The Darkness Within (16 page)

So there was a reason why he’d planned these two books back-to-back. He thought they were a lot alike. Even though I hadn’t even started reading
Frankenstein
yet, I could see his point. I mean, how likely was it that a monster made of spare body parts came to life and started killing people? Sure, I’d come back to life and killed people, but I wasn’t normal. I couldn’t help wondering if these authors had been witches, too. They seemed to know about strange things other people would pass off as fiction. Maybe these weren’t made-up stories after all.

Shannon was pretending to be deep in thought, which really just gave her an excuse to stare into Mr. Ryan’s hazel eyes. Unbelievable. I wished I had a hose to cool her off. Finally, she leaned forward, and I couldn’t help noticing the way she rested her arms at her sides, so they were conveniently pressing against her boobs, making them appear larger. No morals at all! “Well, Mr. R., I think we all have a little monster in us, don’t you?” She winked. Actually winked. At a teacher.

I had half a mind to freeze time—if I had any clue how—and slap some sense into the girl. Every time I thought she was making progress, she did something like this and set herself back to square one. I couldn’t resist. I reached my leg across the aisle and kicked her ankle. Hard. Payback’s a bitch.

“Ow!” She glared at me, but I simply shrugged my shoulders.

Mr. Ryan eyed me and Shannon. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that.”

The bell rang, and I couldn’t have been happier about it. Shannon needed time to cool off, and I was dying to see Ethan. I practically ran to sculpture. I was about twenty feet from the classroom when I remembered my strange conversation with Ms. Matthews. I hadn’t told anyone about it yet. I had to remember to bring it up at lunch. I
didn’t think she’d do anything weird like that in front of the class, so as long as there were other people around, I’d be okay. Probably.

I spotted Ethan as soon as I walked through the door. Dylan was sitting next to him. In
my
seat. I’d forgotten the new schedule change would put Dylan in sculpture with us. I tried to act casual about the seating arrangement. Beth wasn’t there yet, so I took her seat across from Ethan.

“Hey,” Dylan said.

“How’s it going?” I was trying for casual, but my words sounded forced.

I must have been staring because Dylan started to stand. “Is this your seat? I didn’t even think.”

“It’s fine.” Ethan grabbed his arm. Dylan was stuck half-sitting, half-standing. He looked about as awkward as I felt. My own boyfriend didn’t want to sit next to me. Was this how it was going to be until we straightened things out with his magic?

“Yeah, it’s fine.” I stressed the word
fine
, making sure Ethan knew it totally wasn’t. His eyes lowered, and he continued doodling on his notebook.

“Hey, new seating arrangements,” Beth said, sitting beside me.

Dylan’s head jerked in my direction. He was worried, and I knew why. The spell we’d cast should’ve made Dylan’s presence seem perfectly normal, commonplace. The fact that Beth noticed the change in her seat wasn’t a good sign.

“Sorry, that was my fault.” I forced a smile. “I wanted to be closer to Ethan.” I reached across the table, placing my hand on top of his. “You know, now that we’ve been dating for a while, I thought we should sit by each other. You don’t mind, do you?”

“No, not at all. I just figured you would’ve taken Dylan’s seat next to Ethan, but if you want to sit across from him so you can stare at each other all period, that’s fine, too.” I could tell she meant it. As much as I hated having her around, I had to remind myself that she wasn’t all bad. Too observant, yes. Evil, no. “So, Ethan, are you feeling better?”

He nodded. “Not a hundred percent, though.” He slid his hand out from under mine, making my heart sink. He’d said that for my benefit, to explain why he didn’t want to get too close.

“Well, these things can take time to bounce back from. That’s why I was so surprised to see Sam running all around at the diner. I’ve never seen anyone move like that. She was amazing, almost a blur.” She laughed, and I made myself laugh along.

“Yeah, fevers do weird things to me. First I crash, and then I’m a ball of energy.” I wasn’t sure where I was pulling these lies from. I was just glad they were coming to me.

“Well, I wish fevers affected me like that. You were, like, superhuman.”

