Spellbound 2 - Everspell Read online

  —I couldn’t call. There aren’t exactly phones where I am—

  —TELL ME WHO YOU ARE!—

  —They didn’t tell me about you having a temper—

  —If you don’t tell me who you are, I’ll shut this computer down—

  —Temper, temper. All in good time—

  I decide to try a different tack. Obviously, I wasn’t getting anywhere with idle threats. It only seemed to serve as amusement for whoever that could be on the other end of this conversation.

  —If you won’t tell me who you are, tell me what you want— I typed.

  —Easier question. I’m a concerned friend—

  Concerned? What was there to be concerned about? For the first time in my life I felt like I finally belonged somewhere where people cared about me. I’d been reunited with my twin sister and by extension, my true family. I had been welcomed by all the people in her life that loved her, and they, in turn, had found a way to love me. I had never felt more wanted or more like I belonged ever. What in the world was there to be concerned about? And who in the heck could be trying to communicate with me through the computer? And given everything that happened at the beginning of the year, how did I even know this if entity had friendly intentions?

  I must have been lost in my musings for a while because the prompt waiting for me on the screen began to type again.

  —Are you still there, Skylar?—

  I had been about to type back a response when I heard a key in the front door. I went to snap off the computer screen but when I leaned forward to find the button, I realized I didn’t have to. The screen had gone completely blank. In fact, the computer wasn’t even on. I found myself sitting there looking at a dark, cold computer terminal when Sully’s shadow engulfed the doorway and then he stepped over the threshold and into the room.

  “Hey, Skylar. What’s up? You playing online poker all night long?”

  I had to cover. I’d been sitting stone-faced in front of my computer like an idiot.

  “Would you believe I’ve been working so hard on the graphics project, I fell asleep? I turned the computer off about a half hour ago and nodded off. I only woke up when I heard your keys.”

  “Well, it must be turning out to be some project. You’ve really had your nose to the grindstone on it.”

  “I appreciate you guys giving me the chance. I just don’t want to disappoint you.” I needed to change to subject before he asked to see anything. “So, you were with Jade?”

  “Yeah.” He was so obviously spun on her. Just the mention of her name changed his whole demeanor. He went from dominant to docile in zero to sixty. “Actually, we double-dated with Dave and Tamera. Pretty interesting. I thought they wouldn’t have changed that much, but they were totally different.” He seemed to be reaching for the right words. “Kind of like having dinner with my parents. Even Jade noticed it. I hope this is only a phase, cuz’ Dave used to be a really good friend, and whatever Tamera did with him, I hope she lets him change back soon.”

  “Wow. That sounds intense. Have Logan or Serena seen them?”

  “No, but they’re gonna. I made sure and made another ‘dinner date’ with them,” Sully made quotation marks with his fingers and a sour look with his face at the same time signifying just how he felt about dinner dates. “And this time Logan and Serena are going too.”

  I laughed and said, “Make sure I’m around when you tell him, okay?”

  “You got it.”

  Sully turned and headed up the stairs.

  “Okay, I’m beat. I love spending time with Jade and all, but sometimes being around her takes as much energy as dropping a transmission in my Dad’s old Chevy, you know. You love doing it, but it sure can take it out of you.” He trudged up the steps.

  I waited until the shuffling sounds above me stopped and I thought Sully would likely be asleep before I tried to turn the computer back on. But when I did, it just came on like normal. I tried surfing around the web for a while, but nothing unusual happened. My ‘concerned friend’ never showed back up. Maybe he, or it, turned shy when someone else was in the house. Maybe it would be a one-time thing. Whatever the case, it didn’t come back that night. I clicked around for another forty-five minutes or so before I got bored and shut the computer down and went up to bed myself. My last thought of the night: Who could the ‘concerned friend’ be and what do they want from me?

  Chapter Nine

  SERENA

  Logan and I were sitting on the loveseat sofa in the living room of my home. We had been sitting there for almost an hour and I couldn’t remember if we had spoken any words out loud. I know there weren’t any words mindspoken. I also know it had been quite possibly the most perfect hour of my life. Logan sat in the corner of the couch and I lay across him with my head halfway in his lap and halfway resting on the arm of the sofa. My eyes were closed, but I wasn’t asleep. For the past twenty minutes or more, Logan had been stroking my hair.

