The Promise (The Coven Series) (3 page)

“Never,”
I told him.
 

“That’s
a shame, Cassie Jayne Bishop,” he grinned at me.
   

“There’s
the bell!” Kay groaned in relief and grabbed me.
 
She dragged me down the hall toward our first
period Physics class.
 
“Where…how…and you
told him your full name…spill, CJ!”

“I
met him last night,” I told her.
 
I
rolled my eyes at her horror over the name thing.
 
Even though I didn’t buy into the nonsense, I
usually didn’t tell complete strangers my full name.
 
I still couldn’t figure out why I’d told
him.
 
Weird.

“He
was at the party?
 
Why didn’t I see him?”

“Maybe because you were wasted?”
I asked her dryly as we
took our seats.

She
rolled her eyes.
 
“When did you meet
him?”

I
shifted in my seat, making a point to look down at my book and away from her
face.
 

“Come
on, CJ, you have to tell me,” she lowered her voice to a whisper, catching
sight of Mr. Mason coming through the door.

“Later.”

“Now!”

I
sighed.
 
“He helped me get you home when
you passed out.”

Her
eyes went as huge as mine did whenever I saw a shoe sale at the mall and her
expression became one of absolute horror.
 
“NO!”

I
winced.
 
I knew it would upset her.
 
I could feel the waves of horror coming off
of her.
 
It filled me up and I shuddered
as the feelings washed through me.
 
Kay
and I shared some kind of weird connection.
 
Sometimes, we could feel what the other felt.
 
We’d decided a long time ago we were twins
separated at birth.
 

“You
said we walked, CJ.”
 
Blatant accusation
filled her voice.

“We
did.
 
Ethan showed up when we got to
Gallows Lane.
 
You passed out and he
carried you home.”

“NO!”
she wailed.
 

“Something
you care to share with the rest of the class, Miss Martin?” Mr. Mason asked
her.

“No, sir, Mr. Mason, sir.”
 
She buried her head in her book.
 
She had to be remembering what she’d looked
like this morning when she’d woken up covered in puke, her hair reeking of
it.
 
I’d die of embarrassment too.

Mr.
Mason started his lecture on our newest unit and I tuned him out.
 
Instead, I thought about Ethan.
 
I reacted to him in a way I didn’t to other
boys.
 
He made me feel nervous, giddy,
a
little shy.
 
No one
had ever done that to me.
 
Usually it was
me who caused those reactions in a guy I was hunting.
  
Mr. Melt
In
Your
Mouth Gorgeous was an oddity, but a sinfully delightful one.
 
I wanted him and I would have him.

Mr.
Mason interrupted my silent musing by daring to ask me a question.
 
I was forced to focus on the lecture.
 
Sigh.

The
rest of the day passed quickly and much to my dismay, I didn’t see Ethan at
all.
 
I did, however, manage to somehow
get trapped with Jeff at every turn.
 
He
latched on, and no matter how hard I shook, he stayed there.
 
Dammit!

The
only thing that made me hesitant was Ethan’s question about my not going
tonight.
 
It’s not like it was strange
for him to go or anything.
 
Most of the
kids in New Salem would be there.
  
Well,
except for me.
 

Maybe
Billy was right.
 
Maybe I should go
tonight.
 
I could be wrong about
everything, though I doubted it.
  
Would
it really hurt anything?
 
It was a part
of my family history after all and Ethan had hinted at going.

But
I’d promised Emily.
 

What
to do…

Chapter Three

I
heard the shouting match as I walked up the flagstone path to the front
porch.
 
My parents seemed to think
civilized conversation consisted of screaming at each other these days.
 
I debated going in.
 
I hated it when they fought.
 
They hadn’t always been like this.

There
was a time when Dad brought Mom roses just because, and Mom used to smile all
the time.
 
Not anymore.
 
She filled her days with committee meetings
while he worked himself to death in his shop.
 
They’d grown to hate each other.
 
Why they just didn’t get a divorce and put everyone out of their misery
was beyond me.
 
It had to be better than
this constant fighting.
 

I
heard something crash against the wall and then the distinct sound of tinkering
glass as it fell.
 
That made up my mind
for me.
 
I slung my backpack over my
shoulder and started back the way I’d come.
 
I had no doubt Dad would start drinking soon and I didn’t feel up to
dealing with that right now.

Instead,
I strolled down the sidewalk and watched the activity going on around me.
 
It was October 1st, the official start of
Halloween, Samhain, in New Salem.
 
We’d
had our own celebration by the lake last night, but today decorations were
going up everywhere all over town.
 
We
were definitely a Halloween town.
 
We
even had a huge contest every year to find the scariest house.
 
Homes and lawns, storefronts, and even the
parks were transformed into scenes of terror and mayhem.
 
Witches, ghosts, goblins, ghouls, tombstones,
corpses—there was nothing off limits.

I
was surprised Mom hadn’t dragged our stuff out of storage by now.
 
She was always one of the first to
decorate.
 
She loved Halloween more than
I did, I think, and that was saying something.
 
Halloween was my holiday.
 
I loved
the decorations, the scary movie marathons, the candy corn, and especially the
costumes.
 
I loved them all—funny, scary,
or just plain weird.
 
