Embrace (18 page)

Isaac moved closer and wrapped his arms around me, dissolving my trepidation. A tear escaped the corner of my eye as the warmth of his powers embraced me.

“I don’t hate you,” Isaac breathed the words into my hair. “And I know about Kevin.”

I looked at him. “How?”

“Josh.”

I wiped at the tears that ran freely now. I’m not sure what I did to deserve Kaylee and Josh, but I swore with each breath that I breathed that I would always be grateful that they were in my life, picking up the pieces before I knew they need picking up. Filling in the words I couldn’t seem to say when I should say them.

Isaac explained, “Josh called me last night. He mentioned an old friend was in town and that you used to date him. He said something about knowing you well enough to know you’ll avoid the subject if at all possible and that I shouldn’t worry. Was he right?”

“Yeah.” I rested my head on his shoulder. “He got it right.”

“I don’t want you to be afraid to talk to me.”

“I know.”

“Even if you think I might not like what you’re going to say.”

“Okay.”

But saying that was easier than following through with it. I’d never been good at confronting uncomfortable situations, and I doubted I was going to be able to snap my fingers and change who I was. Unless there was a spell that could increase a person’s confidence. If there was, I’d have bet Isaac would disapprove.

He slid out from behind me, taking my hand and pulling me onto his lap so that I was straddling him.

“I’m serious,” he said.

I bit my bottom lip, debating if I should echo my previous responses or promise I’d be more open. Only, with my powers, that vow would be binding, and I wasn’t quite ready to commit like that.

“Madison,” he tickled my waist, making me squeal. “It’s not a hard request.”

“Okay, okay.” I giggled and squirmed, trying to grab his hands so that he’d stop. “I know I can talk to you.”

“Good.”

We were both laughing by the time he relented.

My hands rested on his broad chest. My fingers traced their way up to his shoulders then over the muscles in his arms. He wet his lips; I wondered if he realized he’d done it. His hands held my hips, as if frozen there. When I leaned in, he cupped my cheeks.

Isaac’s kisses tasted sweet, like chocolate-covered cherries and just like the candy, never lasted long enough. I scooted closer, if that was even possible, and threaded my fingers through his hair, pulling his mouth back to mine.

But this time, his kisses were no more than a series of polite pecks. Then, without notice, he quickly shifted, lifting me off his lap and setting me gently on the landing next to him.

He was still holding back. Still questioning something. Maybe our kiss had just confirmed for him what I didn’t want to be true: that the excitement of the last week had messed with our heads and it was only a matter of another day or a week before we’d both wake up and realize we were wrong for each other.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“I’m not,” he replied.

I eyed him quizzically and knew right then I should tell him how much he meant to me. He needed to understand that, and then I could better understand how much I meant to
him
. But when I opened my mouth, the words didn’t come.

Isaac stood and offered me a hand. I looked up at him and noticed the glint of doubt in his eyes and how rigid his body was. It all but confirmed that, even as I let him pull me up to my feet, I was setting myself up to fall.

Chapter 15

In the Shadows

T
HAT
E
VENING
, I D
UG
the jeans I had on the day before out of the hamper and pulled the slip of paper Kevin had given me from the back pocket. I plopped down on my bed and dialed the number. I had mixed emotions about the call going to voicemail. Part of me worried that he might be avoiding my call, yet another part of me was relieved to have a little more time before I’d have to talk to him.

I sighed. “Kevin, it’s Madison. Give me a call when you get this message.”

I tossed the phone on the floor, grabbed my copy of
Death of a Salesman
out of my backpack, and fell back onto my mattress with my head toward the foot of the bed and my feet resting against the wall. I needed to get my mind off being such a jerk to Kevin. I should have just told him about Isaac when I’d first seen him. I could have spared him the shock of seeing us together.

I’d reached the end of the chapter before I realized I didn’t remember much of what I’d read. I jotted down short answers to the questions on the worksheet and vowed to put more effort into the next one.

I tried Kevin again. Still no answer.

The next couple days were a blur. The halls at school were a buzz of excitement over the festival. Besides the maze and bake sale, we had a kissing booth and dunking tank. The faculty would be manning grills, cooking hotdogs and corn on the cob. The festival was the only thing Sarah talked about, and it drove me nuts.

Since news had made it around school that someone had slipped drugs into Kaylee’s mocha, people were keeping a close eye on their food and beverages. It was probably a good habit to be in anyway, so our little white lie might have been good for everyone.

