by Sarra Cannon
“Wow, those are some really good schools.”
“The pressure's really going to be on. It's not like my family needs me to get a scholarship or anything, but I'd love the chance to play college ball.”
It occurred to me how little I really knew about Drake. The one time I'd met his parents, they seemed flat and boring. His mother seemed kind of like a perfect little Stepford wife who always wore just the right outfit and said just the right thing.
He pulled me closer. “I'm thinking UGA is starting to look real good.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Because it will put me closer to you next year,” he said.
I squirmed uncomfortably. “That's still kind of far off to be thinking about, isn't it?”
“My mom was actually the one who suggested I think about UGA so we could stay together.” His hand ran up my thigh again and he kissed my cheek.
“Wait, your mother?” I pulled away. “Why would your mom even care?”
Drake sighed. “Because she knows how much I like you. She wants to make sure I make the right choices. Besides, she and my dad met when they were in high school.” He shrugged.
Was he comparing us to his parents? I shook my head and looked out the window. Things were definitely moving too fast.
He turned my face toward his. I held my breath as he stared at me, then brought his lips to mine. The kiss started slowly. I was hesitant. His hand inched higher on my leg. I tried to push him away, but he was persistent. I wasn't sure what I wanted anymore.
“Harper?”
“Yeah?” I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against his arm. I needed to get my balance.
“Will you go to Homecoming with me?”
My stomach tightened. I couldn't very well say no, could I?
“On one condition,” I said.
He smiled. “Okay, let's hear it.”
“You have to promise that if you get a scholarship to a bunch of these schools, you won't choose UGA just because of me.”
His smile faded. I didn't say what he expected to hear. He seemed to think it over for a second. “Okay,” he said. “If it's that important to you.”
It was that important. I didn't want Drake making decisions about his distant future based on our month-old relationship. Most girls probably would have been excited to hear him talk about the future, but it made me feel uncomfortable. Pressured. Like he was claiming ownership of me. Hell, I wasn't even sure where I wanted to go to school or even if I planned to go to college at all. And if I wasn't ready to make those decisions about my own future, how could I be comfortable with someone else basing their decisions on me?
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I'm just tired.”
I laid my head against his shoulder. We didn't talk the rest of the ride home.
We're Talking About Things Way Past My Experience Level
“Harper, you have to try this one on. This color will look amazing on you.” Brooke held up a silky blue dress.
Brooke, Lark, Allison and I had been shopping at the mall in Macon for the past two hours and none of the others had yet to find a dress. And they didn't seem to be getting tired of shopping either. Me? I was so tired of boutique stores and department stores and never-could-afford-this-in-a-million-years dresses.
“Great,” I said.
“I'm going to try this red one, but I'm not sure I like this beaded flower part on the shoulder,” Lark said.
Allison had three dresses thrown across her arm, too, and the four of us headed into the dressing area together. When they'd asked me to come along, I thought it would be more fun to try on pretty dresses. But when I realized just how much all these dresses cost, the fun quickly drained out of the whole experience. When I stepped into the solitude of the dressing room, I flipped over the price tag on the amazing blue dress. I almost groaned out loud. Three hundred and fifty dollars?! I sighed and slipped it on, praying it looked like crap and I wouldn't care that I couldn't afford it.
Lark let out a high-pitched squeal when I came out to model the dress. “That's perfect,” she said. “You have to get it.”
I panicked. How could she think I could afford this? Sometimes they acted like Shadowford was just some vacation home for me. “I don't know,” I said, scrunching up my nose as I studied it in the mirror. It was fabulous, of course. And Brooke was right. The color was perfect for me. But I couldn't tell them that. Instead, I said, “It's just not the dress. I can't explain it. I'll know it when I see it.”
Brooke nodded in understanding. “You have a good point. It's so important to trust your instincts when it comes to finding the right dress for an occasion like this.”
“Well, I think you're crazy. You'll never find a dress as perfect as that one.”
She was probably right, but what could I do? Short of stealing the damn thing, I had no choice but to put it back.
Later, as we were all eating lunch in the food court, I noticed a strange woman staring at us. She was dressed in all black. Every time I caught her staring, she pretended to be looking for someone she knew. Something about her made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Lark leaned over toward me.
“Want to spend the night tonight?"
I set my burger and fries down on the table. “Sure,” I said. “That would be awesome.”
“Great. My parents have some dinner thing tonight and I don't really feel like being alone.”
“Sounds like fun,” I said. I glanced back over at the woman in black. She was staring again. “Lark? Do you see that lady over there by the stairs? She keeps looking at us.”
Lark turned all the way around in her chair. I rolled my eyes.
“You don't have to be so obvious about it.”
She giggled, then seemed to freeze. She turned back around abruptly and took a long sip of her coke.
“Do you know her?” I asked.
“Nope,” she said. She and Brooke shared a look. I didn't believe her for a second.
The four of us spent another hour or two shopping, then we split up. Brooke had plans for a movie with Foster, Allison was expected to be home for dinner with her parents, and Lark and I went to her house. When we got there, I was amazed at the level of security around their yard. Video surveillance. A gated front drive with a guard.
