Cursed In Love (The Adams' Witch Book 2) (9 page)

“It’s a lot to take in.”

“For sure.”

He reached out and moved my hair over my shoulder. “I’m sorry about your Dad, Sarah. And your aunt. I wish there was a way for you to go back and change things. God knows if it were possible, I would’ve already done it for my own life…and Jennie’s.” He shook his head. “Sometimes dealing with the aftermath is harder than going through the actual tough part. It lingers longer. But hey, you’ve been doing great. I can’t imagine learning all this stuff and adapting to it if I hadn’t known about it all my life. You’re quite remarkable.”

Remarkable? I giggled. “Do people still use that word anymore?”

Red crept up his cheeks again, but he laughed, too. “You don’t like that word? How about amazing?”

I pretended to think it over and then nodded. “I like amazing.”

“Good. Then we can both agree that you’re kind of amazing.”

Before I could even blush, Mrs. Abernathy walked back into the kitchen and Travis stood. “Thank you so much for your time. I’m going to take what I know now from your daughter’s disappearance and put it together with what I know about Courtney’s and hopefully we can come up with a thread to go on.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Travis idled the motorcycle outside my house and then shut it off. It sputtered a little in protest. The ride back from the Trish Abernathy’s house had been a little more relaxed than the ride there. I no longer felt as if I was going to die if I didn’t have my hands around Travis’s abs. That didn’t mean I took my hand away from Travis’s abs though.

I hopped off the bike, handed him the extra helmet, and smiled. “Thanks for inviting me along. I had fun.”

He took his helmet off and shook out his hair. It fell perfectly back into place, of course. He’d probably spelled it to do that. Hell, if I was a Natural, I’d spell stupid stuff like that just so I didn’t have to worry about little things anymore. Bad breath? Spell that away. Now, it would always be minty fresh.

“You had fun at a witness interview?”

I shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I?”

His smile brightened. “No idea. Good to know though.”

I stood there awkwardly for a second. His legs still straddled the bike and his stare was still on me, but it seemed neither one of us wanted to make the first motion to part. “Do I really have to ask you if I can come in? Or are you going to be neighborly and invite me?”

Heat crept up my face. “You want to come in?”

“I thought we could strategize our next moves. Plus, I wanted to show you something cool.” I arched an eyebrow at him and he shook his head. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Perkins. It’s Wiccan related.”

“Well, yeah.” I waved him off his bike as if I’d planned on inviting him all along. “Come on in. I probably can’t offer you anything to eat, except for chips or microwave dinners, but let’s talk.”

The grace he maintained as he got off the bike made me look clumsy on my best day. He walked by my side all the way up the walk and then to the stairs. Once inside, I made a beeline for the library where I spent most of my time. I’d even slept in there before as creepy as it was. I still remembered the crazy barrier spell my aunt—Mother Shipton had put on it to lock Jennie out, but not me.

Travis plopped down on the leather couch and placed his feet on the coffee table in front of him as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “So, what do you think about what Mrs. Abernathy told us?”

I recounted every last bit of the conversation we had at the missing girls’ mother’s house—at least, everything I remembered. Honestly, I didn’t remember much. I’d been in my head for much of the conversation. “I don’t know,” I said casually, not wanting to tell Travis I hadn’t been paying attention the whole time. “Do you think she gave us anything useful to go off of?”

“I think it’s interesting Courtney knew her.”

“Courtney knew her?”

Travis smirked. “You didn’t hear that part.”

“I guess I missed it,” I mumbled.

“You are severely lacking in detective skills. It’s a damn good thing I’m going along with you on this.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just tell me what she said.”

He shook his head in a playful gesture as I sat on the very opposite side of the couch from him. He turned toward me. “It’s not unusual for Naturals to know each other. Especially ones that live so close. But the part that Mrs. Abernathy said that was interesting was that they just saw each other. I wish I knew who the other girl was.”

“Other girl?”

“Were we even in the same place? The other girl Mrs. Abernathy mentioned that paid Trish a visit.”

