Hex, A Witch and Angel Tale Read online

  He took one last step, trespassing on the remaining inches of space between him and the car door, and his fingers latched on to the side of my open window. Holy cow, he was suddenly standing so close! Smelling sooo good, like leather, pine trees, and something else, a faint trace of … gas?

  “I scared you, didn’t I?” he asked, with eyes foraging for the truth in places no one should’ve been able to reach inside me. “I’m sorry.”

  Get it together, Lily! a voice thundered in the back of my head. Apparently, Lily McGutsy, my alter ego, wasn’t spooked by Ryder, the friendly neighborhood stalker. Caught between the two versions of myself, I couldn’t decide if I should hit the gas or initiate a ferocious attack aimed at putting him out cold.

  In the end, I did neither, opting instead for brain rather than brawn usage, mostly because there was no other way to get to the bottom of this. Plus, alarm and trepidation aside, I couldn’t honestly say that the notion of the hottest guy in school following me around didn’t do anything for me. Sure, kind of insane, but not entirely off-putting. He was my Zen-moment guy! Curiosity may have killed the cat, but not figuring out his reasons would kill me just the same.

  “You’ve been following me around.”

  “No,” he denied, without flinching.

  “Gosh,” I scoffed, “I had no idea the woods were rigged with TV cameras. My bad.”

  One of the corners of his mouth twitched.

  “I live in the old McArthur cabin. Do you know where it is?”

  The dwelling he referred to was an old hunting shack in the woods, about a mile from my own house, which marked the edge of the forest. The log cabin, supposedly his, was located right next to one of my favorite trails so, yeah, I knew the place. In fact, I knew it well enough to call his bluff.

  “You do not live there,” I said with supreme certainty.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “How long are we going to argue about it?” He was amused. “Tell you what. Why don’t I cook dinner for you, at my place, for our first date? So you can see for yourself ?”

  Hmm, tempting. Sure, why don’t I willingly agree to meet the potential stalker alone, in the woods, after sundown?

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Lily, Lily, Lily,” he chanted my name, shaking his head. “If I wanted to hurt you, believe me, I could’ve done it many times by now.”

  Reassuring, that was not.

  “Rosemound High is an incredibly boring place,” he continued. “Don’t you know how you stand out? Don’t you know that, other than you, there’s nothing to make coming to school bearable?”

  Asking the question in a voice that somehow felt like warm liquid skimming over my skin, he reached out to touch my face. Fortunately alert enough to see it coming in time, I moved away from the window, all the while giving him one of my back-off-now-or-prepare-to-meet-your-Maker looks. Being called “special” wasn’t exactly a turn-on for me.

  The softness in his face melted away. I was reluctantly congratulating myself on a job well done, expecting him to turn angry and show his true, stalker-like colors, only he didn’t. He looked sad. And, my oh my, how that hit me! Smashed into me, more like. There he was, the most gorgeous creature I’d ever laid eyes on, still as awesome and dreamy as ever, but oh-so-sad. And for all my flippant bravado, there was no pretending that watching him and knowing that I somehow caused this sadness, that I had that kind of power over him, didn’t affect me. What female gifted by God with eyes and a heartbeat wouldn’t react to those lavender-flecked silver eyes drowning in misery? To that bitter set of his — sigh — kissable mouth? That heavy fall of those ordinarily straight, proudly planted shoulders of his?

  “Look, Ryder, I’m going to assume that you’re quick and able to understand that I’m a little freaked out by this. You get that, right?”

  And … we were back to being contemptuous again, I gathered, from the way his face realigned itself into a plain mocking expression. That was good, I figured, because I could deal with arrogant-Ryder. It was sad-Ryder I had no idea how to handle.

  Sarcastically, he said, “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “Mock if you must, but this just goes to prove me right. We really don’t know anything about each other, so all I can do now is assume. That you’re smart, hopefully not dangerous, and also that you’re telling the truth.”

  “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

  “That’s a misquotation, by the way,” I countered without thinking. Which might’ve made more of an impact if I’d stopped grinning like a cretin.

