Everspell (6 page)

I got up, and could tell from the silence in the house that I had to be alone. I knew that meant Logan and my sister were together, and Sully must be with Jade. The idea of that kind of excited me because it meant I’d be alone with the computer. Or alone at the computer. Whatever. I left my room and went downstairs.

A green glow greeted me from the corner desk where the computer sat. I remembered turning the desktop off earlier; why did the screen burn brightly now? I walked over to it and sat down at the desk chair. Something
was
completely different from the last time I sat here. I wasn’t comfortable and I didn’t feel right. I started to get up again when all of a sudden the screen started to
ripple
. I blinked, not sure I had seen it right. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. Just when I felt certain I
had
imagined it, it rippled twice. Then, without warning, the screen bulged and a hand seemed to reach through the liquid crystal screen toward me. I should have run, screaming, from the room, but somehow I felt rooted to the spot. I thought the hand might grab my throat and choke me or something equally as hostile, but it didn’t. Instead, the hand touched my face and caressed my cheek, like I had seen Serena do to Logan, the way a lover would. My skin could feel the prick of electricity as the hand traveled the length of my skin. Slowly, the hand descended back into the screen as words began to appear, letter by letter.

—Hello, Skylar—

Then the cursor came back around to the next line and just sat there, blinking. I realized it wanted me to respond. Up to that moment, my hands had been hanging limply at my sides. I lifted my right hand up and chicken-pecked out one word:

—hello—

And hit the return key. Immediately the response came back, letters appearing lightning quick.

—I’ve been waiting for a way to get in contact with you—

—Who are you?—
I typed back.

—It’s been so difficult.
Logan and Sully are always around—

—WHO ARE YOU?— I typed caps this time to make sure I got an answer. But whoever it happened to be still wouldn’t give me the satisfaction.

—I couldn’t call.
There aren’t exactly phones where I am—

—TELL ME WHO YOU ARE!—

—They didn’t tell me about you having a temper—

—If you don’t tell me who you are, I’ll shut this computer down—

—Temper, temper.
All in good time—

I decide to try a different tack. Obviously, I wasn’t getting anywhere with idle threats. It only seemed to serve as amusement for whoever that could be on the other end of this conversation.

—If you won’t tell me who you are, tell me what you want—
I typed.

—Easier question.
I’m a concerned friend—

Concerned? What was there to be concerned about? For the first time in my life I felt like I finally belonged somewhere where people cared about me. I’d been reunited with my twin sister and by extension, my true family. I had been welcomed by all the people in her life that loved her, and they, in turn, had found a way to love me. I had never felt more wanted or more like I belonged ever. What in the world was there to be concerned about? And who in the heck could be trying to communicate with me through the computer? And given everything that happened at the beginning of the year, how did I even know this if entity had friendly intentions?

I must have been lost in my musings for a while because the prompt waiting for me on the screen began to type again.

—Are you still there, Skylar?—

I had been about to type back a response when I heard a key in the front door. I went to snap off the computer screen but when I leaned forward to find the button, I realized I didn’t have to. The screen had gone completely blank. In fact, the computer wasn’t even on. I found myself sitting there looking at a dark, cold computer terminal when Sully’s shadow engulfed the doorway and then he stepped over the threshold and into the room.

“Hey, Skylar. What’s up? You playing online poker all night long?”

I had to cover. I’d been sitting stone-faced in front of my computer like an idiot.

“Would you believe I’ve been working so hard on the graphics project, I fell asleep? I turned the computer off about a half hour ago and nodded off. I only woke up when I heard your keys.”

“Well, it must be turning out to be some project. You’ve really had your nose to the grindstone on it.”

“I appreciate you guys giving me the chance. I just don’t want to disappoint you.” I needed to change to subject before he asked to see anything. “So, you were with Jade?”

