Chapter Fifteen
The girl reached her friends before she reached me. Isabella and Lexi pulled her into a hug before holding her at arm’s length and twirling her around to get a three-sixty view of her stunning red dress. As she danced in circles, laughing, her aura hit me in waves. I glanced around, wondering if any of the other witches in the room were as affected by the girl as I was, but they did not even spare her a passing glance.
“Oh my God, Nora!” Isabella squealed, spinning the girl again. “You look amazing!”
“Seriously beautiful,” Lexi agreed, nodding.
“If I wasn’t here, you’d be the sexiest person in the room,” Mark added and winked.
The girl, Nora, made a face. “Gee, thanks, Mark. Where’s Duncan?”
The group of friends passed me, jostled along by the crowd, and I followed them beneath the paper mache legs of the Eiffel Tower and into the main hall. Again, I was overwhelmed by the sheer immensity of the party. Models in antique couture strutted up and down a runway, burlesque dancers commandeered another stage, and some of the guests had already taken a place on the illuminated dance floor. Nora and her friends headed straight for the banquet table, laughing and catching up as they loaded small plates with hors d’oeuvres and fondue. I trailed along behind them, keeping them within earshot. No one paid me any mind as I joined the line at the banquet table and mindlessly collected salmon puffs from a crystal platter.
Mark popped a piece of bacon-wrapped sirloin into his mouth with his fingers. “So, Nora. How long do you have to stick around here before we can form our own little after party?”
Isabella smacked his chest with the back of her hand. “Hey, that was my idea!”
Nora giggled at her friends’ antics. “It depends. I think my mom wants me to chat with a few people first. You know, investors and a few people from application committees for Harvard and Yale.”
“Is this a business luncheon for you?” Lexi asked dryly. “Why don’t your parents entertain their investors?”
“Also, why are they pimping you out to the Ivy Leagues already?” Isabella added. “You just turned sixteen. Isn’t it kind of early?”
“Apparently I make an excellent first impression,” Nora replied, topping off her plate with a dollop of chutney from the condiments bar. “And it’s never too early to think about college.”
Mark groaned and crumpled a paper napkin in his fist. “Don’t remind me. My dad’s already talking about how I need to follow in the footsteps of the men in our family and start thinking seriously about getting into Columbia.”
“Columbia’s a great school,” Nora said, patting him on the back.
“Yeah, and it’s in New York,” Isabella added with a smirk. “Which means if the rest of us get into Harvard, we only have to see you on holidays.”
As Mark and Isabella bickered, Nora looked on endearingly before piloting Lexi away from them, balancing her plate in her palm. I sighed deeply and squeezed between two portly guests to follow them. It was going to be a long night.
For three and a half hours, I tailed Nora around the extravagant party. She mostly stuck with her friends, laughing and dancing, but every so often a tall, good-looking man that I assumed was her father introduced her to some other suited business official. As the night wore on and the guests guzzled glass after glass of champagne, the party grew sillier and messier. Business deals and polite chitchat went by the wayside, replaced by raucous conversations and erratic dance moves that should never have seen the light of day. I was getting tired, and Winnie was so bored that she joined the models on stage and struck dramatic poses to make me laugh. All the while, I kept an eye on Nora, waiting for an opportunity to get her alone. Approaching midnight, I got my chance.
I leaned against the wall behind the banquet table, allowing the tipsy crowd to keep me hidden. Nora approached the table, glanced left and right, and liberated an unopened bottle of champagne. She froze suddenly, gazing out of the floor-to-ceiling window. I checked her line of sight. Another witch sat on the porch outside—the same woman who’d escorted Nora down the stairs at the beginning of the party. Her features were hazy through the glass, but I could just make out the faintest hint of her aura, which seemed to be orange or red. A silent exchange occurred between the pair, then the woman outside grinned, winked, and looked away from Nora. Nora’s shoulders visibly relaxed, and she scuttled toward the opposite end of the room with the champagne.
I pushed off the wall and followed her out. She sidled through a back door and into the side yard of the house, where there was no cover for me to tail her without being noticed. I propped the door slightly open with my heel, spying on Nora through the crack at the hinges. She joined her friends, who pumped their fists at the sight of the pilfered booze, and the quartet stole away from the party toward the driveway. When they had enough of a head start, I left the cover of the house behind, hugging the wall to stay in the shadows.