  “See? Ten minutes and you already know that I read Sherlock Holmes. Just imagine what you could discover if we went out on a real date.”

  “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. You read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes is just a character.”

  The effort of holding back a snicker was working his lower lip into the yummiest shape. Naturally, me being me, it gave me flashes of biting into it.

  “Should I take your attempt at educating me as a sign that you’ll go out with me?” he asked. “I promise to provide you with ample opportunity to correct me and prove your intellectual superiority. If nothing else, any time we’ll spend together should be a great confidence-booster for you.” He winked, using three fingers to salute. “Scout’s honor.”

  Toast, toast, toast. I was so toast.

  “Before I agree,” I said, “exactly how do you know the name of my cat?”

  He chuckled softly. “There’s nothing you can’t learn at Rosemound High if you pay enough attention.”

  “You mean, if you eavesdrop,” I decoded. “Raisin?” I asked again.

  Lips pursed, he returned, “That’s one way to look at it. You and J,” — that would be my best friend, Jane Archer — “discuss all kinds of things. But there are snoopers, and then there are snoopers. I mean, Casanova himself spent a few years spying for the Inquisition,” he added whimsically.

  With a frown, I asked, “Your point being?”

  “Mysteries are made to be solved. And it’s no accident that I should be the one solving yours. And vice versa.”

  “Some prediction. Should I just call you Nostradamus from now on?”

  Ignoring the mockery, he insisted softly, “Just say yes, Lily. Why try avoiding the unavoidable?”

  Ah, why indeed!

  Chapter: Two

  Sharing major news with your best friend in class? Without easing her into it? Not a good idea. “What? Ryder Kingscott asked you out?” J squeaked, one octave too high and perfectly audible to many of the healthy pairs of ears in the classroom, which, most likely, included the culprit, Ryder himself.

  I probably looked as if instantly submersed in red paint, my face hot right up to the hairline. Even with my head buried between my shoulders, I could easily count all the pairs of eyes surveying my now-clownish complexion.

  “Louder, please,” I hissed. “I don’t think they heard you in the next solar system.” “Sorry,” she whispered back. “But, come on, this is mind-blowing. Can’t blame a girl for getting excited.”

  Humphing, I risked a peek at Ryder. Two rows behind and to our right, he was, of course, staring at me, a self-satisfied smirk curling his mouth lopsidedly. Fantastic!

  Letting my hair fall over my shoulder to block out that sight, I made a point of elbowing J. “Aw!” she wailed, once again too loudly. “How did it happen? I mean, what did you do?” “Nothing. Nothing at all. But the thing is that, well, he knew stuff about me.”

  “Stuff ? Like what?”

  “Like my candle-making.”

  She scoffed at my answer. “That’s not really a secret, Lil. Everyone knows about it.” The “it” she was talking about was, in fact, a tad more complicated than she made it sound. See, my family didn’t exactly fit the profile of a

  typical Copper Country household. Once upon a time, we used to live in New York, where Dad was a big-shot lawyer and Mom, well, mostly she was just unhappy. Then ca
me the family trip to the Keweenaw Peninsula and Mom’s love at first sight for the place, which brought about an ardent desire to relocate, effective immediately. Somehow, she became convinced the place vibrated very auspiciously, that because of the copper, metal of Venus, good for relationships and health, and an absolute feminine force, it was the perfect spot for our family. Living here was going to be empowering for her. It would make her happy. Trying to explain about the copper mines being depleted led nowhere, Dad had once told me. That’s how, just after I turned six years old, we moved from a beautiful apartment in Manhattan to a country house smack in the middle of nowhere, on the outskirts of a dense woodland area.

  So how did it work? Dad now worked in Chicago. Through a combo of driving and flying via Houghton, he’d come home every Friday night, only to set off again late Sunday evening. Crazy? No doubt. But then crazy could easily be argued, in that Dad, an Armani-wearing, Mercedes-driving, His Majesty’s Reserve cigar-smoking, sixty-year-old-single-malt-drinking kind of guy, had married my New-Agey, laid-back, starry-eyed crackpot of a mom to begin with. Not that she wasn’t an awesome crackpot.

