The Darkness Within (20 page)

“That’s crap, Ethan, and you know it!” I stormed over to him, tired of this distance he kept trying to put between us for my safety. “You didn’t sit back and watch. You pulled me through it all. I would’ve given up if you hadn’t been there to give me a reason to live. You were strong enough for the both of us.” I grabbed his face in my hands and pressed my lips to his. This time he didn’t back away. He kissed me, like we hadn’t kissed in ages, which was exactly how it felt.

I forgot about Dylan and Shannon. I forgot about Nora’s dark magic lurking inside Ethan. I forgot we were standing in a playground and not in the privacy of the cottage. Time stood still for us. Nothing else mattered except for us being close, in each other’s arms. I tightened my grip on him, breathing him in like air. Completely breathless, we tilted our foreheads together and came up for air.

“Sorry.” The word was barely audible, but Ethan brushed his lips quickly across mine, silencing me, so I knew he’d heard it.

“I’m not. I needed that, and not just the incredible kiss. I needed to hear that. I’m not weak. I hate that this magic is making me feel like I am. It’s not me. Maybe I’m not as strong as you, but I’m not going to cower in the corner, either.”

“You
are
as strong as I am.” I laced my fingers through his. “And we’re in this together. It’s not just your fight. Let me repay you for
how much you’ve helped me be strong in the past. Together, Nora’s spell is in for some major ass-kicking.”

He smiled. “Together.” It was how things were always supposed to be with us. We were Ethan and Sam. We went together. We made sense.

“If you two are done sucking each other’s faces, you might want to come over here.” Shannon waved us to the merry-go-round. “We think we found something.”

Hand in hand, Ethan and I walked over to them. “What is it?” I asked. Had we located Mirabella after all?

“Whatever it was that attacked us,” Dylan raised his hand like he was feeling the air, “it left a trail. I think together we can trace it back to the source.”
Together
. There was that word again. I loved the sound of it.

“What if the place it leads isn’t where we’re trying to go?” Ethan asked. “We don’t know who tried to attack us.”

Shannon shook her head. “There’s no
tried
about it. We were attacked. You were unconscious, and Dylan broke his wrist. That thing succeeded.”

“Okay, fine, but Ethan’s right.” I had this nagging feeling. “Do you think the coven, Ms. Matthews’s coven, is searching for us? That they’re the ones who did that, to stop us from finding Mirabella?”

Ethan rubbed my arm. He knew I felt guilty for going to Ms. Matthews on my own. It had been a stupid, reckless idea, and now we were all on the run because of it. “Do
you
think they’re after us? I mean, how did she seem after she told you she’s a witch?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. My mind feels like mush right now.”

“Try to remember, Sam.” Ethan squeezed my hand, giving me strength.

“She said we should combine covens. She said it was the only way to help you.”

“Wait.” Dylan held his hand up. “You told us about all the weird things Ms. Matthews has been doing. When did she offer to help Ethan? How does she even know about him?”

That was a good question. “I don’t know how she knows about him. She didn’t say. I’m not sure I trust her. She was so cryptic and strange. I ran away from her because I wasn’t about to sit around
and wait for her coven to make a decision. They’re teachers. They wouldn’t let us attempt something this dangerous, even if it is the only way to save Ethan.” My voice broke. “They’d probably want to be in charge of us if we joined with them, and we can’t waste time arguing about the best way to get rid of this dark magic inside Ethan.”

They all nodded in understanding. We were a family now, and we had to do what was best for ourselves.

“So what do you think Ms. Matthews is really after?” Shannon crossed her arms, and for once it wasn’t an expression of boredom or annoyance. She was nervous. She was hugging herself, comforting herself.

“I don’t know, but you guys said the dark magic Mirabella took from Dylan went into her, right?”

Dylan and Shannon nodded.

“Well, what if Ms. Matthews—or one of her coven—wants that dark magic?”

