Life's a Witch

by Brittany Geragotelis

  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.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  When I finally made it downstairs, about a half hour later, I found that everyone was awake and already practicing the spells in the backyard. My heart swelled with pride as I realized that I was no longer going to have to convince the other kids to train; they actually wanted to get better.

  As I walked into the kitchen, my eyes drifted to Asher. He was sitting on the counter near the sink, sucking down a bowl of cereal. When he saw me, he shot me a grin, a line of milk dribbling down his chin. Heading straight to him, I leaned up against the counter, jutting out my hip as I looked up at him.

  “I thought Trix were for kids,” I said, nodding to the box of cereal on the counter next to him.

  “That’s just what they want you to believe. Trix are actually for everyone.”

  “You’re kind of tricky yourself, aren’t you?” I asked, raising my eyebrow at him.

  He paused briefly before shoveling more food into his mouth. The break in eating was so imperceptible that I wouldn’t have noticed it if I weren’t looking for it.

  “How so?” he asked, his mouth full again.

  “Well, the plan you had to crash with me last night was pretty sneaky. You must’ve known that if you got into my room, I’d let you stay,” I said.

  He smiled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I was just coming to hang out. You’re the one who invited me in.”

  “Liar!” I hissed, in mock shock. The truth was I’d have let him stay whether he’d asked or not.

  “You can act like the jury’s still out on me, but I know you think I’m awesome.”

  “A little overconfident, don’t you think?” I asked.

  “I like to think of it as realistic.”

  “Mmm,” I murmured.

  “Hadley? Are we learning new stuff today or going over what we learned yesterday?”

  I turned to see that Asher and I were no longer the only ones in the kitchen. Emory and Peter stood by the back door, looking at me expectantly.

  “We’ll review a few things, but I thought we’d go over hand-to-hand combat today,” I said, still staring at Asher.

  “Cool,” Peter said, cracking his knuckles. Then, looking over his shoulder nervously, he took another step toward me. “Hey, Had, you may want to take a look outside before we get started.”

  “Why? What’s up?” I asked, not liking the way that sounded.

  I walked quickly over to the back door, sweeping past them. Scanning the yard, I looked for anything out of place or potentially dangerous. My eyes landed on a crowd that had gathered off to the right of the yard.

  In the middle of it was Fallon.

  I immediately became suspicious as I watched him talk in hushed tones to the group. “What is he up to?” I wondered to myself.

  Ever since we’d made it back from the run-in with Samuel and his crew at my house, Fallon had kept a pretty low profile. He was still showing up to all of our training sessions, but he’d barely been talking to anyone and there were whole chunks of time where I’d forget he was even around. I wasn’t sure what had caused his sudden desire to fade into the background, but I was too busy to worry about it. Besides, a little time off from our constant bickering was kind of nice.

  But now it seemed like he was back to his old self, which was not a good sign.

  Crossing the yard, I thought about what I wanted to say. The group was in such a great place now—we were finally acting like a true coven and not just a bunch of latchkey kids—that I was hesitant to do anything that would take us two steps back. We needed to be fully unified if we were going to win this fight against the Parrishables. It would be bad if Fallon and I butted heads again now.

  I couldn’t let him know I suspected anything was off. That could derail my plan.

  “Serenity now, serenity now . . . ,” I repeated under my breath as I neared the edge of the group.

  Plastering a smile on my face, I clasped my hands behind my back to avoid looking defensive and then pushed my way through the crowd to get to my frenemy.

  “Let’s talk about this later,” Fallon said as soon as he saw me coming.

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Fallon!” I exclaimed, trying to sound as genuine as I could muster under the circumstances. He would’ve known something was up if I hugged him, so I kept my distance but flashed him a welcoming grin. This apparently was enough to throw him off, because almost immediately he crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes at me.

  “Hadley.” He said my name slowly, deliberately. There was no kindness or friendliness in his tone. The way he was acting, you’d have thought he was angry at me. This didn’t make any sense though, considering the last thing he’d done was attempt to save me from the Parrishables. Unless that’s just what he wanted us to think and really . . .

  Oh, man, I had to get to the bottom of this before I went crazy.

  “You guys almost ready?” I asked, as if I didn’t have a care in the world. A few nodded, while Fallon remained silent. “Okay, let’s get started then!”

  I left Fallon staring after me, slack-jawed, as I turned and walked away without challenging him about his sudden change in attitude.

  If I wasn’t already thinking about the next phase in my plan, then I might have taken a moment to laugh at the stupefied expression on his face. Instead, I took a mental picture and stored it away for the next time I was in need of a little cheering up.

  “Let’s start off with Jasmine’s exploding spell,” I shouted before walking over to the porch. I watched everyone break up into groups and begin to practice. Fallon circled up with a few of the guys and they each attempted Jasmine’s spell. To my dismay, Fallon was the only one able to pull it off on the first try, shattering a potted plant on the railing of the porch.

