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.
Chapter Nineteen
I rolled out of the way right as an older man with messy long hair and a goatee shot a spell my way. The carpet singed less than a foot from my face and my eyes widened as I imagined what would’ve happened if it had hit me and not the floor. I tried to put the thought out of my mind. Scars so weren’t a good look for me.
I took cover under our glass coffee table just as one of the guys ran across the room and leaped into the air. I was terrified that he would hit his mark, but I stayed still for just a few seconds longer. My heart was racing and everything in me screamed to move, but I forced myself to stay put.
Finally, just before my attacker’s heavy black boots went crashing through the glass above me, I shot out of the way, missing the fatal blow by milliseconds. Shards of glass sprinkled down like crystal rain, but I didn’t stop to shield myself. Instead, I thrust my leg up and kicked the guy as hard as I could in the side of the head as he leaned down to take a second try at me. With nowhere to go since he was stuck in the frame of the coffee table, the guy fell over the side and landed with a thud. When he didn’t get back up, I assumed the layer of glass on the floor had slowed him down.
With one guy down and two closing in, I turned back to Asher, who was lying facedown a few feet away. “Asher! Wake up!” I yelled at him. I didn’t know what I would do if he didn’t answer. I needed him to get up. Even if it was just so he could get out of there intact.
But he wasn’t moving. I was about to screech at him again when I felt a shot of magic hit my lower back and make its way up my spine, exploding in mind-crushing pain seconds later. Without thinking, I spun around to look my attacker in the eyes. When another girl around my age looked back at me, I blinked with surprise.
“I heard you think you’re something special,” she sneered. Her hair was as blond as mine was black, but darkness clouded her features. She was pretty, though. If she’d gone to my school, she probably would’ve been competition.
“Funny, I haven’t heard anything about you,” I said, placing my perfectly manicured hands on my hips and popping my hip out like I was posing for a picture.
This seemed to piss her off and she started to advance on me slowly. I knew I should put my hands up to protect my face in case she lashed out, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of thinking she had me worried. I’d sparred enough with my dad to know that I was ready for whatever she threw my way.
I waited to see whether she was going to come at me with a spell or with her fists, bending my legs slightly so I was ready for either. When she was within striking distance, she raised her fist and I knew we were settling this civilian-style.
No magic it is.
Her knuckles made contact with my hands as I blocked each hit she threw my way. The girl was putting so much energy into each blow, I knew it wouldn’t be long before she tired herself out. So I stayed on the defensive and allowed her to go crazy. As soon as I saw her chest heaving, I waged my own attack.
I struck fast and hard, but the difference was, I knew where to hit her so she’d end up on the ground. Three strikes and she was out, lying on the floor next to her partner in crime, unconscious but not dead.
“Guess I am that good,” I said, looking down at her.
Two more roundhouse kicks and I’d taken out a few more guys as they came into the room to join their fallen friends. One managed to get a blow or two in himself, but my adrenaline was running so high I didn’t even feel it. They came at me one after another through the kitchen door and I alternated between hand-to-hand combat and spells, doing whatever I could to keep up with them. Just as I threw a woman back over the couch with a tossing spell, I looked over my right shoulder and saw that still more were appearing.
“Oh, come on!” I screamed. “How many of you are there? You know one against a thousand isn’t exactly fair.”
“What the hell’s happening?”
I looked back to see that Asher was awake now and thoroughly confused by what he was seeing in the living room. And why wouldn’t he be? He’d been knocked unconscious and woken up to people shooting sparks from their fingers and tearing up my formerly quiet house. There were nearly a dozen bodies on the floor around him and though there seemed to be a lull in the rush of bad guys, I knew it wasn’t over.
Asher’s eyes grew wide and he tried to get up but couldn’t seem to make it. Apparently the hit he’d taken was still affecting his lower extremities.
“What’s going on, Hadley?” he asked, looking straight at me now.
What was I supposed to say that wouldn’t have him running for the door or get us both killed? I could hear more footsteps hitting the floor of the kitchen and there was n
o way to explain what was going on while defending us both. I had to think fast to come up with an excuse that wouldn’t leave Asher asking too many questions.
“Angry magicians,” I said, before turning around just in time to dodge a punch from a young guy who was screaming something indiscernible at me, and then threw one of my own. He stopped talking as his nose exploded in blood, and I screamed out in pain. Hitting him felt a lot like punching a brick wall.
“What can I do?” Asher asked, trying again to stand up. This time he succeeded.
“Nothing,” I said, magically sending a pair of chairs and the nearly destroyed coffee table flying at the open kitchen doorway to try to block anyone else from coming in. I held my focus on the spell and watched as people began to pile up against the barrier.
“This is insane. Are you . . . Hadley, are you in a gang?” There was hesitation and the slightest sound of fear in his voice. Oh, great. The guy I liked, or thought I liked, was scared of me. Guys didn’t want to date girls they were scared of. Unless that was their thing, I guess, but as far as I knew, Asher wasn’t that guy. As all of this ran through my head, I watched Asher look from me to the door and back again, like he was just now realizing that the furniture couldn’t be holding up itself.
I had to get him out of here before he started asking more questions and got himself killed in the process.
“I am definitely not in a gang,” I said, trying to split my concentration between the spell and Asher. The spell was getting weaker and so was I. We’d been fighting for close to ten minutes already and I was beginning to run low on energy. Whoever was on the other side of my barricade was throwing their own magic at the problem and so it was becoming a major struggle of wits and spells. I had a feeling I was stronger than them, but I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d be able to keep it up. “Asher, get out of here. Go get help.”
He didn’t respond and I began to think—well, really, hope—that he was already gone. But then I felt him come up behind me and touch me softly on the shoulder. “I’m not going to leave you here alone.”
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