Hidden (Hidden Series Book One) (8 page)

If I were at school, the answer would’ve
been in the buzzing in the air. Creatures were different. I
couldn’t hear anything unless I touched them, and that didn’t even
work on Sophia.

I sat there for an hour, hugging the pillow,
listening and trying not to look too weird.

“You’re really quiet, huh?” Nathan asked. I
opened my mouth to say something but closed it when nothing came to
mind. He laughed; it didn’t feel like a taunt, more like he noticed
how ironic it was that I couldn’t find a response to being called
quiet.

I sighed. His laugh sounded real,
undoubtedly real.

“Christine, my love,” Sophia said. She poked
her head into the living room and winked. “Can I speak to you in
here, dear?” I met her in the kitchen. “It’s almost time for
dinner,” she said, barely a whisper. “Are you ready to … I mean are
you interested in eating with-” I shook my head, cutting her off.
Years ago, I swore to myself, as I stood covered in spaghetti that
had been dumped on me
accidentally
, that I would eat alone
for the rest of my life. Nothing was going to change that. “I
didn’t think so,” she said. “I’ll bring a plate up.”

I ran up the stairs without saying goodnight
to the three of them.

Remi, in scary panther form, sat still and
calm in the middle of the stairs – stairs she didn’t need to be on,
stairs that only led to my room and the locked one. She didn’t
budge as I approached, but growled faintly as I stepped around her.
Moments later, I looked over my shoulder to check her position.

She was gone.

Sophia brought up four huge pieces of
tilapia over a mound of yellow rice and eyed me as I ate. Halfway
through, I pushed my plate away. She cleared her throat, and I
finished the rest.

After she said goodnight, I opened my laptop
to do something I’d wanted to do for years. I took a deep breath as
I clicked the Internet icon. The curser blinked on the search bar.
I’d never gone past this point, knowing that a big red X would
appear for all sites outside of the few on the approved list at St.
Catalina.

I typed
Witches and Satan
and pressed
Enter. It yielded over two million results in .09 seconds. I
clicked the first one, and a chill crept over me. Exactly what I’d
thought – evil beings that used powers to harm and had a major,
terrible, role in the war against humans. It was the opposite of
what Sophia said. The opposite of what Sophia …
showed
. Emma
and Paul too, I guessed. And Nathan wasn’t human either, and he
seemed nice. The magic in his blood made him change forms, and
according to the nuns, he was strong enough to rip a human to
pieces as either one. Remi too.

Would it be that shocking for the nuns to be
wrong about us being evil? They also thought we were all in hell,
and I was in a house full of creatures who weren’t burning.

I couldn’t ignore it anymore, what Sophia
thought I was. I typed
depression
in the search bar and
found a short survey that warned that it was not for the purpose of
diagnosis; the exact reason I was about to take it.

I entered my age and gender.

Number 1. My future seems
hopeless
.

Was hopeless the same as waiting to be found
and knowing that hell was the only option when it happened?

I clicked the Strongly Agree box.

The next one read:
Joy and pleasure have
gone from my life
. There wasn’t a box to indicate that I’d
never had joy and pleasure, so I clicked Somewhat Agree.

I groaned at the third.
I feel irritable
more days than not
.

I was a little more than irritable. I’d say
I was explosively angry when I couldn’t control myself. I clicked
Strongly Agree.

I scrolled down to scan the rest of the
statements. They were about eating, sleeping, and energy, all
things I would strongly agree with. I closed out the page. I could
see where that was headed.

“So I’m not just a witch. I’m a crazy one,”
I said. These creatures were nothing like me. They joked and
laughed and enjoyed being around others. They didn’t look like they
were fighting rage every moment of the day. If smiling and laughter
required a soul, they all had one.

Something was wrong with me. Not magical
kind. Just Leah.

My chest grew heavier with every step I took
towards the bed. I wished my parents had left a note or something
to explain it all. I wished they’d told me not to worry when the
magic came, that Satan had nothing to do with any of it. And Sophia
had been watching me. She’d taken helpless creatures in for years.
She let me rot there. I wasn’t as important as Emma who she’d saved
several times.

