by Cassandra
Testing
13 Covens™ Book 3
Cassandra
Hayley Lawson
Michael Anderle
Testing (this book) is a work of fiction.
All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2019 Hayley Lawson and Michael Anderle
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
A Michael Anderle Production
LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
LMBPN Publishing
PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy
Las Vegas, NV 89109
First US edition, March 2019
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Contamination
Author Notes - Hayley Lawson
Author Notes - Michael Anderle
Other Books from Hayley Lawson
Books by Michael Anderle
Dedication
To my awesome daughter Callie &
always supportive husband Gavin.
— Hayley
To Family, Friends and
Those Who Love
to Read.
May We All Enjoy Grace
to Live the Life We Are
Called.
—Michael
Thank you to our JIT Readers
Micky Cocker & Angel LaVey
Editor
The Skyhunter Editing Team
Chapter One
Jessica sat at her desk, her history book open before her despite the fact that she could hardly say she was actually taking it in. Although she had good intentions to read the chapter that had been assigned for homework, all she had managed to do thus far was stare at the same paragraph for nearly half an hour. Her mind wandered in every direction that had nothing to do with school. Or at least not mundane school, that was.
She supposed on the plus side, even if she never managed to actually read the whole chapter, she at least wouldn’t wind up in detention anymore—something that felt weird to think about considering that only two weeks prior, she had never been given detention before in her life.
It was incredible how much had changed in barely two weeks. Jessica practically felt like a different person—and in some ways, she supposed she was.
Anyway, as far as detentions went, thanks to her newly acquired mastery of performing convincing spells, she no longer had to worry about actually serving any that teachers threw her way. Not to mention that her popularity at had skyrocketed due to the rumors about her being a skilled hypnotist. There were even students willing to pay her to get them out of their detentions. While she had yet to take any of them up on their offers, she knew it would be tempting, especially if she was ever pressed for cash.
Detentions aside though, Jessica knew she had many responsibilities to accept in the very near future. First and foremost was likely not landing herself in detention in the first place, despite having the ability to easily get out of them.
She had a strict agenda to follow, and the top priority was to complete mundane high school, preferably with honors, so that she could officially start her first year at the Academy of Advanced Witchcraft.
A smile came to her face just thinking about it. The school had been so awesome when Chad took her to visit. She couldn’t wait to start.
Still struggling to stay focused on her homework for the time being, however, she swiveled in her chair. Her familiar, Frank the imp, lounged in her bed and watched television. Keeping Up with the Kardashians was his show of choice, and it was what he currently watched.
Jessica shook her head and exhaled a small laugh. “You really love this show, don’t you?”
“I’m not the only one, judging from the fact that it always seems to be on.”
“I guess you have a point there.” Before long, Jessica found herself reeled in by the Kardashian drama. She tilted her head, stared at the screen, and wondered if Kim really had butt implants.
But who in their right mind would get butt implants? She laughed at the thought, curious as to whether there was a spell for that kind of thing.
What were the odds that the Kardashians were witches too? It certainly would explain their success.
Her mind wandered again and Jessica marveled about how much magic was out there that she had yet to discover. The possibilities seemed endless, especially when she thought back to the magic shop she had visited with her Grandma Ethel. She still could hardly wrap her mind around how much stuff had been in that place.
As a matter of fact, she still hadn’t even taken a closer look at what she had bought from that place.
She swiveled in her chair again and this time, turned toward the closet where her jacket hung.
Her homework felt far too tedious to bother with, and Frank was so thoroughly absorbed by the Kardashians, and Jessica decided there was no time like the present to take a closer look at the deck of cards she’d purchased from Christa, her economics classmate who also happened to be an undercover witch.
She crossed the room quickly to the closet, where she dug in her jacket pocket and pulled out the deck of cards. They felt heavy in her hand and mysterious somehow. Like they filled her hands with a magical tingle—but surely she only imagined that.
Once she’d pushed her school books aside, Jessica sat at her desk and carefully removed the deck from its box. She then spread the cards across the surface and noticed there were also a pair of dice inside the box—one black with white dots and one red with white dots. Unlike any dice she had seen before, these were bigger and had fourteen sides. Each of the sides had numbers written on them, going from one to thirteen. The fourteenth side, however, featured a depiction of water.
