Spellbound (18 page)

“It’s okay, Sully. He’s not even up here. He’s downstairs with my mom.”

“Nope. Better let you go.” Then his voice became sheepish.

“Will I, ah, be able to, steal you away tomorrow?” Sometimes I would tell my brother I took the bus and then, I would hang around and wait for Sully. Logan would be usually so wrapped up with Serena, he wouldn’t even notice that the buses had already left. Tabitha helped me out by covering for me if he started asking questions. I had only told her about Sully. It freaked Sully out when I told him about it, but when Tabs covered for us a couple of times he calmed down a little bit. I explained that I had to have at least one confidante or I would go insane with the deliciousness of my secret. I don’t know if he understood, but he at least pretended to.

He had kissed my forehead and cautioned me to not tell anyone else. I promised him I wouldn’t.

“You know it, stud.”

Sully sounded relieved. I didn’t know what happened at the warehouse, but ever since that night, he wanted to get together with me more frequently.

“Okay, honey. I’ll catch you after school, okay?”

“Okay. Bye, Sully.”

“G’night, Jade.”

When Sully hung up, I carefully made sure to erase the incoming log on my cell phone. Just in case. Then I called Tabitha so I could rehash the whole conversation with her.

“Did you tell him yet?” Tabitha wanted to know.

“No. And I’m not going to tell him. How in the world do you work that into the conversation? ‘I know we’re just getting to know each other, but by the way, I’m a witch?’ No
way
am I telling him. I only just learned it for a fact myself. Why? Would you tell if it were you?”

Tabitha seemed to be deciding. “I don’t know. There are good reasons to tell and good reasons not to. I guess I should figure it out. Maybe someday I’ll have to decide.” She added wistfully.

The longing tone in her voice was hard to miss. “Tabs, I’m sure there’s someone out there for you. I’ve been crazy for Sully since I was eight years old, watching him play hoops with my brother in the backyard. How’s that for pathetic? Aarggh. Let’s talk about something else before this turns into a pity party.” We both laughed. “How’s River adapting?” And with that we launched into a lively discussion of our dogs. We talked for so long that this time my mom
did
catch me and yelled at me for being on my cell phone so late. I went to bed excited. I would be with Sully again tomorrow. I called Sage up to my bed with me and I fell asleep with my arms around her, dreaming of my big, strong Sully.

Chapter Nineteen

LOGAN

We got to school early in the morning, Serena and I and the girls. Jade and Tabby acted like Cheshire cats, bursting with a secret, but they were clearly not sharing anything with us. I silently questioned Serena, but she only shook her head. She had tried mindjumping, but couldn’t get anything, and gave up. We figured they were just being silly girls and left it at that. I had concerns about Charlie and River, but I needn’t have. We fed and walked them early in the morning and they went to the door as we left for school. As we were driving, I had a notion they were nearby and noticed them on the sidewalks as we stopped at stoplights and stop signs. When we entered the driveway for the high school, I again noticed them, joined by Sage and Zena, running in a pack behind the school, almost invisible to anyone but us, and disappearing into the baseball field and bleachers. So, they were there. And the girls and Serena confirmed to me that they not only could visualize them physically, they could pick them up in their minds, comforting them, reminding them on a psychic level that they were present and that we were guarded. It relaxed the girls more than any other day in recent memory. We joined our friends in the parking lot.

The talk, not surprisingly, comprised mostly of Dave and Tamera’s engagement. Dave appeared to have tired of the subject already, but Tamera and Patty were just getting warmed up. They spouted non-‐-stop about showers and engagement parties, bridal colors and dresses and poor Dave seemed like he might throw-‐-up. I glanced around to confirm if maybe Sully and I could step in and save him, but Sully appeared conspicuously absent from our tight little group. Where could he be? I scanned the parking lot searching for his tall, athletic figure, sure I could at least spot the baseball jacket he always wore. Sure enough, I did. I found him huddled in a corner by the lockers talking to, wait for it, oh yeah; it appeared he had ratholed a sophomore girl. He had one arm stretched out against the wall next to her in the classic pose I’d seen him use a thousand times. He’d commenced to talking her up and she seemed to be digging it. Then he moved slightly, shifting his weight from one foot to another and I got a good eyeful of the lucky girl.
Who happened to be my sister!
I watched in amazement as she reached up and touched the side of his face, gently, sweetly.

