The Promise (The Coven Series) (18 page)

I
did trust him, I told myself firmly as we walked.
 
I did.

Chapter Fourteen

Saturday
dawned bright and clear.
 
And cold.
 
The
thermometer read twenty-two degrees outside.
 
For it to be cold this early was highly unusual in North Carolina.
 
It never dropped below fifty until the middle
of November, but this year the cold seemed to be setting in sooner than
expected.
 
My teeth chattered as I hopped
from foot to foot on the cold tile of the bathroom floor after I stepped out of
the hot shower.
 
Why hadn’t Mom or Dad
turned the heat on?
 
I glanced at my
watch on the sink.
 
It was only a little
after seven.
 
They were probably still
sound asleep.
 
Mom wouldn’t crack an eye
before eight on the weekends.

I
had a lot to do today and I was also pretty sure I was running out of
time.
 
Dad’s crazy ramblings of “you’re
almost eighteen” kept popping into my head.
 
Did all of this, maybe even the curse, have something to do with my
eighteenth birthday?
 
Without Emily’s
Book of Shadows, I had zero chance of figuring it out.
 
Well, almost zero.
 
After admitting there was nowhere left to
look for her book, I only had one option left.
 
The other book.
 
The one heavily guarded by wards and I knew zilch about wards.
 

I
needed help.

The
question was who could I trust?

Kay?
 
I’d known her since the first day of
kindergarten when Jeff had stolen my toy.
 
Kay had pushed him down and kicked him as hard as she could.
 
We’d been best friends since.
 
I loved her like a sister, but every time I
thought about telling her my theories, my stomach went into overdrive, twisting
and heaving painfully.
 
A warning.
 

Telling
Kay was not a good idea, but not because she’d try and hurt me.
 
At least I didn’t think so.
 
Emily had been specific in her diary.
 
She wanted to keep me and Kay safe, to get us
both away from here.
 
No, my instincts
warned me against confiding in her not because she was dangerous, but because
knowing might put her in danger.
 
Or at
least I hoped so.

Then
again, I could be completely wrong and she knew all about the curse and
whatever danger it posed.
 
I hated not
knowing what was going on and not being able to trust anyone.
 
It majorly sucked.

Ethan?
 
Absolutely not.
 
I accepted that I loved him despite my better
judgment, but I wasn’t without some common sense.
 
At least not yet.
 
Emily’s mystery boy could very well be
Ethan.
 
The rational part of me
understood that.
 
He’d shown up out of
nowhere and when Mom had heard his name, she’d looked like a kid on Christmas
morning.
 
Then the town had started
trying to write a truth spell—a spell my sister suggested to begin with.
 
My truth spell could have confirmed it, I
thought darkly.
 
A
ghost?
 
No, even she hadn’t believed
that.
 
But could that have been what I’d
seen that day in the diner?
 
A ghost?
 
The boy from her diary?

Ethan
could be that boy.

But
I hoped and prayed to the Fates he wasn’t that boy.
 
Ghost or not, I blamed that boy for
everything that had happened three years ago.
 
He’d appeared, the town had gone a little crazy, and my sister had
died.
 
He was the catalyst for everything
that had happened.
 
Emily had discovered
some kind of hidden truth and it ended up getting her killed.
 
Everything was his fault.

It
couldn’t be Ethan.
 
Please don’t be
Ethan, I begged silently as I blow dried my hair.

Mom
and Dad were both out of the question—neither seemed willing to tell me
anything.

That
left me with Billy and Jeff.
 
Definitely not Billy.
 
He was Kay’s boyfriend and he loved her, but I’d seen the glint in his
eyes when we were talking about the truth spell.
 
He was a Coven boy, born and bred.
 
I couldn’t trust him.
 
But I might be able to trust Jeff.
 
He’d warned me at the initiation that I
shouldn’t have come.
 
He definitely knew
something and I’d seen the same fear in his eyes I’d seen in Dad’s.
 
My stomach stayed quiet as I thought about
confiding in Jeff.
 
Score one for the
home team.
 
My instincts trusted Neighbor
Boy.

I
pulled on a UNC sweatshirt and pair of comfy jeans before heading next
door.
 
Megan answered the door still in
her pajamas.

“CJ,”
she blinked.
 
“What are you doing here?”

“I
came to see Jeff.
 
Is he up yet?”

“Yeah,
but he’s still in the shower.
 
Come on
in.”
 
She moved back to let me in and I
followed her into the kitchen.
 
It
smelled of eggs, bacon, homemade biscuits and grape jelly.
 
Mmm
.
 
My stomach growled.

“Grab
a plate, honey,” Mrs. Parker laughed.
 
“I
can hear those hunger pains over here.”
 

Megan
looked a lot like her mother, I decided as I watched them.
 
They both had flaxen colored hair and
cornflower blue eyes.
 
The eyes were the
only thing Jeff inherited from his mother.
 
He looked exactly like his father with curly brown hair and a face made
for smiling.

“Thanks
a bunch, Mrs. P.
 
I haven’t eaten
yet.”
 
I grabbed a plate and piled it
high with bacon and eggs.
 
Megan threw me
a couple biscuits and I was stuffing my face when Jeff finally came down.

“CJ?”
 
He frowned and
fixed himself a plate.
 
“What are you
doing here?
 
I thought you weren’t
talking to me.”

