Timespell (7 page)

He grabbed her hands.
“Angie.”
The word was a breath of air.

She wanted to step into his arms, but she wasn’t quite there yet and urged him down to sit with her instead.

“I know this is going to take time,” he said, his words rushing out as if he could barely contain them. “And I know how lucky I am. I know it. I promise you, Angie, if it takes me rest of my life, I’ll make it up to you.”

“Angie! There you are!”

David looked up and Angie followed his gaze.

Julia, her auburn hair flying free, raced through the courtyard with wild, flinging arms. “Oh my gosh, this is
so crazy
,” Julia panted, fanning herself. “Man, I hate running. What’s going on? You saw me at third period, but you didn’t answer any of my texts.”

“My phone is off. They’re not allowed in class, remember?”

Julia rolled her eyes and Angie heard a distinctive, “Whatever,” under her breath. “Hi David,” Julia added, as if just realizing he was there. Angie caught the way Julia’s honey brown eyes hardened. “Mind if I steal her away for a sec?”

His gaze faltered.

Angie’s heart constricted at the sight. “Can it wait a minute?”

“No. It can’t,” Julia said. She tapped a finger against her arm and mouthed,
Come on!

Angie kept carefully still, weighing what her words should be. She understood that it was about the magic, but the things happening between her and David were important too.

He made the choice easy. “It’s okay, Angie. I’ll catch up with you later.” He squeezed her hand lightly and let go. “I love you.”

His blue eyed-gaze hit her straight in the heart, but he left quickly, making her decision not to say ‘I love you’ back less
painful. She turned to Julia, feeling a ball of anger roll up inside her. “This had better be urgent.”

“It is! Look at this.” Julia pulled out a piece of paper from her backpack.

She took the folded up sheet. “A painting. For your history paper? Did you really need to interrupt—”

“Look at the girl in the picture.”

She took a second look. The printout was black and white, and the image was grainy, but it was definitely a girl who bore an incredible resemblance to—

“Oh my goodness.”

Julia slumped. “I know.”

Angie’s tongue became glued to the roof of her mouth. Her stomach turned as the air left her lungs.

“She’s the third Daughter of Fate,” Julia said, her voice sullen. “She has to be. And there’s more.” She unzipped her backpack, digging around for something.

Angie stared at the picture, her hands tightening on the sheet of paper. She couldn’t do anything except picture Kaitlyn and David. Together. The look of satisfaction on Kaitlyn’s face as she broke off her kiss with David. His horrified expression as he saw her and pushed Kaitlyn away. Her stomach bottomed out and the paper crinkled in her hands.

“Angie?”

She glanced up. She was going to be sick.

Julia held her history book against her chest. Her brown eyes shone with worry. “We don’t have to do this.”

Angie pressed her fingers to her eyes.
Kaitlyn-David. David-Kaitlyn.
Tears moistened her lashes as pain lanced her chest, tearing open the wound that had just begun to heal. “I need things to stop for a sec.”

“Really stop?” Julia asked, her voice hushed. Angie nodded and Julia touched her arm. The power formed between them, warm and bright as it always was. Comforting. In another second, everything became silent and still.

Angie released a deep breath. Kaitlyn and David ... Kaitlyn, the third Daughter. Angie couldn’t bring her spinning thoughts under control. She tried counting, but she couldn’t find anything to count. She thought of kittens.
Three little kittens they lost their mittens, and they began to cry
....

“Are you okay?”

The nursery rhyme repeated itself in her mind. She willed the muscles in her face to relax. “Yeah, thanks,” she said, forcing her lips into a smile. Even through tears, she knew she could fool everyone if she just smiled.

Everyone but David. No matter how perfectly she crinkled her nose, David could see right through it. But she couldn’t keep thinking about him. And she couldn’t think of anything else.

Julia put away her history book. She glanced up, her eyes too wide. “I don’t need that book after all.”

Angie sniffed. Julia was the worst liar she knew. “You’re acting strange.”

“Don’t I always?”

She let out a breath. Secrets, lies, Kaitlyn-Kaitlyn-Kaitlyn-Kaitlyn-Kaitlyn. Every beat of her heart seemed to pump out the name like a vicious stab. “We found the final Daughter. We can keep our powers forever,” she whispered. “You were right, Julia. A lot can happen in two days.”

