Starbound (19 page)

Seth bent down. “Looks like you got a nasty cut.” And the next thing I knew, tears were stinging my eyes. He had pulled out the sharp hunk of metal without so much as a warning.

I bit my lip…hard. There was a trail of blood running down my leg. “Jeesh, thanks for the heads up.”

The corners of his mouth tipped. I tried not to think about the tingles coursing through me when his fingers grasped mine. We meandered our way through the garbage, and I only managed to trip once. I might have done so deliberately, playing up my injury a tad just so I could feel Seth’s hands on me again.

Totally devious, but hey, sometimes a girl has to play dirty to get what she wants.

And I so wanted Seth.

That might be the starbound talking, though it hardly mattered. Even after having my life threatened, which probably should have given me the red warning light, I liked to break rules. I could still feel his light inside me, and I clung to it as a beacon of hope.

When we reached the door leading outside, it was barricaded with trash. Seth pushed his way through, kicking what he could out of the path. He shoved down on the bar and then put his shoulder to it with the force of his weight. The door squeaked, not really nudging. It took two more tries before we saw the first crack of a dull light.

The sky was grey, blanketed with dark thick clouds. I gulped my first breath of fresh air, tasting a heavy dampness like after a storm. My nose burned from the kick-up of so much dirt and dust.

Zeke shook his entire body, spraying me with a shower of tiny white particles.

“Hey,” I complained, trying to dust what I could off my clothes. I needed more than just a shower. Maybe I could run myself through a carwash. I winced as my hand touched a scrape on my leg.

For someone who had almost gotten pulverized, Zeke was in good spirits. Too good. I actually thought he might have enjoyed getting the crap scared out of him. That boy had serious thrill-seeking issues. “So what’s the plan, because I am so ready for some payback?” Zeke asked with more enthusiasm than was necessary right now.

I plucked a piece of plaster from my hair. “Could you just give us a sec to be thankful we’re not dead?”

A moment of silence elapsed, which was all Zeke could handle. “Okay, game plan?”

Shaking my hair out, I growled in aggravation. “This isn’t a game, Zeke.”

Seth peered up at the formidable sky. “He’s right, Kats.” His voice was crestfallen and tired. “We need a plan, like now. This thing is getting angrier and us ignoring it, ignoring each other, isn’t helping. We are only pissing if off. So let’s do something.” He punched the last sentence with renewed fire.

I didn’t know how he found the strength. It was like working with a bunch of testosterone junkies. “Fine,” I relented.

The two of them stood outside the school building, eyeing the destruction and scratching their heads. It was clear that I was going to have to be the one to come up with a devisable plan.

“I think we should go back in time,” I suggested. They both looked at me like I was speaking Greek.

“Did you hit your head?” Zeke said.

I rolled my eyes. “Not literally, you dope. I was thinking a spell, with the circle. Maybe we can get the scoop about what really happened to our families and uncover some answers.”

“And how do purpose we do that?” Zeke asked.

“With a really kickass spell.”

They both gave me blank stares.

I sighed. “Okay, fine. I don’t know any kickass spells, but there has got to be something in all the boxes of old literature, journals, and spell books my family has kept. It is a starting point.”

The duo shrugged, and Seth stared off at the incoming trucks and flashing lights. “It’s probably a one in a million chance, but what other choice do we have?” he grumbled.

Sirens sounded in the distance. I grinned, which might have seemed misplaced considering the circumstances, but I didn’t regret what had happened in the gym between Seth and me, at least not yet. There was this glowing light inside of me that I recognized as the aftermath of Seth sharing magick with me and giving me more than he ever bargained for—a vow of magick that bound him to me forever. For the first time all year, I felt a purpose. I felt alive again after living months in gloom.

And this meant I got to spend more time with Seth.

I was a glutton for death.

Chapter 19

Seth

It was the most bizarre feeling stepping inside Kat’s house, like walking into no-man’s zone. Both of her parents were at work, which made me nervous, but I brought Zeke along as a safeguard—not that it was exactly reassuring.

The events in the gym plagued my mind 25-8. When I thought about what I had done, I couldn’t help but berate myself. So stupid. One kiss and I was throwing myself at her mercy, binding myself to only her. If I had wanted a chance at a normal life, I had just squashed it to smithereens on one kiss.