“Whoa. What's up with all the Fort Knox security?”
She looked a little embarrassed and I wondered if I'd said something wrong. “You know, with my mom being mayor and all, sometimes we get threats.”
I nodded as if that made complete sense, but to tell the truth, it didn't make any sense to me at all. It wasn't like we were in Washington DC or New York or anywhere. We were in a small town with a population of less than ten thousand. Was being the mayor in a town like this really all that dangerous? I thought of the creepy woman who'd been staring at us in the mall and shivered.
Inside, the house was like a palace. Marble floors. A huge winding white staircase. Sparkling chandelier. It was unreal. The house didn't look like the typical southern mayor's house, that's for sure. It was far from what I was expecting.
“Wow, did your parents design this place?”
“My dad's an architect,” she said. “And my mom went to school for interior design up in Atlanta. That's where they met.”
“This place is beautiful.”
“You think?” She looked around, a bored look on her face. “It always seems so out of place to me. Like it doesn't fit in a town like this with all these old southern houses.”
I didn't tell her that was exactly what I'd just been thinking. “But it's still gorgeous.”
She laughed. “Thanks. Come on, I'll show you my room.”
As we started up the stairs, an older black woman walked into the hallway and said hello to Lark. “You want something to eat? I've got some cookies in the kitchen. Fresh baked if you want any.”'
“No thanks,” Lark said. “We might come down later. This is H
arper, by the way.”
“Hi, Miss Harper. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too.” I had never seen so many people working to make one house run smoothly. Security guards. A cook. I caught a glimpse of a woman in a maid's uniform dusting in the living room when we first walked in. How many people did the Chen's employ anyway? Half a dozen? More? It blew my mind a little.
Lark grabbed my hand and pulled me up the stairs. The carpet up here was a plush off-white carpet that I sank into with each step. Somewhere in the middle of the hallway, Lark pushed open a dark mahogany door.
“Here we are,” she said. “My little piece of heaven.”
As I walked into the room, I felt a slight shock go through my system. After all of the white and cream and gold tones in the main areas of the house, Lark's bright pink walls and dark wood furniture looked completely out of place.
“Wow, it's crazy bright and cheerful in here.”
“Um, I'll take that as a compliment,” she said, plopping down on her bed. The Queen size bed was covered with a fluffy white comforter that was decorated with violet, green and pink polka dots.
“I meant it as one,” I said. “It's so different from the rest of the house.”
“Yeah, Mom and I have very different tastes. Plus, I like to redecorate a lot.”
Must be nice. I had never once been able to decorate my own room or even pick out my own paint color. “Do you paint it yourself?”
Lark smiled mischievously, like she had a secret.
“What?” I asked.
“Watch,” she said. She slid off the bed and sat down in the center of her floor on a square pink rug. She crossed her legs and set her hands palm up on her knees.
I felt a tingle of energy on the tiny hairs on my arm. I didn't know whether to sit down with her or back away.
Her eyes closed and her lips moved silently. There was movement in the air that lifted my hair slightly off my shoulders. Underneath where Lark was sitting, the pink rug slowly turned a color of teal as bright as pictures I'd seen of the Caribbean ocean. The color crept outward from her in a circular pattern, like a drop of water spreading on a napkin.
The dark wood furniture suddenly became shiny white. The polka-dot bedspread turned black with teal and white stripes, the color perfectly matching the newly teal rug on the floor. Other details of the room changed too. Like the lamp on her bedside table. I watched as it turned from a wooden base with a pink shade to a tall chrome base with a shimmery white shade. When the circle of color reached the edges of the room, a bright white paint climbed up the walls, replacing the pink that was already there. One wall became a teal accent wall.
Less than ten minutes after Lark sat down, the entire room transformed in front of my eyes. I stood, open-mouthed, staring at each changed detail.
“You like it?” She opened her eyes and stood, hand on one hip, surveying her work.
“Like it? This is incredible.” I walked over to the bedside table and touched the lamp to make sure it was real. The chrome base was cool to the touch and very much real chrome.
“How did you do that?”
“It's called a glamour,” she said. “A staple of every respectable witch. It takes a lot of energy and concentration. I used to get super sick to my stomach after doing it, but I've been practicing. It gets easier.”
I ran my hand along the bedspread and the walls, completely fascinated by what she had done. This was definitely a higher level of magic than anything Mrs. King had taught us so far.
“Do you want to learn?”
“Are you kidding me?” I said. “I would kill to learn how to do this. Do you think I could actually do it?”
She smiled and took my hand. “Of course. Here, sit down with me.”
We sat together in the center of the room facing each other, then scooted together until our knees were touching. Lark took my hands in hers and arranged them correctly on top of my knees.
“You need to always sit palms up, like you're meditating. It's kind of like opening yourself up to the power all around you. Feel the energy of the room?”
I nodded. I did feel it. A muted version of what I'd felt in the grass the night they gave me the demon tattoo. A hum deep below the surface of the air.