I felt myself shattering as I crawled into
bed. It felt like I was crawling into my grave.

A bark startled me just before my head hit
the pillow. It, well he, barked again, then scratched at my door. I
managed to lift my heavy body from the bed and pull it to the door
to answer him.

He had the same green eyes as he had as a
person, just surrounded by snowy fur. He dropped the newspaper from
his mouth at my feet.

“I saw it already,” I said. He nudged the
paper closer with his nose. I kneeled and unrolled it. He’d written
on my face when he had hands, I guessed.

Play with me
, it said. “You … want to
play?” He barked. It felt like a yes. “Fetch?” He answered with a
wagging tail. Yes, again.

I rolled up the newspaper and flung it a few
feet to the right. He scurried after it and ran out of the room,
ending the shortest game of fetch ever. So I’d thought. He ran back
and growled, playful unlike the panther, and took off again. I
guessed he wanted me to follow him.

Since the only alternative was crawling back
into my grave, I followed him through the dark house. He barked at
a door in the kitchen.

“Outside? At night?” He jumped up on the
door and tried the knob with his mouth, covering it with slob. It
was locked. He whined, a cute disappointed sound, and I opened the
door for him.

He sprinted out into the yard. I could
barely make out the gate enclosing us in the distance. Nathan
circled my legs, a huge splash of white in the grass. He dropped
the newspaper at my feet. This time, I heaved it as far as I could,
with all of the energy I had.

Somewhere between him charging after it and
lowering my arm, I noticed it was the most energy I’d ever expelled
on anything. How pathetic.

I threw it higher the second time. He jetted
after it, flying through the sticky air, his paws barely touching
the grass. He nudged my leg when he returned, first the right, then
the left, then the right again.

“What?” I asked. He crouched, his tail in
the air, like he was about to charge at me. “Run?” I asked.

He barked and I did. It was a wimpy jog at
first, and he was right at my heels. Then I caught a glimpse of the
stars above us, hovering over the home I should be grateful to stay
in, twinkling in a night I should be grateful to be alive in. My
legs moved faster, propelling me through the wet air and wet grass.
My heart pumped violently for the first time without being afraid
or livid.

His bark coached me on until I was no longer
running from him. I was running to feel my heart pound. Running to
feel my legs and arms move with a fervor I didn’t think I could
have.

Running because I’d feared death for years
for no reason at all, waiting for someone to pluck me from my
hiding spot. Waiting to burn. And I would have thought I deserved
it. I’d sat in Mass truly believing I could combust, more than
convinced that the God I prayed to hated me. Witches weren’t
soulless and incapable of happiness. My mind was just buried in a
dark and hopeless place.

When the tears wanted to come up, I let them
without straining. I kept running, because running felt like the
opposite of dying – what I’d been doing for years. Nathan finally
caught me, and I hurled the newspaper in the air and took off after
him. We continued our game of fetch and chase until I didn’t want
to cry anymore. Until all I wanted to do was play with the friendly
dog that barked at my door.

When exhaustion hit, I collapsed on the
grass to catch my breath. He stretched out next to me.

“Do you like to be petted … like a real
dog?” I asked. He rolled over to his back and panted. It was so
cute that I had no choice but to smile.

For some reason, Sophia thought I wouldn’t
notice the strong smell of lemons wafting out of the bathroom at
7:30 in the morning. Or maybe that was her plan to keep me from
sleeping the day away. After fetch, I’d read an article about
depression. I had to stay out of bed during the day and find
something interesting to do instead. Maybe I’d take up art again. I
only stopped because I convinced myself that I was too evil to
enjoy something.

I dodged a broom in the bathroom doorway
tossing back and forth on its own as she stacked fresh towels in
the cabinet.

“Morning, dear,” she said. “I hope I’m not
too loud in here.”

“It’s fine.”

“I’m sorry it’s so early, but I wanted to
make sure I finished your room and made you breakfast before I went
to work.” A dustpan moved to the broom and it swept the little dirt
it had gathered inside.

