“Do you want something to drink?” Jayden asked. He was as breathless as I was.
I nodded. I was too tired to talk.
Jayden cocked his head to the side, signaling me to follow him. I did, only because I didn’t know where the concession table was.
When we found the concession table, Jayden poured me and himself a glass of fruit punch. I thanked him when he gave me a cup and nursed the drink as I glanced around the room. I spotted Lexi with Flora and Fauna at her side. She was wearing a tight fitted gold dress that had a small train that graced across the floor behind her. Her dark hair was in curls, and gold glitter dusted her face in intricate designs. When our eyes locked, I quickly looked away. I still felt uncomfortable because of what had happened.
On the other side of the room, I saw the doors open, and Lena walk in wearing a giant ball gown made of what looked like crow feathers. It ruffled whenever she walked. Her dark auburn hair was pinned up in a complicated-looking updo, with feathers sticking out from it. She suddenly didn’t look like the Lena I knew. She looked…dangerous.
Sudden images started to flash through my head. I could sense that they weren’t from this time. But before I could make sense of what the images were about, they faded, leaving a cold, hollow feeling in my gut.
“Oh, no.”
I blinked and turned to Jayden. “What?”
“My roommate,” he said in a flat tone. “Look, Em, I’ll be right back. I’ve got to stop him before he does something stupid.” Before I could say anything, Jayden placed his cup down on the table behind me and disappeared into the crowd.
Alone, I placed my cup down beside Jayden’s, but stayed put. I didn’t know many people here yet, so I had no one to socialize with. But I felt strange just standing there doing nothing.
Something in the corner of my eyes caught my attention. Turning my head, I saw a boy wearing a mask looking at me through the crowd, his blondish-brown hair pulled away from his face by a gold ribbon. My heart instantly spiked when my eyes locked with his beautiful kaleidoscope eyes.
He cocked his head for me to follow before disappearing through the sea of bodies.
As if in a trance, I followed.
“May I have this dance?” Casey asked when we finally met up in the far corner of the room. There was no one here because everyone was pressing toward the front of the room near the windows and DJ.
I didn’t even think when I took his hand and nodded. All I could do was focus on him.
Casey smiled. He wrapped one hand around my waist and used the other to grab my left hand. I used my free hand to lift the end of my dress so that I could dance without stepping on it.
“I missed you,” he whispered as we danced.
“It’s only been one day,” I stated.
“And every minute has been agonizing without you.” He brushed the tip of his nose against mine.
I blushed and was suddenly thankful that it was dark.
Casey and I didn’t speak for the rest of the song. Instead, we stared into one another’s eyes and let our bodies move on their own accord, dancing to the sweet harmony as if they’ve done this a million times before.
When the song came to an end, neither Casey nor I moved out of one another’s arms. We just stood there, gazing into one another’s eyes, totally oblivious to our surroundings.
“Em?”
I jumped at the sudden voice and turned to face Jayden. He wore a look of confusion, and for a moment, I thought he was able to see Casey, but then I remembered that he was only visible to me because of the curse that had our souls bound as one.
“Yeah?” I questioned.
“Uh…I was wondering, Em, if you would like to dance?” He glanced around, observing the darkness that Casey had led me to.
Honestly, I wanted to refuse his offer and continue to dance with Casey, but I knew that it wouldn’t be right. Besides looking like some insane person dancing by herself, Jayden was the one who had asked me to go to the dance in the first place. If not for him, I wouldn’t have even come.
“Um, sure.” I nodded and slipped out of Casey’s arms. A second struck where I wanted to tell Jayden all about Casey so that I could remain with him instead, but that second quickly passed.
Before I had time to react, Casey stepped up close to me and snaked an arm around my waist. I sucked in a breath in surprise. He leaned his lips close to my ear to whisper, “Meet me in the backyard when you are done.” Then he stepped back, discreetly grabbed my hand, and kissed the back of it.
