Revealers (5 page)

We all clap, and Hattie Murphy, the coven accountant, turns in her seat and looks at us with tears in her eyes. “No worries, girls. Everything will be fine.”

“Hattie!” snaps Margo’s grandmother, Miranda, who’s sitting next to her. She turns and smiles at us. And waves a shaking hand dismissively. She’s so thin and frail, I find it hard to picture those shaky hands of hers ever spiking a vamp.

Miranda smiles broader and her faded blue eyes are lost in the crinkles. “Of course, everything will be fine. This is a wonderful time for you girls.” She faces the front again, but I don’t miss the fact that she kicks Hattie ever so slightly with the side of her foot.

“Like the generations of Revealers who have come before us,” Helena continues, “Margo will become a part of the coven’s guiding hand that is sworn to protect mankind from the monsters that haunt us.”

Helena wraps an ugly silver scarf around Margo’s neck, kisses her on the cheeks, and faces us smiling. A chill runs up the back of my neck. Helenas smiles have never seemed right to me—

like she’s smiling, but she’d really rather be biting our heads off.

“We’ve watched Margo grow from a child into a strong, determined young woman who I know will continue to be an asset to the coven. Margo demonstrates poise beyond her years, and I am confident she will carry the mantle of responsibility well.”

Margo throws her shoulders back and looks out at us. All I can think is she’s taking this way too seriously, but then she’s always been really into all the coven crap. She reaches up, fingers her star necklace, and blinks twice. She takes in a sharp breath and looks around the room, with wide eyes. I swear I see her opal crackle with light—like the “captured lightning” is trying to escape. Margo pales and drops the necklace under her robe. She turns her head to Helena and then her mother—brow furrowed.

Sascha leans in toward me. “Did you see that?”

“The necklace?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

Sascha holds her star up by its chain—the opal is flickering, but nothing like Margo’s. She moves her eyebrows up and down. “Freaky!”

I try to remember what the card said about opals. Inner beauty? Foresight?

I look down at the star resting on my chest. The gem in the middle is glowing blue and I cover it with my hands. Am I being warned of approaching danger, or guarded from evil? I scan the room and look at the familiar faces I’ve grown up with. Everyone’s eyes are on Margo, nothing seems wrong. The door in the back opens slowly and Connor slinks in. My cheeks flush and I turn my focus back up front.

I realize Helena’s asked everyone to come forward and congratulate Margo before they take her away for the private part of the ceremony. I get in the line and nearly pass out when Connor slides in behind me and presses his chest against my back.

He puts a hand on my shoulder and leans in closer—his warm breath burning my neck.

“Meet me at your mom’s studio,” he whispers, sending goose bumps up my arms. “So we can talk.”

“Uh—” I stammer, but he’s already gone—winding his way through the crowd to the door.

“What did he want?” Dani asks.

“To meet me at my house.”

“That’s good, right?” Dani asks.

I bite my lip. “Too soon to say.”

Dani squeezes my hand. “You’ll work it out, I know it.”

I make it to the front of the line, and give Margo a weak hug. “Your necklace was flashing—did you see it?”

Margo looks past me to Dani. “It—it was nothing.” She holds out a hand to Dani—I’ve been dismissed.

Dani meets me outside. “Is your necklace doing anything?” I ask.

“Actually, it was kind of bumping around just before.” She pulls the chain out from her cape. “Oh, my God.”

The star is jerking around—the inside of the topaz swirling, like it’s filled with a yellow fog being whipped around in a storm.

I lift my star up. “Look at mine.”

“What does it mean?” she asks.

“Maybe it’s a sign that Connors going to break up with me.”

“Or maybe it’s a sign that something bad is going down.”

I drop the star under my cape and shake my head. “I bet we end up going on a hunt tonight, that’s got to be it.

“Yeah.”

Dani and I stand in silence, and I wish I wasn’t filled with a deep sense of dread. “Well, I better get going—not that I’m in any rush to get dumped.”

Dani squeezes my hand. “He’s not going to dump you, but if he does, I’ll research the nuts-to-raisins spell myself!”

“I can think of at least one other thing that might need to be shrunk!”

Dani laughs. “Call me as soon as you can.”

“Okay.” I mount my broom and head home. The wind freezes my cheeks and hands—I will it to freeze my heart so I won’t be able to feel a thing if Connor decides to break it.

