“Poetry?” Winn leans forward to look at her. “You write poetry?”
She folds her arms. “I plead the fifth.”
He glances at me, and I hold up my hands. “Hey, that’s all I know. Kat doesn’t show her poems to anyone.”
We turn down Billy’s dirt driveway, bouncing at each deep hole left from the winter snows. His house has its charms. The porch stretches all the way around, big and roomy. It’s a nice shade of blue, with navy shutters. As we get out, I text Gwen in hopes that I can get her here so I can keep her safe.
We’re @ Billy’s if you wanna come. We want you to. Sry for what happened.
Winn rings the doorbell. “Texting Gwen?”
“Yeah. I think she’s mad at me, though.” Sure enough, her text says it alclass="underline"
No thx. Too tired to play 3rd wheel tonight.
I show her answer to Kat.
“Ouch,” she says.
“I know, right?” I sigh. Gwen won’t let this one slide, and I have no idea how to make it up to her. I need to before our hunters hurt her.
Winn rings the doorbell again, which is when I realize we’ve been on the porch longer than the average wait for someone to answer the door. My heart speeds up, the thought of Billy hurt or dead suddenly at the forefront of my mind.
“Did you tell him we were coming?” I ask.
“Yeah, I called him.” Winn knocks a few times. “Sometimes he can be a little spacey, though.”
“Really?”
Winn smiles like he’s remembering something funny. “Guy’s in his own world half the time, but it’s always entertaining.”
Honestly, I don’t know much about Billy, except that he’s Winn’s friend and his parents are some of the few people around who don’t grow corn. They have apple orchards. Every mother and grandmother in the area waits anxiously to buy them for fall pies. Well, minus Nana. She’s a horrible baker, which is strange considering she mixes precise, nefarious potions all the time.
“Maybe you should call him again?” Kat asks.
Winn frowns. “His car is right there. He has to be here.”
We all knock at once until my knuckles hurt.
Just when I think I’ll have to bust the door down and save another person from death, Billy answers. His hair is the usual perfect mess, but he’s breathing hard, and his face glistens with sweat. “Sorry, couldn’t hear you over the music.”
Kat and I exchange a relieved glance. What was he doing? Dancing? I try not to laugh, though the thought of Billy dancing is pretty funny. He’s seems so laid-back.
Then, like a pro, Kat shoves Billy. “We were starting to think you were dead! Did you forget we were coming?”
The spell wraps around his arm as it drains from her hand in swirling plumes of blue mist. He’s safe. At least safer. He shivers, but other than that I’m sure he has no idea what happened. He stares at Kat, surprised. “Sorry?”
“Whatever.” She stalks past him and we follow.
“Got that out of the way quick,” I whisper. “And after all that complaining.”
She smiles. “I figured it was kind of like ripping off a fingernail.”
I laugh, but it’s cut short when Winn’s arms come around my waist from behind. Is it wrong that I like how he grabs me without asking? It gives me permission to do the same. He plants his head on my shoulder, and I can’t move even if I wanted to. “What’re you two whispering about?”
“It’s a secret.”
“Hence the whispering,” Kat says.
“Anyway . . .” I pull my paper from my messenger bag and hand it to Billy. “Thanks for the help. Here we were all talking about not skipping school this week, and I missed Friday and Monday.”
“Not a problem. It shouldn’t be too hard to get you caught up.” Billy plops down on a maroon couch in the living room, already frowning at my writing, which probably sucks. I’m not great at school in general. Maybe because I’ve always known what I’ll be doing the rest of my life, and you don’t study it in college. It’s more important for me to memorize spells and potions than long math equations.
“Good.” Kat kneels by the coffee table and opens her giant binder. “Because if she had to study during lunch tomorrow I couldn’t prove to her that we don’t have a stalker.”
“What?” Winn says as he pulls me into the love seat.
I try not to smile. And she thinks she’s useless. “I swear, Kat, the day we went out to lunch there was someone with a camera across the street. No one else was by us, so what were they photographing?”
“A car? The road? A penny left in the street?” She pauses, and then goes for her special notebook. The poetry one. I suppose that was . . . inspiring.
“Hmm, a penny or Gwen sunbathing?” I ask.
“I didn’t see anyone,” Billy says. “Did you, Winn?”
He purses his lips.
Billy’s eyes go wide. “Seriously? You saw someone?”
I knew it, but waiting for Winn to admit it is torture. I want so badly for him to give us some kind of clue.
“He wasn’t exactly hiding. If you looked over you would have seen him staring at Jo.” Winn tenses, and so do I. He wasn’t just holding me close that day; it was like some gut reaction to protect me.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Billy asks.
“He . . . I don’t know. The dude was creepy. He looked right at me, and it felt like he’d have no problem stabbing me in the heart if he felt like it.”
The hair on my neck raises. Winn doesn’t know it, but I’m pretty sure he was silenced with magic. That guy put a fear spell on him, told Winn he was dead if he pointed him out.
“What did he look like?” Kat’s voice trembles.
“That’s the thing.” Winn holds me tighter. “He looked totally normal—dark hair, tall, young—”
“Young?” I say, disturbed by the idea.
“Yeah,” Winn says. “But then for one second he didn’t seem right, like he was a real creep underneath.”
There’s silence, as if we can feel the sincerity in his words and what they might mean. Normal humans may not be able to see magic, but sometimes they can feel it—like the niggling sense that something is off, though you don’t know what.
This young guy had to be the one who took the cursed picture, but if that’s true, then he’s also not my mother’s murderer. And that means there’s more than one of these evil men after us. It could be a whole crew, for all I know.
Billy sucks in a breath. “Maybe we should skip school tomorrow.”
I couldn’t agree more.
TWENTY
It takes every ounce of willpower I have to leave Winn tonight, but there is so much magic to prepare if I want to protect my friends, and “Nana expecting me home for dinner” is the easiest excuse I have. He hugs me after Kat gets out of the car. “Why do you always have to go?”
That frown of his is so not fair. He looks like a puppy locked up in the pound, begging me to take him home. “Seriously, Winn, it’s in our best interest to keep Nana happy. What if I got grounded?”
He sighs. “That would suck.”
“It would.” I lean into him, soaking in the sensation before I have to get back to more witch stuff. “But we’re still going on a real date, right?”
He hugs me tighter. “Right. And this time there will be no stalkers-turned-fathers or sicknesses to get in the way. You’re mine for a whole night.”
My face warms. “Well, not a whole night. That would definitely get me grounded, even if we spent the entire time playing Trivial Pursuit with your parents.”
“Yeah, uh, that is not even close to what we’ll be doing.”
I pull back to see him better. “Wait, you already have it planned?”