I watched him slip away into the crowd with my mouth slightly ajar. Why did he want to meet up in the backyard? What was he up to?
“Ready?” He reached out his hand, which I took, and guided me back to the dancefloor.
“You look…you look amazing tonight.”
Heat rose across my face and I quickly diverted my gaze. “Thank you.”
Jayden and I were silent as “Million Reasons” by Lady Gaga played through the speakers. As the melody droned on, I couldn’t help but wonder what was awaiting for me in the dark.
TWENTY–SIX
“CASEY?” I WHISPER-shouted once I finally escaped outside. I walked among the shadows, looking for him. “Casey, where are you?”
Suddenly, out of nowhere, I felt a hand grab my wrist and swing me so that my back came into contact with the rough bark of a tree. But before I had time to peep a sound, Casey’s face loomed in front of mine, a smile on his face and a wicked glint in his rainbow-hazel eyes.
“Casey,” I breathed, relieved that it was only him. “It’s you.”
“My apologies for frightening you, my love,” he said. “It is just…I had to get you alone.”
Even though there was a cool breeze coming off the ocean, I felt warm. Attempting and failing to raise an eyebrow, I asked playfully, “And why is that?”
“To tell you how staggering you look in that dress,” he replied. Then he took a step forward, pinning me against the tree with his body. “And to do this,” he whispered just before he captured my lips in a passionate kiss.
My knees suddenly felt weak, and I was thankful that I was pressed between the tree and Casey’s body for support. I slipped my wrist out of his grasp and wound my arms around his neck. I opened my mouth, allowing him more access. After a few moments of teasing each other with our tongues, Casey moved his mouth from my mine and skimmed it across my face down to my neck. I dug my nails into his back, which only seemed to turn him on even more. Squeezing my eyes shut, I struggled not to release a moan that so badly wanted to erupt from within me.
“Em?”
Casey and I snapped apart at the sound of Lena’s voice. Panic rushed through me when Casey stepped away, and I saw Lena standing there, her eyes wide and mouth agape.
“Lena…” I didn’t know how to explain what I was doing. But then I realized that she wasn’t looking at me…she was looking at Casey.
“You can see him?” I asked her.
“Castiel.” His true name floated off her lips in a barely audible whisper. She didn’t even acknowledge me.
“Magdalena?” Casey wondered, his eyes growing large in surprise.
“What?” I squeaked, looking quickly between the two. “You two know each other?”
“Yes,” Casey answered after a moment of no reply. “Magdalena once lived down the road from me back in St. Albans after her father moved them from Paris.”
I shook my head, still not understanding what was going on. How did they know one another? Casey had died over a hundred years ago, and Lena…I turned to look at her. “Lena, what’s going–”
“I told you to stay away from him,” Lena growled. She snapped her eyes at me, and I could see anger deep within them. “But you didn’t listen.”
I was taken aback by the venom in Lena’s voice that I momentarily lost my own voice. I stared at her, my mouth parted in shock.
“What’s going on?” I couldn’t stop the franticness from entering my words. I could feel a dizzying s
ensation starting to form inside my head.
“You don’t know?” Casey asked, sounding surprised.
“Know what?”
“That you are her–”
“Cousin,” Lena finished in a seething tone. She kept her furious gaze on me. “My dear cousin who always ended up getting her way.” The black feathers on her dress started to ruffle even though there was no wind.
“I still don’t understand.” How could Lena be my cousin? I only had two cousins on my mom’s side, and they were both really little. Then it hit me. She wasn’t my cousin, she was Emilia’s cousin.
“I loved him!” Lena shrieked suddenly, her voice echoing in the night sky. Her green eyes lit up to a gold color then faded to opalescent, so it only seemed like the whites of her eyes were showing. “And then you came along and stole him.”
At that very moment, I wished I could remember–that way I had a sense of what she was talking about–but it was as if someone had drew a black curtain over my past memories, making it hard to see them.
