding like it really wasn’t. But he was smiling as he trudged over to the bedroom door.
When he finally disappeared, I threw on a classic look of designer jeans and a black top that Kristen Bell had worn in an episode of Veronica Mars—one of my fave shows of all time—and turned the knob as quietly as possible. Poking my head out into the hallway, I was happy to see that everyone appeared to be downstairs already. When I was sure I wouldn’t be caught, I tiptoed down the hall to my old room.
This was really why I’d been so eager to kick a cute boy out of my bed. Asher may not have remembered the dream he’d been having before he was shaken awake, but I could certainly remember mine. The dream about Bridget’s daughter was as firmly planted in my mind as if it were my own memory.
And I was positive that if I pried up those floorboards, I was going to find all of Christian’s secrets. This, I hoped, would help me finally decide whether I was going to stay or go. On the one hand, I wanted to do what my mom was asking me to do. She’d never steered me wrong before, and she had ventured beyond the grave to tell me to save the others by leaving for good. It didn’t make sense to me, but it was coming from my mom and that was impossible to ignore.
That’s what I was hoping my little scavenger hunt would help clear up. If there was something in that book of Christian’s that could help us actually win the battle with Samuel, then I wouldn’t have to leave after all. Maybe my mom hadn’t had this info when she’d passed her message on to Emory to relay to me. So she wouldn’t have been wrong, just uninformed.
I was happy to find my old room empty, and tiptoed inside. Closing the door quietly behind me, I turned the button in the knob until the lock fell into place. No good would come from someone catching me—with a traitor among us, I didn’t want whatever I found to end up in the wrong hands. No, the fewer people who knew about what I was doing the better.
With the door secure, I put my hands on my hips and surveyed the room. The furniture had changed from what I’d seen in my dream, so this wasn’t going to be easy. Currently there was a twin bed directly over the spot where Christian had pulled up the boards, and beneath that, carpet. Thanks to me and my extreme dislike of hardwood floors at the age of six (they were cold when you woke up in the morning and weren’t exactly comfortable to lie down on during slumber parties), my parents had installed wall-to-wall shag.
With a sigh, I began to push and pull the furniture until it was situated on the opposite side of the room. I’d already broken a sweat, and wished I could’ve let at least one other person know what I was doing just so I could have gotten a little help with the heavy lifting. But it was too late to do anything about that now.
Snatching a pair of scissors off the desk, I knelt down around where I’d seen Christian the night before and stabbed the blades into the crack near the wall. Jimmying around the edge of the carpet, I managed to get up under it after I pried my fingers in there too, and I started to pull it away from the floor. Using the wall as leverage, I planted my feet and pulled back with all my strength until I heard a ripping sound. One foot, two feet—when I’d loosened three feet of carpeting from the floor, I began to saw at the carpet, attempting to cut a hole big enough to get into the hiding space.
Five minutes later, I’d reached the wood underneath and was practically vibrating with excitement over what I was about to see. I tested out the wobbly boards, hoping they’d come up easily. I didn’t really want to ruin my nail job and I’d done about as much manual labor as I could handle for the day. But all it took was a twist of my wrist, and I was moving the planks out of the way and tossing them on the carpet behind me.
When I looked into the hole, my heart sank.
It was empty.
The hiding place wasn’t all that deep—less than six inches, I’d say—and after all that work I found myself sitting there staring at empty space. What had been the point of having the dream if I wasn’t supposed to find anything? Just another stupid waste of time, dreaming about another crazy, long-lost relative.
I was about to put the floorboards back into place when I had a thought. Sure, it was a last-ditch effort, but it was hard to believe I could’ve done all this work for nothing. Crouching back over the hole, I carefully leaned down and reached my hand into the dark parts of the chasm.
Even though I was hoping to find something, another part of me was scared that my hand would touch something I didn’t want it to—like something furry or slimy. As I thought about what might be hiding under the floorboards, my brain started to scream at me to retract my hand. But I forced myself to keep feeling around.
