Cursed In Love (The Adams' Witch Book 2) (17 page)

Normals?

The girl crossed her arms and pouted. “Normals. Ridiculously boring people like you.”

Holy crap. Had the girl read my mind?

She smirked. “Yes.”

Andrew pushed her shoulder. “Knock it off.”

Open-mouthed, I stared after the little girl as she skipped through the entryway and out of sight. When my gaze finally made its way back to Andrew, his face was tight and unsure.

“My friend Jennie’s missing.”

Almost imperceptibly, his eyes widened. So they hadn’t known this little piece of information yet. Good.

His lips thinned. “And?”

“And I need your help?”

“Help?” He laughed. “You’re joking, right? When have you helped us?”

We did a locator spell and Travis didn’t hurt you when he had the chance.”

His eyes narrowed and the line along his jaw moved.

“I just want to know if you’ve told us everything you know. Our goal has always been the same. We were trying to help find Courtney, too.”

“Yeah, so your boyfriend can strip her powers.”

“No,” I said defensively even though I wasn’t sure if that was going to be a repercussion or not. “To help her. And to be honest, so she could answer a question for me. My goal is still to find Courtney but now I have another one, too. Jennie. If Courtney were here, she’d help me find Jennie. They were a part of the same coven.”

His stance relaxed. Travis was right. Coven meant a lot to these people. It really was like they were all a family. “We really don’t know more than you. You and Jennie were the last ones to see her.”

“No idea who might be doing all the Natural kidnapping? None at all?”

He shrugged. “I’ve really not seen anything like this. It has to be magickally related because who else knows all the missing people are Naturals? It has to be an inside job, but who would it be? No one has taken credit for it. Who would do it if they weren’t going to want something in return? That’s why it all doesn’t make sense. There has to be something more that we’re not getting. There’s a piece of the puzzle that’s not there.”

The young girl stuck her head out. “I told you it was her.”

He shook his head. “I told you. I checked. And now she’s missing, too.”

I recoiled. They thought Jennie had something to do with this. “That’s not possible,” I said.

The girl rolled her eyes. “How would you know? Normal.”

She stuck her tongue out and for a split second, I almost stuck my tongue out, too. Instead, I regained my composure. “Why does she think Jennie had something to do with this? And what do you mean you ‘checked’ her?”

He sighed heavily. “Prissa is a nut case.”

Prissa yelled from the other room. “I heard that.”

“In regards to checking Jennie, remember that day in the school parking lot?”

I nodded. I remembered Jennie getting all weird and telling me not to tell Travis what had happened. He’d touched her forehead. He’d… “You read her mind. To check, didn’t you? She told me you weren’t supposed to do that without permission.”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

Fear and rage built inside my chest. “How about this for desperate? You help me find Courtney and Jennie, or I’ll be telling Travis about that little stunt you pulled with his sister. I’m sure he’d love to hear it.”

Andrew’s face paled and before that moment, I hadn’t realized just how scary or important Travis and his coven were. Andrew’s fingers formed fists at his sides.

Behind me, a loud boom cracked through the sky like a cannon. The noise so loud my hands instinctively moved to my ears. I turned. A cloud of purple billowed in the sky. As the cloud grew larger and the smoke began to wisp away, an S encased in a circle appeared.

Mother Shipton’s calling card.

I gasped. How could that be? I killed the bitch.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I grabbed Andrew’s sleeve. Thoughts whirred in and out of my head. A joke. A mistake. “Do you know what that is?”

“Only because of you. I thought you killed her.”

“I did!”

I watched her freaking burn to death, hadn’t I? She was in my aunt, dammit, and my aunt’s body burned that night. So, what the hell was this?

My phone vibrated in my pocket. Hands shaking, I retrieved it. Travis’s name stared back at me from the screen. I swiped the screen. “Travis?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m with Courtney’s cousin.”

“Jesus, Sarah. What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m helping.”

The little girl crooked her head around the side of the wall again. “I told you,” she sang.

Andrew shooed her away. “Tell your Mom and Dad.” He looked at me. “Does anyone know where that came from?”