“You
so deserved that!” Megan glared at him.
 
I winced.
 
The entire town knew
about our little falling out.
 
Jeff and
Billy suffered because Kay deemed they should.
 
I totally agreed they should be on the outs, but they’d been punished
long enough.
 
I’d forgiven Ethan after
all, and since I needed Jeff’s help, I might as well extend the olive branch
first.

“I
decided to forgive you,” I told him in between bites.
 
“Besides, I can’t let you fail Calculus, now
can I?”

His
eyes widened.
 
Jeff knew something was
up.
 
He wasn’t even close to failing
Calc.
 
The boy had the highest average in
our class.
 
He
freakin
killed the curve.

“You’re
having problems with math?”
 
His father
lowered the newspaper he’d been reading and stared at him in open
disbelief.
 
“Math is your best subject.”

“Yeah,
well, advanced Calculus is a bit harder than I thought it was going to be,” he
muttered and shoveled more eggs into his mouth.

“It’s
nice to be able to finally say I know something he doesn’t when it comes to
math,” I smirked.
 
Lying seemed to be
getting easier and easier for me.
 
Dang it.

“That’s
very nice of you, CJ, to try and help him,” his mother told me.

“Hurry
up,” I told him and rinsed off my plate before setting it in the
dishwasher.
 
“I figured we’d go to the
library.
 
It’s quiet there and no one
will be up this early on a Saturday morning.”

He
nodded and put his own dishes away.
 
I
waited for him by the door while he grabbed his bookbag.
 
His mom and I chatted about the Halloween
competition.
 
She was worried.
 
Mom’s scene of zombies attacking Santa Clause
had her slightly alarmed.
 
Mom, however,
would be thrilled.
 
I made a mental note
to tell her when I got home.

“Come
on, CJ.” Jeff yanked on his coat and we left the house.
 
“Where are we going?” he asked.

“To the tree house.”

Dad
had built the tree house for me and Emily when I was about six or seven.
 
No one would overhear us there.
 
It was a good ten minute walk from my house.
 

“What’s
up?” he asked once we were settled inside.
 

“I
need answers and you’re going to give them to me, Jeffrey Silas Parker.”
 
My voice came out harder than I intended, but
I was still pretty pissed at him.

“Answers?”

“About
what’s going on with the
Coven.
”

“CJ,
you know I can’t talk about the Coven.
 
You’re not a member.”

“Don’t
give me that bullshit, Jeff.
 
You owe
me.”

“I
wasn’t in on any of that,” he snapped.

“No,
but you made damned sure I found out about it in the worst possible way.
 
Now what kind of friend does that make you?”

“A
crappy one,” he sighed.
 
“I’m sorry,
CJ.
 
It was wrong, I know, but I just
wanted you to see that Ethan’s not the guy you think he is.”

“Then
who is he?” I demanded.

“What
do you mean?”

I
growled in frustration.
 
“Don’t act like
you don’t know what I’m talking about.
 
Who is he?”

He
looked out the window, refusing to answer.

“Dammit,
Jeff…”

“Can’t
you just for once in your life trust me?”

Trust
him?
 
Everyone seemed to be telling me to
trust them.
 
Oddly, Jeff was the only one
I did trust.

“I
do, Jeff, that’s why I’m here.
 
No one
else will tell me what’s going on.
 
I
just want the truth.
 
I thought you’d
tell me that much.”

“It’s
not that simple,” he sighed.
 
“There are
things I can’t say.”

“Things about the curse?”

His
head whipped around to face me and his eyes bulged with shocked surprise.

“They
killed her, Jeff.
 
The Coven killed Emily
and it has something to do with that stupid curse.
 
I need to find out why.”

“No,
CJ, you’re wrong,” he shook his head.
 
“She was the Junior Coven leader.
 
They wouldn’t hurt her.”

“They
did.
 
I found her diary.
 
Her last entry said they were coming for
her.
 
She died that same night.”

“But…”

“The
night she died, she was so scared.
 
I
stayed with her while Mom and Dad talked to the doctors.
  
I never told anyone, but she woke up for a
few minutes.
 
She said I was right, that
it was a bunch of nonsense, but her eyes were full of fear.
 
She made me promise not to go anywhere near
the Coven.”

“That’s
why you never came to any of the meetings?” he asked softly.

“I
made a promise to her and now I have to break it.
 
I have to find out why they killed her.
 
It has to do with the curse and the boy she
saw.
 
Is that
who
Ethan is?
 
The stranger that got the town
all riled up before?”

“I
wish I could tell you.”
 
He hung his
head.
 
“I can’t.”

“Yes,
you can!” I shouted.
 
“Please, I have to
know why my sister died.”

“The
c-c-c…” His voice broke off and he made a horrible choking sound.

“Are
you okay?” I asked, alarmed.
 
He was
starting to turn blue.
 
It looked like
something was choking the life out of him.
 
I ran over to pound him on the back, but he waved me off.
 
He stopped trying to talk and his face slowly
turned back to its normal tan shade.
 
Well, almost normal.
 
He looked a
little pasty.

“I
can’t!” he whispered hoarsely.
 
“I want
to tell you, but I can’t!
 
They made sure
of it.”

“Who?
 
The Coven?”

He
nodded.
 

Now
how in the world…well crap.
 
A binding spell.