“I know. But you’ve been so nice to me all year, helping me in Chem the way you have. I’d have flunked by now if it weren’t for you, and Coach would’ve kicked me off the team for sure. It’s so sweet of you, and . . . well, I’ve wanted to kiss you like this for so long, Jess. I just never worked up the courage until tonight. I can’t believe you like me back. You do, don’t you?”
“I do.” Understatement of the year.
“Oh, man. That is so great. You’re so great. . . .”
This was very gratifying to hear—almost as gratifying as his cold, strong fingers felt a second later around my boobs when he finally got my top open and, with a strangled cry, buried his face against my throat.
But it still wasn’t exactly what I’d been hoping for.
“Didn’t you say you had something you wanted to ask me?” I said as I very delicately pushed his head lower.
“Oh, yeah.” He mumbled something that I couldn’t understand because his mouth was full of my boobs.
“Billy.” It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, because the sensation of his hot tongue on my nipple had set off a veritable geyser of lust in my pants.
But I needed to hear the words, so I tugged his head away by his hair. He stared up at me, his eyes as drenched in desire as my pajama bottoms.
“Wha’?” he asked, stupidly.
“Homecoming,” I said. “Who are you taking to Homecoming?”
“Oh. You, if you’d go with me, Jess. You.”
I let go of his hair, and his mouth went right back to my chest, before sliding lower. Then lower. “You,” he murmured again, like an incantation. “You, you, you, you.”
Jessica
Samhain is when the wise goodwife finishes her preparations for winter. Animals should be fattened up enough for culling. Fruits, herbs, and harvest vegetables should be preserved for the cold winter days ahead.
Goody Fletcher, Book of Useful Household Tips
I started to laugh—until I realized Derrick Winters wasn’t joking.
“Wait,” I said. “The Chosen One? Me?”
Apparently he was serious, since he produced a pile of paper from the inside pocket of his leather jacket and unfolded it.
“This was copied from a witch’s grimoire found plastered into the wall of a house in upstate New York,” he said. “It’s thought to have been hidden there nearly four hundred years ago.”
“Wait.” I couldn’t believe this was happening. “This isn’t an ancient prophecy, is it?”
He eyed me sternly over the top of the papers. “Ms. Gold, I can assure you that though you may find it amusing, what’s happening here in your town is deadly serious.”
“What’s happening in my town?”
He stared at me like I’d just asked if the sky was blue. “A rift. A shift in the cosmic balance. Are you honestly telling me you haven’t noticed? Nothing unusual at all lately around West Harbor?”
“Well, no, not really.” When he continued to give me the hairy eyeball, I said, “I mean, I’ve been a bit busy getting ready for this sale.” When the disbelieving look turned into bewilderment, I explained, “My Fall into Fall sale? I have it every year. It’s when we slash our prices to get rid of all of our summer stock to make room for our winter inventory—”
Now the look turned to one of impatience. “Ms. Gold. Are you serious? You’ve noticed nothing strange around this village at all lately? Sinkholes? Missing pets? Unusual weather patterns? Anything unusual at all?”
“Well, if you put it that way . . .”
You couldn’t be a witch—even a nonhereditary witch like me—and not have some inkling when things weren’t quite right. Dina had been complaining for months that West Harbor real estate sales were down, while sales in neighboring Greenwich and Fairfield remained as brisk as ever. The shop next door to Enchantments had had a Vacant: For Lease sign in its papered-over display window for months, and I’d even noticed a slight decline in the usually vigorous market for my wide-leg loungers.
All of those things could be explained by a local—very local—economic slump.
But the wolf Mark swore he’d seen along the jogging trail while he’d been out for his daily run the other day? There hadn’t been a wolf spotted in Connecticut since the seventeen hundreds, when colonists, fearing for their livestock, hunted them into extinction.
Yet the more we tried to convince Mark that he’d only imagined the one he’d seen—or that it had been someone’s husky escaped from its leash or backyard—the more he stuck to his story.
Now I was wondering if he might actually have been right.
And then there was the water.
“I mean, sure, there’ve been a few odd things here and there,” I replied, carefully. The pleasant glowy feeling his touch had wrapped me in had all but disappeared, and I was beginning to feel something else instead . . . a slight chill. It wasn’t coming from the open window behind me, either. “Some flooding in town. Every time there’s a king tide or it rains more than a fraction of an inch, the Post Road floods, especially in the cafeteria over by the high school. That never used to happen. And there’ve been some odd animal sightings. But that kind of thing is going on all over the world, isn’t it? Climate change, or something—?”
“No.” Derrick’s silver gaze was steady. “It’s because of the rift right here in West Harbor. And it’s going to keep getting worse every day until the Chosen One puts a stop to it.”
“And by the Chosen One, you mean me? All because it says so in some book someone found buried in a wall? Oh, come on.” I guffawed, but the air around me did seem to be getting chillier. “You know this is basically the beginning of every supernatural horror film ever made, right? You can’t actually believe it.”
“I do believe it,” he said quietly. “Because I’ve seen it happen before, dozens of times. I’m sure you’ve heard of it happening before, too. Towns just like this one that were wiped off the map like they never existed—”
“You mean by fire or flood? Those were natural disasters.”
“Were they?” His eyes glowed. “Or was it because of an old wrong, a crime committed long ago that was never righted, so that the forces of evil were allowed to fester beneath the town until finally they created a rift they were able to slip through and destroy the area completely?”
“Oh.” I blinked. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
Except that I had. A crime committed long ago that was never righted? I had personal knowledge of such a crime . . . several such crimes, actually. I’d contributed to them. I’d always wondered when—or if—anything would ever come of them.
I guess I had my answer.
“But what if that evil could have been stopped?” he went on, those silver eyes gleaming excitedly. “That’s why I’m here. I’m hoping to keep such a rift from happening to West Harbor—but I can only do it with your help.”
“Okay,” I said. No way was I going to mention having personal knowledge of any crime that might possibly have contributed to the evil festering beneath my town. I was going to keep it cool. As cool as a witch in a neon jumpsuit could keep things. “In that case, yeah, I think maybe I should hear about this ancient prophecy of yours. Just to be on the safe side.”