There was just
something about that night of magic and make believe that struck a chord within
me.
 
Then again, it could just be because
it was my birthday.
 

I
waved to Mr. Corey as he strung the bushes in front of his drugstore with
orange lights.
 
His wife worked in the
front window of the shop crafting her magic.
 
Beginning on the first day of October through Halloween, they created a
new scene each day in the big front display window of the drugstore.
 
Those window scenes attracted people from all
over just to get a glimpse of them.
 
October
brought in more revenue to the town than some of the beaches did all summer,
and it was all thanks to the Corey’s amazing window displays.
 
I couldn’t wait to see what she was doing.
 
Hopefully by the time I came back, she’d have
it finished.
 

I
stopped a moment as I stepped off Main Street and onto
McKelter
Avenue to take in the view of the rolling hills it offered.
 
Fall was in full force, which only added to
the ambiance of the town.
 
The trees
blazed with a life of their own, as if to defy the death of summer at winter’s
cold hands.
 
The leaves that fell to the
ground were a glorious myriad of browns, yellows, oranges, and reds.

The
monument caught my attention as it always did when I passed by this way.
 
A stone circle surrounded a smaller stone
pillar that stood about four feet high.
 
A plaque rested on its top.
   
The
old plaque had been crafted when the town was first established in 1693 and now
resided in the library under a glass case.
 
My dad had replaced it with a newer one a few years back.
 

The
original settlers were from Salem Village, Massachusetts.
 
Our town, New Salem, had been settled shortly
after the Salem Witch Trials.
 
The plaque
held the names of the thirteen innocent people who had been persecuted during
the trials.
 
Their deaths had been the
reason their family and friends fled here to North Carolina.
 

My
feet turned away from the monument and started upon a well-worn path they knew
intimately.
 
I slipped quietly through
the massive gates of the cemetery and trudged up the west hill.
 
A sharp wind whistled through the trees and I
shivered.
 
It was getting colder now with
the onset of fall.
 
I should have grabbed
a jacket this morning, but had been in such a hurry to get to school, I’d
forgotten.
 

I
dropped to my knees in front of the headstone and lovingly brushed the fallen
leaves away.
 
I shifted to a sitting
position, wrapped my arms around my knees, and read the engraving on the
headstone.

Emily Rose Bishop

July 9, 1991 – October 15, 2009

Loving daughter and sister

You will be missed

The
familiar cold knot of agony gripped my heart as I reached out to trace the
words with shaking fingers.
 
Three
years.
 
It had been three years since the
accident and it still hurt as much now as it did then.
 
I expected her to walk into my room at any
second, demanding I give back the sweater I stole from her closet.
 
I missed my big sister.
 
It hurt so much sometimes, I couldn’t
breathe.
 
None of us could.

Emily
had been beautiful.
 
Large sapphire blue
eyes had dazzled a person as they glittered out of a heart shaped face.
 
The best way I could describe her hair was to
call it tawny, but that didn’t do it justice.
 
It had been a mixture of browns,
golds
, and
reds.
 
People told me I looked like her,
but I didn’t see it.
 
I felt ordinary
compared to her.
 
She had been everything
I wanted to be and I missed her.

My
family had died with her.
 
Everything had
just spiraled out of control when the officer had shown up at our door to tell
us about the accident.
 
Dad started
drinking and Mom had just
went
around pretending
everything was fine.
 
It wasn’t.
 
There was a hole inside all of us that would
never be filled.
 

Everyone
said it would get better with
time, that
the pain
would lessen.
 
I didn’t believe it
anymore.
 
If it hadn’t been for Kay, I
don’t think I would have survived those first few months.
 
I didn’t even remember them really.
 
I’d spent most of my time at her house.
 
She understood better than anyone else.
 
I couldn’t bear to walk into my house without
Emily back then, when the pain was fresh and new.

Kay
had been there for me when no one else was.
 
She and I had discovered just how close a connection we shared as it
morphed to life after Emily’s death.
 
She
never asked me how I was, she could feel it, and had been a pillar of strength
and support.
 
That connection helped get
me through those first awful months.
 
I
was better now, but I’d never lose this tight, curling ball of grief that lived
inside me.
 

Sighing,
I took out my journal and a pen.
 
I sat
there for a while trying to write and then I started talking to Emily as I
always did.
 
I liked to think wherever
she was, she could hear me.

“You’ll
never believe what happened to me,” I told her as I doodled on the paper.
 
“I met the most amazing guy.
 
His name is Ethan, but I call him Mr. Melt
In
Your Mouth Gorgeous.
 
My own personal M&M.
You’d be so totally
jealous.
 
His hair is the color of your
favorite dark chocolate and his eyes…his eyes are the most beautiful gray
you’ve ever seen.
 
And the way he looks
at me makes me get all weak in the knees and I can’t seem to stop blushing when
he’s around.”

I
shifted, pulling my feet under me as I continued to tell her the story of how
I’d met him and how mortified Kay had been when she found out he’d seen her
covered in puke.
 
I laughed and I could
almost hear her laughing in return.

I
told her I spent over an hour getting ready for school this morning and my mind
shifted to another scene when I had just turned thirteen.