Tempest

by Laura Marie

  THE TEEN WITCH: TEMPEST

  THE TEEN WITCH CHRONICLES BOOK THREE

  LAURA MARIE

  THE TEEN WITCH: TEMPEST

  * * *

  Copyright © 2018 Sable Syndicate.

  * * *

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For information contact:

  eBooks@lauramarieauthor.com

  Facebook.com/LauraMarieAuthor

  www.LauraMarieAuthor.com

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Also by LAURA MARIE

  Newsletter

  Young Adult & Urban Fantasy Author

  LAURA MARIE

  Want to stay up to date with new releases.

  Join my newsletter today and be kept in the loop.

  * * *

  Click here to join!

  Prologue

  There had been a time when I had had no control over my fire at all. It had started when I had nearly burnt down my old school. My friends had witnessed it, and there was no way around it—I was labeled a freak and practically cast out.

  My mom had moved us here to Safety Beach, the place where she had met my dad and where I had been born. We had newly had a repeat of the past. I had nearly lost my control again, but thanks to a series of events that I tried not to think about, everything had worked out in the end.

  “Maybe you should go to the coven,” my mom said.

  I looked at her. “What?”

  “Mirta offered that you join them. They’ll teach you how to use your power, how to control it.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to go to them. I knew I was a witch, but joining the coven was still a far stretch. It sounded like something out of a fairy tale, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.

  And Mirta scared me.

  “I don’t want to go,” I said.

  “Sweetheart, they just want to help you. I can tell you now you’re not the first witch to lose control.”

  The witches came to introduce themselves to me: a few names I couldn’t remember, and finally, someone much younger than the rest of them, maybe not quite as young as I was, but when he held out his hand to me, I felt much more at ease than with the rest of them.

  “Calder,” he said with a grin.

  “Hi,” I said.

  He was hot, oh, my God. He had light brown hair that was perfectly messy and eyes that were just as black as Indigo’s eyes but, unlike hers, his eyes smiled at me. His skin was pale, which contrasted with those striking eyes. He wasn’t nearly as solidly built as Reece, who was the only other guy I had studied like this, but he didn’t come across as weak. But maybe it wasn’t just his muscles I saw, but his magic, too.

  I met Valentina, a fellow teenage witch at Safety Beach High. Despite the Windermere Coven warning me about befriending Valentina, I felt I needed to make up my own mind about her.

  “Hey,” I said when I walked to Valentina. She looked up at me, confused. When I came closer, she looked around as if she was unsure what I would do to her.

  “You’re Valentina, right?” I asked.

  She nodded, “Why?” She asked, and she sounded suspicious.

  I shrugged. “I’m new in Safety Beach. My mom and I moved here a couple of months ago. I guess I’m just trying to make new friends. It can get pretty lonely when I don’t know anyone.”

  Valentina glanced past me at Chloe. She knew I had a friend. But when she looked at me again, she smiled.

  “Welcome, I guess,” she said. She held out her hand.

  It wasn’t long before Valentina showed her true colors, I guess the coven may have been right about her.

  * * *

  My name is Emily Frank, I’m sixteen years old and I’m a Teen Witch.

  Chapter One

  “Much better,” I said, hands on my hips, looking around my room.

  “Yeah, very Zen,” Chloe said, sarcastically. I smiled.

  We had spent the better half the day pushing the furniture in my room around, looking for a different way to arrange it all. I was getting bored, but my mom said I wasn’t allowed to move into the guest bedroom. So this was the next best thing, I guess.

  Chloe collapsed on the bed.

  “You haven’t been talking about Calder a lot lately,” she said, fluffing up a pillow under her head.

  I shrugged and climbed onto the bed, too.

  “There’s not much to say.”

  “Haven’t you seen him? When you met him, you couldn’t stop gushing about how hot he is.”

  I shook my head. “I wasn’t gushing. Besides, he was a novelty then. And I saw him a lot.” I pulled up my shoulders. “We just don’t spend as much time together anymore. We’re still friends and whatever, but I’m not exactly the coven’s favorite witch.”

  “Why?” Chloe asked.

  I pulled up my shoulders again. As if I didn’t know. But I did know. I knew exactly why they didn’t like me so much anymore.

  They thought I was a freak. Cue the déjà vu. You would think that once we had moved to Safety Beach and I had found out that there were witches everywhere, I would fit right in. Ha. I had been stupid thinking that they wanted me to be one of them. Belonging was just a dream.

  When I had gotten tangled up with Valentina, the good little witch that had turned out not to be a very good witch at all, I had realized there was more to me than just fire magic.

