Brittany Geragotelis - Life's a Witch

“We have a traitor among us. Someone who plans on selling us out to the Parrishables. This person’s been posing as a friend when they’re really our enemy. And it’s time to send them back to their true coven.”

“Who is it?”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m going to kill whoever it is,” Jasmine said with a growl that sounded completely genuine.

Clearing my throat, I concentrated on the lines I’d been waiting for hours to say:

As soon as I began to say the words, I could tell they were working. It felt like there was an electrical current flowing through my veins. The energy surging through my body almost startled me out of continuing, but I kept going, reciting word after word until I finished the spell.

As I came to the last line, my hands began to shine brightly, light emanating from both palms. My arms began to shake with the magical power that was filling up inside my body, building and building until I felt like I might explode from the force. The spell wasn’t particularly difficult—I’d performed harder ones on several occasions—but for some reason this one seemed to really affect me. Like it was coming from my very core. For a brief second, I worried that I had taken on something I couldn’t handle.

Just when I wasn’t sure I could take it anymore, the magic burst from my hands in two streams of light. I watched as the beams weaved around the group in front of me like slithering snakes, bending and curving as they looked for their targets. People were running around the yard now, scared they might be hurt by the streaks of light. I knew what they were really after, and that only one of them had to worry about what was going to happen when the light caught up to him.

My heart was racing from the intensity of the spell and anxiety over what we were about to find out. Then the heaviness in my stomach turned to nausea as I watched the first stream of magic hit Asher and the second hit Emory.

As soon as people realized they weren’t actually the targets of my spell, and that Asher and Emory had been singled out instead, the reaction was immediate. People were confused, angry, frightened—all the emotions that came along with betrayal—and no one bothered to hide their feelings.

Except for me. Because this was the first time I’d ever been in this sort of situation. And I had no idea how to deal with it.

I’d always rolled my eyes when my friends said it, but at that moment I truly understood what they meant when they said they could feel their heart breaking. Because that’s what it felt like to see the stream of light hit Asher straight in the chest. It was a deep ache, unlike anything I’d felt before. When I’d lost my mom, the pain was more like despair, like the feeling that nothing would ever be right again. But the betrayal of someone you cared about romantically? If I didn’t know it was impossible for a heart to physically bust in half, I would have bet that’s what was happening then.

I’d never felt so incredibly let down in my entire life, not by anyone. A dozen different thoughts started racing through my head, each one worse than the last. How was this possible? Had our whole flirtation been a part of the Parrishables’ evil plans to overtake the Cleri? Would everyone hate me because I’d been the one to bring Asher into our coven? How had I been so stupid to fall for a stranger when I knew from the beginning that there was something sketchy about the way he kept turning up everywhere I went? And worst of all, what was I possibly going to do about the fact that the only boy I’d ever kind of loved was playing for Team Evil?

As much as I didn’t want to admit it, that’s what it had come to. I could no longer deny the fact that my feelings for this beautiful dark-haired boy, who had the most magnetic eyes I’d ever seen, had grown into something like love. Could I really turn my back on that? And if I could manage to ignore my feelings, how was I ever going to be able to trust another guy with my heart again?

Trust. It was such a small word that held so much power—and potential for pain. Asher had taken my trust and stomped all over it. So even if I did have certain feelings for him, he obviously didn’t feel the same about me. Otherwise he wouldn’t have conned me into thinking he cared about me when he’d just been planning to hand me over to the Parrishables.

That’s when it dawned on me: someone like that didn’t deserve my love or my forgiveness.

Asher was a traitor and there was no way of atoning for that. And I wasn’t about to let my feelings put my coven in danger any longer. I narrowed my eyes at him as I came to my decision.

Asher looked down at where the light was illuminating his body and then back up at me. He ignored the madness that had erupted around us and kept his gaze steadily on my face. Despite the yelling and arguing that filled the air, Asher just stood there, mouth slightly open as if he was stunned into silence. And maybe he was. It was the first time I’d ever performed that spell, and for all I knew, it’d knocked the wind out of him on impact.

For the first time since we’d met, he looked guilty. Gone was the cocky confidence and sexy smirk I’d come to associate with him. Now he looked more like a deer caught in headlights. I was tempted to let him know there was nowhere he could run to escape my wrath, but it was too loud around us with everyone asking questions and threatening Emory and Asher for me to respond. And truthfully, I didn’t trust my voice just yet.

Movement to my right diverted my attention just in time for me to see Jasmine and Peter grab hold of Emory. Right away she began to struggle, but they just held on tighter. I’d never seen Jasmine as angry as she looked now and I was thankful that I wasn’t in Emory’s position.

“Let me go!”

My head whipped around at the sound of Asher’s outburst. Fallon had followed Jasmine and Peter’s lead and he and a few of his buddies had surrounded Asher and were holding him in place. As I watched—drained by the spell and stunned by the results—they forced him off the porch and onto his knees. A fresh pang shot through my gut as I watched him struggle.

“Hadley! Hadley, look at me,” Asher pleaded, his eyes sincere. “You know me. I never wanted to do any of this, you have to believe me.”

“Actually, I don’t, Asher,” I said, the hurt coming out like hate. I turned to the rest of my coven members. The ones who hadn’t betrayed me. “Don’t let them go.”

I walked down the porch steps to where Emory and Asher were now kneeling side by side, both being held down tightly by the others. When I stopped in front of them, I refused to look at Asher. I was afraid that if I did, I wouldn’t be able to handle the emotions that would flood my soul. So I kept my attention on Emory.

But the girl in front of me now wasn’t the same person I’d come to feel close to over the past few weeks. Her calm, quiet, sensitive demeanor was gone. Sure, she was still dressed like she was on her way to church, but her face had transformed into something hard and ugly. Her lips had formed a perma-snarl and her eyes were so dark now that the whites were barely showing. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen the evil in her before.

“Why are you here and what do you want?” I asked her.

She gave me a smug smile but didn’t respond.