Hidden (Hidden Series Book One) (6 page)

“Um, humans who search for and capture
magical kind for a living.”

There was so much I didn’t know. An entire
world and a whole career devoted to solving a problem for humans I
didn’t know still existed outside of myself.

“They capture us, you said?” I asked. She
nodded and pushed my plate closer. I guessed I wasn’t eating fast
enough for her.

“Only those of us who break the treaty. If
they haven’t done something truly awful, it’s only a matter of
naming a price higher than what the government would pay for them.
Because of you, I cleared a hunter’s stock this morning.” She blew
me a kiss. I didn’t know how to react. “Bless you, my love.”

“Um … no problem.”

Sophia’s hand flew to her shoulder. Someone
I couldn’t see giggled. “Emma,” Sophia said, smiling.

A brunette appeared next to her. The witch,
I guessed. She should have been the most like me, but she wasn’t.
Not even close. The biggest difference was the huge smile plastered
across her face. Her eye shadow sparkled in the light flittering
through the window. Her cheeks were highlighted in pink blush. She
reminded me of Barbie, or Barbie’s friend with the dark hair. She
was even dressed from head to toe in a few shades of pink, just
like the dolls. If she went to St. Catalina, she would definitely
hang out with Sienna.

“Christine, this is Emma,” Sophia said,
smiling with every one of her teeth.

“Hello, Christine,” she said, in a thick
French accent. She smiled and held out her hand to me. “I’ve heard
lots about you.”

As soon as our hands touched, I heard her
thoughts. I knew French well enough to know she thought I was
pretty. Unexpected.

Her face didn’t show that she’d heard
anything odd in my head. Maybe it was a common courtesy not to
mention it. Sophia hadn’t either. Emma dropped my hand, and the
room was silent again. No buzzing like there was at school. I
guessed that was a human thing.

“Hi,” I said. An awkward pause followed my
greeting. I was supposed to say something more than
hi
, I’d
bet. Talking to Sophia was easier. With the roommates I’d met, I
felt frozen, my tongue and my brain. I wanted to put my head down,
be invisible, like she’d just been.

“Could you get Remi for me, Emma? I want to
have a meeting now.” Emma nodded and snapped twice. Nothing
happened that I could see. “It’s alright, dear. Close your eyes,
concentrate, and try again.” Emma closed her eyes and snapped,
slower and louder this time, and she vanished. Sophia erupted in
applause like that was some sort of accomplishment and magic was
something to be proud of. “My little Emma,” she said, fondly.
“Porting around like a pro.”

Porting? I could do that, and it didn’t
involve snapping.

Sophia took my empty plate and rinsed it off
in the sink. She dried her hands on her dress, yellow with green
flowers around the collar and sleeves, and grabbed my hand to help
me down from the stool. It felt like the room and the world were
spinning around me, leaving me dizzy and confused. Nothing made
sense in this new, crazy world where witches wore flowers and blew
kisses and sprinkled cheese on meatball sandwiches.

Sophia led me to the sofa, asking about my
night, how I’d slept, and if the newscast upset me too much. We
were only alone for a minute. Emma and Remi, who had on normal
clothes now, came in together.

Nathan walked in after them, dressed in
jeans and a plain white t-shirt.

“Hi. I’m Nathan Reece,” he said. He smiled
and waved. “Sorry I didn’t introduce myself earlier. I didn’t
expect you to come in while I was … you know.”

“It’s okay,” I said, straightening my shirt
for no reason but to look away.

Nathan sat on the floor, and the girls took
the other sofa. Paul strolled in, smelling like smoke, and tried to
squeeze between Sophia and me. She swatted him away, and he took
the floor by her feet.

“Okay, kids. I think everyone has met by
now. And you’re all settled in your rooms. I hope all of you are
responsible and respectful, but just in case, I’m giving you some
rules to follow. First one. Please ask my permission to leave the
house.” Paul grunted, and she kicked his arm. “And no going out
after dinner.”

“We’re in New Orleans! Are you kidding?”
Paul said.

“This city has an extremely high number of
hunters, and I don’t want to get any calls in the middle of the
night to come bail you out of trouble. If you go out and party,
drinking and forgetting your control, you can consider yourself
caught already. And Paul, you promised your parents you wouldn’t
drink at all.” He held his fingers to his head like a gun and
pulled the trigger. “We will follow human laws in this house, and
none of you are twenty-one.”

