Sinister: A Paranormal Fantasy (Sinisters Book 1) (23 page)

He hadn't seen Anna since they dropped Oliver off two days earlier. Despite his grounding, he’d been allowed to keep his phone. He'd mentioned to her via text that he would be coming to the gathering room this evening in the hopes that she’d stop by as well. It seemed to have worked. He was glad that his parents didn’t know he could escape their grounding into another realm.

"I must return to my office," Luke said, rising from his chair. Matt could have sworn he saw the devil wink before he disappeared.

"So what's new?" Anna asked, throwing herself into the recently vacated recliner. Matt told her about his parents' reaction to his late-night escapades, mimicking his mom's angry tone and his dad's attempts to slither back to his office in the middle of her lecture. Anna was howling with laughter, and Matt felt a corresponding swelling in his chest.

"The winter formal is coming up at my school," Matt said, striving to sound casual.

"Yeah?" Anna said between chuckles, seemingly unfazed by the abrupt change of subject.

"I was just wondering, if I'm not grounded still—I mean, there's—my friends are all— wannagowithme?" His face was burning by the time he finished.

There was silence in which Matt studied the carpet and wished, desperately, that he could sink into it.

"Sure!"

"I—really?" He looked up at last. Anna was grinning at him, her cheeks pink.

"Yeah, it sounds fun."

Matt beamed back. Maybe agreeing to help the devil hadn't been such a bad idea after all.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Colleen Fleshma
n
spent most of her childhood reading fantasy books and wishing she were off saving the world. She, like Matt, is left-handed, and once wrote a six-page paper on handedness that, she figured, qualified her to write an entire book on the subject. She currently lives in Florida, where she is pursuing her MD.