The kids hopped into a black Range Rover at the front of the valet line, whispering and giggling to one another. Nora settled for the passenger seat, responsibly buckling her belt. As the car trundled down the gravel driveway, Winnie appeared beside me.
“What now?” she asked, looking after the Rover.
Without answering, I stunned the valet attendant with a quick hex. The witch’s mark on my calf responded in kind, twinging as I stole a pair of keys from the valet stand and slid into the driver’s seat of the matching vehicle. It was a sleek sedan with luxurious leather seats and a power button. I jammed my index finger into the button to start the car, revved the engine, and peeled out in an attempt to catch up with the teenagers. My calf stung like a fresh burn, but I ignored it in my haste.
Winnie materialized in the passenger seat beside me, holding on to the dashboard as we careened through the neighborhood. “I guess the aura blockers wore off just in time.”
“Good thing.”
I gunned the engine, putting on an extra burst of speed. Whoever was driving the teens’ getaway car had a lead foot, but as we crested a hill, the Rover’s tail lights appeared at the bottom of the road. They were heading out of town, in the opposite direction of the high street, where the houses grew farther and farther apart before giving way to endless rolling hills and green grass. In ten minutes or so, the Rovers passed under an extravagant stone welcome gate guarded by two gargoyles. The accompanying sign read Windsor Falls Preparatory School.
“Really?” I grumbled, turning off my headlights to avoid detection as I steered the sedan after the teenagers. “Who goes to their own high school to party?”
The school itself was a daunting structure of stone masonry, looming above the land like a castle fortress. I ditched the sedan behind a maintenance building, chucked my heels into the passenger seat, and proceeded barefoot. Nora and her friends were easy to keep track of. They whooped and catcalled gleefully as they skipped through the campus. The click of the girls’ heels on the stone walkways echoed through the halls. I shadowed them at a safe distance until we all arrived in a grand courtyard with a giant water fountain. The girls shucked off their shoes to dip their feet in the pool as Mark struggled with the champagne bottle.
“He’s going to blow his eye out,” Winnie mumbled, watching as the lanky boy steadied the bottle between his knees. Thankfully, Isabella snatched it from his grasp and expertly wiggled the cork free. They all cheered at the effusive pop, and Isabella quickly sipped from the top to catch the escaping foam.
“To freedom from that boring party,” she toasted, lifting the bottle into the air before passing it to Lexi.
“To Nora’s excellent thievery,” Lex added, nodding at Nora before taking a swig.
Nora saluted, hiked her dress up to her knees, and hopped into the fountain’s pool. Lexi passed her the champagne bottle as Nora waded around, happily dodging the spray from the waterfall that poured over a large stone arch in the center of the pool. Mark rolled up his pant legs to join her. Isabella dipped her hand in the water to sp
lash the outnumbered boy.
I settled in to wait, casting a quick illusionary ward to hide myself from the teenagers should one of them happen to look my way. For another forty-five minutes, the group of friends chatted about everything under the sun, from the approaching homecoming dance to Duncan’s unfortunate grounding to their test in English Literature on Monday. Just as my eyes were beginning to drift shut, the click of boots behind me jolted me awake.
It was a security guard, patrolling the school grounds to check for harmless hooligans like the teenagers in the courtyard. His eyes passed right over me, guarded as I was by the illusionary ward. He followed the kids’ voices toward the courtyard. If he found them, I would never get the chance to get Nora alone. I readied myself to cast another hex.
“Wait!” Winnie ordered in my ear. “We can use him. Protect Nora and let him chase off the others.”
“I knew I kept you around for something,” I mumbled back.
In one quick movement, I dodged around the security guard and emerged into the courtyard before him. Nora was closest, so I took care of her first, firing an offensive spell at the nape of her neck. She toppled backward, falling off the low bordering wall of the pool. Isabella and Lexi rushed to her aid, blaming the half-empty champagne bottle for Nora’s tumble. Mark, on the other hand, froze suddenly as the beam of the security guard’s flashlight tickled the edge of the courtyard.
“We have to go,” he hissed, tugging at Lexi’s forearm.
“Get off, Mark!”
“You wanna get caught? Security’s just around the corner!”
“Crap!”
Isabella helped Nora to her feet, but she was unsteady. Mark grabbed Lexi’s hand, yanking her out of the guard’s line of sight.
“Hey!” the guard called out in a gruff voice.