“I thought this was your job. Helping us,” I
said.

“That is more of a calling. I have a real
job. One that pays human money that allows me to live in this human
world,” she said, chuckling.

“What do you do?”

She pointed to the broom and the sponge in
the shower I hadn’t seen moving. “This. I’m a maid. I’ll be gone
most of the day, but I can come back for lunch if you want me to be
here to get your food for you.”

I shook my head. “I can do that. And I can
clean my own room too, Sophia. You don’t have to be my maid.”

“Nonsense. I want to be, but if you say you
can handle lunch on your own, I’ll trust you to eat enough.” I
nodded, hearing and understanding the concern in her voice. I also
needed to eat more if I wanted to stop being nuts. “And remember
the four hours of schoolwork. The rest of the day is up to you, in
the house of course.”

My heart throbbed, thinking of Lydia Shaw
out there searching for me. I had the sudden urge to ask if we
could nail the doors and windows shut.

She picked up the sweaty clothes I’d left on
the floor last night after playing with Nathan and threw them in
the hamper.

“Didn’t you say something about chores?” I
asked.

“You have schoolwork. They have chores.” She
sprayed the flowery air freshener in a rainbow above us and
gathered her cleaning supplies. “Have a good day. Call me if you
need anything.”

She vanished before I could ask if they knew
I had maid service. I didn’t want to be an outcast here, so I
didn’t want them to know that I’d technically paid the hunter to
free them. I probably wouldn’t make friends, but I didn’t want any
enemies.

She’d made me sweet oatmeal and left it on
the table in the sitting room. I took it downstairs so the bed
wouldn’t tempt me. I tapped my foot on the stool as I ate in the
quiet kitchen, reminding myself to move, to be alive like I was
last night. After, I went out into the yard to see it in the
light.

The kitchen opened to an outdoor patio that
I didn’t notice as I played fetch. Everything was so green here. I
guessed the plants had no choice but to be healthy with all this
water in the air.

“It’s really beautiful,” I said, trying out
positivity like the article said, hoping it would foster positive
feelings.

The words felt wrong and weird on my tongue,
but I needed to try something. Obviously what I had been doing,
which was absolutely nothing as I wilted, wasn’t the right way to
go.

The house was antique, but timeless.
Classic. The back yard was more than a back yard. It needed a
better title, like resort. “Wow,” I said, when I saw the pool. It
was more narrow than it was wide and had fountains on the ends. The
bottom was tiled. The tiny pieces came together to form a beautiful
white flower.

I wondered what kind it was. After a moment,
I knew, even though I didn’t know a thing about flowers, that it
was a magnolia. For the first time, I didn’t want to apologize to
God for a slip. I didn’t plan to practice magic now, but if I
didn’t relax about the little things, I’d be apologizing all day
for the rest of my life. And if I could make it through this week
without seeing Lydia Shaw, that life could be longer than I’d ever
imagined.

It was warm enough outside for a swim, but
randomly splashing around in a pool would be pushing the whole
positive me thing too far.

I treaded through the grass to the front of
the house. Huge columns stretched all the way up to the third
floor, my floor – that was really just two peaks with shutters. My
room and the locked one, I guessed.

When there was nothing left to see but more
of the neat lawn and the gate I wouldn’t dare go out of, I went
back into the kitchen and cleaned my dish. I didn’t have chores,
but I didn’t want to make them clean up after me.

“Morning.”

I spun around spastically to Nathan. “Hi,” I
said. I rolled my eyes at myself when I turned back to the sink. I
peaked over my shoulder as he rummaged through the pantry and
pulled out a box of cereal.

“Last night was fun,” he said, pulling milk
from the fridge. I didn’t know why I was surprised he’d brought it
up. Maybe because I hadn’t spent time with
him
exactly.
“Were you on the track team at your school or something?”

“No.”

“Could’ve fooled me.” His cereal dinged
inside the glass bowl in the silence. “You’re not planning to tell
anyone I actually like playing fetch, are you?”