“What’s that?” I asked.
“Kind of a cross between a journal and an instruction manual for witches. Every one of us keeps one.” She paused, looking thoughtful. “I wonder if this isn’t just a really f lowery, well-written one.” She sat still for a moment, lost in her thoughts.
I poked her with my foot.
“Shadows, schmadows, Angelique,” I said, frustrated. “I’m dying here. Quite possibly, literally dying, so please tell me what the book says!”
“Sorry.” She smiled apologetically, f lipping the pages again.
“Here it is.”
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thrown ice water on me. I was terrified, hopeful, curious—
but mostly terrified.
Angelique cleared her throat, and began reading the poem from the start.
“If, on your true love a crest is worn Be cautious, from you that love will be torn You’ll be spellbound, enraptured until your last heart beat Which is numbered the moment your eyes meet If freedom from the curse is your goal Be warned, it takes a self less soul
This curse can’t be cured with a potion Since a selfish act set it into motion Ask yourself, would you perish
To save the life of the one you cherish?
Burden yourself with love’s fate so tragic Sacrificing yourself can break the magic You’ll need the strength of mind, body and heart Then, true love shall not be torn apart Break the spell of the evil charmer
If you are strong enough to be her armor Summon the strength and heed this verse It holds the key to breaking the curse.”
I lay there, stunned.
“Do you get it?” Angelique asked excitedly. “Brendan was the key all along! He had to do what Archer didn’t do—he had to be self less. He had to do what was right for you. He had to risk himself. And he did!”
She paused. “I have to admit, I find Brendan slightly more tolerable now.”
“So…the curse is…over?” I asked, my voice very small.
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I felt like if I shouted it from the rooftops, it might not be true.
Angelique nodded emphatically. “I think so. But this is just the beginning. This book is insane! According to this, you guys are true love. Legit, real, honest true love. And it’s magical, because it’s so rare. There’s one story, let me find it,”
Angelique mumbled, f lipping the pages of the book.
“Wait, just wait. Pause!” I yelled, pulling myself up and sitting on my bed on my knees.
“The. Curse. Is. Broken.” I took care to enunciate every word, not wanting to fully embrace this moment just yet. I f lashed back to the showdown at Belvedere Castle, when we first thought we’d won—before Anthony made a run for it. I couldn’t be sure I was going to be safe just yet.
“Yes, Emma.” Angelique grinned. “It is my honest, expert opinion as the smartest witch you know that you are no longer cursed.”
I jumped on Angelique, giving her a giant bear hug.
“Thank you so much,” I whispered. She stiff ly patted me on the back.
“Emma, honey, I don’t do hugs.” She winced, and I removed her from my enthusiastic embrace.
I held out my hands. “Can I have the book? Please? I need to see Brendan.”
“I thought you were seeing him later?”
“I was, but this can’t wait.”
“Come on, we have a lot of work to do.” Angelique shook her head disapprovingly. “I mean, we’ve got to get you going on your spells and basic herbs….”
“Angelique, this involves him, I have to tell him that we’re safe.”
“Fine!” Angelique threw her hands in the air dramatically, handing over Hadrian’s Medieval Legends.
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“I’ll just leave this here,” she said, tapping on the red-covered spell book.
“See you Monday,” Angelique said, throwing her bag over her shoulder as I started cramming my feet into my lace-up Converse sneakers, the only shoes that fit over my bulky ankle bandage. Angelique started for the door, then turned around to address me over her shoulder.
“I’ll want you to have read the first two chapters of that book by Monday. We’ll discuss it at lunch.”
“You’re giving me homework?” I asked incredulously.
After nodding and bowing with a f lourish, Angelique let herself out of my room. I heard her saying goodbye to Aunt Christine as I dialed Brendan’s number, cradling the phone in my shoulder as I tried to find a big enough bag to hold the book.
“Hey, sweetheart,” came the sexy, deep voice on the other end.
“I need to see you right now.” The urgency was clear in my voice. “Everything’s okay—it’s better than okay—but I need to see you. I can’t wait until later.”
“Come over now,” Brendan offered. “I was actually going to call you after I jumped in the shower—my parents left early so I’m here alone now. I’ll send the car.”
“No time, I’ll grab a cab. I’m on my way,” I said, shutting the phone, deciding to just empty my bookbag completely, dumping all the contents on the f loor to make room for Hadrian’s Medieval Legends.
I hobbled to the bathroom to splash some water on my face.
Act natural, Emma.
“Hey, Aunt Christine?” I called, slinging the bag over my shoulder and pulling my winter coat out of the hall closet.
