Enchantment (10 page)

It hadn’t truly hit her yet.

Besides, she was too distracted at the moment
to worry about losing her place at Benita’s summer retreat.

Gray’s body tingled with pleasure. She felt
it in every footfall she took down the Ramblas. She was in a world
of trouble, and yet all she wanted to do was grin at everyone she
passed.

It’s the love spell
, she kept
reminding herself. Even her anger was one of jealous rage more than
humiliation. It made her crazy to think of Adrian going home with
those women at the club rather than her.

Gray had held objects before and felt their
association to the person they belonged to, but when Adrian joined
with her it was like no connection she’d ever experienced before.
Now her body knew his, and that was something that could never be
undone.

She didn’t want it to be undone. To be given
such pleasure, such joy . . . she couldn’t imagine her first time
with a man any other way.

As far as love spells went, this wasn’t what
Gray would have suspected. She still felt like herself. At least
she could be grateful for not turning into an utter dope begging to
stay at Adrian’s side like a lovesick puppy. She would have sooner
thrown herself off the La Sagrada Familia. It was a small comfort
that the spell still allowed her to be herself. The problem was she
truly loved him. Graylee Perez was head over heels in love with
Adrian Hedrick Montez.

He asked, what was it like.

It was wonderful. Gray knew she was supposed
to be appalled, but all she felt was a blissful sense of
wonderment. She also knew she absolutely must get the spell
reversed at once.

Gray stepped off the Ramblas into the maze
that led to Benita’s sanctuary.

Then again, what was the rush? Gray asked
herself as the street swallowed her up. Adrian had already proven
he wasn’t going to take advantage of her once he realized what was
happening.

And did she really want to go back to the
loneliness—the sorrow of knowing someone else was living her life
while Graylee Perez, the copy, wandered the earth alone?

The outer courtyard was as far as she dared
go. She knew Vinuesa would be waiting inside. The witch would
already know that Gray had not returned with her friends early that
morning. Well, it had been fun while it lasted. Gray visualized the
mess inside Hannah’s room and the posters on her wall right before
she felt the long-forgotten rush as she teleported inside the
building.

The last time Gray had teleported, she’d
fainted inside Nolan Knapp’s room. But now, as she emerged in
Hannah’s room, she felt elated.

Hannah was brushing through her unruly hair
when Gray appeared in front of her. The Brit screamed. Gray turned
herself invisible right before the door flew open and one of the
Dutch girls asked, “Is everything okay?”

“Fine,” Hannah said quickly. “I thought I saw
a ghost.”

The girl looked at Hannah like she was nuts
and left the room. Hannah shoved the door shut behind her. “Gray?”
she asked, looking around.

Gray reappeared. Before she could speak,
Hannah was talking over her.

“What happened to you last night?” Hannah
demanded. “We saw you all over that performing wizard and then you
left with him without saying good-bye.”

Gray’s cheeks might have flamed at Hannah’s
words, but they were already red and threatened to remain red until
the end of time.

“And what are you doing performing magic?”
Hannah cried now. “Vinuesa’s going to tell Benita, and Benita is
going to ship you off to Calida.”

“I had no choice, okay!” Gray said.

Hannah snorted. “I knew you’d be the first to
break. They all thought it would be me, but it’s always the one who
protests the most.” Hannah shot Gray a self-satisfied smile.

It made Gray want to rip one of her precious
posters off the wall.

“I hope your American was worth it.”

Way to be a supportive friend. Gray had meant
to confide in Hannah, but she was giving her little reason. “Oh, he
was worth it, all right,” Gray said, sparks flashing over her
irises. “There is no greater warlock in all the world. Adrian
Montez would give his life for me. He’d brave the pits of hell to
bring me back from the dead. What man would do that for you?”

Hannah’s eyes didn’t flash, they darkened.
“Well, it’s nice to know you ditched your friends and ruined your
entire summer over a guy.”

Guilt stabbed through Gray’s chest. Her head
dropped, and she lowered her voice. “Hannah, it’s not like that.
Something happened to me.”