I scraped by with a sixty-two percent on the pop quiz in English. Add that to my homework grade, and I was failing. Mr. Chapin gave me until Monday to turn in my missing assignments. He added a not-so-subtle hint that I needed Bs or higher on everything to pull my grade up to a C, which was so not going to happen.

Mark was being his normal, friendly self, as if he still hadn’t noticed he’d been bound. It was almost as unnerving as finding Paige talking to Isaac in the halls. I swear she was stalking him. She found more excuses to touch him too: a tap of her hand on his shoulder as she laughed at something he said. Brushing against him as if the halls weren’t wide enough to fit a full-size pick-up truck, let alone a hundred-pound bitch. And she’d smile this angelic-devil sort of smile that I would have loved to wipe off her face with the bottom of my shoe. I was finding it harder and harder not to let her see she was getting to me.

Thursday afternoon, Kaylee and I took Chase to the park with my dad. Chase told me I wasn’t any fun. How could I be? Paige was never going to give up on Isaac, and the way Isaac kept his guard up when we were together, I was sure he was close to giving up on us, and Mark was being too nice—I couldn’t shake the feeling something big was about to happen.

Even with all this going on, I knew damn well I should have been locked in my bedroom, working on my English homework. Problem was, I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering while I read the book. Within minutes, my bedroom seemed to close in on me, ready to squash me like a spider under heavy boots.

To top it all off, Kevin wouldn’t return my calls.

“Read through my notes,” Kaylee had said when we got home from the park. “It will catch you up to chapter fourteen.”

My head dangled over the side of my bed as I stared at her curvy writing, trying to figure out when she’d had time to read the darn book. Not that I was complaining. Thanks to Kaylee, I would be able to complete three worksheets and the two short essays before class on Friday. I’d be lucky to pull off Cs on the essays but could get Bs on the worksheets. That would bring my grade up to a solid D.

I groaned. What was the point?

I threw the notes on my bed and headed for the door. I needed to get out of there. I made it to the top of the stairs before I spun on my heels and marched back to my room to grab the book, Kaylee’s notes, and what I needed to complete the worksheets. I wasn’t totally sure why I felt compelled to grab these items; I planned on walking until my legs gave out.

I couldn’t figure out how things had become so screwed up. When did life get so complicated? I really missed the simple days of just last year.

I walked several blocks and had yet to come up with an answer. The sun barely peeked over the town when I found myself at the black iron gates of the cemetery. The air was still, and the little sunlight left made the shadows of the tombstones reach out toward me. The voices of those long-buried whispered in the back of my mind. Knowing about the powers made me realize I wasn’t imagining them. I should have been petrified to set foot in there. I should have run the other way.

But I didn’t. My legs brought me to the cemetery because I needed the comfort I could only get from being near my mom.

She’d died giving birth to Chase. At first, I’d been angry, and I’d hated my brother for taking Mom from me. It had taken me several months to admit to myself it hadn’t been his fault and several years to realize sometimes the people you love can’t be saved.

I walked the long way to her grave. After brushing the leaves away from her headstone, I took a seat. I somehow knew the shadows that slithered over the ground and the whispers that tried to lure their victims into the night couldn’t touch me when I was within her reach.

I pulled Kaylee’s notes from between the pages of the book, could barely make out her curvy handwriting in the dim evening light, and put them away. I really didn’t want to read anyway. I lay down in the grass next to my mom’s grave, using the book as a pillow, and stared at the sherbet-colored sunset. Gossamer clouds floated across a near-full moon as I drifted to sleep.

I didn’t know what time it was when I woke, freezing my ass off. It was the voices that had roused me—the hushed whispers of two beings who shouldn’t have been there and didn’t want to be.

“Over here,” I called.

A white beam of light reached through the darkness to find me. Kaylee and Sarah walked closely together. Kaylee’s eyes kept scanning the graveyard nervously.

“I wish you’d find somewhere else to go when you’re upset,” Kaylee said as she took a seat on the grass next to me. She stood the flashlight on its end in front of us so that the light fanned upward. “This place gives me the creeps.”

Sarah handed me a jacket. “Put this on before you freeze to death.” I gladly took the ski jacket. She sat down and went on, “As soon as Kaylee called looking for you, we knew where you were.”

The breeze brushed past us, bringing with it an oddly sweet scent—like cherry popsicles.

Kaylee rested a hand on my arm. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I just needed to get out of the house.” I shrugged. “This is where I ended up.”

“Want to talk about it?” Sarah asked.