Engrossed in the cards and the dice, Jessica jumped when Frank broke out in a loud laugh. She looked over her shoulder but he was still looking at the TV. Shaking her head, she turned back and refocused.
This time, she looked at each of the cards more closely. The first thirteen, she recognized, each represented one of the thirteen covens. In their top corners was a number written in black ranging from one to thirteen, and the corresponding coven picture was at the center.
After the thirteenth card, though, the pattern became noticeably different. Jessica counted and realized that that next thirteen featured demon depictions, some of which she recognized and others that she was grateful not to.
Although they were only pictures, a cold chill ran down her spine as she looked at them. Some of the demons were positively hideous. Gr
anted, she was convinced there probably was no such thing as a cute demon, to begin with. Still, one with the appearance of a two-headed dog, the Medusa-looking woman with snake hair, one with its face ripped open and had an extra mouth, and the stick-like man hiding amongst a set of trees were all particularly terrifying.
Jessica squirmed in her seat at even the thought of running into any of them. They made the overgrown lizard-like demons and the Aqueil she’d tracked all seem like cuddly teddy bears.
The numbers on the demon cards, she noticed, were red, which suggested that they corresponded with the red die.
As she continued to examine them, one stood out for her. She stared at it and noted its familiarity—not because it looked like a demon she had faced before, but because it looked like an imp.
Frank, to be precise, albeit, an evil version of him.
She picked the card up, studied it more closely, and glanced at her familiar, who had fallen asleep.
Jessica pouted for a moment and then set the card down so she could examine the rest.
The next thirteen cards took a little longer for her to interpret. As she glanced through them and read their complicated text, she realized that spells and potion ingredients were written on them.
A prickle of excitement went through her.
When she reached the last card, however, she was surprised to find it blank. Confused, she flipped it over. On the back, it read, Do you want to learn about the thirteen covens?
She blinked in surprise and felt like the card had actually talked to her. She grinned. “Heck yeah!” she said out loud, placed the card back on her desk, and tried to work out what to do next. Written beneath the question was a set of instructions. The first line instructed her to roll the dice.
Jessica picked the dice up obediently, rattled them in her hand for a couple of seconds, and gently tossed them onto the desktop. The black die landed on two and the red on seven. Intuitively, she reached for the second coven card and the seventh demon card. She was already vaguely familiar with the second coven—Earth. Chad had reviewed the covens with her and even made her a cheat-sheet until she memorized them.
The seventh demon card, however, was more of a mystery to her. It featured the tall, skinny stick-like man hiding in a set of trees. Jessica studied it and her skin suddenly felt like it crawled.
What is so terrifying about this stick man? She tried to will herself to not be afraid.
Unfortunately, right that moment, something tapped at her window.
She jumped and leapt straight up from her seat. Her head snapped toward the window, where she saw a tree branch brush against the glass, pushed by the wind.
Jessica released a slow chuckle and felt ridiculous for scaring so easily.
It was late, she was tired, and she had clearly let her imagination get the better of her. She turned back toward the cards.
I think this needs to wait for later, she decided. When I’m not so tired that a stupid tree branch scares me.
With that, she began to pack away the cards and the dice. Once she returned them all to the box, she approached her bed and shook her head. Frank was snoring at this point, looking far too comfortable for his own good.
Jessica, on the other hand, couldn’t help thinking about how badly the blasted imp needed his own bed. For a little guy, he took up far too much space. Plus, he was messy. Every night, it seemed she found popcorn kernels or potato chip crumbs all over the sheets and comforter.
However, she had been so rude to him when they first met that she couldn’t find it in herself to tell him to scram and find somewhere else to sleep. After all, she had nearly killed him a few times and had given him an ugly bald spot on his head, so the least she could do was let him have a comfortable place to sleep.
Still, she was sure having his own bed would be nice.
She climbed carefully into bed, fluffed, her pillow, and tried not to disturb him.
Maybe I can get him a doll bed. Jessica snickered to herself. She could already envision his reaction. She hadn’t known Frank long, but she was sure he would complain at first, only to later end up loving his own little bed.
Curling onto her side and closing her eyes, Jessica decided to look for doll beds on Amazon the next day so that she could order him one.
