Wicked Secrets

by H G Lynch

  Ricky twitched and held out a book to him. “Read it,” he commanded. Reid raised an eyebrow, taking the book – it looked like a jotter or journal – and flipping open the cover. Inside, on the first page, were the scribbled words: This Journal Belongs to Owen Thorne.

  “So it’s the guy’s journal. Who cares?” Reid scoffed, confused but unalarmed.

  “Read. It. The recent entries,” Ricky barked, his voice strained with impatience. Reid flicked him a glance, his confusion turning to anxiety at the hard look in Ricky’s normally calm eyes.

  Reid did as his friend said, and flicked to the more recent entries. He scanned the pages with disinterest, until his eyes caught on Ember’s name scribble in messy guy’s handwriting. He read the entry more carefully, and then he realised what Ricky’s panic had been about. The sentences were clipped, just notes really, but they were enough:

  Tuesday 5th October

  Plan working so far. Moonstone’s act successful. Ember believes we are Soulmates, though she isn’t happy about it. Blood charm worked perfectly. Another meeting with the witches tomorrow to see where we go from here. Ember has no idea what’s going on around her.

  Reid felt a surge of fury flare up inside him. The bastard was working with the witches! How was that even possible? He made it sound like they’d been in cahoots for weeks, but he only got here the day before this entry. Was this the real reason why he’d come here? Reid knew that witch connections could span countries. There was a network of them; they all talked to each other – that was how they kept stumbling across Reid and his friends. If Owen was hooked into that network, he was obviously here on some goddamned vampire-hunting agenda. And he was using Ember…but for what? If he was working with the witches, Owen had to know she wouldn’t help him get at the vamps. Even as angry as she was at Reid right now, she wouldn’t give him up to the witches, or Ricky either – he wasn’t certain she wouldn’t give them a shot at Brandon, though. She really didn’t like Brandon.

  And what was this shit about Soulmates? What had Owen been saying to Ember that she hadn’t told Reid? Frustrated despite knowing he was right, knowing he’d been right in distrusting Owen all along, Reid kept reading.

  Wednesday 7th October

  Meeting with witches went well. Last night, I played with Ember’s dreams. Found her with her boyfriend in the library. He’s becoming quite the problem. Ember is too attached to him. Need to separate them. Reid knows I was in Ember’s head. He threatened me. But I think cracks are forming in their perfect relationship, fine threads of separation that they don’t notice yet. But they will. Ember will be easy to take after that.

  Panic reared up to mingle with his growing rage as his eyes scanned the paragraph. Owen had been trying to stick a wedge between him and Ember, to separate them. He was trying to turn her against Reid. That was his plot. That was why he’d been helping Ember with her magic, wiggling his way into her head. He wanted her to come over to his side and join the witches.

  Reid flipped the page with shaking fingers, not sure if it was rage or fear – fear for Ember – making his hand tremble. He had to know what Owen meant by taking Ember. Taking her where?

  Thursday 9th October

  Reid is out of the way. He and Ember argued, and she’s still pissed off. Tomorrow I’ll find a way to take her away from her friends. The witches will play their parts. Everything is falling into place.

  Shit! Owen wasn’t just going to take Ember somewhere; it sounded like he was luring her away from safety. He was going to bring her to the witches! She was part vamp now. They would hurt her…a light clicked on in Reid’s head, and he sucked in a sharp breath. He understood Owen’s plan now. He was taking Ember to the witches, and they would threaten her, hurt her, unless she helped them take out the vampires. He’d given up trying to just turn her against them.

  Reid could barely force himself to read the final entry. Today’s entry. But he had to. He had to know if there was any clue where Owen was taking Ember. Anything.

  Friday 10th October

  Today’s the day. The bloodsuckers won’t see it coming. Everything is ready. Ember will give in when she sees how…encouraging we can be.