Another nervous laughed escaped my lips. “So, Beth, what are you making for your next project?” I didn’t care in the least, but I wanted to talk about something else—anything else.

“Dylan, you look fine today, too,” Beth said, as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “Do you share Sam’s strange reaction to fevers?”

Dylan met my eyes, looking for help.

“Oh, well, Dylan went home early yesterday more as a precaution than anything else. Shannon, too. They saw how sick Ethan and I got, and they assumed since it was food poisoning and we’d eaten the same thing that they’d be sick too. Luckily, they weren’t affected by it. Gloria said that was the first and last time she ordered fish from that supplier.” I hoped Beth wouldn’t think my mini-recap of our conversation last night at the diner was weird. I had to get Dylan and Ethan up to speed.

“Oh, well that’s good.” Beth sat back in her seat. Apparently her line of questioning was finished.

“Yeah, Shannon and I got lucky,” Dylan said. “Of course, we didn’t pig out like these two did.”

I got that he was trying to act normal, but I really wanted to get off the topic all together. Ms. Matthews introduced a new project and sent us all off to work. We were supposed to work in pairs. Not good. Ethan and Dylan were now attached at the hip. I looked around the room, searching for an acceptable partner.

“Hey, Sam.” Beth’s smiling face blocked my view. “I was thinking we could partner up. You know, since Ethan’s working with Dylan.”

“Oh, um…” Damn it. Why didn’t I know anyone else in this class? Where was the guy who used to sit with us at lunch? What was his
name? Elton? “I kind of promised Elton I’d work on the next project with him.”

Beth’s face scrunched up. “You did? I haven’t seen you talk to Elton in weeks.”

“Yeah, I knew I’d been neglecting him since Ethan and I started dating, so I promised him the next chance we had to work on a project together, we’d partner up.”

“That explains why you aren’t working with Ethan. I thought it was kind of weird you two weren’t pairing up. You always do.”

I snuck a glance at Ethan, knowing he’d heard Beth. “Yeah, I’ll definitely miss working with Ethan, but a promise is a promise.”

Beth stood up. “Time to find me a partner before all the good ones are taken.” She practically skipped away.

“You better go talk to Elton,” Dylan said. “I see someone else heading his way now.”

Crap! I jumped up and called Elton’s name across the room. The guy walking over to Elton paused, and I pounced on the opportunity. I slid into the seat next to Elton. “Hey, want to partner up?” Before he could answer, I said, “Great!” and gave him a big smile.

The other kid turned and walked to another table. Dylan met my eyes and nodded. Ethan was still looking away, and the thing that bothered me the most was that I wasn’t surprised.

Elton turned out to be an awesome partner. He designed our entire project. All I had to do was keep saying, “Uh-huh. That sounds great.” Elton liked being in charge, and since I sucked at art, I let him. My head wasn’t in it anyway. I was too busy staring at Ethan, watching him look everywhere but at me.

As soon as the bell rang, I rushed over to Ethan and slipped my hand in his. Dylan was right there, so Ethan was just going to have to deal with the whole touching-me thing. One minute he was okay with it and the next he was avoiding me like the plague. I couldn’t keep up, and I didn’t want to. He was going to have to give in to me because I wasn’t taking no for an answer. I squeezed his hand as we walked to lunch. He gave me a slight squeeze back, but it was halfhearted.

Shannon was already at our table, and I could tell she had a spell in the works. The faint golden glow only visible to us shimmered
around our designated spot. I didn’t let go of Ethan when we sat down, so he was forced to sit by me. Dylan nodded to him and took a seat across from us, next to Shannon.

“Well, you look like a fun bunch.” Shannon rolled her eyes before mumbling the rest of her spell to enclose us all in the bubble.

I rolled my eyes, too. “I’m glad we can’t be heard, because there’s something I have to tell you guys.” Ethan’s fingers tensed, and I finally released his hand. “It’s about Ms. Matthews.” I could see relief wash through Ethan. Had he really thought he’d done something he didn’t even know about? Was that possible? He’d said he sort of blacked out when the dark magic took over. Had that been happening lately? Was that the reason he’d left last night—why he’d run to Dylan’s?