Now, I really wish I’d been paying attention. It sounded as if the mom had actually told us some useful information. “Right. But we don’t know who it was.”

“Well, we know it was another female witch. Another Natural. Most likely from the same area. And we know that Trish’s mom had never seen her before, which is kind of odd.”

“So why do you think she would’ve been from the same area if Mrs. Abernathy had never seen her before?”

“Because they were all together. The girl must live close enough to know who Courtney and Trish are, but not close enough to have ever met the mother. You with me?”

Sounded reasonable. He was a professional after all. I’d go along with his gut feeling. “You think finding this other girl will help us find the two missing ones?”

“It couldn’t hurt.”

I sank lower into the couch and looked at the ceiling. Surely this girl knew that Courtney and Trish had gone missing. Why wouldn’t she have come forward with information? This was something the police would have wanted to know. And if they knew about this other girl, they’d probably leave Jennie and me alone.

When I asked the same question aloud, Travis nodded as if he were thinking. “She’s probably petrified.”

Oh, right. Any young Natural, specifically teenage girls, were probably scared out of their minds if they lived within the area. “Do you think Jennie will be safe?”

Travis chuckled. “Jennie can hold her own. Trust me. I wish you could’ve seen her before her powers…before she lost her powers. She was amazing.”

“Aren’t you just a little bit worried that she doesn’t have enough powers to defend herself?”

He rolled his head toward me and laid it back on the cushion of the sofa. “I’ll always be worried about my little sister in a big brother kind of way, but I’m also smart enough to know that she’s a tough cookie.”

I smiled, remembering what a hell hole of a day it was when my aunt died. Jennie had been on point. There was no way I would’ve gotten as far as I had without her. “You should’ve seen her that day.” I cleared my throat. “That day—she was amazing. There’d be no way I’d be sitting next to you right now if it weren’t for her and there definitely would still be a witch bitch hanging around if it weren’t for her.”

His eyes closed briefly and when he opened them, they were electric. “Funny. She said the same about you.”

No way. Jennie was the badass and knowing Travis, he was just trying to flirt. I shook my head and his hand inched across the sofa toward mine. “Really,” he said. “She said you tackled an ancient evil witch into a bonfire. Who does that?”

In my head I saw my aunt and then the terrible picture of the actual Mother Shipton. My aunt hadn’t deserved to go out like that, but the witch had. I shrugged. “It just kind of happened. I didn’t think about it ahead of time, I just kind of reacted.”

“Like I said, amazing.”

His fingers brushed mine, and a shock zinged up my arm. Travis, all dark and handsome, stared at me in awe. Pride overwhelmed me. It was such a powerful feeling to have someone proud of you. I smiled, but it felt funny, as if it wasn’t enough to show him how it felt to have him say those words to me. I didn’t trust myself to speak though, or to move. There was no way I wanted to break the way he was looking at me. Intensity like that could fuel a small town like Adams for freaking days.

The front door opening and slamming pulled us out of our epic stare down. He pulled his hand back. “Is that your mom?”

The balloon that had been growing in my chest just sprung a leak. “I’m sure.”

His brows furrowed. “Should I leave?”

“No,” I answered too quickly and then cringed at the sharp tone in my voice. “It’s fine,” I said. “She shouldn’t bother us.”

He crossed his arms and laid his head against the back cushion. From that position, he looked so vulnerable. It was a side he probably didn’t share with everybody. It was a good side though. Even though he was badass, he could chill, too.

“So, you said you wanted to show me something cool?” I asked.

His lips turned up. “I almost forgot.” He pulled his cell out of his pocket and scrolled through his apps. “I found this simple protection spell and wanted to see how well you did with it.” I reached for my necklace. His gaze zeroed in on my movement and a shadow fell across his face. “Don’t worry. That is more than you will ever need. Hopefully. But, you did so well at the park with the locator spell, I kind of wanted to experiment with you and see how good you could be at a simple protection spell.”

“You thought I actually helped at the locator spell?”

“Are you kidding me? You were better than Jennie. For some reason, I felt like she was hindering us more than helping us. She was probably just in a pissy mood.”