  I had other powers, too. I had discovered them in my final fight against Valentina, although I hadn’t known it then.

  It had taken the witches to point out that I was a freak again. And Calder, although not fully on their side, didn’t disagree, either. He wasn’t against me, or anything; he just wasn’t going to choose sides.

  Which was a lot more cowardly than anything else, in my opinion, but there it was.

  I had new magic, and the witches had decided to shun me.

  They weren’t allowed to kick me out of the coven. Not when I hadn’t done anything wrong. In fact, I had taken care of Valentina, which had been all kinds of right.

  And the witches had invited me to join the Windermere coven almost seven months ago. They couldn’t just kick me out again.

  But I didn’t go as often as I used to. I didn’t like feeling unwelcome. And they didn’t bother telling me I had to show up to things anymore. Their interest in me had faded as quickly as it had sparked.

  Since the drama with Valentina just after Halloween, everything had gone back to normal for the most part. Christmas break had come and gone, and school had carried on. Winter had barely shown its face in a town that was seemingly summer all year round.

  Now it was April, and I missed springtime. I missed relishing warmer weather, seeing blossoms and fresh green leaves color a world that died in winter, and I missed tasting the promise of spring in the air.

 
; It was just as hot and sunny and perfect as every other day had been during the past year in Safety Beach.

  “Mom has some guy she’s dating,” I said, “Victor.”

  “Oh, wow,” Chloe said.

  I glanced at her. No questions, no remarks? Chloe stared out of the window, distracted.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  Chloe looked at me. Her eyes were a light blue. She wore less makeup today—we stayed out of the sun so it didn’t bother her, and she had been hiding from me less and less. I had seen her in her true vampire form, and there was nothing about her that could scare me now.

  “The Vampire clan wants me to go to a ceremony,” she said. “It’s like an initiation or something. I should have gone last year already when I turned sixteen, but I didn’t want to go. My dad was upset then. Now, he’s forcing me.”

  “Why don’t you want to go?” I asked.

  “Because I’m terrified,” Chloe admitted. “I know what I am, Em. I was hoping I could avoid it, but it looks like I won’t be able to for much longer.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean? What are you?”

  Chloe looked down at her hands. “A monster,” she whispered.

  I shook my head. “That is such bullshit. You are as far from a monster as you get.”

  Chloe pulled up her shoulders. She didn’t believe me. I knew she had been struggling with her control. She freaked out in crowds, and I knew that being a vampire bothered her.

  “I don’t have an issue with people, you know,” Chloe said.

  “What?”

  “My anxiety attacks.” She looked at me. “It’s not because I don’t like being in crowds. I love people. But since I hit puberty…” She swallowed hard. “Do you know that’s when vampires start doing their thing? The blood.”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t known that. But I guess it made sense.

  “I just can’t stop it,” Chloe carried on. “I just can’t help but wonder what they would taste like—the people around me—the blood. When there’s too many of them, or when someone touches me…” She closed her eyes and shuddered.

  And suddenly, it all fell into place. Chloe was struggling with bloodlust.

  “I am scared that when I lose control, I’ll hurt someone. And it freaks me out so much…”

  “It becomes an anxiety attack,” I finished for her.

  She nodded.

  I thought back to all the times Chloe had freaked out in public; the way she would swallow, the way she would open and close her mouth, the sign of thirst. I should have figured it out sooner.

  I tried to look at her in a different light. Chloe, the vampire. Chloe the bloodsucker. Not just my friend. How many times had we been alone? Was I scared of her?

  I wasn’t.

  Chloe was my best friend, and she had never given me a reason to think that she would do anything to me. In fact, when she freaked out, I was the one she turned to for help.

  And I was going to help her.

  “You know, the loss of control is made worse if you deny who you are,” I said carefully. I didn’t want to offend her.

  “Is that what they teach you in the coven?” Chloe asked.

  Her tone was level, her face voice of expression and I didn’t know if she was sarcastic about it or if she honestly wanted to know.

  I nodded slowly because it was what they had taught me at the coven. It had worked for me, too. The moment I had stopped rejecting that I was a witch, or a freak, as I had thought of my powers at first, I had gained more control.

  Maybe the same would work for Chloe.

  “The problem is that accepting my vampire side means I’ll have to feed. And I can’t do that. I don’t want to.”

  “Do you have to kill someone?” I asked. I was hoping to God the answer would be no.

  Chloe shook her head, and I was more relieved about it than I wanted to admit.

  “But I’m scared I will,” Chloe said. “I’m scared that when I do feed, this thing will take over and I won’t be able to stop. If that happens, if I hurt someone, I’ll never be able to forgive myself.”

