Cara Shultz - Spellcaster

I looked up, and the bus had cleared out. I gave Cisco and Jenn hugs goodbye, and walked off the bus as quickly as I could, barely stopping myself from just running straight into Brendan’s arms.

“What’s going on?” he asked, taking my hand in his as we began walking slowly to the train station.

“Not here. People are looking,” I said quietly, casting a glance around at the students milling about.

“Don’t care. Are you okay?” he asked, kissing the top of my head softly. Finally I shook it back and forth, frowning.

“I knew it. As soon as I saw you, I just knew something was wrong,” he whispered, dropping my hand to rest his arm across my shoulder, tucking me into his side. “Let’s just get out of here.”

Chapter 4

“So is that everything?”

I searched for some kind of anger in Brendan’s eyes, but I didn’t see it. Just concern—and a little frustration at being kept in the dark—but there wasn’t anything hard in those glittering green eyes as he rested on his left side, his head propped up with his hand.

I nodded and he shut his eyes, taking a deep breath before leaning over me, steadying his balance with his palm resting over my left shoulder and taking care not to hit my raw knee. We were barely dressed, and we were sprawled out on his large bed in his family’s empty, palatial town house—but the situation was anything but romantic. For starters, I held a bag of frozen vegetables against my knuckles. Cisco was right, they were red. And puffy. And nothing sets the scene like a melting bag of broccoli. Seriously, it’s the sexiest vegetable.

Brendan just had on an undershirt and his black school pants, and my clothing was in the washing machine on the floor underneath his—yes, he had an entire floor for a bedroom. So Brendan, an only child whose parents traveled a lot, had the place to himself. He was like a teenage Bruce Wayne, but without a driver’s license for the Batmobile. In fact, none of my New York friends had their licenses.

I was in a pair of Brendan’s boxer shorts and one of his T-shirts, which hung on me like an oversize shirtdress, but when I showed him the knife, any possibility of romance went out the window. All my rage and thoughts of vengeance joined it as soon as I’d stepped foot in his room. I started sobbing, stuttering out everything—the spell that foretold disaster for me and possibly Brendan, Angelique’s mystical sense of doom, which clearly predicted the attack at the Cloisters, the magic mojo I summoned to disarm my attacker—even Kristin and Kendall’s catty commentary. I probably should have left that last part out, but every lurid detail of the past twenty-four hours came tumbling out as I blubbered like a big stupid baby in his arms. I even continued to blubber while he gently tended to my shredded knee, cleaning it and getting the splinters out while I sat on the rim of the bathtub in his messy bathroom, blowing my nose into a continuous roll of toilet paper like the sexy beast I am.

“I understand why you think you had to wait to tell me about the spell you and Angelique did, but I need you to promise me that you won’t keep things from me anymore, even if you think you’re just looking out for me,” Brendan implored, wiping away an escaping tear with his thumb. I thought I had gotten them all out, but much like me, a few of my tears liked to run late.

“Okay.” I sniffled, blinking back the rest.

“Don’t just ‘Okay’ me, please,” he said a little more firmly, his voice getting more agitated as he continued to speak. “We talked about this only yesterday, remember?”

He pulled at his black hair, frustrated. “Promise me you won’t keep this kind of stuff from me, not even for a little while. Especially when it’s something magical! I mean, hell Emma, only four months ago, we beat a millennium-old curse that could have tortured our very souls for all eternity. I’m not asking you to tell me every time you use the damn bathroom, but when you do a spell that indicates that there’s a major evil out there for you, that’s even stronger than us—because that’s what those crystals meant, right? A billion evil little crystals and one tiny red one for us?—then I need to know!”

He took a deep breath and shook his head bitterly.

I whispered another apology.

“Stop apologizing,” Brendan moaned, rolling onto his back next to me with such force he almost hit the wall. He rubbed his face with his hands so hard I thought he was going to take his nose off. Then Brendan propped himself back up on his elbow.

“Emma, I know there’s magic at play here, but can you do me a favor and remember that you’re also in New York City?” he asked, and this time I did see anger glinting in those green eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you thought this spell meant something had come gunning for me, right? Well, so what if it had?” Brendan threw his hand in the air, exasperated. “That doesn’t mean some random crackhead wouldn’t still try attacking you if you were alone somewhere!”

“I thought I’d be fine in the daytime!” I defended myself. “I was in a park on a school trip, and I just had to get away from everyone for a minute.”

“Still, Emma. And I have another question. Did it ever even cross your mind to, oh, I don’t know, call 911?” I flinched at his harsh tone.

“Um, maybe you missed the part where I kicked his ass?” I retorted angrily.

“So? Emma, I don’t care how you disarm someone—with a few self-defense moves I taught you, or with magic, or with Mace, or they somehow get burned to a crisp by fireballs you summoned from the sky—if someone attacks you, you call the police,” he said through his teeth.

“Brendan, I didn’t even have a description,” I protested, and he cut me off.

“I don’t care. You should have—”

“Okay, Brendan, I call the police. And say what, exactly?” I fired back, throwing the bag of frozen broccoli on the nightstand angrily. “‘Hey, someone—a guy, I’m assuming—in a blackout mask clearly bought on the clearance shelf at Ricky’s the day after Halloween, pushed me into a tree. So I used these self-defense moves my semi-notorious boyfriend taught me, I punched him in the face, then he asked to cut me, so I used a repulsion spell to kick him, through the air, about twenty feet away. And I think he stole Ashley’s hair clip.’

“One more thing,” I continued, annoyed. “Don’t forget that I would have had to turn over that evil-looking knife before Angelique could get a good look at it.”

I pushed myself up on my elbows and pointed at the knife, which sat across the room on top of Brendan’s desk, and shuddered as if it could somehow fly across the room and stab me. For all I knew, that’s what it was designed to do.

“That knife is just more of a reason why you should have called the cops. Someone comes at you with a knife, you call the people with guns,” Brendan demanded, his eyes narrowing.

“Did you get a look at that thing? It’s clearly a ritual knife—they’re called athames,” I explained, still irritated. “And that one looks like it was designed with a very clear purpose.”

“The police deal with the occult all the time, Emma. Assault is assault, no matter what sorcery this guy might worship at home.”

“And how would I explain how I got away? I couldn’t exactly tell them about the spell I used to disarm this psycho! They’d think I was insane,” I argued, slamming my fist down and wincing when my sore knuckles struck the pillow-topped mattress. I dropped my elbows and let my head fall back against his pillow. “Think about it. I’d be the one locked up in a padded room. They’d think I was making it up for attention or something. I mean, who gets attacked twice in four months? We have to figure this out on our own. Besides, could you imagine if people knew spells worked? That’s why Angelique is always telling me that real witchcraft isn’t something we want to go around advertising.”