Ethan shook his head. “Who would willingly take this? I feel out of control, like I could set the world on fire at any moment. I’m struggling every second of the day to suppress this darkness within me. I can’t imagine someone wanting to feel this way.”

“That’s because you’re not evil,” Dylan said. “You’re not a dark witch. You didn’t bring this on yourself. It was done
to
you, without your knowledge.”

Shannon shrugged, but she kept her arms crossed. “I don’t see what the big deal is. We want the dark magic out of Ethan, so if Ms. Matthews wants it, let her have it. What do we care?”

Dylan scoffed. “You can be such an idiot sometimes.”

“Don’t start. Either of you.” Why was I always having to play referee with them? “We aren’t going to figure this out by arguing. I think what Dylan is trying to say,” I paused to glare at Dylan, “is that letting a witch who wants that kind of dark magic take it would be a really bad thing.”

“Try a hell of a lot worse than bad.” Dylan rolled his eyes. “She’d be unstoppable. She could take us all out, easily.”

“Then what do we do?” Shannon dropped her arms in defeat.

I looked at Ethan. He was staying quiet, letting us think through
all this. I knew he didn’t want to put us in any more danger, but I really wanted his opinion. “What do you think we should do?”

He took a deep breath and let his gaze fall on each of us. “I think we have to trace this magic and see who’s trying to hurt us. If it leads to Ms. Matthews, at least we’ll know where she is and how to avoid her. If it leads to Mirabella, then all the better.”

Dylan stepped closer, making our more-square-than-circle group tighter. “You should know that if we trace this magic, whoever cast it can then trace our spell back to us. If it’s Ms. Matthews and her coven, we’d be leading them right to us. We could run, but they wouldn’t be far behind.”

“That’s a risk we’re going to have to take,” Ethan said.

The rest of us nodded in agreement. One way or another, we were about to track down an evil. One that could easily track us down in return.

21

T
HE
merry-go-round looked almost menacing, like it was challenging me. I stepped up, taking the same place I’d stood in earlier. Dylan and Shannon were right. I could sense the magic that had been used on us. It felt dark, evil beyond anything I could imagine. If I hadn’t known for sure that Nora was dead, I would’ve suspected she was behind the attack. But looking at Ethan, practically crawling in his own skin, I knew that wasn’t possible. The only part of Nora that was lingering here was now inside Ethan. For a split second, I jumped to an awful conclusion. What if Ethan had caused the spell? What if the darkness we were about to trace led us back to him? Then what?

But no. It couldn’t. Ethan had been knocked unconscious. If he’d caused the burst of dark magic, it wouldn’t have hurt him, too. Or would it? He didn’t know how to use the magic. He’d just been tapping into it by accident. Could the magic manifest itself without Ethan even knowing? Could it have clashed with the spell we were doing and backfired on all of us, including Ethan?

Oh, God, I hated that I was questioning him like this. He was Ethan. Perfect and sweet. Only he wasn’t just Ethan anymore. He was a witch, a cursed witch. I had no idea what that part of him was capable of.

“Everyone ready?” Dylan asked.

Ever since Ethan’s magic had changed, gone all screwy, Shannon had taken over leading the group spells. Dylan had stepped back,
probably because what was happening to Ethan felt all too familiar to him. But this time Dylan was back in the leadership role. I wondered what had changed. Did he want to find Mirabella that badly?

Ethan and Shannon were nodding in reply. I followed along.

“Good. Be ready. We have no idea what’s on the other side of this spell. If anything bad starts to happen, break the circle. Everyone understand that?” His eyes shifted to each of us. I’d never seen him look so serious, and considering Dylan wasn’t much of a joker these days, that was saying a lot.

Apparently our attention wasn’t a good enough answer because he repeated the question. We all said yes.

“Good. Now everyone follow my lead.” He closed his eyes, so we did the same. “Through air and space, this magic we trace. Reveal the one from whom the spell was done.”