But good God almighty, what a kiss
. I take it all back. It might have very well been worth the risk, and given the chance, I’d probably do it again. And again.

Ugh
.

Apparently I was nowhere near as smart or cunning as I thought I was. But Kat…she was something else. Just knowing that ribbons of my magick now ran in her blood gave me goose bumps. Seeing the five-stars on my wrist gave me chills and, at the same time, made my heart swell.

There was a warmth of welcoming that lived in the Montgomery house. From inside the doorway, Kat sent me a jaw-dropping grin that could cure any ailment that might plague me. She was halfway down the stairs with a hand resting on the white banister. Her curls were piled in a messy knot, and dimples dotted either side of her lips. Hiding the intense feelings that were boomeranging in my chest was harder since my astronomical screw-up.

Collins held open the door, staring between Kat and me suspiciously. “I thought you guys were cursed. And what is this bonehead doing with you, Seth?” She nodded to Zeke beside me, and my lips twitched.

Zeke glanced over his shoulder to Kat. “I see where she gets her sunny disposition.”

I nudged Zeke in the side, reminding him to play nice. She was only eleven, after all, but he did have a point. Attitude ran deep in the Montgomery bloodline.

Collins crossed her arms and gave Zeke the stink eye.

“Hey, Collins,” I greeted as she shut the door behind us.

She sent me a cheeky grin, almost nearly as devastating as her older sister’s, with cute matching dimples. “Hiya, Seth.”

“How come he gets the royal treatment?” Zeke asked, feigning outrage.

Collins sent him a sour smile. “’Cuz he is like family.”

Zeke put a hand to his heart, amping up on the charm. “What am I, chopped liver?”

Kat’s little sister was a handful. She rolled her eyes. “You’re a dork.”

He dropped the act. “Coming from someone who still watches Sponge Bob,” Zeke commented, lifting a brow to the TV in the other room.

A small smile broke out on Collins’s lips. “Sponge Bob is the shit.”

Zeke coughed, trying to cover up a laugh.

Kat rolled her eyes.

And I smirked.

“Alright, you two, put down the gloves. We have work to do,” Kat cut in before any more crossing of words.

Zeke groaned. “All work and no play makes Katia a dull—”

“Zeke,” Seth and I both said in a unison warning.

“Are you guys going to complete each other’s sentences next?” Zeke was in rare form today.

Collins snickered from the couch, as the three of us climbed the stairs. Kat and I ignored him, but Zeke winked at Collins before we disappeared to the second floor.

“Just a warning,” Kat said, looking back over her shoulder. “The attic isn’t pretty. Actually, I avoid it at all cost. Gives me the willies.”

“Oh great,” Zeke mumbled as he opened the door that led to the third floor—the attic. “It’s like
Night of the Living Dead
in here.”

“I warned you,” she said, following carefully behind him.

“Zeke, grow some balls and get in there.” I couldn’t be tempted by Kat’s backside for much longer, or her scent. Through the musk and dirt, I could smell her sweet shampoo and the cherry blossoms that followed her everywhere.

“Wow, don’t you guys have a Swiffer or something?” Zeke said, swiping at a cobweb with his hand.

“And displace all my eight-legged friends? I’d rather they stay up here and out of my room.” She shivered.

He angled his head. “Good point. Might I suggest Merry Maid?”

If we couldn’t take a few measly spiders, how the heck were we going to destroy an ancient curse cast out of desperation and high emotions?

Katia

Glued to Zeke’s back, I stepped over the threshold. I’d be damned if one of those webs fell in my hair. It would be lost forever, tangled in my curls. “No one ever comes up here, you dingleberry.”

Zeke’s eyes twinkled. “God, I’ve missed you, Katia, and that mouth.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Watch it,” Seth growled behind me.

“Note to self: Never mention Katia’s mouth in Seth’s presence,” Zeke mumbled to himself, taking out another monstrous looking web.

I smiled, trying not to get overly distracted by Seth’s alluring presence behind me. “You’re my hero, Zeke.”

He guffawed. “If my spider killing skills impress you, you should see my—”

“Zeke!” growled Seth. “Just get us to the boxes in the back.”

