Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 115432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
She shook her head. “To me, and even to Shadow, you still feel like a witch. That’s why she directed me to come to you. She trusts you. That’s why I’m talking to you like I would to any other witch.”
“Please stop!”
“No. What are you going to do? Kill me? Don’t you have to ask your vampire leader first?”
Atarah giggled, and I glared over at her. She held her hands up. “Sorry, it’s just that I remember fighting like this with my older sisters.”
“Ugh! I am starting to hate witches! You guys do whatever you want with her,” I hollered and moved to leave.
“Our circle hasn’t felt right!” Adelaide called out to me before I exited. I stopped at the door. “Me, Simone Ward, Jericho Dupree, Faye Whitmore, Tate Blackwood, Tala Blackwood, Fiona Stone, Rue Umbra…I know and remember everyone. But I can’t really remember the ninth. Her name is Laurel Dormoen, in my mind, and Axel said she died during the attack that bound our powers. But none of us could really remember her clearly. Conversations we had, yes. But what she looked like? We didn’t know. We have no photos with or of her. It was as if she were a ghost. But we all simply assumed that we had gotten so hurt that, somehow, it had messed with our minds. It was easier to accept and move on. But then I remembered something, a magic trick for erasure spells. Since it is hard to erase the truth from someone’s mind, the trick is to disguise false information with true. If you rearrange the letters, what do you think Laurel Dormoen spells out?”
Druella Omeron.
Just like Monroe had shifted into Omeron. Apparently, I was very good with anagrams.
“It feels similar enough, but it is different. A lie within a truth,” she said behind me. “I wouldn’t have even thought of it if not for Shadow saying your name over and over again. I was lying in the grass crying, covered in blood, trying to hold Jason, scared the coven would find me, and at that moment, it all made sense to me.”
Slowly, I turned back to her. She was out of bed, holding the bedpost, looking at me again with those mortal tears of her. “I was scared and alone. A witch without a coven, a spellbound witch at that. In love with a vampire who was taken from me, and I didn’t know how to get him back. Then this crazy thought came to me. What if…what if another witch fell in love with a vampire and knew the only way she could escape with him was to erase herself from the coven? Cover it up with an attack and become a vampire to be with him. If she did all of that for one man, she would surely understand me and why I need Jason back. Please!”
I felt something in me begin to shake. Like my heart was racing with each word from her, which was not possible. I didn’t want to think about it. But her words…were they the truth? Was that how my past was with Theseus? I wanted to know. However, when I looked at her, the world changed around me.
“Hey, Dru!”
I blinked and saw Adelaide beside me, arms linked with me and a large smile on her face. The hall was gone as I—we now stood in some high school. “Buy me lunch!”
“No, not again!” I snapped
“You said to think of you as my big sister. Isn’t this what big sisters are for?”
“No, we are supposed to nag you not to do something stupid and offer advice!”
She pouted. “Please, I promise I’ll help you with your chemistry.”
My eyes narrowed her. “And calculus?”
She grinned wide. “Feed me!”
“Ah, I swear your familiar should be a pig!” I then hushed her, checking around the school hall. She laughed as she walked, dragging me with her.
The memory changed again, and now we sat on playground swings, looking up at the stars.
“Hey, Dru?” she called as she swung her feet.
“What? I am not buying you food!” I said as I kicked my feet up higher beside her.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
At her question, I quickly dragged my tennis shoes through the sand and came to a stop so fast I almost fell out of the swing.
“No.”
She snorted. “Liar!”
“I really don’t!”
“Really, then why have you been all smiles and going off on your own all the time.”
“To paint without you bunch bothering me,” I said quickly.
“Sure, whatever, I believe you. It is so hard being a circle leader.” She gave me a look like she didn’t believe me and started to swing higher, screaming to the heavens. “This is not fair! I want a boyfriend too!”
“Shut up! I don’t have one!”
“Fine, but if that’s true, don’t admit it! How are we this age and not had a romance!” she grumbled. “Training. Training. Training! My heart needs to be trained, and so does my va—”