Entangled (6 page)

Graylee blinked several times when Nolan spoke. Somewhere in her ponderings she’d lost the thread of their conversation. “Totally,” she replied lamely.

Nolan broke out into a wide grin.

Sometimes that was all it took. A smile could be more powerful than the most potent love spell.

“Want to take a break?” Nolan asked.

“Heck, no.” Graylee grinned mischievously. She’d always known that if her full powers returned she’d never doubt them again. She’d stretch them to the limits… well, within bounds, and make up for all the time she missed. Graylee looked at the west wall with its dry erase board. “I’m going to move something.”

“Like the eraser?” Nolan said just before the heavy oak desk lurched forward and screeched along the floorboards. Nolan’s eyes widened.

Their peer leader looked over.

Graylee dragged the desk to her, chuckling to herself when Ryan Phillips had to jump out of the way. When the desk stopped a foot away, Graylee leapt forward and levitated the final three feet above the desk. She landed on top as Shay Baxter walked in.

Graylee crossed her arms over her chest triumphantly. Everyone stared. Shay was unable to hide a tight frown. Graylee saw the disbelief on Miss Perfect’s face, as though she believed Graylee wasn’t capable of excelling at anything.

Graylee couldn’t help thinking it. Once more she was queen of the classroom.

Graylee hopped from foot to foot on the sidewalk in front of her house Monday morning. In Kent, it was either raining or trying to rain. At the moment, it was drizzling. Her breath leaked out in white puffs. The light rain didn’t touch her. She’d erected a shield around her body.

Thea flashed her lights when she saw Graylee by the side of the road. Graylee waved and walked around to the passenger’s side. “Good morning,” Graylee said cheerfully.

Thea nodded at the Beetle parked in the drive. “Is your sister staying home today?”

Graylee looked over her shoulder. “She hasn’t left her room yet.”

“I take it you’ve been on suicide watch all weekend?”

“More like criminal watch. Charlene wants Stacey’s heart on a plate.”

“So she’s still not over the whole Blake dumping her thing?”

“Ha.”

Brittany and Kiki were standing in the middle of D Hall when Graylee and Thea entered the building. “Mind if we go the other way?” Graylee asked. “I don’t feel like dealing with the brat pack this morning.”

“I hear you,” Thea answered.

She accompanied Graylee to her locker. Thea was in the middle of telling Graylee about her trip to the assisted living center to visit her grandmother when Graylee felt a light kick against her foot.

Her stomach fluttered when she saw Nolan. The tap against her foot was gentle and deliberate. It sent a current shooting up to her chest. He had the widest grin on his face. “Hey.”

Graylee’s hand stilled inside her locker. She couldn’t remember which book she’d been reaching for. She smiled like an idiot. “Hi.”

“I saw you standing here so I thought I’d come over and say hi.”

“Yeah, cool.” Graylee noticed Thea staring from her to Nolan. “This is my friend, Thea. Thea, this is Nolan.”

Nolan’s cheeks dimpled. “How’s it going?”

Thea smiled back. “Good.”

“Great, so you ladies have a nice day.” Nolan tossed Graylee one last endearing smile. “See you around, Graylee.”

She and Thea watched Nolan walk away. They kept staring until he’d disappeared around the corner. Thea’s eyes glittered. “Well, isn’t he cute. How come you’ve never mentioned him before?”

“We never really spoke till this weekend… at church.”

“Uh-oh,” Thea said. Her grin widened.

“What?”

“I see a sin coming on.”

Graylee swatted her friend. “He just said hi.”

“That’s how it starts.”

Graylee’s smile folded over on itself. Thea’s words reminded her of Raj. “Let’s get to class.”

Graylee wasn’t sure why going to fifth period made her so nervous. Well, actually, she totally knew why, it just didn’t seem like the sort of thing that should continually unhinge her. That’s why she’d decided she was going to stare the problem straight in the eye. Yep, straight in those exotically slanted green eyes.

