The Promise (The Coven Series) (6 page)

I
really wished Kay was here.
 
Or maybe not.
 
The
fact that she and Ethan
were
both MIA today worried
me, if only just a little.
 
Sure, he’d
seen Kay at her worst and while she’d been mortified, that wouldn’t stop her if
she decided to go after him.
 
Kay could
be a bit of a barracuda when it came to getting what she wanted.
 
I know she thought Ethan was gorgeous, but
then who in their right mind wouldn’t?
 

What
would I do if she made a move on him?
 
I’d kill her.
 
I loved her, yeah,
and she was my best friend, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t commit an extreme
act of violence if she so much as looked sideways at him.
 
Damn.
 
When did I get so possessive?
 
I
didn’t even have a right to be possessive.
 
It was only a date.

He’d
gone to the meeting last night.
 
Alone.
 
What if he and
Kay had started talking and he discovered he liked her more than me?
 
Kay was beautiful, sure, but she was also
funny and always knew just what to say.
 
How could Ethan resist that when no one else had ever been able to?

I’d
kill her.

I’d
tried to calm my nerves all day, but when lunch rolled around with still no
signs of them, I’d started to imagine all sorts of things.
 
Billy and Jeff were suspiciously absent
too.
 
What if Kay had broken up with
Billy last night?
 
He’d get drunk and
Jeff would have kept him company, chugging away.
 
That could very well be why they weren’t here
today.

I’d
all but convinced myself I should just go home by the time the last bell
finally rang.
  
What if he decided to
stand me up?
 
His smoky gray eyes flashed
through my mind.
 
Ethan didn’t like
drunken girls, I reminded myself.
 
He
preferred redheads.
 
Those were his
words.
 
Damn, why was I so paranoid?
 
I was a catch, dammit!
 
And I so wanted Ethan to catch me.

I
found a note taped to my locker.
 

Meet
me at Lucy’s – E.

My
eyebrows shot up.
 
He had time to put a
note on my locker, but not to meet me?
 
I
started to fume.
 
Here I was torturing
myself all day and he puts a note on my locker?
 
I shoved my books into the locker and shut the door.
 
I winced at the pain that shot through my arm
with that simple movement.
 
I’d taken
some Motrin earlier, but it didn’t seem to be helping much.
 

Lucy’s
Café was only a five minute walk from the school.
 
When I opened the door, I stopped.
 
The place was packed, not an empty table to
be found, and everyone was
pouring
over papers laid
out in front of them.
 
As soon as I
stepped in, everyone looked up, like they’d been expecting me.
 
The word ambush flashed in my mind.
 

Nonsense,
I told myself.
 
People were just hungry
today, myself included.
 
Still, their
stares made me feel very weird and extremely uncomfortable.
 

I
frowned when I spotted Jeff and Billy at one of the booths.
 
Then I saw Mr. Mason.
 
Crap.
 
What were they doing here after skipping school?
 
Mr. Mason would totally bust them.

I
hurried over and sank down beside Jeff.
 
He flashed me a tired smile.
 
“What are you two doing here?” I whispered.
 
“Mr. Mason…”

“It’s
cool,” Billy interrupted me.
 
“Mr. Mason
knows why we weren’t at school today.”
 
He rubbed bloodshot eyes.
 
“We’ve
been up most of the night.”

“Why?”
I asked and my drunken theory popped into my head.
 

“We’re
working on something with the Senior Coven,” he sighed.
 
“No one can seem to make this stupid spell
work.”

Spell?
 
I just barely managed to keep my eyes from
rolling.

“Where’s
Kay?” I asked.
 
If they were writing
spells, she should have been here.

“Probably
asleep by now,” Billy said wryly.
 
“Ethan
took her home a while ago.”

Ethan
took her home?
 
What if…stop!
 
Don’t jump to conclusions.
 

“What
are you guys working on?” I asked to distract myself.
 
She was so dead.

“
A truth spell
.”
 
Jeff
rolled his shoulders.
 
He looked in
serious need of sleep, but so did everyone else.
 
I looked around the café again and saw the exhaustion
on all their faces.
 
What was so
important about a stupid truth spell?
 
It
wasn’t even a hard one as far as spells went.
 

“That’s
all?” I laughed.
 
“Those are easy.”

Billy
shot me a dirty look.
 
“And how would you
know?
 
You don’t believe in this
‘nonsense’ remember?”

“Are
you forgetting that I grew up with parents and a sister who did?
 
Emily could write those things in her
sleep.
 
She used to bounce ideas off me
all the time.”

“Wait,
Emily talked to you about this stuff?” Billy eyed me speculatively.
 
Heads tilted towards us.
 
People seemed to be listening all of a
sudden.
 
Or was I just being paranoid?

“Sure,”
I nodded and frowned.
 
Why was everyone
paying so much attention to our conversation?

“Hmm,”
Billy mused.
 
“So how would Emily have
solved this problem?”

“Depends
on what kind of truth you’re looking for and the person you’re trying to get
the truth out of.”
 
The last one she’d
written had been designed to find out if her boyfriend was cheating on her.
 
I smiled at the memory.
  
She’d been livid at the time.

“We’re
not trying to get the truth out of someone specifically,” Billy frowned.
 
“More like trying to find out the truth about
someone.”

“That
could be a little harder.”
 
People were
openly staring at me now.
 
I
fidgeted.
 