The same way Serena touched mine. Holy crap! What gives around here!

As if she’d radioed into my thoughts, which knowing her, likely she did, Serena flashed over to my side.

“Logan. Logan.” Serena tried to reach me. I turned to her and she read everything on my face. “He has only good in him, Logan. And for your sister, he holds only good intentions. He doesn’t know it yet, but he loves her. And she loves him.”

“He does?
She
does? She’s so young. Are you sure? Because I might have to kill him.”

“I am sure. And more than that, she is sure. You’ll have to trust her. She wants to tell you and she will, soon. Be ready, okay.”

“Okay. If you say so.” I wasn’t sure I could be ready for this, but I had asked everyone to trust me and they did. If she wanted me to trust her, well, I guess I had to show the trust now. And Sully
was
a good guy. I had known him forever and he didn’t have a bad bone in his whole body. Come to that, she could do a lot worse. In spite of myself, I warmed to the idea. I’d wait for her to tell me and give her my blessing, I guess. Serena gave me her sweet, composed smile. She always had the ability to calm me down. Man, how I hoped that would always be the case.

****

The school day seemed to drag on longer than usual. We
were
getting to the end of the semester and with all that going on, it became harder for me to tune in and easier for me to tune out.

Understandably, I wanted to get in Sully’s face. Now that I knew, or at least suspected something going on with him and my sister, I thought it would be right there on my face, and he would feel it the next time he spoke to me. I knew that our years of friendship would win out over any new loyalty he thought he had to my sister. Or at least I hoped it would.

When the last bell in my final class rang I ran a fifty-‐-yard dash out to the parking lot, intending to be the first person there.

Unfortunately for me, my last class couldn’t be farther from the parking lot, so I wasn’t the first person there, but I made it close. I positioned myself so that I could watch every single person who came out of the school. Just a trickle at first, then a few clumps of kids started as a steady flow, then became a surge. Sully always stood out in a crowd. I figured the best place to catch him would be by his car, but I couldn’t find it anywhere in the lot. I thought I knew where he parked it, but it wasn’t there.

Dave and Tamera came out together in the flood of kids and shortly after that I spotted Serena with Tabitha, then Patty, then some of my baseball friends, some more guys from gym, some of Jade’s sophomore girl friends, but no Jade, and no Sully. And where the heck did he park, anyway?

Everyone came up to where I stood scanning the crowd.

Serena came up and surveyed the situation and quickly figured out my plan. Deftly, she moved us away from our friends, assessing my distress level perfectly.

“Logan, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation.”

“Well, somebody better start reasonably explaining it to me right now.” I glared pointedly at Tabitha. I now had a good idea what all the secrecy and whispering had been about lately. Tabitha, to her credit, did her best to feign shock and surprise, but Serena was not buying any of it. Probably mindjumped her and got way ahead of me, like usual.

“Tabitha.” Just one word Serena spoke, but in a warning voice never uttered from her before. And it did the trick. The confession came out in a whoosh of words.

“I’m sorry, Logan. I’m sorry, Serena. Jade made me swear not to tell anyone and I didn’t think it would get to be such a big deal and Sully is such a nice guy and they weren’t going far and she promised to tell you she said she would and she told me she would tell me all about it when she got home and she said she loves him and she has since the third grade and that he loves her too and they don’t do anything they just talk and….” Serena silenced her little sister with one withering glare. Tabitha appeared to shrink inside herself.

“Tabitha, it has nothing to do with Sully not being a nice guy. We all have to know where each other is at all times. We have to be protected. Now, where’s Sage?”

At the mention of the dog’s names, we could suddenly make out insistent barking. At that moment, Zena. River and Charlie made their presence known. We could tell right away that they were alone. I hoped that meant that Sage knew where Jade might be right now, doing what she had been bred to do, protect my sister. “And,” I said, “Do you know where they went?”

“Oh!” exclaimed Tabitha. “I do! It’s the same place they always go. Let me try to remember the name. Something like Sky Lights, or Night Lights. Oh, what is the name, um, some kind of abandoned or closed for the winter drive-‐-in place.”

“Northern Lights Drive-‐-In!” I hollered. “I know exactly where that is! Off Route 3 on the Causeway. Come on, get in the car.”