  Through the red haze of fury and the tremors of terror, Reid knew he had to find Ember. Right now. He dropped the book and bolted down the hall, hoping that maybe Owen hadn’t gotten to her yet, or at least that he could follow their trail. Ricky called desperately after him, but Reid didn’t stop. He burst out the doors of the school building and headed for the dorms, but he stopped dead when the wind blew a tendril of Ember’s scent to him. He lifted is head, closing his eyes, not caring if he looked weird to anyone watching. He needed to figure out which direction her scent was coming from. He stood still as stone, focusing, ignoring the weeping rain beating down from the now-dark sky, and the punishing wind that tried to slash his skin without substance.

  The wind swept over him again, bringing the faintest whiff of that grapefruit scent to his nose, and Reid turned on his heel toward the forest. He opened his eyes, staring into the dark depths beneath the skeletal branches and angry sky. Ember was in there somewhere, in danger.

  Running, searching, scanning desperately, Reid stumbled through the darkened forest. He snapped branches that scratched him, trampled bushes in his way, and ignored the sting of rasping icy air down his throat and in his lungs. He had to find Ember; that was all that mattered. He couldn’t risk losing her. He’d never be able to live with himself if he lost her.

  He found himself tripping over roots in his panic, and his own breathing and frantic heart rate echoed in his ears, blocking any outside hope he had of hearing Ember’s voice or – God forbid – her screams. Logically, he knew it was best to calm down and stay still, listen for her, but he couldn’t. Panic was eating at him, clawing at his chest like a wild animal, making him feel uselessly human.

  He was so caught up in his panic that he wasn’t watching where he was going. He caught his foot on a root and slammed into a tree nearby. He gritted his teeth and punched the tree in helpless, throbbing fury. The whole tree shook as his fist collided with it, and a shard of bark sliced into his skin between his knuckles. He grunted as pain burned through his hand, breathing heavily and feeling his limbs shake, not from exertion but from a fearful sense of dread. Reid leaned his forehead against the rough bark of the tree and clutched it to keep himself standing.

  “Damn it!” he snarled, whacking the tree with the side of his fist, barely feeling the sting of the splinters that gouged his hand. What if it was too late? What if Ember had refused to go with Owen, refused to help the witches, and they’d already…no, he couldn’t think like that. He couldn’t. She was okay; she had to be.

  Reid shuddered, nails biting into the bark in disgust and rage at the very idea of any of them laying a hand on Ember. It’d be too easy for them to hurt her. Ember was part-vampire but she was still susceptible to ordinary weapons, like knives, if Owen could get close enough. And of course, he could. Ember liked him, trusted him. It’d be easy for him to catch her off-guard.

  Reid let out a growl, digging his nails into the bark more and more until a huge chunk came off in his palm. Frustrated, he turned quickly and threw the useless piece of bark into the trees beyond him. And then he froze, eyes going wide in horror. Something in his chest jerked and spasmed, a sharp pain like a knife slash cutting through his heart.

  There in front of him, tangled in the fine branches of a pine tree, was Ember’s ribbon. The ribbon she always wore these days, tied around her ponytail whenever she left her room. It was definitely hers because no other girl on campus wore a red ribbon and, even in the rain, her sweet scent still clung to the silky fabric. It swayed gracefully in the breeze, the red so bright against the black branches it glowed, obscene and sinister. It looked almost like dripping blood. Oh, God.

  ** Ricky **

  Ricky waited. He waited for his friend to come back, having realised he couldn’t search the whole forest on his own. He waited fo
r Brandon and Perry to arrive, which would be any minute since he’d called them ten minutes ago. And he waited for words to come to his head, telling him how he was going to explain this to Sherry. The kind thing would be to leave her in the dark, let her wonder about Ember’s whereabouts on her own. Sure, she’d be upset but she wouldn’t go mad like Reid obviously had and chase after him into the forest in the dark.

  Ricky wondered just how long it would be before Reid’s common sense kicked in again. He wouldn’t find Ember by blindly running into the forest in the pouring rain and darkness. But Ricky could understand his friend’s rashness. What would he do if it had been Sherry that’d been drawn off by a traitorous warlock? He’d do exactly what Reid was doing, which was why he didn’t go after the blonde boy to stop him.