“Yes, dear?” she asked, looking up from the couch where she was watching a rerun of Cribs on one of her billion or so 9780373210305_TS.indd 321
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channels. “Look at this, who needs a gold toilet?” she clucked disapprovingly.
“Um, yeah. Wait, what?” I asked, momentarily dis tracted.
“Nothing, dear.” Aunt Christine laughed. “Are you leaving already?”
“Yeah, Angelique reminded me about some stuff that I had to get done, and Brendan’s an ace with Latin. Me, not so much.”
“Okay, Emma. I know you still have a lot to catch up on,”
she said, nodding. If only she knew just how much.
I kissed her on the cheek and headed out the door, hailing the first cab I saw. A subway would have been faster—and cheaper—but aside from my still-sore ankle, I was afraid to carry this precious cargo around people. I hugged the bag to my chest, looking down at my sweatpants and sneakers with mismatched laces and realizing that I probably should have thrown on jeans or something a little more presentable.
Brendan was waiting in the street for me, paying the cab driver before I could even protest.
“What’s this all about?” Brendan asked with a bemused expression, taking the heavy bag from me and sliding it on his shoulders. His still-damp hair hung in his green eyes, which crinkled at the corners with his smile.
“I’ll tell you when we’re upstairs,” I promised as he scooped me up into his arms, insisting on carrying me up the four f lights of stairs. Even though I could have made it on my ankle, I didn’t argue with him—much.
I hadn’t been to Brendan’s house since that first time—so I was at first surprised at how, well, messy his room was.
“Yeah, I was going to clean up before you got here,” Brendan admitted sheepishly while he still held me in his arms.
After a short kiss, he sat me on the end of his bed and surveyed his room, kic
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couch. He scratched his hair, sending the damp locks in a million different directions. It looked like his hair was fighting with itself.
“It’s not bad.” I smiled, looking at the disorganized mess and realizing the first time I’d come over, he’d cleaned up to impress me.
“So what’s the emergency? Not that I mind getting extra time with you,” Brendan asked, sliding his hands around my waist and leaning into me. I started falling back on his bed, losing my senses as usual whenever he kissed me.
“Wait!” I cried, pushing him back. If we started that I’d never get to the great news. I brushed some magazines off his bed and plunked down my backpack from where he’d set it on the f loor, pulling down the copy of Hadrian’s Medieval Legends.
“Is that book the book?” Brendan asked, staring in awe at the intricate, hand-carved leather cover. I nodded, f lipping through the pages.
“I have to read you something,” I said, launching into the text. I felt like my heart was a metronome, beating in time to the poem’s rhythm.
When I was done, I looked up at Brendan triumphantly.
“Can we believe that?” he asked tentatively.
“It was right about everything else,” I reasoned.
Brendan took the book from me and reread the poem.
When he was finished, he stared at me with a dazed expression on his face.
“Don’t you get it?” I asked, placing my hand over his as he held the book in his arms. “You were the key! You saved me—you sacrificed yourself to save me.”
“It can’t be that simple.” Brendan shook his head in disbelief.
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a psychopath, battle him nearly to the death, then have you take him out, almost dying yourself, and let’s not forgot how I had to conjure a spirit, too. Really simple. And I had to go to a school dance.”
A slight smile began to touch Brendan’s lips, and soon spread across his face.
“So we’re okay, and you’re safe?” he asked, placing the book on his bed so he could pull me into his arms again. This time, I didn’t fight the embrace.
“I think this is one battle we can put behind us,” I said, adding, “As long as you always remember to put me first.”
“Little witch,” Brendan said affectionately, planting a quick, noisy kiss on my cheek.
“I don’t have a problem with putting you first,” he admitted. “It’s a small price to pay, to keep you safe and with me, always.”
“Always. I like the sound of that.” I sighed, staring deeply into those green eyes that I loved so much. My heartbeats—
now that they were no longer numbered—accelerated.
Brendan gently stroked my cheek, cradling my face with his hand while his other arm wrapped around my hip, holding me against him. Then my soul mate pressed his lips to mine. His hands searched my face, as mine did his. I savored the slow, sweet caress, the way his soft kiss felt against my lips, the safe, secure feeling of his strong hands as they moved up my back. Brendan clutched me to his chest, and I held on to him happily, hearing his heart beat against my cheek.
“So, Brendan, does this mean we live happily ever after?”
He smiled at me and kissed my forehead.
“Happily ever after,” he agreed. “Or at least, as happily as we can in high school.”
Then he touched his lips back to mine.
* * * * *
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Thanks to my ever-supportive husband, Dave Ciancio, for his love and understanding when I disappear into my laptop for hours on end, getting lost in my own little world.
Thanks to my wonderful agent, Lynn Seligman, for her patience and guidance, and to Dr. Elizabeth Stone, for all her invaluable advice through the years.
