Unbound (29 page)

“What did you guys do?” I demanded. They looked guiltily at each other.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Harrison said, looking above me. He was lying.

“Don’t make me cast a truth spell!” I threatened.

Ethan sighed, “How did you find out?”

“Natalie told me. Supposedly Mike got mugged.” We examined each other’s faces, not sure how anyone would react. Harrison laughed first. Then I did and Ethan next. “I shouldn’t be laughing about this,” I said, unhappy with myself for not feeling bad.

“Why not?” Ethan put his arm around my waist. “That guy’s a total douche. He needed to be taught a lesson.”

“Nobody hurts my sister and gets away with it.” Harrison looked rather happy with himself.

“You’re right.” I put one arm around Ethan’s shoulders and the other around Harry’s. “Thanks guys.”

“You know what the really creepy part is?” Harrison asked, shrugging off my hug. “That jackass showed up at a party with date-rape drugs, like he just happened to have some.”

“Ew, like he was planning on using it the whole time…” I trailed off, thinking of some other poor innocent girl. Now I wished I had thrown a punch in Mike’s face.

“Besides,” Ethan’s face turned serious. “I let him off easy. I should have severed his balls with a rusty knife.”

Harrison stared, unblinking, at Ethan before saying, “Gotta go to practice. See ya later sis, Ethan.” He nodded his head the way guys do instead of saying ‘bye’. Ethan came with me to the barn and then back to my house.

“What do you want for dinner?” I asked Ethan as I let Romeo out of his cage to bounce around my room.

“Don’t know.”

“That helps.” I tossed ideas around in my head as we walked downstairs and into the kitchen. I opened the fridge. “How about Italian sausage and spaghetti?”

“Sounds good.” Ethan was standing behind me. He slipped his hands around my waist and kissed my neck. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back. Hunter jumped up with a
ruff
causing us to snap into alertness. Mom, wearing a white lab coat, walked into the kitchen.

“Hey Mom.”

“Hi honey. Hello…” She searched her memory for Ethan’s name. In her defense she’d never actually met him. “…Ethan.”

“Good evening, Mrs. Benson. How are you?” Ethan asked, his arms still around me. I gently elbowed him away.

“Oh, tired as usual.” She took off the lab coat. “Is Anora really making dinner?”

“I
can
cook, you know.”

“Of course you can, but you never do. I should get out the camera,” Mom joked before she went into her room to change.

“Did you talk to them about going away for the weekend?” Ethan put his arms around me again.

“Not yet, I’ll ask my mom tonight.”

“Ok, remember the plan is that we’re going to see my aunt in Maryland who has horses, so that’s why you want to come. And tell them to call my dad if they want to talk to him, which should help persuade them.”

“Ok.” I nodded and went about getting dinner ready. Mom joined us in the kitchen again. “Hey Mom, is it ok if I go back to my house in Indiana? Ethan will be with me so I won’t be alone.”

Mom stared blankly into space for a few seconds before answering. “Sure, sounds like fun.”

The look on Ethan’s face was priceless. I turned back to the sausages to cover my silent laughter. “You’re ok with me being alone with my incredibly attractive boyfriend all weekend, all alone, just the two of us, right?”

“Of course, sweetie, why wouldn’t I be?”

Ethan looked at me in bewilderment. I crouched down to get a pot from the cabinet under the counter. He knelt down to.

“What did you do?”

“Agreeance spell. Pretty awesome, isn’t it?”

“Yea,” he said, sounding very impressed. I filled the pot with water and turned the burner on just long enough for Mom to hear it clicking on. When she wasn’t looking, I held my hands over the pot and waiting a few seconds for the water to bubble with heat.

“Whoever said watched pots never boil never saw you in action,” Ethan whispered in my ear, causing me to shiver from his warm breath so close to my skin and laugh at his lame joke.
 

Chapter 8 For the First Time

“So remind me again how you’re able to do this?” Laney asked me at the end of the day on Friday.

“I cast a spell on my parents to make them agree with me. Thanks to it, they have no problem with me spending a weekend with Ethan.”

“That is so freaking awesome!”

“What’s so freaking awesome?” Josh had just arrived at our lockers.

“Annie gets to go on a weekend get away with her boyfriend.”

“And your parents are ok with it?”

“Yea.” I smiled. “It’ll be fun!”

“Um, ‘fun’, of course,” Josh joked. I turned to Laney.

“Thanks again for helping with Mystery and Neptune. I owe you.”

“I’m sure I can think of something for you to do to pay me back,” she said with a wink. “Have fun this weekend!” She hugged me. I really hoped I’d have fun. But since the purpose of the trip was to look for demons, I had my doubts.

I went to the barn before heading home. I brushed and exercised the horses. I ran out to the truck to grab something and ran back into the barn. I wrapped my arm around Mystery’s neck and buried my face in his mane. He smelled like hay and pine shavings, two of my favorite scents. “I’ll miss you boy.” I pulled a charm out of my pocket and braided it into Mystery’s mane. The charm was a Blue Glass Nazar Boncugu (which was the Evil Eye protection bead; a bead made out of glass that resembled an eye), a stone with a natural hole in the middle and a small lock of my own hair, all tied together with white yarn. I did the same to Neptune. I hoped the charms stayed in.

                                                                                                                                               
I had a few more things to pack and I wanted to double check what I had already packed to make sure I had everything I needed. Ethan thought it would be a good idea to bring Hunter, so I had to put together a suitcase for him too. I loaded everything up in the back of the pickup, said bye to Romeo and headed over to Ethan’s. It was nearing six-thirty and I knew Ethan would want to leave as soon as possible. He said the drive would take us about ten hours. I felt bad for Hunter having to be stuck in the car for that long. I’d have to make sure we stopped often enough to get him out and walking around.