“Yeah.” He was so obviously spun on her. Just the mention of her name changed his whole demeanor. He went from dominant to docile in zero to sixty. “Actually, we double-dated with Dave and Tamera. Pretty interesting. I thought they wouldn’t have changed that much, but they were totally different.” He seemed to be reaching for the right words. “Kind of like having dinner with my parents. Even Jade noticed it. I hope this is only a phase, cuz’ Dave used to be a really good friend, and whatever Tamera did with him, I hope she lets him change back soon.”

“Wow. That sounds intense. Have Logan or Serena seen them?”

“No, but they’re gonna. I made sure and made another ‘dinner date’ with them,” Sully made quotation marks with his fingers and a sour look with his face at the same time signifying just how he felt about dinner dates. “And this time Logan and Serena are going too.”

I laughed and said, “Make sure I’m around when you tell him, okay?”

“You got it.”

Sully turned and headed up the stairs.

“Okay, I’m beat. I love spending time with Jade and all, but sometimes being around her takes as much energy as dropping a transmission in my Dad’s old Chevy, you know. You love doing it, but it sure can take it out of you.” He trudged up the steps.

I waited until the shuffling sounds above me stopped and I thought Sully would likely be asleep before I tried to turn the computer back on. But when I did, it just came on like normal. I tried surfing around the web for a while, but nothing unusual happened. My ‘concerned friend’ never showed back up. Maybe he, or it, turned shy when someone else was in the house. Maybe it would be a one-time thing. Whatever the case, it didn’t come back that night. I clicked around for another forty-five minutes or so before I got bored and shut the computer down and went up to bed myself. My last thought of the night:
Who could the ‘concerned friend’ be and what do they want from me?

Chapter Nine

SERENA

Logan and I were sitting on the loveseat sofa in the living room of my home. We had been sitting there for almost an hour and I couldn’t remember if we had spoken any words out loud. I know there weren’t any words mindspoken. I also know it had been quite possibly the most perfect hour of my life. Logan sat in the corner of the couch and I lay across him with my head halfway in his lap and halfway resting on the arm of the sofa. My eyes were closed, but I wasn’t asleep. For the past twenty minutes or more, Logan had been stroking my hair.

I was dreaming again, I knew. In my dream, I stood in the middle of a beautiful, snowy scene. The ground had been recently blanketed with a pristine, untouched layer of white that had obviously just fallen the night before. The trees were bare of leaves and laden with a full complement of the previous night’s snowfall. The whole scene seemed to glow with the brightness of the white wonderland. Then, without warning, the beautiful snowy scene was awash in crimson. Blood splashed my dreams, turning them into nightmares. I was jolted from sleep, gasping for air and clutching at Logan as my violent reaction jerked me out of his arms. I fell off the couch, my heart pounding with fear.

“Serena! Wow! Are you okay?” Logan jumped up and dropped to his knees on the floor where I lay.

I felt fine. I banged my elbow on the coffee table somehow, and it really smarted, but what bothered me most? The dream. My dreams always meant something but I had no idea what that one meant. Not for the first time did I long for my coven sister Prudence and her second sight abilities. She could tell me what that disturbing dream meant.

“I’m okay, Logan. I am. I just got startled by a dream.”

“Sounded more like a nightmare.” Logan helped me up till we were both sitting on the couch again.

“Maybe a bit more like a nightmare.” I agreed.

“A bit?”

“Maybe more than a bit.” I was reluctant to share it with Logan. It was still too real.

“Serena, you screamed bloody murder. Nearly fell off the couch myself, you scared me so bad.”

Screamed? I didn’t know I did that. The dream must have been much more like a night terror.

“I’m so sorry, Logan. I didn’t mean to frighten you.” My efforts at downplaying it were falling flat. Logan was too concerned.

“Don’t worry about me, Serena. I’m more worried about you. Your dreams always have some kind of special meaning. Should we be worried about this one?”

“I don’t know yet, really. I think I might try and get in touch with Prudence and see if she has had any strange ‘sightings’ lately.”

“Good idea. Meantime, I better get going. It’s getting pretty late.”

“Oh, it is.” I stood up and followed him to the door. “I’ll walk out with you.”

We walked out the front door and down the driveway. Logan saw it a split second before I did.