I uncloak as I land in my yard, and stumble none-too-gracefully to a stop. It’s hard to land smoothly when your feet are numb. I try to tread quietly through the frosty leaves, lean my broom gently on a nearby tree, and peek in the front window of Mom’s shop—the pale yellow flicker of candles inside warming the glass.

My insides melt when I see three small, white jack-o’-lanterns—Luminas—lined up against the far window by the pond. The light from the candles catches in the glass strands of the witch balls hanging above them. A C is carved in the first pumpkin, a heart in the second, and a crooked J carved in the third. There’s a small red candle on the table next to one long-stemmed white rose, and Connor is looking nervously at the door.

I watch him and smile, knowing he remembered that every Halloween I always pick white pumpkins instead of the plain orange ones. Madeline Kline, who cultivates the small field near the coven meeting house, always plants a special row of Luminas and Baby Boos just for me. She told me a while back that the cool spring rain damaged a lot of the pumpkins and my white ones didn’t make it this year. So that means Connor went out of his way to find these.

It means he does still care.

He takes his wallet out and lays it on the table in front of him. We didn’t have condoms last time—did he buy some? Are they in his leather wallet? Is that why he said he wanted to meet? So we could finish what we didn’t last time?

I frown and feel a wave of anger bubble up in me, bursting any hope I had for this evening.

If Connor thinks carving our initials in a few gourds is going to make up for the fact that he blew me off after our first heavy hook up—after all the things he said and promised—well, he has another thing coming.

I open the door and put my hands on my hips. “So, you’re finally ready to talk?” I say in my coldest voice. I don’t move toward him and almost smirk when his brow furrows.

“Yeah, Jules.” He stands up. “I’m sorry,” he says with a pained look.

“Oh, about what?”

“Jules, you know.”

I stare at him waiting for him to go on—to tell me he was a jerk or scared or something to make up for the fact that I trusted him so completely, and then he bailed on me. When he doesn’t say anything, I roll my eyes. “Well, I guess we’re done here—apology not accepted.”

I turn to leave and he rushes toward me and touches my arm. “Wait, this isn’t easy for me.

I—I know I should’ve called you, and I know you were probably wondering what was going on and …”

“Damn straight I was wondering what was going on!” I say, pulling my arm away from him. “God, Connor, you told me you loved me, we almost went all the way, and then you act like I don’t exist. I know you saw me in the hall at school. And then to top it all off, you have Michael give me a note like we’re ten or something. Not that you even meant what you said in your stupid four-word note. I called you five times before I decided I was making a complete ass out of myself!”

He grabs my hand and pulls me close. “You don’t understand,” he says. “My mom was waiting for me, she knew.”

He’s still holding my hand, and part of me knows what facing his mom must have been like—I can picture her steely eyes boring into his, but he said he’d fight for me, and it’s obvious he gave up without even trying. “You told me it didn’t matter what your mother thought.” I try to yank away from him but he holds on tight, so I turn away and look at the stupid pumpkins. “I’m such an idiot to have bought into all your bullshit!”

Tears sting my eyes as the effort it’s taken to stay strong and pretend Connor doesn’t matter these last two days dissolves. “I am such an idiot,” I choke out, feeling my legs buckle.

He comes up behind me and I’m too tired to fight him.

“Jules, I’m the idiot, not you. I’m sorry I put you through this. Please just stay and hear me out, okay?”

I stared at the jagged heart he carved in the middle pumpkin. “Whatever.” I let him lead me reluctantly to the couch.

“My mom was waiting for me; she knew. I don’t know how, some sort of witch thing maybe, but I opened the door and she up and slapped me. My own mother—no warning, and then she was raging at me, and she may not look like much, but it was like getting hit by a demon.”

“Like you’d know what that felt like.”

Connor glares at me. “Sorry I wasn’t born with special powers and don’t get to go at it with demons on a regular basis.”

I look up at him and see fear and sadness in his blue eyes. I hold my hand up to his face and whisper, “Reveal.” A small pink handprint rises on his cheek, and I bite my lip. “Oh, Connor,” I say, bringing my hand up to cover the mark. “I should’ve realized. I mean I thought this all might have been because of your mom, but I was so upset and then I got mad. But you should’ve come to me.”

