The Darkness Within (9 page)

“Yeah, and believe me, you’re lucky your parents don’t know you’re alive.”

“Ethan’s hiding from his family.” I didn’t know why I’d admitted that to Dylan.

“I figured as much. You two try to keep a lot of secrets, but it’s hard to fool someone who’s been in the same situation.”

I finally uncrossed my arms. “Believe me, it’s not the same situation.”

“Oh no?” Dylan stepped toward me, and now that I wasn’t afraid he liked me anymore, I stood my ground. “You mean you aren’t in hiding because of magic?”

Okay, so we were. “Is that why you changed your last name? So your parents couldn’t track you by it?”

“That wasn’t because of my parents. I told you they could find me through a locator spell. The name change was for everyone else’s sake. I couldn’t have them trace me back to my real family. Not that anyone gave a damn about me or Ben. We were invisible. And after a while, our parents stopped looking for us. Disowned us, I guess.”

But why? There had to be more to this. People didn’t disown their kids for no reason. “What did you do? How did your magic go wrong?” Dylan obviously didn’t want to talk about it. He would’ve explained more if he’d wanted to, but I needed some indication of what might happen to Ethan, how bad things might get.

“You sure you want to know?” He leaned back against the sink, trying to act casual, but the tension in his face said otherwise. “Because we’re linked now. If I tell you what happened and you end up hating me, you’re still going to have to be in the same coven with me. Can you handle that?”

I wasn’t sure. He was seriously scaring me now, but if I didn’t find out after all this, I’d never trust him again. I’d always wonder what horrible thing he’d done, and my mind would probably think up things that were ten times worse than the truth. “I want to know.”

He stood up straight and looked down his nose at me. “I killed Ben’s girlfriend.” He walked out without another word, leaving me with weak knees and my stomach doing flips.

9

I
LUNGED
for the toilet and threw up my breakfast. I’d killed people. Multiple people. And that had only been a month ago. But somehow hearing Dylan say he was responsible for the death of his brother’s girlfriend sent my cereal hurtling into the toilet. Dylan had been using magic his whole life. He should’ve had it under control. He had never returned from his grave a monster and the pawn in a witch’s game of dark magic and revenge. I didn’t know the details, but I could tell that Dylan blamed himself for the girl’s death. And not in an it-was-just-a-tragic-accident sort of way.

My mind raced back to the way he’d reached for my hand in this very bathroom. Maybe he did have feelings for me. Maybe those feelings were pushing him to the edge and thoughts of Ben and his dead girlfriend were surfacing, confusing him. Maybe it all felt a little too familiar to Dylan.

No, he wouldn’t hurt me. We were in the same coven. We were linked by magic. But Ben was his blood, his brother, and Dylan had killed his girlfriend. Had he fallen for her, too? Was it a jealousy thing? I had to find out more. I had to know if I was in danger around Dylan. But how would I find out? I couldn’t exactly ask Dylan. Did Shannon know? She was the one who had told me to ask Dylan those questions. She might have been trying to warn me. I had to talk to her.

I splashed water on my face and rinsed my mouth. Luckily, I had
gum in my pocket. I popped a piece in my mouth and headed back to class. Mr. Ryan shook his head at me as I entered the room. I went to his desk and whispered, “I’m sorry, but I got sick. It came on suddenly.”

His expression softened. “Are you all right now? Do you need to see Nurse Wentworth?”

“No. I think it was just my breakfast not sitting right with me. I’m okay now.”

“All right, but if you start to feel sick again, you have my permission to just leave.”

“Thank you.” Just leave. I could take Shannon with me as an escort. Then I’d be able to talk to her about Dylan.

I sat down and pretended to follow along for a few minutes. I texted Shannon under my desk.
Going to fake sick. U R taking me to nurse
.

She read the text and nodded her head slightly. Two seconds later, I was covering my mouth and rushing out of the room with Shannon following behind, carrying my stuff for me. I waited until we were around the corner before I took my shoulder bag from Shannon.

“So, where are we going?” she asked.

“The nurse. I’m sure Mr. Ryan will check up on me, so I have to at least show up at the nurse’s office and pretend to be sick.”