“She did not steal me,” Casey bit out, his voice becoming stern. “We fell in love.”
“But you loved me,” Lena cried. I could hear the tightness in her voice as if she was trying to hold back a wave of emotions.
“I never loved you, Magdalena.” Casey’s voice softened a bit. “You were just a child.”
“Lies!” Before I could blink, she threw her hand out at me, using an invisible force to slam me back against the tree behind me. I crumbled to the ground like a rag doll.
“Em!” I heard Casey cry.
“Not so fast, my love.” There was a sound of rushing air, then the sudden sound of Casey yelling, his voice fading the further he was thrown away from me.
I groaned as I regained my bearings and forced myself into an upright position. My breathing was coming out in pants, but I wasn’t worried about that. Instead, I focused on all of the things that started to click together inside me head. The girl in the hallway late at night, the threatening letter I found addressed to me, Nova falling down the stairs…It wasn’t Lexi who had done all of those things; it had been Lena.
“You were there in the hallway on my second night here, weren’t you?” I asked, needing confirmation. “You had done that to try to scare me away from Brier Hall.”
Lena stared at me, her eyes glittering like a crocodile’s.
“And it was you who had sent me that note to frighten me away from Casey.”
She made a sound of approval.
“And you pulled Nova down the stairs.” I slowly got up onto my feet, flinching ever-so-slightly at the pain in my ribs. “You were afraid that if she kept talking about witches, she would have eventually found out that you were one.”
“Oh my innocent, darling cousin,” Lena said, her voice suddenly not her own. It was high-pitched and gravelly. “If only you had known sooner.” With a flick of her wrist, an awful cracking sound sounded right above my head. Tilting my head up, I saw that a giant limb from the tree was breaking. Gasping, I jumped out of the way just as the branch fell and rolled across the ground. My hair was starting to fall out of its crown braid, but I just shoved it out of the way. Lena cackled just like the witch she was.
“You know,” Lena mused once she sobered, “in the beginning–when I figured out that you didn’t have any knowledge of Castiel or your past life–I thought we could be friends, like back then. That was until Nova revealed that you were sneaking around in the middle of the night to go to the ballroom–the room where he killed himself over you.”
“Why is all this happening?” I asked, figuring that she would know. “Why are we here? You, me, Casey…”
Lena frowned. “After you died, Casey fell into depression. I could see his aura fading away, and I knew that I didn’t have long. I loved him, and I wasn’t going to let him go that easily.
“So on the night of a blood moon, I put a spell on him, binding his soul to Brier Hall. But something went wrong, and I ended up binding my soul here as well. If I was to leave the premises, the spell would be broken.”
“But what about me?” I asked. My mind was spinning with the new information that Lena had just given me. It didn’t seem real. All of it was insane.
“I don’t know,” she scoffed. Then a wicked glint shone in her eyes. “But it doesn’t matter. Not anymore.” Before I had time to react, she threw her hand out toward me, sending me flying again.
When I landed on the ground, I gasped. It was as if all the air had been punched out from my lungs.
Casey…
I heard the swishing of fabric and knew that Lena was coming. Using all the strength that I could muster, I pushed myself off the ground, then rose to my feet. Lifting my gaze upwards, I saw Lena coming toward me with murder in her opalescent eyes.
Sucking back a scream, I lifted the ends of my dress and ran toward Lover’s Leap, hoping that I could run and hide in the cave below it.
“You think you can escape me?” Lena cackled, her voice ringing out in the darkness.
I tried to push her voice away as I ran down the narrow path, bushes and branches catching my dress and scraping against my bear arms. But I didn’t care. All I cared at the moment was putting as much distance between me and Lena as possible.
The edge of the cliff came sooner than I expected. I had to skid to a stop so that I wouldn’t plummet to my death–again. I glanced down below and saw the dark water crashing into dark, jagged rocks at the bottom. I sucked in a sharp breath as a new fear washed over me, paralyzing me from moving toward the path.