Shannon took a sip of soda. “Who’s Ms. Matthews? I don’t know her.”

“The sculpture teacher,” Dylan said, giving me a look that said “why haven’t you mentioned this before?”

“Something happened yesterday before class. I meant to tell you guys, but then…”

Ethan turned his head, pretending to be interested in the sandwich he’d taken out of his bag. Had Dylan made them both lunch? This male bonding was really getting to me. Of course, I’d forgotten my own lunch in my rush to see Ethan this morning.

“Okay, so Ethan took off and you forgot to tell us.” Shannon waved her hand at me. “Go on.” She had no clue how to be subtle.

I placed my hand on Ethan’s leg. He looked back at me, handing me half his sandwich. “You should eat something.”

“Thanks.” It sucked that something like sharing his sandwich—a totally normal thing to do—was such a big deal right then.

Shannon shook her head. “Earth to Sam, tell us the story.”

“Okay, well, Ms. Matthews said she wanted to talk to me, and I assumed she meant about the clay incident.” Ethan’s head lowered again. “But it wasn’t about that. She said something about not being able to play favorites because some of the other students might get mad. Like Beth.”

“Beth?” Shannon nearly spit her soda at me. She covered her mouth and mumbled a sorry.

“Yeah, Beth. And the next thing I knew, I was rambling on about how Beth keeps an annoyingly close eye on me. I didn’t mean to say anything. It sort of slipped out like I had no control over my own mouth.”

“This is so not good, Sam,” Shannon said.

“Yeah, well, it gets worse.”

Dylan slammed his fist down on the table. I jumped, not sure if I was ready to continue my story. “What happened?”

“She was eating her breakfast. An egg sandwich, and she had this saltshaker on her desk. She started talking about secrets and how to hide them. I didn’t know why. But then she kept trying to give me the saltshaker. It was weird and totally freaked me out.”

“What did you do?” Ethan asked, taking my hand like he used to.

“I made up an excuse and ran out. I didn’t know what else to do.” I shrugged.

“So, Ms. Matthews might know you’re a witch,” Dylan said.

Hearing Dylan confirm what I’d only suspected—what I’d tried to convince myself wasn’t true—was too much to handle. I couldn’t answer him, so I nodded.

“Wonderful. Now in addition to avoiding Beth and fixing Ethan’s magic, we have to watch out for Ms. Matthews.” Dylan pounded the table again. This time I didn’t jump. My stomach lurched as I realized all these problems came back to me.

17

S
HANNON
shoved Dylan’s shoulder. “Lay off, Dylan. What the hell was she supposed to do?”

“I don’t know what she should’ve done, okay? It’s just crap that we keep running into more problems.” He stood up and stormed off toward the food line.

Ethan squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry about him. Eat your lunch. I’ll get you a soft pretzel.” He kissed my temple, and it was all I could do not to cry. I watched him walk after Dylan, catching up in seconds and placing his hand on his shoulder.

“Those two are certainly getting along well.” Shannon picked at her salad. She always ate the croutons first. “That’s got to be weird for you—the guy you’re in love with and the guy who’s got a thing for you.”

“I think Dylan’s feelings for me are definitely back in the negative column after the Ms. Matthews thing.” He was furious with me. Maybe it was better that way. Our relationship had always been rocky, right from the start.

“Nah, that’s just Dylan. He’s kind of a hothead. More so when it has to do with something he really cares about.” Shannon ate a cucumber drenched in ranch dressing.

“I don’t know what to do. It’s like bad stuff follows me everywhere, and now it’s affecting Ethan.”

“He doesn’t blame you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she said with a mouth full of cucumber.

“Pretty.” I shook my head.

“Please, inside this bubble I don’t have to be perfect. No one’s watching me. Well, except for you, but I don’t care if you don’t find me sexy.” She winked.

I couldn’t help laughing, and it felt good. “What do I do about all this?”

“You help Dylan and me track down Mirabella. There’s a spell we can do. It’s like a locator spell but with a twist.”