Travis swore into the phone. “We think it’s coming from the party spot up in the woods.”

I relayed the info to Andrew. He grabbed his keys from his pocket and ran toward his car. I ran after him. If Jennie was there…if she was there with Mother Shipton for some Godforsaken reason, I was going to help her.

“Stay right there,” Travis said. “I’m coming to get you.”

I jumped in the front seat and slammed the door closed. “No time. Meet us there.”

“Are you in a car? Do not get in a car with him.”

“This isn’t the time to start a pissing match. I’ll meet you there.” I took the phone away from my ear and ended the call. He’d be pissed, but he’d get over it. He didn’t need to waste his time coming to get me. We needed to be focused on Jennie right now.

“Do you think it’s really her?” I asked.

Andrew peeled away from the curb in his crappy little Honda Civic. I prayed this thing could get up to the speed we needed. This was showtime. He turned the wheel, and the tires screeched around a corner. “It doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“No.” None of it ever had.

Surprisingly enough, the Civic did pretty well except when we hit the dirt road to climb up the small incline to the party spot. The tiny car didn’t have the best suspension. It did as best as it could and then we finally pulled to a stop. I pushed open the door and ran ahead. When I broke into the clearing, Jennie was there.

I sighed in relief. Finally, something had worked out. Courtney was there, too. Both Jennie and Courtney were sitting among two other girls and one guy. Andrew ran ahead and reached them first. My legs took me only as fast as I could go. Suddenly, Andrew’s body flung backward. His feet flew up in front of him and he landed feet behind where he’d actually been. I knelt down. “Are you okay?”

His face was pure white and his eyes were fixed on nothing at all, just staring. I shook him. “Andrew, are you alright?”

His chest heaved, and he started coughing and choking at the same time. I helped him to his feet and looked ahead. All five of the missing Naturals were each a point to a pentagram. Courtney and Jennie were the two points closest to us. I searched the clearing, trying to find what or who had knocked him back, but there wasn’t anybody but the seven of us. No one could’ve possibly done it.

I inched closer to Jennie. Her face was tear-streaked, her hair snarled and ragged. She looked as if she’d been dragged through the forest floor. Leaves and branches were in her hair and on her clothes.

She shook her head frantically at me as I nudged my toe closer to her. Her eyes blazed. “Don’t.”

I froze immediately. I’d seen what happened to Andrew. “Are you okay?” I whispered. My eyes still searched the opening for another figure. For Mother Shipton waiting around to do something.

I squatted down as close as I dared get to her. “Is it her? Is it Mother Shipton again?”

Jennie nodded and her eyes moved around the space as frantically as mine did.

“How?” I hissed.

That wasn’t possible, was it? Unless…

Unless she’d jumped bodies before she burned to death.

My heart contracted and my chest tightened as so much pain radiated outward. Had it been my aunt that I killed then?

I pushed that thought aside for another time and relived the memory of everyone who was there in the park that day. Me, Jennie, Drake, Marlene, and Courtney of course. It had to have been Courtney. She was under her spell. She’d been missing since that day.

“Stop!” I yelled toward Courtney’s cousin who inched closer and closer to her. Courtney’s pixie haircut was all over the place and she looked worse than Jennie. It was hard to justify the thoughts in my head with the picture in front of me. Clearly, Courtney looked as if she’d been put through hell. “She’s not who you think,” I said.

Andrew narrowed his eyes. His gaze shot from me to his cousin. Courtney shook her head, tears streaming from her eyes. “No. It’s me. It’s really me.”

Andrew turned toward me again. “What are you talking about?”

“She’s back, right? But I burned the body she was in so who is she in? There were only a few of us close to her that day.”

I moved closer to Andrew, but he backed away. “You were the closest. You tackled her into the fire.”

“But I’m me.”

His eyes narrowed. “But who do you think I’m going to believe? My cousin or you?”

Andrew took a red stone from his pocket. His hand enclosed around it and his eyes shut.

“Just don’t do anything until we figure this out. We don’t know what’s going on here.”

Jennie struggled against the ropes binding her hands together. “Get me out of here, Sarah. Hurry.”