Each time she felt herself drift off to sleep, the branch blew in the wind and tapped her window to reawaken her. But eventually—thanks to Frank’s snores—she was able to tune it out and fall into a rather peaceful sleep.
Ethel Libbons paced her bedroom and listened carefully.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, she heard the television in Jessica’s room turn off. Peering down the hall, she no longer saw light shining through the bottom crack of her granddaughter’s door. The sounds of the imp’s snoring confirmed that they both had finally fallen asleep.
Moving quietly and stealthily, Ethel picked up the pair of boots in front of her closet. She then tiptoed down the dark hall and made her way down the stairs.
A part of her felt ridiculous, creeping out of the house like a sneaky teenager at her age. Another part of her, however, couldn’t help but find the whole thing a little funny and damned exciting.
“Shoo! Shoo!” she hissed at her cats, a few of whom were up and wandered the house at night, as usual. Through the darkness, she spotted Grace’s bright eyes staring at her from the living room couch. “And you hush up too. I don’t even wanna hear it.”
Grace, her familiar, gave her a knowing look as she swished her tail but thankfully, kept quiet.
Ethel already knew that if she got caught, she would never hear the end of it. Yet, in the moment, it all felt worth risking anyway.
That damn Maximus. How did he always manage to bring out this side of her? Why did that man still have such a hold on her after all these years? It didn’t make sense.
“Asshole,” Ethel swore when she thought about Maximus despite knowing deep down that she didn’t really mean it.
Still, it was preposterous that after all these years, all it took was one letter from him and she was sneaking around at night, exactly like the good old days.
While she wanted nothing more than to be angry, she simply couldn’t succeed in whipping the silly grin off her face.
She cast a muffling spell over the front door so that it wouldn’t creak when she opened it, darted out of the house, locked up behind her, and sprinted on her old legs straight to her car. Her movements were as rapid as she would have made as a teenager, afraid her parents would glance out the window at any moment.
Her eyes creaked open to see the sunlight shining through the window. With a sigh, Jessica sat up in bed, yawned, and stretched. A glance to her side confirmed that she had the bed to herself again. Frank had disappeared but that wasn’t unusual, though. The imp had a habit of vanishing while she was asleep. She always wondered where he went off to and wanted to ask him to take her with him one day, but she always forgot to do so.
Jessica swung her bare feet out of the bed and onto the carpet, then stretched again before she made her way downstairs. It wasn’t until she had reached the last step that she noticed how unnaturally quiet the house was.
“Grandma?” she called once she reached the dining room. “Grandma!”
She stood there with a hand on her hip and wondered why everyone had apparently left her in the middle of the night without notice. Frank, she could understand. But Grandma Ethel? It wasn’t like the old lady to leave without giving her a heads-up first.
After a short moment, she jogged back up the stairs and went down the opposite side of the hall toward Ethel’s room. The door was cracked opened but she knocked first anyway. When she received no response, she pushed it open and poked her head in.
“What the hell, Grandma?” she muttered. The room was empty.
Where had the old woman disappeared to so early?
Baffled, Jessica went back downstairs. She would obviously have to fend for herself for breakfast, which was rather disapp
ointing since she’d hoped Ethel would make pancakes.
As she made her way grumpily to the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom door swung open and Ethel emerged.
Jessica’s heart nearly leapt to her throat, for with the exception of the cats, she had been convinced she was alone.
“Grandma! Goodness, you scared the crap out of me. Where have you been?”
Ethel glanced toward the bathroom as if the answer to the question was obvious.
She shook her head, unconvinced. “No way you were in there the whole time. Otherwise, how come you didn’t answer me?” She eyed her grandmother and noted her attire—an all-black ensemble finished off with black boots. Her long gray hair that usually hung down in a braid was tied back—and far less gray. She noted how much younger than normal her grandmother looked.
“You can’t prove anything,” the old lady said stubbornly and marched off to the kitchen.
“Oh yeah?” Jessica followed her. “Well, you still didn’t answer me when I called you.”
“I didn’t hear you calling.” Ethel shrugged. “Are you hungry?” she asked, clearly trying to change the subject.
She stared at her for a moment longer, knowing her grandmother was hiding something. Much like anyone else, Ethel had a hard time looking someone in the eyes when she was lying. Currently, she had her back turned toward her granddaughter and ran water needlessly from the kitchen tap.
