In fact, I was counting on it.
With a fire lit inside me, I opened the book back up to take a closer look and see if we couldn’t find the stranger among us.
Chapter Twenty-Five
When I finally made it downstairs, about a half hour later, I found that everyone was awake and already practicing the spells in the backyard. My heart swelled with pride as I realized that I was no longer going to have to convince the other kids to train; they actually wanted to get better.
As I walked into the kitchen, my eyes drifted to Asher. He was sitting on the counter near the sink, sucking down a bowl of cereal. When he saw me, he shot me a grin, a line of milk dribbling down his chin. Heading straight to him, I leaned up against the counter, jutting out my hip as I looked up at him.
“I thought Trix were for kids,” I said, nodding to the box of cereal on the counter next to him.
“That’s just what they want you to believe. Trix are actually for everyone.”
“You’re kind of tricky yourself, aren’t you?” I asked, raising my eyebrow at him.
He paused briefly before shoveling more food into his mouth. The break in eating was so imperceptible that I wouldn’t have noticed it if I weren’t looking for it.
“How so?” he asked, his mouth full again.
“Well, the plan you had to crash with me last night was pretty sneaky. You must’ve known that if you got into my room, I’d let you stay,” I said.
He smiled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I was just coming to hang out. You’re the one who invited me in.”
“Liar!” I hissed, in mock shock. The truth was I’d have let him stay whether he’d asked or not.
“You can act like the jury’s still out on me, but I know you think I’m awesome.”
“A little overconfident, don’t you think?” I asked.
“I like to think of it as realistic.”
“Mmm,” I murmured.
“Hadley? Are we learning new stuff today or going over what we learned yesterday?”
I turned to see that Asher and I were no longer the only ones in the kitchen. Emory and Peter stood by the back door, looking at me expectantly.
“We’ll review a few things, but I thought we’d go over hand-to-hand combat today,” I said, still staring at Asher.
“Cool,” Peter said, cracking his knuckles. Then, looking over his shoulder nervously, he took another step toward me. “Hey, Had, you may want to take a look outside before we get started.”
“Why? What’s up?” I asked, not liking the way that sounded.
I walked quickly over to the back door, sweeping past them. Scanning the yard, I looked for anything out of place or potentially dangerous. My eyes landed on a crowd that had gathered off to the right of the yard.
In the middle of it was Fallon.
I immediately became suspicious as I watched him talk in hushed tones to the group. “What is he up to?” I wondered to myself.
Ever since we’d made it back from the run-in with Samuel and his crew at my house, Fallon had kept a pretty low profile. He was still showing up to all of our training sessions, but he’d barely been talking to anyone and there were whole chunks of time where I’d forget he was even around. I wasn’t sure what had caused his sudden desire to fade into the background, but I was too busy to worry about it. Besides, a little time off from our constant bickering was kind of nice.
But now it seemed like he was back to his old self, which was not a good sign.
Crossing the yard, I thought about what I wanted to say. The group was in such a great place now—we were finally acting like a true coven and not just a bunch of latchkey kids—that I was hesitant to do anything that would take us two steps back. We needed to be fully unified if we were going to win this fight against the Parrishables. It would be bad if Fallon and I butted heads again now.
I couldn’t let him know I suspected anything was off. That could derail my plan.
“Serenity now, serenity now… ,” I repeated under my breath as I neared the edge of the group.
Plastering a smile on my face, I clasped my hands behind my back to avoid looking defensive and then pushed my way through the crowd to get to my frenemy.
“Let’s talk about this later,” Fallon said as soon as he saw me coming.
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Fallon!” I exclaimed, trying to sound as genuine as I could muster under the circumstances. He would’ve known something was up if I hugged him, so I kept my distance but flashed him a welcoming grin. This apparently was enough to throw him off, because almost immediately he crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes at me.
“Hadley.” He said my name slowly, deliberately. There was no kindness or friendliness in his tone. The way he was acting, you’d have thought he was angry at me. This didn’t make any sense though, considering the last thing he’d done was attempt to save me from the Parrishables. Unless that’s just what he wanted us to think and really…
Oh, man, I had to get to the bottom of this before I went crazy.
“You guys almost ready?” I asked, as if I didn’t have a care in the world. A few nodded, while Fallon remained silent. “Okay, let’s get started then!”
I left Fallon staring after me, slack-jawed, as I turned and walked away without challenging him about his sudden change in attitude.
If I wasn’t already thinking about the next phase in my plan, then I might have taken a moment to laugh at the stupefied expression on his face. Instead, I took a mental picture and stored it away for the next time I was in need of a little cheering up.
“Let’s start off with Jasmine’s exploding spell,” I shouted before walking over to the porch. I watched everyone break up into groups and begin to practice. Fallon circled up with a few of the guys and they each attempted Jasmine’s spell. To my dismay, Fallon was the only one able to pull it off on the first try, shattering a potted plant on the railing of the porch.
Looks like somebody’s been practicing.
My mind started to whir with possible theories. When could he have managed to team up with our enemy without us knowing about it? Maybe I should have just confronted him when I’d first found out there was a traitor in the Cleri. But how was I supposed to know if he was telling me the truth when he denied having anything to do with the Parrishables? Which he would, of course. It wasn’t likely that he’d stand up and say, “Oh, the Parrishables? Sure, I met them at the mall and handed over every secret we’ve ever had on a silver platter. Surprise! I’m a traitor!”
Yeah, right. Whoever was planning to turn against us wasn’t going to admit it on their own—until our enemies were well on their way to destroying us, at least. Nope, I was going to have to get it out of them. And that’s what had changed.
Thanks to the Bishop family spell book, I now knew just how to sniff out the double agent.
In the meantime, I joined Asher on the porch and began to wonder whether it was possible that the culprit could be anyone other than Fallon. Of course, once I looked at everyone as a potential suspect, it was easy to awaken my inner conspiracy theorist and realize that anyone was capable of turning on me. I wished it wasn’t true, but I had to prepare myself for the possibility it was someone I’d come to care about.
Jasmine always had been a little hotheaded and quick to cast before she thought. Sure, she’d been knocked out at the mall, but the Parrishables could have done that to throw us off. With all that black in her wardrobe, she had darkness written all over her.
And Sascha definitely had it in her to be the mole. No one was that happy and friendly all the time. I’d never really thought of her as a threat before, but that would have made her the perfect enemy.