An engine roar eclipsed the clearing and my heart jumped in my throat. Finally, someone I could trust to figure out what the hell was going on here. “Travis,” I yelled just as he jumped off his bike and ran forward. The motorcycle fell on its side, the tires still spinning.

Travis’s eyes rounded. “Watch out!”

To my right, Andrew stood with his right palm outstretched. His mouth formed words that didn’t make sense. “What are you doing?” I asked.

A slight breeze blew my hair back, but besides that, nothing else happened.

Andrew’s forehead creased as I backed toward Travis who looked as if he were three seconds away from taking Courtney’s cousin out. He reached for me and touched the necklace he’d made for me at the base of my throat. Realization dawned on me. Obviously Andrew had tried to put some sort of spell on me, but it hadn’t worked because of the necklace.

Travis’s gaze moved up, and he caught sight of Jennie. He took three steps, but I grabbed him back. “Don’t. There’s some sort of shield. Tool over there already ate field because of it.”

For a moment, delight twinkled in Travis’s eyes, but then he knelt like I had earlier in front of Jennie. “Are you okay?”

She nodded again, but didn’t say a word.

“Who did this to you?”

Jennie’s eyes darted around the clearing. “She’s back. We never killed her. We thought we did, but we didn’t. She’s powerful, Travis. She’s more powerful than you think.”

Travis’s shoulders tensed. “Where is she?”

Jennie’s body stiffened and like a mechanical robot, she stood to her full height. She didn’t stop there. Her feet left the ground. Travis jumped back, and I grabbed his arm.

All five of the Naturals hovered six feet in the air and the pentagram turned so that Jennie was the point in front. Courtney screamed, and the rest whimpered and struggled against their invisible restraints.

Without warning, the other four Naturals fell to the Earth while Jennie still hovered. She descended as if she were an angel. When her feet finally touched the ground, it was as effortless as breathing. A crooked smile flitted across her face and she waved at me. “Surprise,” she said. “It’s me.”

No. No way. It was impossible.

Jennie stepped forward and cackled.

“Jennie?” Travis’s voice cracked.

“Oh no, dear. I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.”

She stuck her hand out and Travis’s body went flying. I turned just in time to see him hit the dirt flat on his back.

Her face froze in disgust. “I particularly dislike him. He reminds me of Thomas Ludington. Disgusting creature. And do you know what he did to his sister? I’d have killed him myself if I was her.”

Her eyes focused on me. The evil witch bitch tucked her hair behind her ears. It looked so foreign on Jennie’s body. The body was Jennie’s, the hair, the arms, but not the movements. They looked alien-like. I hadn’t noticed it before. Could she have been hiding in Jennie all along?

“You,” she said.

I gulped and stood up straighter. I thought I heard a rustling behind me and hoped Travis was okay. I didn’t dare look back to find out though.

Her lips curved up into a torturous grin. “You’ve been annoying me from pretty much the day you showed up at your aunt’s house. As annoying as your father.”

My heart thumped like mad in my chest. She’d killed my father. She’d killed Drake’s grandfather and every other male in his line. Why couldn’t she be stopped?

She held her hand out into claws and then squeezed them together. My throat tightened, but nothing else happened. Her eyes narrowed and her fingers curled in on themselves tighter until her hand started to shake.

I’d seen her do this before when she killed Drake’s grandfather. Was she trying to hurt me? Instinctively, my hand reached for my necklace and the witch gasped. “Clever.”

“I know.” Travis spoke from behind me and thrust his hand out. Mother Shipton flew back onto her ass.

She growled and popped right back onto her feet in a runner’s stance. Jennie’s hair was in her face and eyes, but she left it there as she slowly rose to full height again, her stare never leaving Travis.

Her head whipped around. Andrew knelt next to Courtney and was trying to pull her to her feet.

“Nuh-uh. I don’t think so.”

Andrew froze. He looked from her to his cousin. “What do you want?”

She cocked her head toward me. “This one. She’s a pain in my ass.”

Andrew’s eyes flicked toward me. “If I can help get her, will you let Courtney go?”

A tremor shook Travis’s body. “Over my dead body, asshole.”