Emma chuckled but dissolved her smile when
Sophia glared at her. “Sorry, Sophie,” she said.

“Next rule,” Sophia said, accepting her
apology with a nod. “No hanky panky.”

“You may as well call this the
Kill Paul
Slowly Meeting
,” he said.

“Thank you, Paul. You’ve reminded me of
another rule. No griping. If I ask you to do something, please just
do it. Backtalk will get you kicked out, and you’ll lose the
protection living here provides. You are safe here, but out there …
not so much. Especially those of you who can’t control your magic
well.”

I felt myself sinking lower into the
cushion, feeling like the comment was directed at me – the girl
who’d lost complete control last night.

“Next rule, until you find a job, you will
be expected to do a chore every day. If it is not done,” she said,
pointing to the door. “You can find somewhere else to live.”

Paul jumped to his feet and walked to the
door. Sophia cleared her throat, and he ran back to her feet,
laughing and rubbing her leg.

“And the final rule,” Sophia said, her voice
going cold. “The most important of all. You will not under any
circumstances reveal to anyone that you have seen Christine. Not a
human. Not our kind. No one. She has been in hiding for years, and
despite currently being on the news, she wants to stay that
way.”

Sophia nudged my arm. I looked up into her
sparkling eyes and saw that she wanted me to explain.

“I’m Leah.” I rolled my eyes. Sophia had
already introduced me by my blasphemous name. “That’s my name from
school, anyway. I’m … a witch.” I swallowed hard. It was strange
admitting that to them. “I’ve been pretending to be human.”

“Can you speak up? I can barely hear you,”
Remi said.

I didn’t realize how low my voice was. I
guess I wasn’t used to talking, at any volume. “Sorry,” I
whispered, even softer.

Sophia grabbed my hand, twining her fingers
through mine.

“She is very soft spoken and hasn’t been
awake very long today. She said that she has been hiding at her
school. She has been pretending to be a normal sixteen-year-old
girl, but she is not. That brings me to another point. She doesn’t
actively practice witchcraft, so please don’t ask for exhibitions
or anything like that. Respect her wishes. She’s used to living as
a human, and she plans to continue that.” Heads nodded around the
room, and Sophia leaned closer to my ear. “Sweetheart, you can go
to your room and get dressed. I’ll be up in a second.”

I untangled our fingers and headed for the
stairs. I caught a glimpse of the rolled up newspaper Nathan had
fetched on a table as I passed it. I could see enough of the
headline to know the cover story was about me. I unrolled the
paper, and there I was, glaring at the world with my creepy trance
face on the cover of
The Times Picayune
. Whatever a Picayune
was.

I shook my head. Hours of sleep hadn’t made
this any more believable. I was partly waiting to wake up in my
dorm room and start my usual dance – pretending to be human and
moving around the dorm like a well-practiced ghost. But I was
really here and around more creatures that shouldn’t exist,
creatures that seemed to live very different lives from me.

I searched in my new closet for something to
wear that was appropriate for sitting around all day.

I pulled on a pair of dark jeans and the
most casual shirt in the closet – a slightly see-through,
loose-fitting one. I’d never worn anything so nice and in this
bright of a color, a mustard yellow.

I pulled my hair back in the tightest bun my
curls would allow. I’d met my roommates with bedhead … and before
I’d brushed my teeth. A wonderful first impression.

I remembered where Sophia had stashed the
sweats and tees after I was dressed, but I didn’t have enough
energy to change. I stepped out of the closet, and she startled me
with her sudden presence again, holding a plate of grapes and apple
slices out to me. “Snack time,” she said.

“I just ate.”

“Snack time,” she repeated. I took the
plate. It didn’t feel like I had a choice. I ate the fruit while
she rummaged through a duffle bag hanging on her arm. She brought
it to a desk I didn’t remember being in the corner of the sitting
room last night.