“Well, well, well,” Lena said, appearing out of the shadows. The silvery moonlight casted shadows across her face, giving her a ghoulish appearance. “Looks like history is repeating itself.”
“Please, Lena,” I begged. “You don’t have to do this.”
“You know, your relationship with Castiel wasn’t even the worst part of it all,” Lena continued, either not hearing me or ignoring me. “I might have gotten over it if you two hadn’t flaunted your ‘love’ in front of me–in front of everyone.”
I stared at her, not understanding. “Lena, I…”
“I thought that working for Castiel would bring us closer together–that he would see that he was in love with me, and that whatever he had with you was just a fling–but it only seemed to push us away. I was suddenly no more than just an object to him. And you two were always together…”
Suddenly, I remembered the memory of Christmas Eve where I ran down the hall with the small present in my hand. I had almost crashed into a maid.
Lena. It suddenly dawned on me. Lena had been the maid that I had almost ran into.
A sickening feeling made my stomach feel like lead. I opened my mouth to apologize for whatever I may have done to her in the past, but the anger in her eyes stopped me. I knew whatever I said would be insignificant.
“But now,” Lena said, smiling widely, “I can get rid of you like I did the first time.”
“Wait. What?” Did she just say that she had gotten rid of me?
My nightmare rushed back to me. I remembered walking slowly to the cliff without being able to stop or call for help. In the nightmare, I had always felt as if a spell had been cast over me, and now I knew…it was a spell.
Lena laughed coldly at my realization, sending baby spiders tap-dancing along my spine.
“So it was you?”
Lena whirled around. I glanced past her and saw Casey emerge from the dark trail, looking angry. A coldness I had never seen before had settled in his eyes. A vein bulged in his neck.
“Castiel.” Lena sounded surprised by his presence. “I–”
“All this time,” he growled, cutting her off, “I have been tormented by the thought that Emilia had taken her own life, but it was you who had done it.”
“Castiel, I can explain…” she rushed.
“You killed her!” Something dangerous flashed in his eyes.
“I had to!” Lena roared. “I loved you, but you
didn’t care. You were bewitched by her!” She pointed a crooked finger at me.
“I told you, I was never in love with you,” Casey said, his voice lowering even though the anger never left his eyes. I could see that he was struggling to hold back his emotions.
“Enough!” Lena covered her ears and pinched her eyes closed as if that could make this whole thing disappear.
Dirt beneath my feet started to crumble so I took a step forward. “Casey,” I started.
“Em.” Relief washed through his eyes, and he took a step toward me.
But then his face twisted into panic as Lena swept her hands, once more sending him crashing through the thicket of trees.
“Casey!” I started toward the direction he had disappeared to, but before I could get past Lena, she snapped her eyes open, freezing me in place.
I stared at her like a doe caught in a set of shining headlights. “What are you going to do to me?”
“Something I should have done a long time ago: get rid of you once and for all.” Before I could react, Lena reached out toward me, shoving me backwards. I gasped as I stumbled, tripping over my dress, and plummeted off the edge of the cliff.
TWENTY–SEVEN
A SCREAM ERUPTED from inside my throat as I caught myself on the edge of the cliff, my body dangling over the choppy water below. I suddenly felt very heavy as I grasped onto the cliff with my hands to keep from falling.
“Help!” I looked around my shoulder to see the dark water below. The water slapped hungrily at the base of the cliff, urging me to let go and embrace its cold, watery grave.
Lena appeared above me, her eyes gleaming in the soft moonlight. Anger and hatred was etched on her face.
“Please, Lena,” I begged. Tears poked at the corner of my eyes and a lump suddenly built up in my throat, but I didn’t know whether it was from the tears or the fear that I felt.
“That’s what I said to you when I found out that you and Castiel were seeing one another behind my back. And you know what? You ignored me.” Her eyes hardened. “And now I’m going to ignore you.”
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