“Hey! Serena? Where’s your car?”

“Oh, Logan. I hope she didn’t. Wait here.” I closed my eyes and astrally projected myself to Tabitha’s room. She wasn’t there. Quickly, I tapped on Elizabeth’s room and filled her in on what had been going on. Together we mindjumped Tabitha and listened in on her current conversation. We hurried downstairs where I’d left Logan in the driveway. I’d been gone less than three minutes.

“Logan, she’s at the town library with a new friend Elizabeth and I don’t know. Someone named Larissa. Do you know her?”

Logan shook his head.

“Never heard of her. Do we have a problem?” I knew what Logan meant. So did Elizabeth. Logan meant the same kind of problem we had before with Christophe and the old Council. The kind of issue we’d had to convene our entire coven to solve.

Elizabeth spoke up.

“Without jumping to conclusions, we have one of two scenarios. One, she is just being a teenager and is out with a girl and a guy who will turn out to be only bad influences. We’ll find her and I’ll ground her for breaking curfew and stealing Serena’s car and all will be well.”

“What’s the second scenario?” asked Logan.

“We have a problem.” Elizabeth said gravely. She looked at both of us. We knew what she meant without elaboration.

The three of us jumped in Logan’s car and we sped off into the night.

****

We didn’t speak on the way to the library. Logan and I held hands and Elizabeth sat so far forward from the back seat that she nearly qualified as being in the front of the car. Silently, Logan navigated the darkened and deserted streets on the way into town. I saw my car as soon as we pulled up to the front of the library steps. Tabitha hadn’t even bothered to hide it. It sat parked right in the front of the library. And oddly enough, it seemed to be the only car there. Curiously, I wondered how her new friends had gotten here tonight. Had she picked them up? I made a mental note to find that out too. She wasn’t legal to drive herself; she’d better not be ferrying other people all around town.

I fired up and began to jump out of the car to give that girl a piece of my mind. Who did she think she’d been messing with? She could have been killed driving all alone like that. And who would know where she’d gone? I was far into my speech to her internally when I realized Logan had been trying to get my attention.

“I’m sorry, Logan. I’m so distracted. In my head I’m already working through the major dressing down I am going to give that girl for taking my car without permission.”

Logan was anything but contrite.

“Well, don’t let me stop you, but I just want to call your attention to that.” I followed his outstretched hand and pointed finger. And sucked in my breath. He pointed to the door handle of the huge antique double doors of the library. Well, actually, he pointed to what
remained
of the door handle because it had been melted off. A hardened puddle of cooled metal on the cold concrete floor just below the gaping circular hole in the door indicated where the handle had been.

Elizabeth grabbed my arm.

“Serena, look.” I turned to see what she pointed at now. That turned out to be the door frame, which had been destroyed. It looked like something large and heavy had bulldozed it. Something supernatural.

“Oh no. Not again.” I touched the door frame lightly, and could feel the heat still pulsing under my hand. Definitely the work of something not human at all. I snatched my hand back so suddenly I fell back a couple of steps and nearly lost my footing on the wide concrete stairs. Logan caught me in time.

“Serena, what is it?” He sounded concerned, and as I turned to him, I caught Elizabeth’s eye. She didn’t need to hear my explanation. She knew. “Oh, Logan. Tabitha needs us. She’s been tricked.”

I nodded.

“Hurry. Let’s get in there.”

Logan pushed open the door and the three of us entered the library.

Chapter Ten

TABITHA

Once Larissa and Colton and I stepped inside the library, things changed really fast. One minute I’d been walking inside the big building with my new friend and her super cute guy friend, who had linked his arm through mine, like they do in the movies. The next minute that friendly gesture felt more like an arm-lock, the way the jerks in gym class did when they were screwing around.

“Hold her tightly Colton. I don’t want her squirming around while I extract the blood.”

Excuse me, what?
Extract the what?
Are we talking about my blood?
Before I had a chance to wrap my head around how exactly we would be “extracting the blood”, I felt the stick of the needle.