“Jeesh, someone has their tighty-whiteys in a wad.”

Seth’s brows were pulled together. “Just cut the wisecracks and open a book.”

“God, now you sound like my mom.”

Seth exhaled, and I couldn’t help but smile. It felt like I was caught in the middle of an episode of Scooby-doo. I guess that made me Daphne.

We poured through thick bound books with fragile papers, discolored and aged. Handwritten script we could barely read with foreign symbols, many none of us knew how to decipher. The pages smelled musky, but the knowledge between the pages was rich and vast. Yet nothing we learned was what we were looking for, what we needed.

Discouraged didn’t come close to describe what I was feeling.

This sucked.

My neck had a cramp and my back was strained from scouring books all day in my dust-ball of an attic. Collins had brought us a pitcher of lemonade, but I think she had ulterior motives, like snooping. We had been at it for hours. Although we hadn’t found squat that was worth any value to our cause, I’d literally had the best time. Seth and Zeke had me rolling on the dingy old floorboards, laughing like a hyena.

It was refreshing, therapeutic, and damn fun. Who would have thought?

Rubbing the back of my neck, Seth stretched out his long legs beside me and let out a groan. His thigh brushed against mine, and heat zinged up my leg. The temperature in my body skyrocketed. “We should probably call it night,” he suggested, eyes on me.

“What, you scared of the dark?” Zeke teased, his head in a book, unaware of the electric shock that charged the air.

Before the sharp comeback I knew was on the tip of Seth’s tongue ever came to fruition, a brown leather book fell to my feet. It clattered to the floor with a thump. It was so quiet you could hear a fly karate chop the silky thread of a spider web.

Bending down, I picked up the book that literally sang in my grasp like the Holy Grail of spell books. It hummed under my fingertips. The relic Celtic symbol on the cover glowed like the moon as I ran my fingers over the three oval loops encircled in a larger one.

This was it.

The one we’d been searching for.

The three of us held our breaths as I opened to the first page. A surge of power bolted down my hands. I half expected the book to levitate in the air, pages flipping on their own until it landed on the spell we needed. I guess that was too much to hope for, and far too easy.

Instead the curse decided to pay us all another visit. And it was nearly as pleasant as the last one. A tiny tapping clattered onto the hardwood floors. My gaze lifted, meeting Seth’s and Zeke’s. Seth angled his head, listening. Then I felt something brush my arm. Not going to lie, I was afraid to look.

It was my nightmares come true.

A hairy spider the size of a quarter was talking a stroll down my forearm. Not even a gag could have stopped the scream from erupting. It ripped from my lungs. I had no sooner opened my mouth when Seth flicked his wrist, casting a spell that flung that
thing
off me.

All those creepy dreams I had about spiders suddenly became a reality.

I barely had time to breathe or do a wiggly heebie-jeebie dance in my seat when the sound of splitting wood punctured through the close quarters. The three of us froze, afraid to move. My stomach was in my throat with the unexpected noise. I latched onto Seth’s gaze right before shit hit the fan.

A wooden beam fell from the exposed frame of the roof, smashing it with a force strong enough to knock me on my ass. I hit the tattered floorboards with breath-stealing impact. Seth and Zeke hadn’t faired much better, but none of us had time to react or brace ourselves. I was going to have a bitch of a bruise tomorrow, on my butt nonetheless and probably a few other places I couldn’t yet feel.

The beam landed with a crash that shook the entire house from top to bottom, which caused an aftershock of miscellaneous shit to break. The noise echoed in some warped glass-shattering fireworks display. It was a deafening sound that I thought was never going to end, but that wasn’t the only thing to fall on us.

Spiders. They were everywhere, dropping down on us like an epidemic.

I squealed, my arms instinctually covering my head. Seth crawled to me and encompassed me in the safety of his arms.

Wasn’t that a catch-22?

I felt safe and secure in the same arms that would ultimately be my death.

Bullshit of epic portions.

A rainfall of dust bunnies, debris, woodchips, and, my personal favorite, spiders continued to tumble around us. Seth’s grip tightened, shielding me with his body. The curse—it felt angry. Seth and I were almost eighteen and had come so close to completing the starbound. It was raging to be let loose, to steal what it felt was rightfully its—our lives.