“Imagine that energy is entering your body through your hands and your eyes and your mouth and your ears. Just close your eyes and let it fill you up.”
I closed my eyes and imagined that the energy was a blue light pouring into me. I soaked it in, and it felt like a warm current running up my arms and through my shoulders. It flowed from my head down through my chest and all the way down to the tips of my toes.
“Good,” she said. She touched my arm lightly and I felt a tiny shock. I pulled away and opened my eyes. Lark giggled. “Sorry. Making a connection with another shadow witch can be pretty intense.”
She slowly placed her hands, palm up, into my own. I felt the zap of energy, like a static shock. This time, I didn't pull away. In that moment, I had a flashback of memory. My first day at Shadowford in Ms. Shadowford's office. I had touched the doorknob in her room and it had shocked me. Then, the first time I touched Mrs. King, the same thing had happened. This felt exactly the same, only more concentrated. More dense and full.
“Lark? What does Shadowford Plantation have to do with the Order of Shadows?” I don't know where the question came from, but I suddenly knew there was a connection.
Lark shrugged. “I don't know for sure. Only that the clearing is there on the property,” she said. “And I've heard there's a sacred ritual room somewhere underground. Kind of like our training room in the gym. It's where they take girls for their final initiation on their eighteenth birthday.”
“Have you ever been there?”
“No.” She shook her head. “But sometimes I overhear my mom talking about things.”
So her mother was definitely a member of the Order of Shadows. I wondered if Lark knew who the other members were and why they kept the names a secret from the recruits. I'd been putting together a list of potential members in my head. Lark's mom. Mrs. King. Sheriff Hollingsworth. And so on.
“Do you ever wonder why they don't just tell us who the members of the Order are? I mean, why does it need to be a secret?”
Lark shifted uncomfortably. “Do you want to learn how to do this glamour or not?”
“Of course.” Why was it so difficult to get answers to my questions? Everyone kept brushing me off like secrets were normal. I sighed.
“Concentrate again,” she said. “Try to get back to that same place of energy where you were before. Focus on your breathing and draw the energy from every item in the room.”
After a few moments of breathing and concentration, I felt the blue light flow into me again. I let the breath come in through my nose and out again, filling my chest and my soul.
“Wow,” she whispered.
“What?”
“You really are powerful, Harper. And you don't even know it yet.”
I started to open my eyes, but she stopped me. “Wait, don't let it go.”
We breathed together. In and out slowly.
“Now think about the rug beneath us,” she said. “Feel it under your legs and in connection with your body. Imagine it as clearly as you can. Got it?”
“Yeah,” I said. I had a clear image of the square teal rug in my head.
“Now imagine the rug is a different color. Any color you want.”
I imaged it was bright yellow, like the sun. That's how strong the warmth was inside of me. It felt like the rays of the sun were flowing into me and filling me up with sunshine. I pictured the color slowly radiating out from beneath me, turning the teal to yellow until it reached the very boundaries of the square spot. I shifted as I felt something slither across my back.
The demon.
Lark giggled and pulled her hands from mine. “You did it! On your first try.”
I opened my eyes and looked down at the rug underneath me. It was
exactly the shade of yellow I had pictured in my head. I laughed and reached down to touch it, making sure it was real. “Holy crap.”
“Holy crap is right. I mean, you were using my power somewhat too, but that was incredible. I've never seen anyone do something so large on their first try with a glamour. Pretty color too.”
I stood up and laughed. I felt giddy with joy and power and this amazing new connection to the world around me.
“Will it stay like this forever? I mean, until someone changes it?”
Lark shook her head. “It depends on the glamour and the level. These are all stationary objects. Changing their color is easy. The lamp, for example, took a little more power since I changed its shape. It won't last as long as the color will.”
“What about a person? Like if I wanted to change my hair color? Or my eyes?”
She thought about it for a second. “To be honest, I haven't tried much of that. It can be dangerous.”
“How so?”
Lark stood up and walked over to the mirror. “Well, magic is a sort of give and take. That's what Mrs. King was talking about with her healing and why it's not something witches at our level can handle. When she heals someone else, it takes something from her.”
“What?”
“I'm not sure. Power. Her essence. Something like that. We're talking about things way past my experience level here. All I know is that if there's one person who is hurt, it's not that hard for her to heal them. But if there were, say, five people critically injured, she'd likely kill herself trying to heal them all. Certain magic can really drain you.”
I thought about what she'd said. It made sense. Nothing in this world was free, so of course magic had a cost.
“So changing my hair color or something might be too hard? Or might drain me and make me sick?”
“I honestly don't know.”
“Should we try it?”
Lark looked at me like I was crazy. “Did you hear what I said about the sickness and the possible death?”
“Oh come on,” I said. “You think changing my hair color is going to kill me?”
She took a deep breath and rolled her eyes. “I guess not.”
“Okay, so here's the deal. I change my hair from blonde to brown. Then we'll see how long it lasts on its own.”