“I thought you wanted to talk to me. That’s what it seemed like, anyway.”

“I do. We’ll have to use a bubble spell so Nurse Wentworth doesn’t overhear us.” The bubble spell was one of my favorites. You could talk and no one could hear you. They couldn’t really see you, either. If they focused on you, they could see you, but they couldn’t stay focused on you for long.

Shannon slowed her pace and grabbed my forearm. “Did something happen with Ethan?”

“No. With Dylan.”

She let go as we went down the stairs. “Did he do something? Hit on you? Try to kiss you? What? The suspense is killing me.”

“Nothing like that. Worse. I think.” I was definitely relieved he didn’t have a crush on me. It would’ve been disastrous for the coven, but this wasn’t any better. If Dylan was a killer…

I knocked on Nurse Wentworth’s door. I couldn’t hear anything
on the other side of it, so hopefully that meant the office was empty. More people around would mean we’d need to cast a stronger spell so we could talk. My nerves were distracting me, which wasn’t going to help me focus on the spell in the first place.

The door opened, and Nurse Wentworth reached her hand out. “Passes, ladies?”

I shook my head. “Um, we don’t have any. I was sort of sick in class, and Mr. Ryan said if I felt like I was going to be sick again, I should just come here. He didn’t write me out a pass.”

“And what about you?” She turned to Shannon.

“Mr. Ryan thought I should escort her. She’s thrown up so much we were afraid she’d pass out on the stairs or something. I think she should lie down.”

“Very well. You may go back to class. I’ll handle this from here.”

“No!” Shannon couldn’t leave. I thought quickly. Mind-control spells weren’t easy, and I hated the idea of putting one on Mrs. Wentworth, but I had to find out more about Dylan. If he was dangerous or not.

Mrs. Wentworth felt my head. “I think you may be running a fever.”

“Can I please stay with her for a few minutes? Mr. Ryan won’t mind at all. And that way I can update him on how Sam’s doing when I go back to class.” Shannon was good, and I was relieved she hadn’t gone straight to the mind-control spell. What did it say about me that it had been my first thought?

Mrs. Wentworth sighed. “Fine. A few minutes. That’s all.”

“Thank you.” Shannon smiled and took my arm, leading me to the cot in the back of the office. Seeing it and the ugly green curtain reminded me of Nora putting a spell on Mrs. Wentworth and making her fall asleep on that very cot so she and I could talk. God, I was no better than her.

“Lie down. I’ll get the thermometer.” Mrs. Wentworth walked to the cabinet on the opposite wall. Shannon pulled the curtain closed and started mumbling the bubble spell. I joined in. We had to work quickly. It wouldn’t take Mrs. Wentworth long to locate a thermometer. I felt the barrier go up as Mrs. Wentworth started walking back
toward us. She veered off to her right and sat down at her desk. We watched her filling out paperwork, forgetting we were even there.

“We’re good,” Shannon said. “Now, tell me what’s going on.”

“I talked to Dylan. I asked him the things you told me to ask him.”

She lowered her head and played with a tear in the sheet on the cot. “Oh.”

What, she was going to get all quiet on me now? She was the one who’d put me up to this. “Shannon, he told me about his magic going wrong, like Ethan’s. He said his parents disowned him, and Ben took him away. He told me about Ben’s girlfriend.”

“Ben was a good guy. A bit of a hothead at times, but so is Dylan.” By the soft tone of her voice, I could tell Shannon had had a thing for Ben.

“I’m sorry if this is hard to talk about.”

She shook her head. “No. It’s fine. I liked him. There. I said it. But everyone liked Ben. He was amazing, and wickedly powerful.”

“What about his girlfriend? What was she like?”

“Not a witch, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Not a witch? That was shocking. “How did he date her, then? Wasn’t that risky?”

“Extremely. When he came here, she followed him. They were in love.” She rolled her eyes. “Rebecca and I recognized the magic in Ben and Dylan right away. And Nora recognized the magic in Dylan, too. She saw the darkness in him. She was attracted to it.”

“Don’t tell me they dated.” That would just be too weird.