  I was dreaming again, I knew. In my dream, I stood in the middle of a beautiful, snowy scene. The ground had been recently blanketed with a pristine, untouched layer of white that had obviously just fallen the night before. The trees were bare of leaves and laden with a full complement of the previous night’s snowfall. The whole scene seemed to glow with the brightness of the white wonderland. Then, without warning, the beautiful snowy scene was awash in crimson. Blood splashed my dreams, turning them into nightmares. I was jolted from sleep, gasping for air and clutching at Logan as my violent reaction jerked me out of his arms. I fell off the couch, my heart pounding with fear.

  “Serena! Wow! Are you okay?” Logan jumped up and dropped to his knees on the floor where I lay.

  I felt fine. I banged my elbow on the coffee table somehow, and it really smarted, but what bothered me most? The dream. My dreams always meant something but I had no idea what that one meant. Not for the first time did I long for my coven sister Prudence and her second sight abilities. She could tell me what that disturbing dream meant.

  “I’m okay, Logan. I am. I just got startled by a dream.”

  “Sounded more like a nightmare.” Logan helped me up till we were both sitting on the couch again.

  “Maybe a bit more like a nightmare.” I agreed.

  “A bit?”

  “Maybe more than a bit.” I was reluctant to share it with Logan. It was still too real.

  “Serena, you screamed bloody murder. Nearly fell off the couch myself, you scared me so bad.”

  Screamed? I didn’t know I did that. The dream must have been much more like a night terror.

  “I’m so sorry, Logan. I didn’t mean to frighten you.” My efforts at downplaying it were falling flat. Logan was too concerned.

  “Don’t worry about me, Serena. I’m more worried about you. Your dreams always have some kind of special meaning. Should we be worried about this one?”

  “I don’t know yet, really. I think I might try and get in touch with Prudence and see if she has had any strange ‘sightings’ lately.”

  “Good idea. Meantime, I better get going. It’s getting pretty late.”

  “Oh, it is.” I stood up and followed him to the door. “I’ll walk out with you.”

  We walked out the front door and down the driveway. Logan saw it a split second before I did.

  “Hey! Serena? Where’s your car?”

  “Oh, Logan. I hope she didn’t. Wait here.” I closed my eyes and astrally projected myself to Tabitha’s room. She wasn’t there. Quickly, I tapped on Elizabeth’s room and filled her in on what had been going on. Together we mindjumped Tabitha and listened in on her current conversation. We hurried downstairs where I’d left Logan in the driveway. I’d been gone less than three minutes.

  “Logan, she’s at the town library with a new friend Elizabeth and I don’t know. Someone named Larissa. Do you know her?”

  Logan shook his head.

  “Never heard of her. Do we have a problem?” I knew what Logan meant. So did Elizabeth. Logan mean
t the same kind of problem we had before with Christophe and the old Council. The kind of issue we’d had to convene our entire coven to solve.

  Elizabeth spoke up.

  “Without jumping to conclusions, we have one of two scenarios. One, she is just being a teenager and is out with a girl and a guy who will turn out to be only bad influences. We’ll find her and I’ll ground her for breaking curfew and stealing Serena’s car and all will be well.”

  “What’s the second scenario?” asked Logan.

  “We have a problem.” Elizabeth said gravely. She looked at both of us. We knew what she meant without elaboration.

  The three of us jumped in Logan’s car and we sped off into the night.

  ****

  We didn’t speak on the way to the library. Logan and I held hands and Elizabeth sat so far forward from the back seat that she nearly qualified as being in the front of the car. Silently, Logan navigated the darkened and deserted streets on the way into town. I saw my car as soon as we pulled up to the front of the library steps. Tabitha hadn’t even bothered to hide it. It sat parked right in the front of the library. And oddly enough, it seemed to be the only car there. Curiously, I wondered how her new friends had gotten here tonight. Had she picked them up? I made a mental note to find that out too. She wasn’t legal to drive herself; she’d better not be ferrying other people all around town.

