Five: Out of the Pit (Five #2) (19 page)

We sat at the tables and removed the lunches from our packs. Thankfully the queasiness from the Dark Magic area subsided as I pulled my sandwich from the plastic wrap.

I’d taken one bite when I heard voices and laughter coming from the part of the trail I couldn’t see. I recognized Alec’s voice and started to stand. Even though I was still mad at him and Johnathan, I decided to extend my hand in reconciliation and invite them to eat lunch with us. Then I heard the high pitched laughter of a girl. A couple more girls joined in.

I dropped my sandwich on the table and hurried over to the edge of the rock wall that blocked my view of them. I peeked around the edge and my heart cracked into a million sharp pieces, all of them piercing my constricted chest.

Johnathan, his back toward me, walked with quick steps. A giggling blonde practically jogged to catch up to him. The same girl from the day before.
Katrina
. I covered my mouth, afraid if I didn’t, the sob forming in my throat would escape.

Halli came up beside me. I put a finger to her mouth to shush her before she said anything that might alert them to our presence. She watched alongside me as the girl caught up and sidled up next to Johnathan—and she grabbed his hand.

She
grabbed his hand
.

He looked down at their clasped hands for a second, his limp in her grip. Her other hand came around to rest on his upper arm. “Your hands are so warm, Johnny! Are your lips as warm, I wonder?” Then she giggled again.

The high-pitched, fake, flirty sounds spewing from her mouth did it. An angry, choked growl escaped my throat. Johnathan, Alec, Seth and the girls all stopped in their tracks and turned toward Halli and me.

The hurt quickly turned to anger. I felt the heat rush to my cheeks as I narrowed my eyes. Joe walked over and looked from Johnathan, to Katrina, to me. The anger-magic that had helped me defeat a foe or two, started coursing through me. My hair tried to pull free of its ponytail as the static of the magic reached it. My fingertips tingled with energy. I knew the blue veins of electricity would soon start shooting from them.

I flipped around, closed my eyes—and portalled away from there
…
without first thinking of where I wanted to go.

ot my best idea.

The feeling of suffocation closed around me. Shooting stars broke through the complete darkness as I started to fade from consciousness.
This is it. I really screwed up now.

The funny thing was, I didn’t care. Even dead seemed better than seeing Johnathan with someone else. The intense pressure in my chest made me sure it was collapsing in on itself from lack of air. There was nothing in the
in-between
to breathe in. There was no air in nothingness.

I closed my eyes and waited for whatever came next.

My feet hit solid ground and I collapsed before gulping in huge lung-fulls of oxygenated air. I was afraid to open my eyes. Afraid of where I’d ended up without having a specific place in mind.

I decided to open just one eye. I peeked out of my right eye and saw trees. Lots of trees. I felt grass under my bare hands. I opened both eyes. I faced a familiar forest.

I rolled to my back, pushed up onto my elbows and looked around. I gasped at what I saw. I had portalled to the backyard of my old home. My parents’ home. My heart skipped a beat as anxiety and hopefulness battled it out there. A longing for home I hadn’t known existed pushed its way forward. A tear slipped from one eye as I thought about my mother’s embrace, welcoming me home.

I stood slowly and took a closer look. The once perfectly groomed lawn was overgrown with weeds. I walked toward the house. Some of the blinds were askew. The paint on the back door was peeling.
Sadie,
I thought.
Where’s my dog?
I spun around to see her doghouse, empty and in disrepair.

I opened my
sight
to make sure there was nothing
otherworldly
going on here. Nothing strange popped out so I closed my
sight
and walked toward the back door. The doorknob rattled in my hand. It took me only a matter of seconds to pick the lock with magic. I stepped inside to an empty shell of the home I’d grown up in. They were gone. I’d never planned to go back here, but it was nice to think they would always be here if I changed my mind. I wandered into the now empty family room and sat on the carpet.

Where did they go?
I dropped my head in my hands. Mostly, I was glad my parents weren’t there. I had no idea how they would react to me showing up, literally, out of nowhere. Plus, it would have been really hard to leave them again—that’s assuming they’d want anything to do with me. It seemed like such a long time since my dad had caught me using magic, freaked out, and tried to send me away to a treatment facility for troubled youth—had it really only been six months ago?

My mom had cried her eyes out the day they’d come to get me. She would have wanted me to stay today—if she’d been home. I was sure of that. And, I knew I wouldn’t have been able to. I stayed on the floor, remembering my sweet, quiet mom, until I grew too cold to sit any longer.

I went back outside and found a large rock. I brought it back in, placed it in the empty fireplace, and heated it up with a warming spell which I locked in place so the warmth wouldn’t fade. I curled into a ball in front of the warmth and cried. Cried for the home the little girl in me thought would always be there, full of the furniture I grew up with. Full of my parents. Mostly, though, I cried about Johnathan.
How could he?
The scene with the blonde girl kept replaying in my head like a nightmare brain DVD set to loop. The worst part was when she’d held his hand—and he just
let
her.