“Logan, wait!” Did Serena just ask me to wait? How could she? I needed to get there and kill Sully and my sister both, at least a hundred different ways and time wasn’t on my side. I started to give her my best
are you crazy?
face, but I noticed she had a look of fear on her face. I stopped with the sarcasm.

“Serena.” I tried to keep my voice level. “What am I missing here?” “I’m mindjumping her, Logan. She’s calling to me. They’re letting her.”

“What do you mean ‘they’re letting her’?” Suddenly my blood ran cold. I found myself unaware of the people in the parking lot, the sounds of the cars, and the noise of people talking. I only took in the sound of Serena’s voice and my own heart beating, increasing in speed, until I thought it would leap out of my chest and bounce around the pavement of the lot.

Serena reached out for my hand, her eyes filling with tears, her lips trembling, words leaving her mouth, but I wasn’t sure I understood them. I couldn’t have heard them right. Two weeks ago I was a normal teenager. I went to high school and played baseball.

I had a beautiful mother and a pretty, crazy little sister. But our little family equaled ordinary. I could count on that. It screamed predictable. It screamed dependable. Then I met a beautiful, extraordinary girl and my life got yanked upside down. Then nothing meant ordinary anymore. No one asked me if I allowed this to happen. It just did. And now my lovely, accomplished mother called herself a witch and my talented, sweet sister became a witch and my mysterious, unbelievable girlfriend ruled witches and people I had never met before wanted to kill them or me or both. And now something had happened to my sister and it could be my fault. I grabbed Serena and asked her to repeat what she just said. “They took them, Logan. The Council has taken Jade and Sully.”

PART TWO

Chapter Twenty

LOGAN

It had been a week since Jade and Sully were snatched and we hadn’t received a word from them. My mom turned into a nervous wreck. She couldn’t eat or sleep and she just prowled the house with Sheba either in her arms, or following behind, winding around her legs and purring loudly. Every movie I’d ever seen, the ransom call came within twenty-‐-four hours. Serena tried to explain to me that it wasn’t going to work like anything I’d ever seen in a movie. Yeah, I kind of guessed that one already.

Elizabeth had me call the school and explain that Jade and Sully had been in a car accident up north and would be out for a while. I guess I pushed just the right amount on the phone with the school secretary, because she believed me and didn’t ask me any questions I didn’t have the brains to figure out before I made the call. She never asked what happened, or what hospital or anything.

She just asked me to keep her updated and give them the school’s best. I said I would, and hung up feeling even worse than before.

I spent most of my time at Serena’s house. At least over there I felt involved in making a plan or something. I just couldn’t face my mom’s eyes anymore. They were so hollow and without life.

She broke my heart.

At Serena’s house it reminded me of battle stations. I remembered what happened the day of the kidnapping. As soon as Serena figured out what went down, I got whipped into a lather to go straight to the drive-‐-in, no matter the consequences. She soon reminded me just what those consequences could be. I quickly realized that an uncontrolled assault fell exactly into The Council’s top ten. And I knew just how ill prepared we were. She helped me to understand that she or I was their greatest prize, and that Jade and Sully were just the bait. And that as the bait, one false move and they were easily expendable. Serena calmed me down and made me understand that I could end my sister’s and my best friend’s life with one stupid move. So I sat down and I shut up.

Fast. Because these women, they knew what they were doing.

Only here at Serena’s, in the strategizing, did I develop my respect for Eden and her coven sisters. They had come here with an agenda and they had planned, longer than I even knew, had mobilized and gathered some of the foremost talents in their respective fields, and were prepared to do battle with the most vicious and unforgiving evil their world knew. Yeah, they had more than just developed my respect; they had earned it. I gave major props to this determined and single-‐-minded group of women. And the more I watched Serena interact with them, the more I began to understand what made her so special. It wasn’t just the ‘unique’ gene she supposedly carried. It had so much more to do with the way she carried herself. She had a new maturity to her, a composure, probably only hinted at before, but that this crisis had uncovered. In the last week or so, I had watched Eden guide her to quietly, yet firmly, take over gatherings and strategy meetings with a self-‐-assured air and what’s more, the other assembled witches not only allowed it to happen, they seemed to welcome it. It occurred to me that it appeared preordained, as if they were allowing a deposed leader take her rightful place.