Isabella panicked. She gave Nora’s hand a halfhearted tug before letting go, her eyes fixed on Mark’s retreating back. “Come on, Nora!”
In the split second between Isabella’s exit from the courtyard and the security guard’s entrance, I cast an illusionary ward over Nora. She disappeared from view, taking on the appearance of her surroundings as the security guard rushed around the fountain and sprinted after the fleeing teenagers. A jolt of triumph flooded through me. Finally, I had Nora on her own.
She sat down on the edge of the pool, cradling her head in her hands. The jinx I’d hit her with wasn’t a fun one. It gave the victim a nauseating case of vertigo and a wicked headache. I felt bad for employing it, but if I was going to go through with Morgan’s test, Nora had more than a headache in store for her. I lifted my hands, summoning my craft, and my fingertips glimmered with the dark green light of my aura, but Winnie’s hand sunk through my forearm, stopping the flow of magic.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, stepping out of her reach.
Winnie’s expression was startled and sad. “I’m leaving.”
“You’re leaving? What do you mean—?”
When her body shimmered without warning, flickering on and off like a faulty light bulb, I abruptly understood. The otherworld was calling to her. Winnie was passing over.
“No,” I gasped, my attention straying from Nora. “You can’t go! I need you.”
Transparent tears flowed down Winnie’s cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Gwenlyn.”
“No!”
A cloud shifted overhead, revealing the bright light of the moon. It shone down on Winnie, and she nearly disappeared in its silvery glow. She reached out to caress my cheek, but all I felt was the frosty touch of her nonexistent fingers.
“I’m so glad I got to know you,” she murmured as I began to cry. “All my life, I felt like I was missing something. It was you, all this time.”
“We’re not finished,” I sobbed, sinking to my knees. The silk dress pooled around me like a puddle of liquid emeralds. “You said you were here to help me cure the coven. The curse isn’t broken yet!”
Winnie flickered out of existence and back in again. “I’ve done my part. The rest is up to you. I wouldn’t be leaving if you couldn’t do it on your own.”
“Winnie, please.”
She floated down to my level, taking my face between her frigid, immaterial palms. “You can do this. Get the girl. Bring her home. Save the Summerses. I love you.”
“Winnie—”
The moonlight shone down, almost as if opening a portal between this world and the next one. Winnie faded ever-so-slightly.
“Say you love me too.”
“I love you,” I choked out.
My own dimpled face grinned back at me, and I flashed back to the first night Winnie and I had met. In a little over a month, she had grown to mean everything to me, and now I couldn’t bear the idea of letting her go.
“See you later, sis,” she said.
When the moonbeams swallowed her and the last outline of her face was no longer visible, my emotions overflowed and ran wild. I heaved for breath, crouched on all fours in the courtyard, as sobs wracked my body. The rough stone scraped against my knees and hands, but the pain of saying goodbye to Winnie was immeasurable compared to something so trivial.
“Why are you doing this?”
My head snapped up at the sound of the soft voice. The girl in the red dress, Nora, stared at me from her spot on the edge of the fountain.
“You…you can see me?” I stuttered. At some point during Winnie’s passing, I’d forgotten to maintain the ward that kept me out of sight.
The girl nodded and winced. The jinx was still in place. “I saw you at my parents’ party too. You’re like me, aren’t you?”
I swallowed hard, trying to regain my composure. “Yeah, I’m like you.”
She heaved forward like she was going to retch but managed to hold her nausea at bay. “You followed me. You attacked me just now. What do you want?”
At the sight of her challenging stare, an angry determination rose within me. Panting, I lifted myself from the ground and wiped the tears from my eyes. The train of my dress trailed behind me as I approached the younger girl. She glared up at me, and I saw the comprehension in her glazed eyes. She knew I was not here to be kind to her.
“I’m sorry,” I told her.
Green witchcraft exploded, setting the courtyard alight. My leg felt as though someone had set it on fire, but my energy circulated through the witch’s mark and amplified itself. A sinister satisfaction flowed through me as Nora crumpled at the foot of the fountain. She fought valiantly, casting her rosy pink aura as far as she could, but she was no match for the burst of dark power that rushed through me from the witch’s mark. As our colors combined, bathing the courtyard in a queasy hue, she collapsed and passed out. I heaved for breath, staring down at the girl as the witchcraft settled and the power dissipated from my aura. Winnie was gone, but I’d done my part. Nora was mine.
Witch Myth: Wildfire- The Beginning Page 15