“I don’t want to hear it, Gray,” Hannah said.
She stomped to her door and flung it open. “Save your explanations
for Benita.”

“Hannah . . .” But Hannah lifted her nose and
pressed her lips together. “Fine,” Gray said. “Don’t listen to what
I have to say.”

Gray felt as though she were walking the hall
of shame as she made her way to her bedroom. It wasn’t her fault
she’d been put under a spell.

Inside her room, Gray pulled her duffel bag
out from under her bed and began filling it with clothes. She
stacked everything neatly inside the duffel, taking her time. Why
hurry? She had no idea where she was going. She couldn’t stay here,
and she wasn’t about to go running back to Adrian, either.

She might be under a spell, and she might
love him, but she still had her pride . . . sorta.

Gray stared at the empty drawer after
removing her tank tops and felt a brief moment of panic when she
saw the luck amulet missing. Then she remembered that she’d
returned it to her purse and breathed a sigh of relief. Holding the
amulet always gave her courage and comfort. But when she dug
around, the amulet did not present itself.

Gray dumped the contents of her purse onto
the bed. It was all there. Everything, except the luck amulet.

“No,” Gray cried out in anguish.
Not the
amulet. Please, not the amulet.

Everything else could go to hell in a
handbasket so long as she had her amulet. She opened every drawer
of her dresser and looked under the armoire and then her bed. She
removed everything from her duffel bag and repacked each item, eyes
peeled for the amulet.

Once Gray saw that it was truly gone, she
threw the last of her items back inside her purse and stuffed it,
too, inside the duffel. She was just heading to the door when
Vinuesa stepped into the doorframe.

The woman’s eyes were bright as though she’d
just won a prize. “When did you get back?” she asked in
Spanish.

“Ten minutes ago,” Gray replied.

“I did not see you.”

Gray lifted her chin. “I teleported
inside.”

Vinuesa nodded. “At least you are honest. I
would have read it in your palms regardless.” She looked at the
duffel Gray had packed and nodded again. “S
eñora
Contreras will wish to speak to you before I
make arrangements.”

“Give her my apologies,” Gray said before
grabbing her duffel bag and vanishing once more.

She saw the look of shock on Vinuesa’s face.
This time Gray was walking out of the complex. She’d learned the
hard way not to overdo teleportation spells. Invisibility, while
impressive, wasn’t as advanced as teleportation and didn’t take as
much out of her.

Gray didn’t linger lest the Spanish witch
sense her and somehow block her way out. Better to let her think
Gray had already gone.

She was sorry she couldn’t explain things to
Benita herself, but either way, the head of the retreat would see
it as her duty to either ship Gray off to Benita’s sister, back to
her mom, or oversee the reversal of the love spell herself.

Gray would see to her own arrangements, and
she had no intention of leaving Barcelona while Adrian was still in
the city.

Gray made her way to the nearest metro and
headed in the direction of the University of Barcelona. On the way
out of Benita’s, she’d grabbed one of the battered travel guides to
Spain and flipped through Barcelona youth hostels, settling on the
Centric Point, located on a street corner of the swanky shopping
boulevard Passeig de
Gràcia
.

Gray ended up with a top bunk in a unisex
dormitory. Before tossing her duffel bag up top and turning it
invisible, she pulled out her purse.

The change of scenery was nice. She walked
around the
Gràcia
district, slowing her
steps as she passed a bustling café. She sat down and ordered
breakfast—the standard Spanish fare of a croissant with a coffee
and orange juice. Gray’s stomach grumbled for more. She hadn’t
realized how starved she was.

* * *

Gray waited till late that evening to try her mom’s
cell phone. Her heart leapt with joy when Mom answered. “Hi, Gray!
How are you, sweetie?”

“I’m fine.” Gray had left the dormitory in
favor of an outside park bench. The halls and common rooms of the
hostel were alive with conversation and laughter. “Are you still in
the San Juan Islands?”

“Yes. Today we went kayaking and saw orca
whales breach not fifty feet away.”

Gray kicked at a crack in the pavement. “Oh .
. . cool.”

“What about you? How was Sitges?”

