Brittany Geragotelis - Life's a Witch

I walked quickly over to the back door, sweeping past them. Scanning the yard, I looked for anything out of place or potentially dangerous. My eyes landed on a crowd that had gathered off to the right of the yard.

In the middle of it was Fallon.

I immediately became suspicious as I watched him talk in hushed tones to the group. “What is he up to?” I wondered to myself.

Ever since we’d made it back from the run-in with Samuel and his crew at my house, Fallon had kept a pretty low profile. He was still showing up to all of our training sessions, but he’d barely been talking to anyone and there were whole chunks of time where I’d forget he was even around. I wasn’t sure what had caused his sudden desire to fade into the background, but I was too busy to worry about it. Besides, a little time off from our constant bickering was kind of nice.

But now it seemed like he was back to his old self, which was not a good sign.

Crossing the yard, I thought about what I wanted to say. The group was in such a great place now—we were finally acting like a true coven and not just a bunch of latchkey kids—that I was hesitant to do anything that would take us two steps back. We needed to be fully unified if we were going to win this fight against the Parrishables. It would be bad if Fallon and I butted heads again now.

I couldn’t let him know I suspected anything was off. That could derail my plan.

“Serenity now, serenity now… ,” I repeated under my breath as I neared the edge of the group.

Plastering a smile on my face, I clasped my hands behind my back to avoid looking defensive and then pushed my way through the crowd to get to my frenemy.

“Let’s talk about this later,” Fallon said as soon as he saw me coming.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Fallon!” I exclaimed, trying to sound as genuine as I could muster under the circumstances. He would’ve known something was up if I hugged him, so I kept my distance but flashed him a welcoming grin. This apparently was enough to throw him off, because almost immediately he crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes at me.

“Hadley.” He said my name slowly, deliberately. There was no kindness or friendliness in his tone. The way he was acting, you’d have thought he was angry at me. This didn’t make any sense though, considering the last thing he’d done was attempt to save me from the Parrishables. Unless that’s just what he wanted us to think and really…

Oh, man, I had to get to the bottom of this before I went crazy.

“You guys almost ready?” I asked, as if I didn’t have a care in the world. A few nodded, while Fallon remained silent. “Okay, let’s get started then!”

I left Fallon staring after me, slack-jawed, as I turned and walked away without challenging him about his sudden change in attitude.

If I wasn’t already thinking about the next phase in my plan, then I might have taken a moment to laugh at the stupefied expression on his face. Instead, I took a mental picture and stored it away for the next time I was in need of a little cheering up.

“Let’s start off with Jasmine’s exploding spell,” I shouted before walking over to the porch. I watched everyone break up into groups and begin to practice. Fallon circled up with a few of the guys and they each attempted Jasmine’s spell. To my dismay, Fallon was the only one able to pull it off on the first try, shattering a potted plant on the railing of the porch.

Looks like somebody’s been practicing.

My mind started to whir with possible theories. When could he have managed to team up with our enemy without us knowing about it? Maybe I should have just confronted him when I’d first found out there was a traitor in the Cleri. But how was I supposed to know if he was telling me the truth when he denied having anything to do with the Parrishables? Which he would, of course. It wasn’t likely that he’d stand up and say, “Oh, the Parrishables? Sure, I met them at the mall and handed over every secret we’ve ever had on a silver platter. Surprise! I’m a traitor!”

Yeah, right. Whoever was planning to turn against us wasn’t going to admit it on their own—until our enemies were well on their way to destroying us, at least. Nope, I was going to have to get it out of them. And that’s what had changed.

Thanks to the Bishop family spell book, I now knew just how to sniff out the double agent.

In the meantime, I joined Asher on the porch and began to wonder whether it was possible that the culprit could be anyone other than Fallon. Of course, once I looked at everyone as a potential suspect, it was easy to awaken my inner conspiracy theorist and realize that anyone was capable of turning on me. I wished it wasn’t true, but I had to prepare myself for the possibility it was someone I’d come to care about.

Jasmine always had been a little hotheaded and quick to cast before she thought. Sure, she’d been knocked out at the mall, but the Parrishables could have done that to throw us off. With all that black in her wardrobe, she had darkness written all over her.

And Sascha definitely had it in her to be the mole. No one was that happy and friendly all the time. I’d never really thought of her as a threat before, but that would have made her the perfect enemy.

Then again, Peter’s parents had been the first to disappear and the only ones not caught in the fire. Could they have been a part of the Parrishables the whole time, and could their son be the one passing along information? He’d been one of the few who hadn’t gotten hurt so far.

After enough thought, it became clear that any one of my coven members could have been the one to sell us out. But I hated feeling that way—like I couldn’t trust anyone around me. So after a few hours of practice had gone by, I decided I’d had enough and it was time to unveil the culprit once and for all.

I knew exactly what words to say. Before I’d left my room, I’d committed the spell to memory.

“Hey, everyone! Can you all gather over here real quick? There’s something I want to talk to you about.” I looked around the yard to make sure everyone was still there. I hadn’t sent any of the naturally gifted witches off to hone their crafts alone today and Asher was still hanging out beside me and watching the others train.

Once everyone was assembled on the grass in the yard, they stood there staring up at me as if awaiting instructions. I took a deep breath and smiled confidently at them. It was the moment of truth.

“Are we learning a new spell?” Peter asked hopefully. Over the past couple of weeks, he’d gotten increasingly good at mastering new spells. Maybe being around the other twitches had inspired him to finally live up to his full potential. Or maybe he’d tapped in to some evil magic mojo and was on a casting high from the power boost.

Guess we were about to find out which it was.

“Not exactly,” I answered. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you guys about something. Ever since the Parrishables blew into town, they’ve had us running scared. And we’ve done a great job training for our day in battle. When we came here, I told you the cabin was a haven, a safe place to hide out in until we were ready. And although I thought it was true at the time, it’s come to my attention that it’s been infiltrated by the enemy.”

Gasps broke out in the group and I tried to search their faces for one with guilt and shame written on it. But all I saw was genuine fear—kids were looking around as if the Parrishables were about to burst out at any second and attack.

Since no one had come forward, it looked like I was going to have to perform the spell after all. I thought maybe if I gave the person the chance to turn themselves in, they would take it. But no bother. Ever since I’d found the spell, I’d been looking forward to seeing how it worked, anyway.