I had to be careful what I said in front of Sarah. She didn’t know about the powers, and I didn’t want to put her in the middle of that. How wonderful it must be to believe that everything is fine, to believe the police could protect you and your loved ones, and to feel like life was going on as it always did. I knew better. There were powers in the world the police could do nothing about. Powers that, if in the wrong hands, could harm people and
had
harmed people.

I couldn’t say any of this to Sarah. Powers weren’t my only problem.

Sarah rested a hand on my knee. “They’ll find who drugged Kaylee. You shouldn’t worry about it.”

Kaylee let out a high-pitched laugh then covered her mouth with her hand.

“I’m not worried about that,” I said. At least not in the way Sarah thought. I sighed. “It’s guy problems.”

“Guy problems?” Sarah repeated. “Didn’t I see you with the new guy?”

“Isaac,” I said. “His name’s Isaac. Kevin saw us together too.”

Sarah’s eyes grew wide. “Kevin’s back in town?”

I nodded. “And Mark asked me out.”

“He what?” Kaylee blurted. Disapproval and disgust warred for first place in her expression. I guess I’d neglected to mention that little detail to her.

“It was before,” I mumbled. I studied a patch of clover as if it were the most interesting thing I’d ever seen. The whole necklace drama kept coming back to bite me.

“Before what?” Sarah asked.

I glanced up at Kaylee. “Before he gave me the necklace.”

Kaylee’s jaw fell to her chest. “You told me he wanted to get rid of it. That you were just holding it for him.”

“I was.” I knew now it was stupid to have taken the damn thing. “I’m sorry.” Not just for conveniently leaving out an important part of the story but for putting her in danger.

Kaylee shook her head. “Madison, you are so naïve sometimes.”

“Let me get this straight,” Sarah said. “Mark asked you out on a date. You declined. Yet he gave you a necklace, which you took even though you said no to going out with him. Soon after, you’re dating the new guy Isaac, and out of the blue Kevin shows up and sees you two together.”

“Well.” It sounded even worse hearing her sum it up like that. I bit my bottom lip. “I ran into Kevin a few days ago, so I knew he was in town.”

“And you didn’t mention Isaac to him?” Sarah asked. I got the impression she wanted to say more, but she snapped her lips together instead. After a long pause, she said, “Okay. Start at the beginning.”

So I did. I told her about everything but, of course, the witchcraft. When I finished, I covered my face with my hands. “I’ve made such a mess of things. I wish I could hide from everyone.”

Sarah twisted her hair into a knot. She used my pencil to hold it in place at the back of her head. “The first thing you need to do is set things straight with Mark. You have to give him the necklace back and tell him you value his friendship and don’t feel right having it.”

“She can’t,” Kaylee said.

Sarah looked at the metal cross around Kaylee’s neck. “You can’t keep it.”

Kaylee covered her necklace with her hand. “This one is from Josh. I don’t have the one Mark gave Madison. I—I lost it.”

More like had it ripped off her neck and crushed to break an evil curse, then stuffed in a poppet and buried in Isaac’s backyard, but Sarah didn’t need the details.

“Then Madison has to offer to replace it,” Sarah said. “She can’t string Mark along. It’s not right.”

“I didn’t string him along,” I said into my hands, my voice muffled. “I told him we were just friends.” My fingers slid to my temples. “Besides, he knows I gave it to Kaylee, and I don’t think saying sorry is going to help. It may only make him madder, and I’m sort of afraid he might be planning something big to get back at me.”

Kaylee’s eyes grew wide in recognition of my none-too-subtle hint. Her voice shook when she spoke. “Make him madder? Planning something big?”

I hated to worry Kaylee, but she needed to be careful around him. “I’m not so sure everything is over, if you know what I mean.”

Kaylee didn’t have to tell me she knew what I meant. Even in the dark, I could see all the color drain from her face.

Sarah leaned forward so that her elbows were on her knees. “I think you’re being paranoid.”

My reply came out as a crazed laugh.

“Then you need to apologize,” Sarah insisted. “Tell Mark you’re sorry and you hope you can be friends.”

I nodded. There was no way for Sarah to understand just how bad things with Mark were, and since I couldn’t provide specifics without spilling my secret, I didn’t want to continue to talk about him.

Sarah took my silence as concurrence. “Then you have to pick who you want to date and tell either Kevin or Isaac it’s over.”

“Kevin and I
are
over,” I replied immediately. “We have been for a long time, remember?”

“He must still have feelings for you if he came back to visit,” Sarah said. “And you must still have feelings for him if you’re beating yourself up because he saw you with Isaac.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I mean, yes, I still care about Kevin, but he came back because he wanted to talk and didn’t have anyone at home he could confide in.”