Gray wrinkled her nose. The cancelled trip to
Sitges was the farthest thing from her mind. “The trip got
cancelled because the van broke down.”

“I’m sorry. Is it going to be
rescheduled?”

“I don’t know.” Gray stood up. “Listen, Mom,
I don’t want you to worry if
Señora
Contreras calls. I walked out of the program.”

“Walked out? Gray?”

“I didn’t want to, it’s just . . .” Gray
lowered her voice as a group of teens walked by. “I broke the
rules.”

“You performed magic? Gray, why?”

Gray began pacing the street as she spoke. “I
wasn’t thinking at the time. Anyway, it’s too late now for the
retreat, but I’m not ready to leave Spain, so I’m staying at a
hostel.”

“Which hostel?”

“It’s called Centric Point.”

“Is it in a safe area?”

Gray snorted. “It’s on one of Barcelona’s
most chic shopping boulevards.”

“Good,” Mom said. “Now tell me why you
performed magic.”

If Gray told her mom about Adrian she would
insist she leave at once. Mom wouldn’t understand. She’d forbidden
Adrian from seeing her again. Imagine how she would react if she
knew Gray had slept with him.

In the pause that followed, Gray could have
sworn she heard Raj laugh in the background followed by Lee.

Mom and Lee had someone to love them. Why
couldn’t Gray?

“There was a guy bothering me at a club,”
Gray said. “I should have left instead of reacting. Old habits die
hard, you know?”
One white lie
.

Mom sounded unhappy, but not over the magic.
“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, which is more than I can say for
the guy in the club.” Gray chuckled.

“I want you to be careful,” Mom said.

“Mom, I know.”

“Honestly, I’m not entirely sorry to hear you
left the program. I feel better knowing you have the use of your
powers when you’re all alone so far from home.”

“Oh, I’m not alone,” Gray answered.

At least not tonight.

One more night. That’s all she wanted and
then she’d get the spell reversed. The damage was already done.
What difference would one more night make?

The fog engulfing Adrian seemed thicker than usual.
His legs and feet disappeared somewhere below the white cloud. The
auditorium put up the usual ruckus when Adrian made his way to
center stage.

Yes. Bravo, Adrian. You got the girl and you
lost her all in the same morning. At least he had gotten her. That
counted for something.

But the words rang hollow inside his
head.

Adrian peeled off his right glove and shook
it in the air. It transformed into a pigeon, but instead of
flapping over his shoulder and flying to the gas lamp, the bird
landed on his head. The audience laughed. Adrian took the pigeon
onto his finger and wagged his free finger at the bird playfully
before lifting his hand. This time the pigeon flew to the gas
lamp.

The audience was faceless beyond the flare of
the spotlights. Adrian’s mouth and body performed, but his mind
wandered away with the retreating fog.

Who would dare play such a trick on him?

Try as he might to come up with another
explanation, Adrian kept settling on one theory. This had Nan’s
name written all over it. Curious that the old woman fled just as
Gray had fallen under the spell. The problem was that to do a love
spell you needed more than a name, and Nan had not been in contact
with Gray.

The old witch had made herself unavailable,
which only confirmed Adrian’s suspicions. After Gray left he
discovered a message from Nan on his cell phone. He never
remembered it ringing, and he’d never turned it off. She told him
she made it safely to Paris and would stay with a friend.

What friend? Nan didn’t have friends. At
least none that Adrian knew of. More likely she had located an
unoccupied flat overlooking the Eiffel Tower while the owners were
off in Nice for the summer and was currently holed up pleased as
punch at what she’d done.

Adrian tried the number at their own flat,
but there had been no answer. Big surprise.

The real surprise came when Adrian attempted
a locator spell. He’d gotten a ceramic bowl down from the cupboard,
lit the candles, said the words, and had seen nothing but the
mosaic floral print at the bottom of the bowl.

For a moment he felt a twist in his gut. But
if Nan didn’t want to be found she would see to it she wasn’t.

Adrian couldn’t very well tell Gray that he
suspected his nan of casting the love spell. It was almost as bad
as performing the spell himself.