  I fired up and began to jump out of the car to give that girl a piece of my mind. Who did she think she’d been messing with? She could have been killed driving all alone like that. And who would know where she’d gone? I was far into my speech to her internally when I realized Logan had been trying to get my attention.

  “I’m sorry, Logan. I’m so distracted. In my head I’m already working through the major dressing down I am going to give that girl for taking my car without permission.”

  Logan was anything but contrite.

  “Well, don’t let me stop you, but I just want to call your attention to that.” I followed his outstretched hand and pointed finger. And sucked in my breath. He pointed to the door handle of the huge antique double doors of the library. Well, actually, he pointed to what remained of the door handle because it had been melted off. A hardened puddle of cooled metal on the cold concrete floor just below the gaping circular hole in the door indicated where the handle had been.

  Elizabeth grabbed my arm.

  “Serena, look.” I turned to see what she pointed at now. That turned out to be the door frame, which had been destroyed. It looked like something large and heavy had bulldozed it. Something supernatural.

  “Oh no. Not again.” I touched the door frame lightly, and could feel the heat still pulsing under my hand. Definitely the work of something not human at all. I snatched my hand back so suddenly I fell back a couple of steps and nearly lost my footing on the wide concrete stairs. Logan caught me in time.

  “Serena, what is it?” He sounded concerned, and as I turned to him, I caught Elizabeth’s eye. She didn’t need to hear my explanation. She knew. “Oh, Logan. Tabitha needs us. She’s been tricked.”

  I nodded.

  “Hurry. Let’s get in there.”

  Logan pushed open the door and the three of us entered the library.

  Chapter Ten

  TABITHA

  Once Larissa and Colton and I stepped inside the library, things changed really fast. One minute I’d been walking inside the big building with my new friend and her super cute guy friend, who had linked his arm through mine, like they do in the movies. The next minute that friendly gesture felt more like an arm-lock, the way the jerks in gym class did when they were screwing around.

  “Hold her tightly Colton. I don’t want her squirming around while I extract the blood.”

  Excuse me, what? Extract the what? Are we talking about my blood? Before I had a chance to wrap my head around how exactly we would be “extracting the blood”, I felt the stick of the needle.

  “Owww! What’s that?” I thought afterward that was a pretty stupid thing to say, given the circumstances. It felt like I had just been stabbed by a needle! I tried struggling against the hold Colton had me in. But the yummy guns I had admired earlier weren’t just for show. Pretty boy turned out to be pretty Strong-Boy. It felt like trying to move bricks with jelly. It just wasn’t going to happen.

  “Nothing for you to worry about, precious. You could call it research.” Larissa and Colton giggled at their private little inside joke. I did not find it funny. She produced a small doctor’s bag and carefully pulled out several vials. While Colton held me still, she continued extracting blood from my arm. I tried not to look but it was taking so long, I finally had to. I wished I hadn’t. Just the look of the filled vials of blood, my blood, and I started to feel faint. I was about to lose consciousness when I heard my sister’s voice.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Larissa was apparently startled by the entrance of my sister, my Aunt Elizabeth and Logan, and she dropped the vial she had been filling. I looked down and watched it shatter on the tile floor, spattering my fresh, bright red blood all over the floor.

  “Oh my stars, is that blood?” I felt so faint now, I could hardly focus, but that voice I knew as Elizabeth’s. Then I heard Colton’s voice next. It sounded so much different than it had been earlier. Before, it seemed so handsome and welcoming, warm, like a blanket. Now, his voice resembled sandpaper.

  “Larissa,” he snarled, “take care of the other vials.”

  “I am!” she snapped back. “You take care of our guests.” Larissa hissed that last word at him while she placed the surviving three vials of blood into her doctor’s bag and clicked the top closed. Then she sort of crouched and sprang straight up into the air onto the top of one of the book shelves. Dizzily, I remember thinking, is she a witch or part dog?