I now understood how he must have felt seeing me with the Incubus. But, that was different. I was under a spell. I fought him. I resisted. Johnathan did not appear to be resisting. In fact, he appeared to be enjoying himself. And, Katrina wasn’t an Incubus, or Succubus. She was just a pretty, dumb, bleached blonde, bimbo.

There wasn’t a scrap of food to be found in the house, which was fine because my appetite was completely destroyed anyway. There was also no evidence as to where my parents could have gone or why they’d left. Nothing. Just an empty house. I wandered into my old bedroom, still painted the hideous sky blue I’d insisted on when I was twelve. But it was empty of every other memory.

I decided to stay there overnight. I needed to think about things before I went back to face Johnathan. I loved him as much now as ever, but he’d broken my trust and I wasn’t sure that could be repaired.
We might have to figure out how to go on as part of the group, without being together as a couple
. A sharp pain stabbed into my chest and exited through my back. I didn’t know if I could do it—work so closely with him, always near him, yet not able to touch him the way I longed to… or kiss him. I pulled at my hair as I imagined the torture it would be to see him love someone else. I stumbled to the kitchen sink and wretched up the contents of my stomach.

I finally fell asleep, late into the night, on the floor next to the fireplace. It was a fitful sleep. Being separated from the others felt wrong even under the circumstances. Our connection pulled to me. Each time I awoke throughout the long night my insides fluttered with disquiet.

When morning arrived, I replayed the scene with Johnathan in my head again. I still felt betrayed. As far as I was concerned, he had no plausible excuse. He and Alec lied to me. A lie of omission rather than an outright untruth, but that didn’t matter. They’d planned to go hiking with the girls, I was sure of that.
Had there been a girl there with Seth, too?
I couldn’t remember. My mind would only focus on Johnathan and Katrina. That was the only couple that mattered.

Thinking of them as a couple hurt emotionally and physically as my intestines twisted into a painful knot and the tears started flowing again. I just couldn’t believe it. After everything we’d been through together. I shook my head furiously, trying to get the image to go away. Trying to forget.

I knew I had to get back to the other four. Finally, I removed the spell from the rock in the fireplace. I took a deep breath and concentrated on the front yard of Trey’s house, closed my eyes, and portalled.

The trip through the darkness was quick for once. I hardly had time to register the tightening of my chest and the feeling of suffocation. I opened my eyes to see I stood in the yard a few steps away from the porch.

I steeled myself before entering the house. It was mid-morning and I had no idea what to expect or even if anyone was there.

I opened the door and stepped through. I walked into the family room. Everyone was gathered there and they all looked up as I entered. I’d never heard silence quite that
loud
. For several seconds, no one moved or spoke. Halli’s face was red and streaked with tears. She and Johnathan stood at the same time. Johnathan beat her to me and picked me up in a hug so tight I thought my ribs would break.

Being in his arms warmed my soul, filling the emptiness there and, for a moment, I forgot about the other girl. Even when I remembered her I stayed in his embrace for a moment longer. I needed to feel his closeness. Then, reluctantly, I pushed him away. “Set me down, please.”

He did. I looked closer at his eyes. They were rimmed with red and he had dark circles under them. I almost felt guilty. Almost.

I did, however, feel guilty about Halli. She grabbed me around the waist and sobbed. I could barely understand her blubbering speech. “Paige, you’re here, you’re really here. I was so worried. I thought you were lost forever.”

I stroked her hair and back. “Hal, I’m fine. I just had to get away from”—I looked at Johnathan—“you know, the situation. I was ready to blast… someone.”

Joe came over and wrapped his arms around both of us. “Paige, you don’t understand. We really thought we’d lost you. Alec tried to follow you; he couldn’t pick up your trail. It was like you were just… gone. He should have been able to easily follow you that soon after you portalled. But, you were nowhere. There should have been an imprint of the track you took. We thought you were gone. The others couldn’t feel you. They should have been able to feel you, to feel that you were still alive. Where were you? Where did you go?”

I extracted myself from their embraces and went to sit on the couch next to Seth. He gave me a quick one armed hug and smiled apologetically. Johnathan motioned for Seth to move over and he sat next to me. He tried to hold my hand but I jerked it away, incredulous that he would actually think I would let him hold my hand.

“Where did you go? Why couldn’t I follow you?” Alec looked as tired as the rest of them, but I didn’t hear an ounce of apology in his voice, just curiosity.

“I just portalled… without thinking of a place. I had to get out of there. I wasn’t thinking. I just opened a portal with no idea where I was going.”

“You should have ended up stuck in the
in-between
,” Joe said, eyes wide. “But, obviously you didn’t. So where did you end up?”

“Home. I ended up at my parents’ home.”

Everyone was silent.