Finally, my fingers grazed something cold and hard. I pulled my arm back reflexively. As I willed my heartbeat to slow down and the pounding in my ears to go away, I realized that if there was any chance that Christian’s stuff was hiding under this roof, I had to do whatever I could to find it. It would be worth touching something icky in the process.
Taking a deep breath, I reached back down and began to feel around again. It didn’t take long—what I felt was small, hard, round, and cool to the touch. Based on my dream from the night before, I was pretty sure it was the ring that had glowed when Christian had put it on. Wrapping my hand around the jewelry, I pulled it out and looked at it triumphantly.
The ring itself was stunning. With a thin band of gold encrusted with tiny diamonds, the ring glittered under the lights in the room. All these details led up to the traffic stopper: the enormous ruby sitting right in the middle. It was at least six carats, in the shape of a soft square with more diamonds surrounding it like a little army protecting its queen.
It was the kind of ring I’d dreamed of owning one day. Preferably given to me by my incredibly wealthy and attractive boyfriend, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. This was pretty cool too.
I wanted to sit and stare at the ring all day long, but I hadn’t forgotten that in my dream, Christian had also been hiding a book. With the ring firmly in one hand, I reached back down into the darkness with the other.
My fingers searched the space, at first coming up with nothing. Finally, I touched something long, thin, and soft, like a string, and I had to force myself to grab hold of it, even though I was scared of what it might be. It was dragging something along behind it that made the tiniest scratching sound as I pulled it out.
Please don’t be attached to a rat, please don’t be attached to a rat, please . . .
But as my hand came back into view, I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw that what I was holding on to was a silk ribbon being used as a page marker for a book. The book that Christian had been writing in.
Crawling back across the floor, I sat down cross-legged against the bed, mimicking the position of Bridget’s daughter. Slipping the ring onto my middle finger—no way was I wearing it on my ring finger, since it’s totally bad luck—I waited for something spectacular to happen.
But nothing came. No heat. No tingling sensation. No magical surge of power. No glowing red light. Just a gorgeously expensive ring that would’ve been the envy of my friends. With a shrug, I turned my attention to the book.
The worn, leather-bound book was heavy in my hands. The pages weren’t numbered, and there were too many to count. A quick flip through showed that not all of them were written on. Some were blank, but most were filled up with scribbles. At first glance, I thought maybe it was poetry because of the way the words were positioned on the page, all gathered in the middle with lots of white space on the sides. But a closer look proved it to be something much different.
What I was holding in my hands wasn’t a diary or a compilation of poetry.
It was a spell book.
“Holy magic, Glinda,” I mumbled.
There was page after page of spells. Each was labeled at the top; some pages held multiple incantations. We’d been taught only around fifty spells through magic school, but there were hundreds in here. More than we could ever learn in a lifetime, probably. And it appeared like more than one person had contributed to it. At first glance, I could see that some of the spells were seriously outdated, reflecting the time that Christian would have been growing up. Some, however, could span generations . . . and did.
Turning to a page that had been dog-eared, I read carefully through the words. As I began to understand what I had here, my adrenaline started pumping.
A Charm for Forgetfulness
When a cloudy mind is what you seek,
Just step inside and take a peek.
Create a storm to rain in the brain,
Make things muddy and then take claim.
As the mist takes hold and covers your secrets,
I’ll make you forget just where you keep it.
Wicked. I’d never heard these spells before, and although they were a bit old and the wording was outdated, I was psyched to try them—I definitely didn’t doubt their potency.
In other words, I couldn’t wait to see how well they worked.
Bustling around to put everything back in its place, I was already working out what I was going to do with this newfound knowledge. Should I bring it to the entire group and try to have everyone learn as much as they could before the Parrishables found us? Or would I be better off keeping this news to myself, considering the traitor in the house?
Wait. Maybe there was something in the book that could help me with that.
I had my hunches of who was planning to betray us, but I still didn’t feel comfortable shunning him without seeing the proof for myself. And though my mom hadn’t been much help in telling me who the culprit was, it didn’t mean that Bridget and Christian wouldn’t be.
In fact, I was counting on it.
With a fire lit inside me, I opened the book back up to take a closer look and see if we couldn’t find the stranger among us.