  Instead, he held onto his rationality and started coming up with plans. Reid wouldn’t be much help just yet – he wouldn’t be thinking clearly through his panic – so he and Brandon and Perry would have to be the masterminds in the search. They would find Ember, he was sure of that. What he wasn’t sure of was if it would be before or after something bad happened to her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ** Reid **

  It was getting late and Reid knew he had to get back to the dorms before Ricky and the guys came looking for him. But he couldn’t seem to move. For a long while, he’d been sitting in this exact spot, in the dirt at the base of Ember’s tree, twirling the ribbon in his fingers. He didn’t know how long he’d been out here exactly, just that it had started to grow dark and cold. The ground was wet from the rain earlier, damp leaves clinging to his jeans.

  Around him, shadows huddled under bushes and ferns, tiptoeing out from under rocks and roots. There were the noises of the nocturnal forest creatures waking up for the evening; the hissing and clacking of teeth, the faint mournful songs of the dryads, the giggles and whispers of sprites and the hum of will-o’-the-wisps as they darted between the drowsy trees like mad fireflies.

  Reid wondered where his own Firefly was right now, if she was hurt, if she was bleeding right now. He tipped his head back, peering through the dripping branches to the cloudy charcoal sky. Everything smelled damp and mossy, and somewhere a fox padded through the bushes. Crickets chirped around him warily, made anxious by the vampire’s presence. Pixies tangled in the briars, and a gnome hobbled over roots, muttering to himself about finding pinecones. Reid ignored them all, used to the strange nightlife of the forest.

  Distantly, Reid realised he was wasting time sitting here like an abandoned dog. So, with an aching heart and soaked clothes, he got to his feet and made his way back to the dorms. He was sure Ricky had gotten Perry and Brandon involved by now; they probably had plans upon plans by now. That gave him a little hope. As much as Brandon really pissed him off most of the time, he could always come up with strategies that worked. Reid would just have to hope Brandon wasn’t off his game on this one.

  ** Brandon **

  Brandon was totally on his game. He had to be. As soon as Ricky had called him, he’d called Perry and they’d rushed over. Neither him nor Perry had ever met this Owen guy before, but Ricky had been keeping them informed on him since they’d found out he was a warlock.

  Brandon had never particularly liked Ember, but he had a kind of respect for her. She was a fighter, and she stood by her principles, like loyalty and friendship. Plus, she was Reid’s first serious girlfriend, and anyone who could put up with Reid’s crap was automatically one of them – a girl who could make Reid act like an actual human being, though, was one in a million. So they had to find her, end of story.

  That was why the four of them were crammed into Reid and Ricky’s room, circling a large map of the Acorn Hills forest, which encircled most of the tiny town. Brandon grimaced at the stretch of paper, marked with lines and little sketches of tiny green trees. He’d never realised how big that forest was before, even though him and the guys had been exploring it for years. It was full of supernatural creatures, drawn here for some inexplicable reason – maybe the safety and seclusion of the forest, maybe the magic hot-spots where the veil between this world and the otherworld were thinner than everywhere else – and the deeper into the forest you went, the nastier the creatures you’d find.

  “Okay guys,” Brandon said, tapping his pencil against the map. “We know they can’t have gone too far. We know Owen doesn’t have a car because Ember’s mum’s car is still in the parking lot. He could have gone maybe three miles, but much more and Ember would start to get suspicious of where he was taking her. She’s a smart girl that way. So, we’re looking at an area about here.” Brandon flipped his pencil around and drew a circle on the map to show the area they’d be looking at.

  Ricky frowned. “Still, that’s a lot of ground to cover in the dark. Even if we split up, it could take the whole rest of the night. We could be too late by then.” He was being unusually pessimistic, and he looked a little distracted; he kept looking at the door as if he expected someone to come through it any minute.

  Brandon narrowed his eyes at him. “Ricky, what’s wrong? Aside from Ember being essentially missing.”

  After a moment of hesitation, Ricky sighed, tugging a hand through his hair in his accustomed gesture of agitation. “It’s just that Sherry’s bound to be worried by now, but what do I tell her? I don’t want her getting upset and running off into the forest on her own to look for Ember.” Ricky gazed at the big map as he spoke, his brows drawing together over his eyes, guilt and concern warring in his features. Brandon knew he was feeling bad about worrying about Sherry when Ember was the one in real danger.