“Physics. Calculus. Chemistry. World
History,” she said, stacking four textbooks on the desk. She
reached into the duffle again. More books. “French. Literature.
Bible Studies.” She cleared her throat and tapped the Bible Studies
textbook. “You may want to pay special attention to this one. Read
more closely than you’ve done before. It may clear up some of your
confusion.” I looked away, not wanting to debate evil magic and the
bible with another witch. “I want you to spend no less than four
hours a day on your studies.” She pulled a silver laptop out of the
bag. “This will help.”

“You’re giving me … homework?”

“You’re a high school student, and you
should be learning. I checked. You are enrolled in all of these
classes. I don’t know when you’re going back, but I want you to
keep your mind fresh in the meantime. Do you think you’ll be able
to do it alone?”

I’d done the bulk of my learning since I was
twelve on my own. “I’m used to it. Class was distracting,” I said.
I left it there, assuming she’d understand why. “Did, um, your kids
do it this way?”

“No, they went to school,” she said, like
nothing was odd about that. “Three of them graduated from college.
Of course, some of my grandchildren were homeschooled because of
the war. The youngest ones went eventually when things calmed down.
Paul graduated from a normal high school. Emma too.”

I had to look as confused as I felt. Maybe
they just handled the distractions better than I could. “Did they
have good grades?”

“Paul did, believe it or not. Emma … has a
problem with numbers. If you notice it, don’t laugh. She’s very
sensitive about it.” I wanted to roll my eyes at her. Why would I,
or any of us, have a problem
not
laughing? “Oh,” she said,
reaching into the pocket of her dress. “I got you a cell phone.
It’s not very fancy, but it calls and uh … texts or whatever it’s
called.” I’d never had one of my own, but I’d seen enough cell
phones to know that the pink flip-phone she’d tossed to me was
dated. “I just thought you’d want one. The others have them
too.”

I stashed the phone in the desk drawer,
knowing I’d never use it, knowing it wouldn’t ring. That was why I
didn’t bother getting one of the pre-paid ones from school.

“I didn’t think witches needed things like
this. Phones and stuff,” I said.

Sophia smiled and sighed – an infuriatingly
happy sigh.

“Once upon a time when all was right with
the world, we didn’t. Gregory calls technology the great equalizer.
It made magic … less
magical
. The generation after us didn’t
want to learn it. My own children told me there was no point.
Humans were suddenly more capable and cooler with their gadgets. To
me, that caused the tension that eventually boiled over and caused
some of us to lose our minds.”

Some of us? I guessed Sophia didn’t look
like she could do the horrible things I heard magical kind had
done. Home invasions. Mass murders. But neither did I. Looks are
deceiving.

She pulled out her phone and mashed some
buttons, and the phone in the drawer chimed, proving me wrong about
it never ringing already. “I have to admit, this is a little faster
than contacting someone the old-fashioned way. That’s my number.
Save it.”

I saved it under
Sophia
as she
scribbled my number on a torn out piece of notebook paper so I
could learn it. We had different area codes. I was 504, she was
210.

“Where’s 210?” I asked.

“San Antonio, Texas. I got yours here this
morning. Oh, that reminds me.” She pulled out a credit card from
the same pocket she’d pulled the phones from. “Gregory managed to
change the name on the account to Cecilia Neal without anyone
noticing. Neal was your mother’s family’s name. I’m being overly
cautious, but if they’re tracking Christine Grant, I don’t want
online shopping to be the reason you get hauled off to school
before you’re ready.”

“So this is mine?”

“Yes. We can change the name back when
you’re less famous, but I figured since you’re a millionaire now,
you’d want access to it. Check the desk drawer for your bank info.
You can change everything. Greg and I don’t want access to your
money. We’ve been paid the agreed amount. Not a penny more.”

I nodded, getting a bit overwhelmed by it
all, and she excused herself to clean my room. I turned on the TV
instead of doing homework. Of course my picture was on the screen.
I was still Breaking News on the national channel.

“It has been nearly fourteen hours since
sixteen-year-old Leah Grant disappeared from St. Catalina Catholic
Boarding School. The video evidence has revealed nothing more than
a flash of light after hours of digital enhancement. Witnesses
report seeing a woman, no younger than fifty, inside the beaming
light that seems to have swallowed the missing girl. What began as
a kidnapping case for the New Haven Police Department has now
captured international attention. It is an extreme honor to welcome
the Honorable Lydia Shaw to our broadcast.”