  More to the point, at least in certain respects, we were a textbook case of “like mother, like daughter.” She owned a little place called The Enchanted Forest Occult Emporium, where she performed tarot readings and sold magic crystals, mystical trinkets, and such. Among the “such” were a number of special candles, most likely the only legitimate items in her shop. What made the candles special? In a word, me.

  Okay, first off, peculiar family living arrangements and kooky mom aside, I didn’t like to think of myself as anything but your typical seventeen-year-old from middle-of-nowhere, Michigan. Most of all, I hated that words like witch, fortune teller, or psychic often popped up in casual conversation next to my name. Because that was so not me! So what if I could “see” a person’s whole life, and sometimes bits of their future, too, simply by touching them for a second? So what if I could fix virtually any problem by mixing certain plants with wax? So what if my candles actually worked? That didn’t make me a witch; I was simply more sensitive to people’s energy and to Mother Nature’s gifts to us. Freaky? You bet. Except there was more to me than freaky talents. In fact, for the most part, I was just a run-of-the-mill, small-town girl. Not that a lot of people got that.

  “Thank you, Lady Old-News,” I snapped. “I’m well aware that everyone knows about my candles. But how many people know I gather the plants at night, during a full moon, huh?”

  She breathed out sharply. “Uh-oh.”

  “Yeah. Also, he called me ‘special,’” I expelled the word with a glare aimed mostly at the battered surface of my desk.

  “Double uh-oh. But wait, maybe he meant it as in ‘cool.’ Maybe he didn’t —”

  I was about to bestow upon her a would-you-stop-dreaming-already look when Mr. Garcia intervened.

  “Señorita Crane, Señorita Archer, por favor! No puedo oir a mis proprios pensamentos por su chachara.”

  “Sorry, Señor Garcia,” J answered, trying for repentant and failing. “Er … I mean, lo siento,” she corrected herself, to the mirthful enjoyment of some of our classmates.

  “Silencio!” Mr. Garcia demanded.

  The class quieted down. It was an effort, though. With the SATs behind us and the summer break fast approaching, simply being here was a feat of sheer willpower. Everyone was either tired or distracted, longing to be out in the sun and taking advantage of the unusually balmy weather. The only thing that made school at all attractive was the upcoming prom. That reminded me …

  “He asked me to prom, too,” I whispered.

  J’s eyes widened with shock. As always, she was dressed to fit the week’s theme, which was a sexy-secretary kind of deal. The girl had style, no argument there, but it was pretty out there and always modeled with great panache. She put her outfits together around a weekly concept — smooth secret agent, chic French ingénue, Greek goddess, upper-crust Brit, etc. — and for seven days she wore only stuff that kept to it. Today, as part of the sexy-secretary motif, she was sporting an ensemble which I viewed as a cross between Victoria Beckham’s gray period and Lady Gaga’s look: fiery crimson button-up shirt, mostly unbuttoned, pencil leather skirt so tight she could barely sit down, spiky metallic heels of dizzying heights, and a futuristic hat in a starfish shape. The getup was completed with red lips and exaggerated smoky eyes. The surprise with which she met my news clashed with the makeup somehow, making her look like a mug-shot version of her typical self.

  “I didn’t say yes yet,” I added, before she could ask.

  “But you’re going to, right?”

  “I don’t know, J. I mean, he is really hot and everything.”