  Looks like somebody’s been practicing.

  My mind started to whir with possible theories. When could he have managed to team up with our enemy without us knowing about it? Maybe I should have just confronted him when I’d first found out there was a traitor in the Cleri. But how was I supposed to know if he was telling me the truth when he denied having anything to do with the Parrishables? Which he would, of course. It wasn’t likely that he’d stand up and say, “Oh, the Parrishables? Sure, I met them at the mall and handed over every secret we’ve ever had on a silver platter. Surprise! I’m a traitor!”

  Yeah, right. Whoever was planning to turn against us wasn’t going to admit it on their own—until our enemies were well on their way to destroying us, at least. Nope, I was going to have to get it out of them. And that’s what had changed.

  Thanks to the Bishop family spell book, I now knew just how to sniff out the double agent.

  In the meantime, I joined Asher on the porch and began to wonder whether it was possible that the culprit could be anyone other than Fallon. Of course, once I looked at everyone as a potential suspect, it was easy to awaken my inner conspiracy theorist and realize that anyone was capable of turning on me. I wished it wasn’t true, but I had to prepare myself for the possibility it was someone I’d come to care about.

  Jasmine always had been
a little hotheaded and quick to cast before she thought. Sure, she’d been knocked out at the mall, but the Parrishables could have done that to throw us off. With all that black in her wardrobe, she had darkness written all over her.

  And Sascha definitely had it in her to be the mole. No one was that happy and friendly all the time. I’d never really thought of her as a threat before, but that would have made her the perfect enemy.

  Then again, Peter’s parents had been the first to disappear and the only ones not caught in the fire. Could they have been a part of the Parrishables the whole time, and could their son be the one passing along information? He’d been one of the few who hadn’t gotten hurt so far.

  After enough thought, it became clear that any one of my coven members could have been the one to sell us out. But I hated feeling that way—like I couldn’t trust anyone around me. So after a few hours of practice had gone by, I decided I’d had enough and it was time to unveil the culprit once and for all.

  I knew exactly what words to say. Before I’d left my room, I’d committed the spell to memory.

  “Hey, everyone! Can you all gather over here real quick? There’s something I want to talk to you about.” I looked around the yard to make sure everyone was still there. I hadn’t sent any of the naturally gifted witches off to hone their crafts alone today and Asher was still hanging out beside me and watching the others train.

  Once everyone was assembled on the grass in the yard, they stood there staring up at me as if awaiting instructions. I took a deep breath and smiled confidently at them. It was the moment of truth.

  “Are we learning a new spell?” Peter asked hopefully. Over the past couple of weeks, he’d gotten increasingly good at mastering new spells. Maybe being around the other twitches had inspired him to finally live up to his full potential. Or maybe he’d tapped in to some evil magic mojo and was on a casting high from the power boost.

  Guess we were about to find out which it was.

  “Not exactly,” I answered. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you guys about something. Ever since the Parrishables blew into town, they’ve had us running scared. And we’ve done a great job training for our day in battle. When we came here, I told you the cabin was a haven, a safe place to hide out in until we were ready. And although I thought it was true at the time, it’s come to my attention that it’s been infiltrated by the enemy.”

  Gasps broke out in the group and I tried to search their faces for one with guilt and shame written on it. But all I saw was genuine fear—kids were looking around as if the Parrishables were about to burst out at any second and attack.

  Since no one had come forward, it looked like I was going to have to perform the spell after all. I thought maybe if I gave the person the chance to turn themselves in, they would take it. But no bother. Ever since I’d found the spell, I’d been looking forward to seeing how it worked, anyway.

  “We have a traitor among us. Someone who plans on selling us out to the Parrishables. This person’s been posing as a friend when they’re really our enemy. And it’s time to send them back to their true coven.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I’m going to kill whoever it is,” Jasmine said with a growl that sounded completely genuine.

  Clearing my throat, I concentrated on the lines I’d been waiting for hours to say:

  You never can tell who is friend or foe.

  Ask them straightaway and they will not say so.

  Do not close your eyes to the truth in your heart,

  Or the knife might hit back before the curtains do part.

  Sun light the dark and let it be known,

  The traitor is caught and their lies are now shown.

  As soon as I began to say the words, I could tell they were working. It felt like there was an electrical current flowing through my veins. The energy surging through my body almost startled me out of continuing, but I kept going, reciting word after word until I finished the spell.

  As I came to the last line, my hands began to shine brightly, light emanating from both palms. My arms began to shake with the magical power that was filling up inside my body, building and building until I felt like I might explode from the force. The spell wasn’t particularly difficult—I’d performed harder ones on several occasions—but for some reason this one seemed to really affect me. Like it was coming from my very core. For a brief second, I worried that I had taken on something I couldn’t handle.