  Brandon tried to reassure him. “It’s okay, Kee. The best thing for Sherry is to leave her in the dark for now. She’s safer not knowing. We need to focus on making a search grid.” Brandon waited for some of the guilt to dissipate from Ricky’s eyes before he started drawing lines on the graph. He glanced at Reid, who was still damp from his earlier trip into the forest in the rain, and so far hadn’t said much – which was unlike him.

  “You okay, Reid?” Brandon asked carefully.

  Reid blinked and glared at him. “I’m fine. Ember’s not. Just make the bloody search grid.”

  For a second, Brandon considered offering his friend some comfort, some reassurance that they’d get Ember back safely, but he knew it wasn’t necessarily true, and it would just piss Reid off. So he turned back to the map and started tracing lines onto it. Why, he thought, do those two always end up in the middle of trouble?

  *

  Once the grid was set and search areas assigned, they all made their way outside into the rainy night. Ricky and Perry were up ahead, discussing ways to capture Owen once Ember was safe, as they crossed the parking lot to the forest. But Brandon hung back with Reid, noticing that the aggressive, impulsive one of their group was completely silent for once.

  Normally, Reid was hard to shut up when it came to planning stuff like this, and surely he’d be even more enthusiastic since they were looking for his girlfriend, right? But the blonde boy was looking more miserable than Brandon had ever seen him before.

  With a sigh, Brandon moved over to his friend. It was in his nature to try and comfort others who needed it, especially his friends, but it was in Reid’s nature to reject comforting words and make snide remarks. So Brandon was shocked when, without looking up from the ground, Reid muttered sorrowfully, “This is my fault.” His voice was so quiet and sad that Brandon barely heard it. And he was sure Reid had never uttered that phrase before in his life.

  Cautiously, Brandon said, “Reid, this isn’t your fault. There was no way you could’ve known what Owen was up to–” He would’ve said more but Reid looked up and met his gaze with haunted, pained blue eyes, and Brandon was stunned into silence.

  “It is my fault,” Reid muttered stubbornly. “If I hadn’t been such an asshole, she wouldn’t have been avoiding me. She’d have been with me, instead of going off with Owen. We would’ve had more time to find out his plans and this w
ouldn’t be happening. I should’ve talked to her instead of pissing about for the last two days. I should have just apologised for being an arse. Now…now, I feel like such a friggin’ moron.” Reid gritted his teeth and looked away, but Brandon knew he was fighting to control himself. He was amazed by Reid’s outpouring; the blonde boy never, ever spoke about his feelings. Ember had really gotten to him – maybe Reid’s feelings for her were more serious than he’d led them to believe.

  Brandon hesitantly put a hand on Reid’s shoulder. “Hey, come on. You know as well as I do, Owen’s a twisted bastard. If Ember hadn’t gone with him willingly today, he would’ve just taken her. And once this is over and we get Ember back safe and sound, she won’t care about how you acted two days ago, she won’t care that you didn’t apologise. She’ll care that you saved her.”

  Reid sighed and looked off into the trees in front of them with a slightly less bleak expression. “Yeah, I guess,” he said quietly. He shoved his hands in his pockets, hunching his shoulders. “I never realised how much it hurts to care about someone.” He pulled a grim self-mocking, half-smile.

  Brandon rolled his eyes. “That’s just how life goes, mate. The same things that make us feel great can make us feel crappy just as easily.”

  Reid nodded in agreement, and turned to face Brandon, a dark look plastered to his face. “Tell anyone about this conversation, and I’ll rip your tongue out, got it?” Reid warned, glaring.

  “I got it.” Brandon smiled and Reid grinned back with some effort.

  “Hey, stop sizing each other up and get searching. No time for a fight right now, guys!” Perry called through the trees, poking his head around a huge pine.

  Brandon broke away from Reid, who had his usual, stubborn expression back on; the one that threatened violence. Hoping for Reid’s sake that they weren’t already too late, Brandon called, “Okay, everyone find your grid area and get looking. We’ll look all night if we have to.”