We all repeated the lines, and like last time, I felt our combined powers flow between us. Every so often, I felt a tugging sensation in my stomach, like something was pulling me toward the center of the circle. Even though closing my eyes helped me stay focused, I felt the need to look at the invisible force pulling on me. I opened my eyes and saw an image. Afraid to speak and break the spell, I tugged on Dylan and Ethan’s hands, hoping they’d open their eyes to see what was wrong. They did. I motioned to the image. Ethan tugged on Shannon’s hand, and she opened her eyes, too.

None of us spoke. We just watched. It was a house in the woods. It looked secluded, but it was hard to tell. A light went on in the lower left window. Someone was there. A burst of green energy seeped under the window and snaked through the trees. It wiggled closer, coming straight at…us! Dylan’s warning screamed in my head, and I broke the circle. I let go of Dylan’s hand, still clutching Ethan’s tightly, and jumped off the merry-go-round. Ethan came with me, leaving Dylan and Shannon staring where the image used to be. It was gone.

“Whoever it was tried to hurt us again,” Shannon said.

Dylan nodded and jumped down from the merry-go-round. “And they were definitely using dark magic. That thing was green with dark power.”

“But did it tell us anything? We still don’t know who it is or where
they are, and now they can trace our magic here, to us.” I was seriously panicking. I hated snakes, and big, green, magical snakes were about a thousand times worse.

“We can trace it.” Dylan walked to the car with Shannon right behind him. Ethan and I watched, not sure what they were doing. We were still pretty new to this stuff. Dylan turned the key in the ignition while Shannon mumbled a spell, holding her hands over the hood of the car. If anyone saw this—anyone who wasn’t a witch—it would look like Shannon was talking to the engine. She put her arms down, and Dylan shouted, “Get in and buckle up.” The engine revved, and I noticed Dylan didn’t have his foot on the pedal.

“Is the car doing that on its own?” I asked, skeptical to get in a car that seemed to be possessed by magic.

“Yes, and if you don’t hurry up and get in, it’s going to leave without you.”

Dylan’s words slammed into me. Ethan and I ran for the back seat. We barely had the doors closed when the car peeled out of the playground. Shannon laughed. She was riding shotgun, and she’d managed to get her seat belt on before the Mazda turned into a psycho driving machine. Ethan and I weren’t so lucky. We slid across the black leather seats. Ethan reached his hand around my head just seconds before I smacked into the window.

“Thanks.” I grabbed my seat belt and clicked it into place. Ethan did the same. We were safe. For now, at least. “Where are we going?”

“Not a clue,” Dylan said, his hands resting in his lap.

“You better put your hands on the wheel and at least pretend you’re driving. People are going to be very suspicious of a car that looks like it’s driving itself.”

“It
is
driving itself.” Dylan wasn’t used to being around people all the time. Before he met Ethan and me, he hadn’t even attended school. He was getting better at acting normal around non-witches, but every once in a while we had to remind him of things other people would think were weird. Like a car that drove itself.

“She’s right, Dylan.” Shannon put her feet up on the dashboard. “Put your hands on the wheel.”

He huffed, but he listened.

“Do you mind?” Ethan asked Shannon. “The dashboard isn’t a footrest.”

Shannon groaned as she lowered her feet. “I was trying to get comfortable. Who knows how long of a drive we’re in for?”

Which brought up the question, what would we do if we ran out of gas? “This thing is really going to take us to that house in the woods? How is that possible?”

“I told it to follow the trail of magic.” Shannon twisted in her seat so she could see me sitting behind her.

“But we saw the snake thing in the image, not around us.”

“We saw where it was coming from, not the entire path it traveled.” She twisted her hair in her fingers like she didn’t have a care in the world. I had a hard time understanding how she and Dylan were so nonchalant about all this.

“Have you guys done this spell before? You’re a little too calm right now, when I think you should be freaking out like Ethan and I are.”

Shannon laughed. “I bewitch my car all the time. It’s like having your own personal chauffeur.” Why was I not surprised?