“Yeah,
we know,” Billy said with a sour expression.
 
“We’ve written this thing at least a hundred times and no one can make
it work.”

“Well,
you’re looking for the truth so you want to work with an Element that’s
grounded in stability.”
 
Emily used to go
back and forth with that.
 
It was
crucial, she’d said, to use the right Element.
 
“Probably Earth.
 
It’s ever changing, but always essentially
stays the same.
 
The truth is simple, but
can expand and grow as it evolves just like the earth does.
 
It’s the lies that we build around the truth
that are complex.”

Jeff
and Billy both looked at me like I’d suddenly sprouted horns.
 

“What?”
I asked.
 
“I picked stuff up.”

“Okay,
Earth magic,” Billy nodded.
 
“What else
would you do?”

“Focus
it around an object representing the truth you seek.
 
I don’t know, a tree maybe?”

“A tree?”
Jeff asked skeptically.

“Sure.
 
Trees are constant, surviving thousands of
years.”

“Something
like tree of wisdom, tree of knowledge, give us the truth we seek?” Billy
frowned, pen poised on his notepad.

I
laughed.
 
He glared at me.
 
“Sorry,” I said.
 
“Couldn’t help it.”

“Alright,
smartass, let’s see you come up with something better.”

I
suppressed another laugh at the blush on his cheeks.
 
Jeff grinned at him.

I
thought about Emily and how she would have worded it.
 
The lines came easily to mind.

“Tree
of wisdom, tree of knowledge, leaves of truth, leaves of change, I call upon
thee to bend your branches unto me and listen as I speak. Show me now the truth
of which we seek.”

“Shit,”
Billy whispered.
 
His eyes were wide with
shock as he stared at me.
 
No wait, he
was staring behind me.
 
Everyone in the
café was staring behind me.
 
I turned to
look.
 
Something flickered at the very
edge of my field of vision.
 
I followed
it with my eyes.
 
What was it?

“CJ!”
 
Billy’s voice held
a bit of desperation.
 
He reached out to
take hold of my hand.
 
I let out a shriek
of pain.
 
He’d grabbed my bandaged wrist
instead and pulled hard to get my attention.
 
Bursts of agony raced up and down my arm, centering in the bones of my
wrist.

“Dammit,
Billy, let go!” Jeff pried his fingers away from me.
 
“Are you okay?”

I
let out a hiss and cradled my arm to my chest.
 
Hell no, I wasn’t okay.

“CJ,
I’m sorry,” Billy whispered, still looking behind me.

“What
the hell is wrong with you?” I whispered.
 
Damn, but my arm hurt.

“That’s
a good question,” Ethan glared down at Billy.
 
I hadn’t noticed him come up to our table.
 

“I
am sorry.
 
I didn’t know you’d hurt your
arm,” Billy apologized, his eyes never leaving Ethan.
   

“It’s
fine,” I told him absently.
 
Why was he
staring at Ethan like he’d just grown another head?
 
And what was that shadow thing I’d seen?
 
I frowned and looked behind me again, but
there was nothing there now.

“What
happened?” Jeff signaled to the waitress.
 
He asked for some ice in a towel for my arm which immediately distracted
me.
 
Wow.
 
Jeff being considerate?
 
What was up with that?

“Nothing,”
I replied.
 
“It’s not a big deal.”

Ethan
stared at my lips and his eyes narrowed.
 
Did my lip really quiver when I lied?
 
I pulled my bottom lip in between my teeth to still any movement.

“It
is a big deal.”
 
Ethan sat down across
from me.
 
“You look ready to throw up
from the pain.”

I
did feel ready to hurl, but I didn’t want to talk about it.
 
“It’s fine.”

“You
are such a little liar, Cassie Jayne Bishop,” he glared at me.
 

“I
said its fine,” I snapped.
 
“Just leave
it alone.”

“Fine,”
he growled.
 

“You
know, CJ, for a girl who doesn’t believe in witchcraft, you’re pretty good at
it,” Billy tried to change the subject.
 
His eyes moved back and forth between me and Ethan as we glared at each
other.

“He’s
right, honey,” Lucy Marrow, the owner, told me as she personally delivered my
make-shift ice pack.
 
“You’re a
natural.
 
Why don’t you come and check
out one of the meetings?”

I
took the ice and very gingerly placed it on the spot with the worst of the
pain.
 
“Thank you, Mrs. Marrow, but I
can’t.”

“Why not?” she asked.
 

I
sighed.
 
I really didn’t want to get into
this right now, especially with half the town listening, but it looked like I was
going to have to.
 

“I
just don’t believe in it,” I told her.
 
“I do my duty and keep the Coven a secret from outsiders who come to
town and I try to respect everyone else’s beliefs.
 
It would be nice if you would extend me the
same courtesy of respecting mine.”

She
looked taken aback by the gentle rebuke, but I couldn’t bring myself to
care.
 
My entire arm throbbed from my
fingertips up to my shoulder.
 
I just
wanted to go home.
 
Date
be
damned.
 
Ethan had
seriously pissed me off.
 
Between the
note and him taking Kay home and his pushy behavior a second ago, I was so
ready to leave his ass sitting there.

Billy’s
question stopped me.
 
“Can I ask you
something?”

I
nodded uneasily.
 
I had no desire to talk
about the Coven anymore today.

“Well,
I was wondering what to do about Kay’s birthday.”

“Oh.”
 
This I could totally get behind.