  “I don’t think you’ll hurt someone,” I said.

  Chloe sighed. “But you don’t know, Em. You don’t know what I feel. You don’t know how bad it gets.”

  She was right. I had been in her head once, but it hadn’t been enough to understand Chloe from the inside out. I didn’t know how she felt and what she thought and how bad the bloodlust was.

  “But I do know you,” I finally said. “And I know that you won’t hurt someone.”

  Chloe took a deep breath, and she looked so sad I wished I could lean over and hug her. But Chloe didn’t like being touched. I understood that now more than ever.

  “That’s not all,” Chloe said. She took a deep breath and let it out with a shudder.

  When she looked up at me, she looked nervous.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I’ve started blacking out.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean? Like fainting?”

  Chloe shook her head. “No, that would be okay. I mean, if I fainted maybe I would know about it. Someone would notice and help me out. I mean I’m blacking out, as in I don’t know what I’m doing or where I am. Afterward, I can’t remember what happened or even how much time passed.”

  She looked at me, watching me for reaction, worried.

  And she was right to be worried. It was scary.

  “Did you tell your parents?” I asked.

  Chloe shook her head. “No, there’s nothing to tell them. I mean, I’ll just sound crazy.”

  “But if you have a problem, you need help, Chlo.”

  She was angry, suddenly. The emotion had come out of nowhere. Her anger danced around us in the room, but that wasn’t all. There was more. This time, her anger was accompanied by a flare of her vampire magic.

  My power rose to match it. It was unexpected, I hadn’t done it on purpose. A breeze picked up in my room as if we were outside. My magic met hers, toe-to-toe. I wasn’t sure what would happen if we didn’t take a step back.

  Chloe was the first to calm down. My magic followed, filtering away now that there was no threat.

  “It’s not a big deal,” Chloe said as if nothing had happened, as if our magic hadn’t just faced off like we were enemies when we were nothing more than the best of friends. “I’m just telling you because I wanted to tell someone. Don’t make a thing of it, okay?”

  I nodded. I wouldn’t make a thing of it if it were what she wanted. I was a little worried about her. Her magic had never flared up like this before, and Chloe had been angry with me often enough. And if she was talking about blacking out and bloodlust, something was very wrong.

  But Chloe was a pro at shrugging off anything important. Before she had gone through her vampire puberty, with her powers making her anxious around people, something I only realized fully now, Chloe had been one of the popular girls at school. She still had the same attitude, pretending not to care, showing only what she wanted others to see.

  Old habits die hard.

  “Will you come with me?” Chloe asked.

  “To the initiation?”

  She nodded.

  “I didn’t know you could take someone.”

  She shrugged. “My dad encouraged it. I think we can, it’s not like the witches.” She chewed on her bottom lip, her eyes intense. “So, will you?”

  “Of course,” I said. How could I not be there for her? And how bad could it be to go to a vampire meeting? I knew Chloe’s parents, and they were perfectly nice people. It wasn’t like vampires were real monsters like in the stories. They were just people, like the rest of us.

  “So, what are we doing this weekend?” Chloe asked, obviously changing the topic.

  I shrugged. “We can go to the mall if you want to. Or see where we can find a party, hang out with Reece.”

  Chloe shook her head. “I don’t really want to be around people.”

  How could I already hav
e forgotten? If she was around people, the bloodlust was worse. And I had just suggested places with crowds.

  “But I think we can hang out with Reece if it’s just us. What about we go to the beach?”

  “Romberg?”

  Chloe shook her head. “I want to see Pebble Beach. Can we go?”

  I didn’t hesitate before I nodded. I saw Pebble Beach as my personal spot, but it didn’t technically belong to me. A while ago, when I had spent time with Valentina, thinking it was good to be friends with another witch, I had taken her to Pebble Beach.

  Chloe had been upset with me about it because I had never taken her.

  I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

  “I’ll call him later,” Chloe said.

  I laid back on the bed, and we talked about other things—clothes and makeup and boys—safe topics.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A week later, I went with Chloe to her vampire initiation just as I had promised.

  When I arrived at her place her mom let me in, and I found Chloe in her room. She was terrified. I could taste the fear on my tongue when I stepped into her room.

  Chloe had brushed out her long black hair until it hung down her back like silk. She wore a simple red dress that was cinched around her waist with a black corset and had ruffles all the way down to her ankles. Against her white skin, the effect would have been nerve-racking if I hadn’t known her as well as I did.

  “You look different,” I said, sitting on her bed.