That afternoon she made it to class before Raj. She took her usual seat beside Sadie and watched the doorway like a cat waiting for a mouse to scamper out of a hole in the wall. Raj was the mouse in this case, or more fittingly, the rat.

But he didn’t show up.

Mrs. Pritchett arrived, acting pricklier than ever. It was almost as though Graylee had imagined the battle-ax running out of the room after her blouse burst open last Friday. Students were still talking about it. Not in class, though. Not anywhere within a hundred feet of the English teacher. Laughter climbed its way up Graylee’s throat like carbonation in a bottle of soda after the cap is twisted.

“What?” Sadie asked.

Graylee quickly bit down on her tongue, but nothing got past Mrs. Pritchett. She glared at Graylee from her desk in the corner.

“Miss Perez, your paper on
Othello
was two pages short.”

It was the kind of remark she could have written on Graylee’s paper, but Mrs. Pritchett sometimes chose to share these comments with the entire class depending on her mood, which was just about always foul.

“What happened, Perez?”

The room went silent.

Graylee fought the urge to shrug. “I didn’t have anything else to say.”

“Nothing else to say?” Mrs. Pritchett intoned. “You couldn’t meet the minimum requirement on an essay about the greatest writer the world has ever produced?”

Graylee’s eyes narrowed in on Mrs. Pritchett’s peach top. Ripping open a sweater wasn’t as easy as bursting open a blouse. Graylee chided herself for even thinking it, but for one fleeting moment she understood the anger that had prompted Raj to act out. But she was above magical retribution. Graylee would turn her cheek and take the punishment like any other student.

Didn’t mean she couldn’t shoot Mrs. Pritchett a menacing glare as she took it.

By the end of class, Raj still hadn’t shown. Had Mrs. Pritchett somehow figured out he was behind the blouse-popping incident? Impossible.

Graylee passed Nolan in the hall on her way to sixth period. She waved and he waved back. Maybe he’d ask her out. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. The sooner he did, the sooner she could put an end to any delusions Raj was entertaining in his head about the two of them and the world to themselves.

It might even be worth breaking her own dating rule.

“You’re in a good mood this evening,” Mom said as Gray sat down to dinner.

“Eh,” Gray replied with a grin and shrug.

Across from her, Charlene blew on her fingernails, which were now ruby red. Char had been acting eerily nonchalant ever since Gray returned home from school. She’d even applied eyeliner and lipstick, which seemed like a waste considering she hadn’t gone anywhere.

“It must be from regaining your powers yesterday. See, I told you Gatherings weren’t a complete waste of time.”

Sure, let Mom think that was the reason behind her dopey grin.

Charlene stiffened. “What’s that?” she asked now. “Lee got her abilities back?”

Mom smiled. “Your sister floated yesterday.”

“That’s great.” Charlene practically sneered, dropping her elbows to the table and rocking forward. “About time you caught up to the rest of us.”

Graylee slammed her fork down. “Way to show your sisterly support.”

Mom cleared her throat. “Girls, let’s enjoy dinner.”

Enjoy dinner? Right, with the bad seed sitting directly across from her?

The clank of Mom’s serving spoon against the casserole dish was a distant echo in Graylee’s ear.

“The squash came out nice,” Mom said. “Just needs a little more seasoning.” She stretched her hand toward the salt shaker. It stood directly between Graylee and Charlene. The salt moved across the oak surface into Mom’s hand. If Graylee’d had any doubt about who’d moved it, it was clarified when Charlene said, “Here, let me help you, Mom.”

Graylee straightened her back and lifted her chin. “Would you like some pepper, as well?” She glared at Charlene and then pushed the pepper grinder toward her mom with her mind. Only it didn’t move.

Graylee’s lower lip dropped. She stared in disbelief at the pepper. Then she caught it: a slight smirk on her sister’s lips.