Julia’s eyes were steady as she watched her.

“I like the world this way. Everything stopped. Nothing moving forward or taking us to places we don’t want to go.” She wrapped her arms around her middle and began pacing the still earth. “You have the best power out of the three of us.”

“We don’t even know what Kaitlyn’s power is,” Julia said, dropping her gaze as she trailed off. “Not that I care what her power is.”

“Her power is going to be seeing into the future,” Angie said, trying very hard to keep the gloom out of her voice. “The ancient texts have our powers outlined, remember?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Julia said, pulling out a binder.

Angie braced herself against a tree. Frozen students dotted the lawn, midway through their lunches or walking or making out. She had asked Julia to freeze time so she could give her thoughts a chance to catch up with her emotions. It wasn’t for selfish reasons. It was to determine whether she could go through with marking Kaitlyn and releasing her magic.

And because her heart was on the brink of shattering.

“We don’t have to tell Kaitlyn anything,” Julia whispered.

“Yes, we do,” Angie said, hearing the woeful tone of her voice but unable to curb it. “We have no choice.”

“We have a choice. We can choose to let your birthday come and go. Just let our powers fade away.”

“Fade,” she murmured. She couldn’t let the magic fade. It was her birthright. Her destiny.

If they brought Kaitlyn to Indira, they would keep their powers. Then Kaitlyn would be sealed with her and Julia forever.

Angie let the idea settle over her mind.

“But then the creatures of Mythos will roam through time for another generation. Just because I don’t get along with one of the Daughters.” She shook her head. “I can’t be that selfish.”

Julia blushed. It made the glints of red in her hair seem brighter. “Well, it doesn’t have to be today. Your birthday’s on Saturday, so mark her tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow is prom,” Angie answered, surprised she could breathe through the ache in her chest. “I don’t think we’ll be able to mark Kaitlyn, find Indira, ask her to seal us, and get ready for prom all in one afternoon.”

“Sure we could, if we froze time. Do you even think about our powers at all?”

Wait until tomorrow. Maybe Julia was right.

“It’s the best thing,” Julia said, taking out a math book. “Sleep on it. If you still want to mark her tomorrow, we’ll find her at PE and then freeze time and go after school to Indira’s.”

“All right,” she relented. One night to sleep on it. One night to reconcile herself to the fact that Kaitlyn would become a
permanent part of her life. She would need a
lot
of cookies to make it through.

Her eyes rested on Julia, whose hair spilled in a wild mass as she bent over her book. Something came back to her mind, something Julia said right after she told her about Kaitlyn.

And there’s more.

She sat on the grass beside her friend. “What else did you have to tell me?”

“Hm?” Julia flipped through her book without looking up. She unsnapped her binder and took out a sheet of paper. “Oh!” She bit her lip. “Nothing.”

She watched Julia’s pencil as her friend scribbled barely decipherable numbers across the page. “You said there’s more. Is it something to do with the Fates?”

Julia’s pencil hovered a moment above her paper. Her face turned a nice, deep shade of red, but she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter right now. All that matters is you deciding whether to be sealed with Kaitlyn.”

Angie blinked at her dismissive tone. Julia had never kept anything from her before. For a moment she thought about establishing a connection to Julia’s mind and peeking into her thoughts. She shook her head at herself. “We should unfreeze time,” she said softly.

Julia didn’t pause in her writing. “Can’t. I have to finish my homework.”

“But—” Wasn’t that cheating?

“I was too busy finishing that stupid history paper to do homework last night. I
was
going to take a zero in math, but now I have all the time I need.”

“That doesn’t really seem ... right.”

“Don’t care.”

“I’ll bet if you unfreeze time you can still finish before the bell rings.”

“Not a chance,” Julia murmured, flipping to the back of the book to copy the answers to the odd-numbered questions.