“Mood will effect a spell?”

“Well, of course.” He moved his free hand to his chest. “It all comes from here. If we’re not open, we can’t expect the universe to comply with our thoughts.”

I tamped down the laugh that wanted to break free from my chest. “You just sounded like the corniest Hallmark card.”

He peered up at me through the hair that fell across his forehead. “Hallmark doesn’t have anything on me.” He looked down and scrolled some more. “Here’s a good one.”

After reading the screen on his phone, he placed the cell on the coffee table and turned toward me once more. “Are you down for this?”

“Might as well. Do we need any candles or anything? Tools?”

He shook his head. “Just energy. When we say the words, truly believe them. Open your heart and your mind and believe that the words are the exact thing you should be saying at this precise moment. Believe it in your heart of hearts. Believe it like you’ve never believed anything before in your life.”

I nodded, and he slid closer to me on the couch and held his hands out. I put mine in his and noticed again how warm they were. He smiled and closed his eyes. “Repeat after me.”

I did as he instructed and closed my eyes, repeating every single word he said as if it was the most powerful thing I’d ever heard. I mimicked his cadence, his intensity, and after we said the incantation three times, Travis pulled his hands away.

His ginormous smile made me think something had worked, but I didn’t feel any different. I didn’t feel safer, like I could walk into a motorcycle bar and pick a fight with the biggest dude there. I just felt like the same old me.

“Did it work?” I whispered.

“Are you kidding me? You’re a natural.”

“Really?”

“Well, not a Natural. Not like me, but you could be a really good witch in the Wiccan path if you wanted to, Sarah.”

I tried to picture myself doing spells and fitting in with Travis and Jennie’s lives. It seemed exciting, but…

“How do you know it worked?”

“Watch.” His smile widened as he reached out to me and touched my bare skin at my wrist. His eyes gazed past me as if he was looking at a faraway place. “Nothing. I got nothing.”

My forehead creased. “What are you talking about?”

He placed his feet on the floor. “This morning I spelled myself a mind reading ability. We use it when we do interviews in case we don’t trust the person we interview. If I make skin-to-skin contact with a person when I’ve done the mind reading spell, I can get glimpses of what they’re thinking or seeing in their head. When I touched Mrs. Abernathy earlier, I knew she was telling us the truth.”

I narrowed my eyes. I did not like the idea of Travis being able to look inside my head. “And just now…”

“Didn’t get a thing. It worked. You did it.”

“But how do I really know it worked? You’re asking me to believe that you can look into people’s minds.”

“Of course I can.”

I gave him a doubtful look. “I need more proof it worked.”

He sighed. Quiet for a moment, he looked around the room. He cracked his neck and then turned back toward me. “You trust me?”

His eyes were so serious, almost dangerous looking. I was half-tempted to say hell no. Instead, I nodded.

Before I realized what he was doing, he cocked his hand back and launched it toward my face. Before I could flinch, before I could even raise my hands in defense, Travis’s knuckles smashed against something solid. He howled in pain, drew back his arm, and shook it out.

“Oh my God. Are you okay?”

He winced. “Yeah.”

He cradles his fist and grimaced some more. Holy crap. What just happened? He went to punch me, but it didn’t work. There was something there. But wait. He went to punch me. I took the decorative pillow between us and threw it at his head.

He ducked out of the way. “What’s your problem?”

“You punched me.”

He held out his hand. “Obviously I didn’t.”

“But you could have! So not cool.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and backed away from him on the couch. He glanced at my stance and laughed. “I knew it would work.”

“Well, that’s all well and good, but I didn’t. You could’ve hurt me.”

His lips smoothed into a tight line. “But I didn’t.”

“But—”

“But I didn’t. And I would never hurt you. In fact, to prove to you that you’d done something amazing, I hurt myself.”

He held his hand up again, trying to curl and uncurl his fingers. They were shaking.

I groaned inwardly. Standing, I silently cursed stupid boys and then stalked off to the kitchen to get him a frozen bag of peas. He smiled when I returned holding the ice cold bag of vegetables. “I accept your apology,” he said.