Thanks to my editor, Tara Gavin, for her enthusiasm and support—and everyone at Harlequin TEEN for helping me realize my dream.
A big thank you to my first readers, Cyndi Lynott, Catharine McNelly, Dawn Yanek, Maggie Mae Mell, Jennifer Urbealis, Angela Nigro and Sandra Tedt for reading the (sometimes horri-fyingly awful) early drafts and giving me invaluable feedback.
Thanks to Jonathan Bernstein, Trent Vanegas, Jason Pet-tigrew, Rachel Hawkins, Lynn Messina and Nancy Holder for the much-appreciated early support!
A gigantic thanks to Mom for all of her encouragement and faith in me through the years. I love you, Mom. And finally, thanks to the rest of my amazing family—Evelyn, George, Auntie, Connie, Ann Marie, Aunt Babe, Jessica, Jodi, Karen and the Ciancios—for everything. The only way my family could be more awesome is if they had jet packs.
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I left Emma’s fabulous aunt’s house, deciding that I’d walk back to my home on the West Side. Maybe I’d walk through Central Park—there was a light dusting of snow on the ground, and the park did look pretty in the winter. Picturesque. It was cold enough that there wouldn’t be a ton of people around.
I had a lot to mull over, and I hated getting on the subway.
Too many people—and often, too many emotions to read. For someone like me, sometimes the subway was like being beaten about the head with a sledgehammer. I’d always been able to read auras. It was like a shimmer, a colorful shimmer that surrounded the person, radiating out. The first one I ever saw was green, surrounding my mother when I was very young as she comforted me over the death of my grandmother.
But being around a witch like Emma, with so much untapped potential, had somehow amplified my own abilities. I don’t know how—it just did. I was beginning to wonder if I was an empath, someone who could sense other people’s emotions. It would jump out at me out of nowhere, these feelings I picked up from others. The last time I was on the subway, I was assaulted by some guy’s guilt over cheating on his wife.
I left the train a few stops early, unable to control my tears.
And I don’t cry.
I headed toward Fifth Avenue, telling myself that I shouldn’t 9780373210305_TS.indd 329
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be surprised that Emma picked running to Brendan’s house over working with me on the craft. I hadn’t told Emma about my possible empath abilities yet—she’d had enough on her mind—so I wasn’t surprised that she opted to go see Brendan.
After all, I wasn’t that surprised the first time I saw Emma react to Brendan. Everyone reacted to Brendan like that. Well, everyone except me, of course. I saw the attraction. You had to be blind, deaf and dumb not to see it. He was aloof. He was richer than Midas. And I guess he was handsome in that obvious badass sort of way. I got it. I’d seen it, over and over again.
I headed to the Sixty-seventh Street entrance to the park, thinking about the countless times I’ve seen girls in our class fawning all ove
r him. The ones who were “fortunate” enough to hook up with him didn’t get any repeat business—and they were usually devastated by his dismissal. I’d chalked him up to be nothing more than a big slutty player and never thought he was deeper than a thimble of water. After all, he just wasn’t my type. When most girls screamed for the lead singer, I checked out the guy working the lights.
But of course it was just my luck that my best friend at Vince Academy—the only person outside of my family that I could talk to about witchcraft and the supernatural—fell for him. And it got worse: she wasn’t just a random hookup for him, like every single girl before her was. Oh, no. He was absolutely head over feet for her. They were supernaturally intertwined with each other—soul mates in the truest sense of the word. So that meant Brendan—the epitome of what I couldn’t stand about Vince A—was now a part of my life.
Whether I liked it or not.
Sigh. It was a travesty!
I reminded myself that I’d resolved to make an effort, for Emma’s sake, as I crossed the threshold into Central Park, 9780373210305_TS.indd 330
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enjoying the calm quiet of the day. I promised myself that I would be patient when she got that dreamy little look on her face whenever his name was mentioned. And he did save her life, so he had that big ol’ checkmark in the plus column. I didn’t doubt he’d do it again, a thousand times over. I didn’t doubt his love for her. But generally, just sigh! Travesty! Out of all the guys in the world, couldn’t her soul mate have been some video-game programmer? Someone with a friend I at least wanted to meet? Or could tolerate?
So I was trying to be patient. But it was hard. Like when I left Emma with a pristine copy of Hadrian’s Medieval Legends.
There were countless tales in that book—and considering that her own supernatural beginnings were found in that book, I’d venture a guess to say most, if not all, were rooted in some kind of truth. But of course, instead of jumping right in to read these legends—or even f lip through the Spells for the New Witch book I brought her—she just had to go to Brendan’s house.
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