Brittany Geragotelis - Life's a Witch

“Huh? Nothing. I must’ve been having a weird dream or something,” he muttered.

“What about?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” he said, shaking his head. His eyes roamed over my face as he noticed my morning glow. He smiled lazily. “Wow. You’re really not a Hyde, are you?”

“A Hyde?” I asked, confused.

“You know, there’re those girls who look great during the day, but when you see them first thing in the morning, you realize in reality they don’t look anything like the person you fell asleep next to. You go to bed with Dr. Jekyll and wake up with Mr. Hyde.”

“Girls don’t like it when you compare them to psycho monsters, Asher.” I said it like I was serious, but then let my mouth fade into a grin.

“I just mean that some girls wear so much makeup that you’re surprised when you see what they really look like. And you’re not like that. You really are gorgeous all the time,” he said, turning over onto his side and propping himself up on his elbow. “Your girlfriends must hate you.”

I burst out laughing. Not a great delivery, but I could tell he was trying to give me a compliment. “Only part of the time,” I responded.

“Sounds about right,” he said. Then, without hesitation, he leaned forward and gave me a soft kiss. I happily kissed him back, grateful that I’d had the foresight to freshen up. But the sound of someone running down the hallway pulled me out of my fairy-tale make-out session.

I sucked on his lower lip lightly before falling back onto my pillow. “Everyone’s getting up. We should probably do the same.”

Asher reached over and wrapped his arms around my waist and rolled us until I was lying on top of him. “Let’s just stay in bed for the rest of the day. The others can get along without you for a few hours.”

I shook my finger at him, but didn’t get up just yet. The offer was tempting—part of me wanted nothing other than to stay right there, enveloped in our little love cocoon—but I had work to do. Because the truth was, I wouldn’t be around to enjoy these kinds of moments if the Parrishables wiped me out the next time we met. So right now, Asher had to come second.

“Have you met these kids? If I leave them alone too long, they’ll burn the cabin down, leaving smoke signals for our enemies,” I said. “So come on, get up!”

I threw the covers back and hopped out of bed.

“Ugh,” Asher groaned, watching me cross to the bathroom. “You’re really kicking me out?”

“Yep! Now go clean up and get dressed—because although I’m beautiful and smell like roses in the morning, you don’t seem to have those powers,” I said jokingly, and gave him a wink. “I’ll meet you downstairs in fifteen and we’ll eat breakfast together, okay? And if you’re good, I may be up for another slumber party tonight.”

“ Fine ,” Asher said, sounding like it really wasn’t. But he was smiling as he trudged over to the bedroom door.

When he finally disappeared, I threw on a classic look of designer jeans and a black top that Kristen Bell had worn in an episode of Veronica Mars —one of my fave shows of all time—and turned the knob as quietly as possible. Poking my head out into the hallway, I was happy to see that everyone appeared to be downstairs already. When I was sure I wouldn’t be caught, I tiptoed down the hall to my old room.

This was really why I’d been so eager to kick a cute boy out of my bed. Asher may not have remembered the dream he’d been having before he was shaken awake, but I could certainly remember mine. The dream about Bridget’s daughter was as firmly planted in my mind as if it were my own memory.

And I was positive that if I pried up those floorboards, I was going to find all of Christian’s secrets. This, I hoped, would help me finally decide whether I was going to stay or go. On the one hand, I wanted to do what my mom was asking me to do. She’d never steered me wrong before, and she had ventured beyond the grave to tell me to save the others by leaving for good. It didn’t make sense to me, but it was coming from my mom and that was impossible to ignore.

That’s what I was hoping my little scavenger hunt would help clear up. If there was something in that book of Christian’s that could help us actually win the battle with Samuel, then I wouldn’t have to leave after all. Maybe my mom hadn’t had this info when she’d passed her message on to Emory to relay to me. So she wouldn’t have been wrong, just uninformed.

I was happy to find my old room empty, and tiptoed inside. Closing the door quietly behind me, I turned the button in the knob until the lock fell into place. No good would come from someone catching me—with a traitor among us, I didn’t want whatever I found to end up in the wrong hands. No, the fewer people who knew about what I was doing the better.

With the door secure, I put my hands on my hips and surveyed the room. The furniture had changed from what I’d seen in my dream, so this wasn’t going to be easy. Currently there was a twin bed directly over the spot where Christian had pulled up the boards, and beneath that, carpet. Thanks to me and my extreme dislike of hardwood floors at the age of six (they were cold when you woke up in the morning and weren’t exactly comfortable to lie down on during slumber parties), my parents had installed wall-to-wall shag.

With a sigh, I began to push and pull the furniture until it was situated on the opposite side of the room. I’d already broken a sweat, and wished I could’ve let at least one other person know what I was doing just so I could have gotten a little help with the heavy lifting. But it was too late to do anything about that now.

Snatching a pair of scissors off the desk, I knelt down around where I’d seen Christian the night before and stabbed the blades into the crack near the wall. Jimmying around the edge of the carpet, I managed to get up under it after I pried my fingers in there too, and I started to pull it away from the floor. Using the wall as leverage, I planted my feet and pulled back with all my strength until I heard a ripping sound. One foot, two feet—when I’d loosened three feet of carpeting from the floor, I began to saw at the carpet, attempting to cut a hole big enough to get into the hiding space.

Five minutes later, I’d reached the wood underneath and was practically vibrating with excitement over what I was about to see. I tested out the wobbly boards, hoping they’d come up easily. I didn’t really want to ruin my nail job and I’d done about as much manual labor as I could handle for the day. But all it took was a twist of my wrist, and I was moving the planks out of the way and tossing them on the carpet behind me.

When I looked into the hole, my heart sank.

It was empty.

The hiding place wasn’t all that deep—less than six inches, I’d say—and after all that work I found myself sitting there staring at empty space. What had been the point of having the dream if I wasn’t supposed to find anything? Just another stupid waste of time, dreaming about another crazy, long-lost relative.

I was about to put the floorboards back into place when I had a thought. Sure, it was a last-ditch effort, but it was hard to believe I could’ve done all this work for nothing. Crouching back over the hole, I carefully leaned down and reached my hand into the dark parts of the chasm.

Even though I was hoping to find something, another part of me was scared that my hand would touch something I didn’t want it to—like something furry or slimy. As I thought about what might be hiding under the floorboards, my brain started to scream at me to retract my hand. But I forced myself to keep feeling around.