  Not to mention that, for the past twelve months he’d been constantly on my radar. The same radar that had stopped registering any male life forms at about the same time I’d sprouted boobs. But J didn’t know about the Zen moment. She didn’t know that Ryder had been in my head ever since. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my BFF loads; she was tough, beautiful inside and out, and so overly avant-garde for rural Michigan. Gutsy enough to parade her true self in front of people whose second nature was to judge, she was, in some ways, just another outcast, like me. So our friendship seemed to be a match made in heaven. But she was suffering from these full-blown terrors which centered on my boyfriend-less state. In her mind, I was sure to end up living alone with a mob of cats, or worse, revert to a Neanderthal form of Lily and seclude myself in the woods, which, of course, opened the door to unsavory sanitary habits and possibly cannibalism, too. So I couldn’t tell her about my Zen moment, not without risking her already booking the church where I should immediately marry Ryder, only minutes after she would have already picked out the names for our five, to seven, unborn, but definitely on the way, children.

  I peered back at the unknowing groom-to-be again. He was reading a book, acting mighty indifferent to everything around him. Sunlight clung to his hair, glazing the darkness of it in a bluish luster. There was something so careful, delicate even, about the way his long fingers were curled over the book’s cover. It made me sigh in a way that crumpled my chest achingly.

  “But?” J pressed.

  I swiveled in the chair to face her. “He even knew Raisin’s name, J. My cat’s name! Not to mention that —”

  “You’re freaked,” she interrupted, her head going up and down a few times, like one of those little hula-girl dollies.

  “Well, yeah,” I agreed, and then sighed again. “What should I do?”

  She flipped a handful of black curls over her shoulder, shrugging. Hard to believe, but her funky hat never moved. Was it glued on?

  “You should definitely take him for a trial run.” She grinned impishly. “In a public place, of course, with lots of people around.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. “He’s been here, what, a year? I had no idea he even knew I existed.”

  “I think that’s a widespread belief among the female Rosemound High students,” she soothed.

  “So you think I should do it?”

  “What I think is not really relevant here. The only thing that matters is, do you like him?”

  “Well, I’m not blind, am I?”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today’s episode of Lil Crane, Strictly Skin-Deep. Would you forget how he looks for a sec? Do you like him, as in do you think he’s worth taking a chance on, weirdness and all?”

  I glanced over my shoulder again. He was still reading, but as he turned the page, his eyes trailed sideways and locked on mine. He didn’t smile, even though he’d just caught me spying, and there was something incredibly intense about the way he held my gaze. And then, very deliberately, he dropped his again, returning to the book with an almost bored expression. Talk about mixed signals …

  With a frown, I answered, “Maybe. Maybe I think he’s worth the effort.”

  J’s generously rimmed eyes bulged. “Wow! High praise from you.”

  “
Like it’s my fault that most guys in Rosemound are either total jerks or dull as ditchwater.”

  “Amen to that. But obviously Ryder is neither. So go for it. I mean, what’s the worst thing that can happen?”

  “Um, let’s see … he could be Ted Bundy, Jr.? In his time, Ted Bundy was pretty hot, too, you know.”

  She laughed her sultry, deep laugh that had so many guys drooling over her. Not that she cared much. If her fashion sense followed weekly patterns, her love life moved in seasons. There were only two: the I’m-bored-I-think-I’lldate-someone-to-help-pass-the-time phase and the all-boys-suck-I’m-thinking-aboutjoining-a-convent-and-embracing-abstinence-forever one. Presently, she was plodding through the latter.

  At the sound of her laughter, Señor Garcia’s nose re-emerged from the pages of the book he was reading. He cast us another murderous look, his thin mustache twitching in aggravation, to which J reacted by raising her arms in something of an apology.We were expected to finish translating some obscure piece of literature scribbled onto the blackboard, as Rosemound High was one of those places still stuck back in the blackboard-era. Both J and I had yet to write down a single word, but a brief peep around the classroom revealed that we were hardly the only ones avoiding the task. Luckily, given his lack of reaction, Señor Garcia wasn’t going to call anyone on it.

  “Oh, Lil,” J sighed. “Spoken like a true hermit living in the middle of the woods.”

  “Gee, thanks. Spoken like an annoying pain-in-my-neck.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Look, what’s the big deal? Do you really think he’s dangerous? Did you get some weird vibe off him or something?”

  I shook my head. “You know I have to touch someone before I can tell anything. There was no touching.”