We drove the first four hours to Indiana without stopping. After a twenty minute walk around an empty parking lot, I buckled Hunter back in the backseat. Ethan said he’d drive the rest of the way. He got to sleep in today and wasn’t as tired as I was. Plus, like most guys, he seemed to enjoy driving. I tried to stay awake and talk to him, but at two AM I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore.

The sun was rising when we pulled onto the gravel driveway. A sense of belonging filled my heart when I looked at the white Victorian.

“You weren’t kidding when you said this place was big.” Ethan got out of the truck and grabbed two suitcases. I unbuckled Hunter and debated letting him run loose or not. I decided to go ahead and let him, and I watched him carefully as he ran around, tailing wagging wildly as he smelled his new surroundings. I grabbed the remaining bags and joined Ethan on the porch. I set the bags down and patted my pockets.

“Oh my God. I left the key at home!” I said as seriously as I could. Ethan’s eyes widened. “Just kidding!” I pulled it out of my back pocket.

“I would have kicked the door down,” Ethan chuckled. Hunter sprang up the steps and pushed ahead of me as soon as the door was open, wanting to be the first to check everything out. I made sure to lock the door. Before Ethan and I lugged the suitcases upstairs (and into the master bedroom), we joined Hunter in making sure the premises were indeed safe.

After using the bathroom, Ethan stripped down to his dark green boxers and collapsed into bed. I hastily washed my makeup off and did the same. I pressed myself close to Ethan’s bare, muscular chest. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me. “Love you, Annie,” he whispered.

“Love you too.” We both quickly drifted into some much needed sleep.

I woke up first at half past one in the afternoon. Hunter was sleeping at the end of the bed. I didn’t realize before how big the bed was; Ethan, Hunter and I fit comfortably together. Ethan had rolled over on his stomach in his sleep. His left arm was to me, and I traced over his tattoo with my finger. I wanted to know the origin of the design. Whose zodiac symbols were these? What did the eye represent? My light touch caused Ethan to stir, and I drew my hand away, not wanting to wake him up. Still asleep, he tossed an arm around me and pulled me in. I smiled, put an arm around him too, and ended up dozing off for another hour.

“Shoot,” I said after Ethan and I finally got up. “We wasted most of our day.”

Ethan shrugged. “Yea, but there’s nothing we can do about it now. Let’s just get a move on.”

I buckled my weapon belt around my waist. Ethan got his own weapon of choice from his bag.

“You brought a
gun
?” I asked, disbelief in my voice.

“Uh, yea. We don’t know what we might be facing.” Ethan seemed totally comfortable with that thing in his hands.

“I thought you couldn’t kill demons that easily.”

“You can’t.” He loaded the gun. I didn’t know much about guns so I had no idea what kind it was. But I can say that it was a hand gun. It was black and looked just like the ones in movies. He stuck it in the waist of his pants, also like in the movies. “But shooting them is a good distraction, if all else fails.”

“That’s cheerful.” I pulled the dagger out of its sheath. I ran my finger over the cool metals that made up the blade. I remembered something Ethan told me the day the Pricolici attacked. “This was made for killing demons, wasn’t it?” He looked over to see what I was talking about.

“Yea. That’s why you have the three metals: silver, copper and brass make the blade and the Coven Seal is inlaid in iron.”

“But that’s not possible, right? I mean for regular people to make.”

“Right. It was forged with magic.”

No wonder it felt so smooth and seamless. We headed towards the basement stairs. I kept Hunter on a leash; I didn’t want him to run ahead this time. Feeling like I was stuck in a rerun of my dreams, I opened the door and slowly went down the steps. I pulled the string to turn on the single light. No rituals were going on, no one was being sacrificed. Ethan walked around slowly, looking for anything that could signal us to what might have happened here. Hunter sniffed along the walls. I closed my eyes and tried to pick up on anything. But none of us got anything weird. A large storage closet revealed an old bookshelf but nothing else. Relieved and a bit puzzled, we went back upstairs.

My stomach growled. “I’m gonna get us something to eat. You stay with Hunter?”

“I can come with,” Ethan offered. I shook my head.

“We don’t have much time and there are still a lot of boxes to go through. I’ll be ok on my own for a half hour or so.”

“I know you will be.”

 
Once I returned, we at a late lunch and walked around the yard, looking for clues but came up empty handed again. Reluctantly, we went back into the attic to go through the remaining boxes. Shoved up against a wall, covered with a drop-cloth and hidden behind a box of old clothes was a bookshelf. On this shelf were several diaries, a huge wooden crate full of different colored candles, and a very old looking, gold hourglass. Ethan and I thumbed through the diaries.

“I think I found something!” I moved over by Ethan. “Here, it’s talking about bird demons, wait never mind. It says ‘bird demonstrations’.” I skimmed the page. “Oh, Aunt Estelle was part of a group that worked with endangered species.” Behind the book shelf were several old bird cages, one had obviously not been cleaned before being shoved in the far corner of the attic. I wrinkled my nose and moved on.

Ethan ran his hands through his hair, making it stick up all crazy in a way that I found to be oddly sexy. “Let’s put these aside for now. I can’t stand being up here anymore. It’s too stuffy.”

We went out on the turret. A breeze blew through my hair. It felt so good. I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the wind. I felt Ethan’s arms wrap around me. I twisted around and kissed him.