Angie placed a hand on her friend’s arm and sent her some magic. She meant to encourage her friend to unfreeze time, but Julia’s thoughts flowed alongside hers. She had been hiding something, and Angie ached with the desire to figure out what it was. The magic was right there. She could dive into Julia’s consciousness, search out her thoughts. Lies were so easy to find. They stood out, feeling different than the normal thoughts in a person’s mind. Curving out of place. Wayward.

Before she realized she was doing it, Angie brushed against the edge of Julia’s consciousness. The membrane separating them was almost nonexistent. She could feel her friend’s worry over something. Her uncertainty.

A wave of icy shock washed over her mind. Julia glanced up, locking gazes with Angie. Surprise shone there, mixed with accusation and disbelief, all echoing in their shared emotion. She let go of Julia’s arm. That had been wrong. Much more wrong than working on homework during frozen time.

Julia’s lips parted. After a moment she lowered her eyes and returned to her work, but her pencil moved more slowly.

Guilt filled Angie’s chest. She shouldn’t have even thought about searching her friend’s mind. There had to be boundaries between them. Julia had a right to her own thoughts, her own secrets.

Angie settled back on the grass, wishing she was home with a big plate of cookies. A bird had been in mid-flight when they froze time. It hung in the air at an impossible angle below motionless clouds. There was no wind. No life. No anything. She could think for as long and hard as she wanted. Maybe this wasn’t such a good thing after all.

“Done,” Julia said. She stuffed her binder in her backpack, then stood up and reached for Angie. “I’ll unfreeze time now.”

“Okay. I was standing here,” Angie said. “And I think you were closer to the tree.”

“What the crap? Who was even watching us?”

“You never know,” Angie answered.

Julia rolled her eyes. “Is this close enough?”

Angie nodded and they joined hands. Power surged to life, awaiting their command. She felt Julia draw it to her. For a split-second Angie saw students sitting in the cafeteria, people at bus stops and in coffee shops, in office buildings and gardens. Everything was a jumble of images that made her head spin. Angie’s heart constricted at the thought of Kaitlyn with a share of this power, and for a moment she resisted the flow of time. Julia frowned, pulling in more of Angie’s magic until the whole world surged forward and back to life.

Julia
hated
running. Detested, loathed, whatever other words there were for it. Angie would know them, but Julia thought
hate
summed it up best.

“Pick up the pace, Corona,” Coach Hamden yelled.

She ignored Coach Hamden, panting through the ache in her side as she pounded away on the dusty track. It was so unfair that athletic types like Angie were excused from PE for participating in a sport, while she had to suffer through the school’s underfunded fitness program.

She turned into the curve around the track, watching the girls in the middle of the field. Angie was there, spending her free period today being thrown in the air like the pebble in a human slingshot. Julia stared at her murkily.

Maybe she should have told Angie about how her history book changed.

If she
had
told her, Angie would’ve felt like she had no choice about sealing with Kaitlyn. Angie deserved a choice.

Angie saw her and offered her a bubbly wave, her ponytail
bouncing. Julia was too tired to curb her annoyance and too exhausted to wave back. Hopefully the moan she gave her sounded like a ‘hello.’

“Are you excited about prom tonight?” a girl next to Julia said.

Julia’s lungs ached. Her head hurt from trying to think while running, which was always a bad idea. Who was this girl? Mindy? Cindy? And
why
did she want to start up a conversation and run at the same time?

“You’re going, right?” the girl asked.

“Right.”
Right, right, right.

“Wow, you’re so lucky that your boyfriend’s a junior,” the girl said. “I would kill to go to a dance on the
Queen Mary
,” the girl continued, oblivious to Julia’s aching side or her annoyance at being talked to while enduring this agony. “It’s the actual retired steamship. Aren’t you excited?”

“Excited,” she huffed.
Yes. So very excited.

“You don’t look excited.”

Couldn’t the girl see she was about to die?
Please, somebody, shoot a meteor at her so she’ll shut up and leave me alone.

Angie joined in on their little running group. When cheer practice ended she liked to run a lap. For fun.

How did the girl always manage to look so happy? Even while
running
?

“Excited about what?” she asked, tilting her head to the side.

Two gasps later, Julia said, “Prom.” Oh, goodness, why must everyone keep talking? She managed the few more steps to the finish line and grabbed her knees for dear life.