  Just when I wasn’t sure I could take it anymore, the magic burst from my hands in two streams of light. I watched as the beams weaved around the group in front of me like slithering snakes, bending and curving as they looked for their targets. People were running around the yard now, scared they might be hurt by the streaks of light. I knew what they were really after, and that only one of them had to worry about what was going to happen when the light caught up to him.

  My heart was racing from the intensity of the spell and anxiety over what we were about to find out. Then the heaviness in my stomach turned to nausea as I watched the first stream of magic hit Asher and the second hit Emory.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  As soon as people realized they weren’t actually the targets of my spell, and that Asher and Emory had been singled out instead, the reaction was immediate. People were confused, angry, frightened—all the emotions that came along with betrayal—and no one bothered to hide their feelings.

  Except for me. Because this was the first time I’d ever been in this sort of situation. And I had no idea how to deal with it.

  I’d always rolled my eyes when my friends said it, but at that moment I truly understood what they meant when they said they could feel their heart breaking. Because that’s what it felt like to see the stream of light hit Asher straight in the chest. It was a deep ache, unlike anything I’d felt before. When I’d lost my mom, the pain was more like despair, like the feeling that nothing would ever be right again. But the betrayal of someone you cared about romantically? If I didn’t know it was impossible for a heart to physically bust in half, I would have bet that’s what was happening then.

  I’d never felt so incredibly let down in my entire life, not by anyone. A dozen different thoughts started racing through my head, each one worse than the last. How was this possible? Had our whole flirtation been a part of the Parrishables’ evil plans to overtake the Cleri? Would everyone hate me because I’d been the one to bring Asher into our coven? How had I been so stupid to fall for a stranger when I knew from the beginning that there was something sketchy about the way he kept turning up everywhere I went? And worst of all, what was I possibly going to do about the fact that the only boy I’d ever kind of loved was playing for Team Evil?

  As much as I didn’t want to admit it, that’s what it had come to. I could no longer deny the fact that my feelings for this beautiful dark-haired boy, who had the most magnetic eyes I’d ever seen, had grown into something like love. Could I really turn my back on that? And if I could manage to ignore my feelings, how was I ever going to be able to trust another guy with my heart again?

  Trust. It was such a small word that held so much power—and potential for pain. Asher had taken my trust and stomped all over it. So even if I did have certain feelings for him, he obviously didn’t feel the same about me. Otherwise he wouldn’t have conned me into thinking he cared about me when he’d just been planning to hand me over to the Parrishables.

  That’s when it dawned on me: someone like that didn’t deserve my love or my forgiveness.

  Asher was a traitor and there was no way of atoning for that. And I wasn’t about to let my feelings put my coven in danger any longer. I narrowed my eyes at him as I came to my decision.

  Asher looked down at where the light was illuminating his body and then back up at me. He ignored the madness that had erupted around us and kept his gaze steadily on my face. Despite the yelling and arguing that filled the air, Asher just stood there, mouth slightly open as i
f he was stunned into silence. And maybe he was. It was the first time I’d ever performed that spell, and for all I knew, it’d knocked the wind out of him on impact.

  For the first time since we’d met, he looked guilty. Gone was the cocky confidence and sexy smirk I’d come to associate with him. Now he looked more like a deer caught in headlights. I was tempted to let him know there was nowhere he could run to escape my wrath, but it was too loud around us with everyone asking questions and threatening Emory and Asher for me to respond. And truthfully, I didn’t trust my voice just yet.

  Movement to my right diverted my attention just in time for me to see Jasmine and Peter grab hold of Emory. Right away she began to struggle, but they just held on tighter. I’d never seen Jasmine as angry as she looked now and I was thankful that I wasn’t in Emory’s position.

  “Let me go!”

  My head whipped around at the sound of Asher’s outburst. Fallon had followed Jasmine and Peter’s lead and he and a few of his buddies had surrounded Asher and were holding him in place. As I watched—drained by the spell and stunned by the results—they forced him off the porch and onto his knees. A fresh pang shot through my gut as I watched him struggle.

  “Hadley! Hadley, look at me,” Asher pleaded, his eyes sincere. “You know me. I never wanted to do any of this, you have to believe me.”

  “Actually, I don’t, Asher,” I said, the hurt coming out like hate. I turned to the rest of my coven members. The ones who hadn’t betrayed me. “Don’t let them go.”

  I walked down the porch steps to where Emory and Asher were now kneeling side by side, both being held down tightly by the others. When I stopped in front of them, I refused to look at Asher. I was afraid that if I did, I wouldn’t be able to handle the emotions that would flood my soul. So I kept my attention on Emory.

  But the girl in front of me now wasn’t the same person I’d come to feel close to over the past few weeks. Her calm, quiet, sensitive demeanor was gone. Sure, she was still dressed like she was on her way to church, but her face had transformed into something hard and ugly. Her lips had formed a perma-snarl and her eyes were so dark now that the whites were barely showing. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen the evil in her before.