He covers my hand with his, presses it to his face, and then takes it to his lips and kisses it, making my heart flutter. “You don’t know how badly I wanted to tell you, but she was crazy. She said all these things, and I—I didn’t know what to do. I needed time to figure things out, to think how we could be together when you’re a hunter with all the rules and stupid freaking traditions that go with it.” He drops my hand and drops his chin to his chest. “And I’m just a nothing, whose grand purpose in life is cleaning up roadkill.”

“No, it’s not like that—”

Connor shakes his head. “Jules, you just as much said it yourself a minute ago. You can pretend all you want that I’m destined for something bigger, but it is what it is. I’m a guy riding the coattails of a bunch of monster-hunting witches.” He stands up and walks to the witch balls hanging on the curtain rod. He twists one, winding the string tight, then lets it go, sending the ball into a frantic spin. “You women have been holding all the power since the 1600s when the coven was first approached, I, uh—” He stops the ball with his hand. “I mean, was formed, and us guys have just been along for the ride ever since.”

I get up and wrap my arms around him, pressing my chest into his back. I rest my head on his shoulder blade and sigh. “It’s the twenty-first century, you can be whatever you want— we can be whatever we want.”

“I don’t know anymore,” he says quietly. “But we’d both be lying if we said that making a change in the coven would be easy. You know what we’re up against, and as much as I wanted to think it would be easy to make all the roadblocks disappear, it’s not going to happen. My mother won’t let it. There’s too much at stake.”

He sighs and I hug him tighter. “Let’s just be together for now.” I reach around for his hand and we sit on the couch. “Where’d you get the pumpkins?”

Connor smiles. “Seeing as I’m as magical as a can of worms, I called a bunch of farms until I found one that was growing the white ones. I remembered how much you like them, and Ms.

Kline said hers didn’t come up this year.”

“That was really sweet,” I say, and then lean in and gently kiss him on the lips.

“I got you something else,” he says, reaching for his wallet.

My heart beats faster wondering if tonight will be the night.

He opens it up and pulls out a tiny manila envelope instead of a pack of condoms from behind some bills. Relief and a bit of disappointment flush through me, but I figure after what’s happened it’s better to take things slowly.

He tips it over his palm, and a silver-and-gold ring slips out and lands in his open hand.

“My mom has a room in the house filled with all sorts of old stuff—I think you guys get some of it after kills, and some of it’s been around a long time from other hunters, but put it on.”

“Wow, this must be the universe’s way of telling me I need to accessorize more,” I say, feeling giddy Connor is giving me a ring! “I got a new necklace today, too.”

I’m about to pull out my necklace to show him, but he takes my right hand and slides the ring on my finger. “It’s an Ouroboros,” he says. “You know—the symbol of unity and eternity.”

My heart quickens. “I’ve seen this before,” I say, looking down at the snake, with its tail in his mouth, loosely coiled around my finger. The head and the top half of the body are gold, the rest silver with ruby eyes that sparkle in the candlelight.

“Oh!” My right hand suddenly starts to quiver. “We got this off a demon we killed in ninth grade! Your mother told us not to come home without it.” I start to pull it off, but the snake lets out a soft hiss, and I yank my hand away like I’ve been bitten. The head starts to move and gulp the tail down its throat, until the ring fits tightly around my finger. “Oh, my God, Connor!” I say, shaking my hand—trying to dislodge the ring. “What the hell is happening?”

Connor jumps up, his eyes wide. “I don’t know! There was a paper in the box, it didn’t say the ring moved or anything, just that the eyes are supposed to glow if—”

“If what?”

“If the person who gave it to you is telling the truth. I swear I didn’t know it moved or anything.”

“Well, it did! The freaking ring swallowed its own tail,” I say, holding my shaking hand far from my body. I hold my left hand over it. “Remove!” I say The spell swirls around my hand, but the snake just wiggles, takes another gulp, and the ring cuts deeper into my finger. “Ow!” My legs start to shake, and I flop down on the couch. “What if it’s cursed? Did you research the thing?

And what if your mom finds out it’s missing?”

Connor puts his hands out to calm me down. “No, no— don’t worry. It’s okay. From what I read, the ring lets you know when the person who gave it to you is telling the truth. That’s it. I just wanted you to be able to trust me. I just wanted to talk to you and then I was going to put it back.”