“You!” Graylee screamed.

Their mom startled in her seat. “What’s going on?”

Graylee pointed a finger across the table. “You’ve been blocking my spells all along!”

If Graylee’d had any doubts, they were wiped clean by the look in Charlene’s eye.

“No.” Mom looked at Charlene as though she were a stranger. She even spoke as though she wasn’t there. “She wouldn’t do that. She couldn’t.”

“Five years,” Graylee all but choked. Tears were threatening, but she refused to let a single one spill in front of Charlene.

“Charlene, is this true?” Mom asked.

“No.”

Graylee flexed her fist and practically leapt across the table. “How dare you lie? I know it was you. How come I’ve never been able to perform spells in your presence? Until yesterday I could never do magic at Gatherings, then low and behold—the one day you’re gone suddenly I can.”

Charlene’s glare was fierce. The best defense was an offense and Charlene rocked the whole “I’m not the one in the wrong, you are” thing.

“Charlene, how could you?”

At least Graylee’s mother believed her.

Charlene’s lip folded over. “Oh, right. So I’m the bad guy. The evil twin.”

“Charlene, I didn’t say that.”

Why not?
Graylee grumbled in her head. It was the truth. Five freaking years she’d been stripped of her abilities and confidence.

“You don’t have to,” Charlene cried out. Oh sure, now she was the one sobbing. “You love her more. You always have.” Charlene sobbed harder, great big gasping breaths as though she was choking. “You’d be happier if it’d just been her—if I’d never been born.” Charlene leapt from her chair and ran for the stairs.

“Charlene!” Mom called in alarm. She pushed back her chair and hurried after her.

Graylee was left sitting at the table alone.  She stared across the table so long everything went out of focus. The dining chairs, the plates, the framed pictures: everything turned to blurred fuzz as though she were altering reality and might cause everything around her to disappear until there was only herself, seated inside an empty room.

Graylee squeezed her eyes so tight her upper lip pressed into her gums. Her desire to transport was so intense that she cried out in frustration when she opened her eyes. The dining room came rushing back into focus.

Graylee stood up so abruptly her chair skidded back.

Fine, if she couldn’t teleport she still had her own two feet.

She ran outside into the rain and took off down the street. The rain beat down and she did nothing to stop it from pelting her, absorbing through the layers of her clothes to the skin beneath.

Her own sister had taken everything Graylee was and locked it tightly away. She’d let the other kids laugh at her in sixth grade. She’d made Graylee doubt herself and feel like a screw-up. What kind of sister would do that?

She hadn’t taken her powers from her completely, but enough to make her out for the fool in front of her peers and her own mother. Graylee had been hesitant to practice on her own. Just when she thought she was getting into the swing again she’d try something at the dinner table or Gathering and hit a brick wall once more. Just think what new spells she could have mastered if her sister hadn’t blocked her for FIVE YEARS!

The dim room was making Raj sleepy. Adrian’s voice in the main chamber brought it all back into focus.

“Just relax, Mrs. Court, and give me your hands.”

Adrian, or Hedrick, as he went by these days, was barely visible through the narrow gap between the velvet curtain and the doorway leading into the back room where Raj was crouched on a low stool. On the other side of the curtain, the dark chamber was lit with dripping candles. Adrian sat in front of his client at a round table covered in a midnight-blue tablecloth. The setting looked better suited to a psychic reading than a healing session.

Luckily Raj could see in the dark. If only he could absorb an entire book with the touch of his palm instead of flipping through a tomb on the art and magic of healing terminal diseases.

Adrian had told Raj he’d be fixing a migraine, not a brain tumor.

He shouldn’t have been surprised when the shady warlock pulled a fast one on him. There was a reason the coven had stripped Adrian of his powers. The man couldn’t be trusted. Adrian did, however, pay cash under the table to those who accepted employment working for the famed Hedrick the Healer. Basically, Raj was doing Adrian’s work for him.