“No. Nothing like that. She was only after his magic—well, more like finding out how he’d tapped into dark magic. Once she got what she wanted, by totally tricking him, she backed off. Lost interest. Dylan was a little hurt at first, but then…”

“What?” She couldn’t get the words out quickly enough for me. I wanted all the information, like, yesterday.

“He started talking about Mindy a lot.”

“Mindy? Was that Ben’s girlfriend?”

“Yup. She was a redhead with long legs and boobs I would’ve killed for.”

I gave her a look. This wasn’t the time for jealousy. Besides, the girl was dead.

“Dylan obviously had a thing for her, but Ben never caught on. He was oblivious. I had my suspicions that Dylan used a spell on Ben to make sure he didn’t notice. I never proved it, though, so I can’t be sure. Still, everyone seemed to know. And Mindy led Dylan on. She liked his attention. Ben was running the coven. It had been his idea to form it in the first place. He was busy a lot, and that left plenty of time for Dylan and Mindy to get close.”

“How close?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this, but if it helped me understand what Dylan had done and why, then I had to force myself to listen.

“I’m pretty sure they were sleeping together.”

Oh, yuck! Dylan had sex with the same girl his brother was sleeping with? “That’s so messed up!”

“I know. I wanted to tell Ben, mostly so he’d dump Mindy and pay more attention to me.” That was Shannon, totally not shy about her intentions, even when they were completely selfish.

“But you didn’t?”

“No.” She looked away again. “I should’ve. Maybe it would’ve stopped Dylan. But knowing him, it probably would’ve made things worse. And it might have been me he came after instead.”

“Came after? What are you talking about? Did he kill Mindy on purpose?” My stomach lurched again.

Shannon shrugged. “I can’t say for sure, but I do know Mindy told Dylan she wasn’t breaking up with Ben. She said the thing between her and Dylan was just for fun, nothing more. He pretended to be okay with it at first, but he was falling for her pretty hard. Finally, he told her to choose between them. So she did.”

“And he killed her for it?”

“I don’t know. I guess that’s what happened.”

“What do you mean, you
guess
? I thought you knew this story!” Had she really put me through this without knowing what had happened?

“I know the next day Ben found Mindy’s body. She was in her apartment, in the bathtub.”

“How did she die?”

“Her heart stopped, or something stopped her heart.”

“Was it magic? Was it Dylan? He told me he killed her, but maybe
she had heart problems. Maybe she had a heart attack. We can’t be sure.”

“I can.” The curtain opened. Dylan stared down at us. My eyes immediately flew to Nurse Wentworth. She was oblivious to Dylan, too. He’d put a bubble spell on himself. The only reason why we could see and hear him was because we were witches, too.

“Did you do a locator spell to find us?” Shannon looked pissed.

“Oh what, you’re the only one who can use spells to sneak up on people and spy on their conversations?”

He had a point there. I couldn’t believe our happy little coven had been reduced to this. Lies, secrets, and snooping. What happened to the group spells and the good times?

“I knew you’d run right to Shannon.” Dylan glared at me. “I shouldn’t have run out on you like that. I should’ve explained things myself, but you were getting under my skin with all your questions and the way you stuck up for Ethan.”

“Of course she’s going to stick up for Ethan.” Shannon stood up, getting in Dylan’s face. “She loves him, so get over it. This crush you have on her is ridiculous. She doesn’t feel the same way, and hell if I’m going to let you hurt her like you hurt Mindy.”

Seeing Shannon stick up for me was surreal. She really
had
become my friend over the past month. But did she actually think Dylan would hurt me? That I’d end up like Mindy?

“Stop! Both of you. This isn’t helping.” I turned to Shannon. “Dylan doesn’t like me. It was a misunderstanding.”

Dylan cocked his head to the side and took a sharp breath. “You think I—”

“No.” I waved my hands in front of me. “I was wrong. When we were talking in the bathroom yesterday, I thought maybe you had feelings for me. It was stupid, but when you reached for my hand…I don’t know. I guess I jumped to the wrong conclusion. But I don’t think that anymore. You’re still mad at me about Ben. I get that, and I appreciate that you’re being nice to Ethan and me after everything we’ve been through.”