  Colton had been holding me this whole time in the arm lock. Now, he flung me to the side, like I weighed as much as crumpled paper. Then he, too, sprang straight into the air from a crouched position. When I hit the ground, it really woke me up. I shook my head a little and rubbed my eyes to clear my vision. Colton had seemed to morph right in front of me. His legs became thicker and more powerful and suddenly, from the waist down, he was a dog, a giant, misshapen, wild dog. Larissa was the same. They crouched, ready to pounce, atop the tallest book shelf nearest me.

  Serena and Logan rushed over to where the Colton-dog had thrown me. It didn’t feel like any of my bones were broken, but I felt certain I would be bruised and sore for days. Gently Serena removed the rubber tubing and transparent tape that was still attached to the inside of my arm where Larissa had taken my blood. Logan lifted my head and tenderly laid it on his lap. He took a handkerchief out of his back pocket and began wiping my head. When he pulled the cloth away, I could see my own blood on the fabric. I hadn’t realized it, but the fall must have caused a small wound on my forehead and Logan had kept the blood from running into my eyes.

  Elizabeth crossed the room and went to take care of Larissa and Colton. She held her hand out in front of her and waved her other hand over it. A small spark ignited and suddenly, in her hands appeared two strong leather dog collars with long leads. She waved her hands again and swished them upwards toward the top shelf. The collars obediently shot heavenward and headed straight for Larissa and Colton like homing missiles. At her command and with a final wave of her hand, they latched themselves onto each of their necks, despite both of them struggling against it. The moment the collars latched on, Larissa and Colton’s true forms became evident and they shape-shifted back into feral dogs. After that, Elizabeth dispatched them swiftly. She cast a reverse-spell on them and I watched, fascinated, as the dogs reversed in age in a matter of seconds. They went from adults, to puppies in the blink of an eye. Serena and Logan were as amazed as I was. Elizabeth lifted the puppies down with a floating spell and we watched them descend from the book shelf. I thought puppies were supposed to be cute, but even in youth, evil is evil. These puppies still snarled a
nd snapped and foamed at the mouth, as though they were rabid or disease-ridden. And they continued their backward transgression. They became younger and younger, until they were fetuses, then eggs, and then they finally just winked out and disappeared. Then she grabbed the doctor’s bag with the vials in it.

  “Wow!” said Logan. “Leave it to you, Elizabeth, to find a humane way to dispose of even that kind of garbage.”

  Elizabeth blushed. “They don’t really know any better. I don’t think it’s fair to punish them. They won’t hurt anyone ever again.” She turned her attention to Tabitha. “How are you, Tabby?”

  “I’ve been better. I’ll probably be black and blue for awhile. Mostly I feel pretty stupid. I should have realized why cool people would like me.”

  “Hey!” said Serena. “Cool people would like you for you, Tabs. Don’t think that you can’t get friends unless they’re crazed shape-shifting creeps and only want your blood for some strange reason. You are a wonderful girl and if they can’t see that, then they’re the uncool ones.” My sister gave me a huge hug. She was mushy most of the time, but I loved her so much. I hugged her back, really hard. I could see why Logan loved her. Who wouldn’t?

  Logan put his arm around me. “Tabitha, I don’t like any underclassmen, but I like you. And I hardly like my own sister. That’s saying something. So, don’t worry. I think you’re cool, too.” He grinned. He was so full of it. I remembered how mad with worry he had been when Jade was kidnapped by those warlock freaks from the old Council.

  “So,” He gestured toward the front entrance of the library. “Everyone about ready to get out of here? I do not want to be around when Ms. Hannerly comes in tomorrow to open the library and sees that door.”

  “Oh, right. Let me take care of that.” Elizabeth walked over to the front door and waved her hand over the frame, wiggling her fingers along the splintered wood as though she were playing it like a piano. The bits of fractured wood stitched themselves back together and we heard a low creaking sound as the standing beam righted itself back into position. She then turned her attention to the handle. Twirling her index finger in a circular motion over the steel-cold puddle of metal on the ground, it re-liquefied and snaked up from the ground in a golden ribbon, following her pointed finger like a lemming. She directed it to the gaping hole left in the door and I watched, amazed, while it poured in and formed a perfect door handle. She turned to us and smiled.