“I really need to learn to keep my mouth shut around Emerson,” Brendan said, reaching up on his tiptoes to return another book. His black hair was a little damp from his after-practice shower and hung in his eyes. He looked adorably rumpled, the knot on his black tie hanging low on his untucked, white shirt. And he was staring at me with an amused smile on his face, since he’d just caught me shamelessly checking him out.
“What?” he asked innocently, picking up a book in an exaggerated way so he could flex.
“Is it wrong that I want to take you into the foreign-languages section and do naughty things to you?” I asked Brendan, and he laughed loudly.
“That might be one way to get you to finally appreciate Latin.”
“No one’s that good of a kisser—not even you,” I teased, sighing dramatically as I leaned forward on the cart, pushing it after him with my elbows.
“I can call the car to come earlier,” Brendan suggested, raising an eyebrow at me. “Is your aunt home?”
“Yes, but let’s stay here, anyway,” I said quickly. “Megan’s in the area. I don’t want to risk bumping into—”
“She’s here? How do you know?” Brendan interrupted me, dropping the book in his hands back on the metal cart.
“She told Angelique that she wanted me to meet her at four at the Met steps. Even if I didn’t have to work, it’s not like I would have gone.”
“Emma, why didn’t you tell me?” Brendan demanded.
“You had basketball practice,” I explained as he stared at me, incredulous. “What?”
“I would have cut.”
“I couldn’t exactly go running onto the court to tell you. Besides, what would that have accomplished?” I asked him, putting my hands on my hips. “Megan’s nuts.”
“I would have tried to talk to her. Apologize, maybe. I don’t know,” he said, running his hands through his hair and letting the damp locks fall into his face.
“That’s very sweet—and very misguided,” I added. “That might have just made her angrier. Besides, she’s in this for power just as much as she is for revenge,” I reminded him.
“Still…” He sighed, leaning against the bookcase and shaking his head. “I’d like to at least try.”
“You’re not going anywhere near her!” I told him emphatically. “Megan keeps vowing payback for me not meeting her. What if she attacked you with a knife?”
“Let her.” He folded his arms, clearly annoyed as he looked at the clock above the front desk. It was a quarter past five. “I dare her to. Better me than you, anyway.”
“Please don’t talk like that,” I begged him. “Look, she’s been harassing Angelique since yesterday, threatening this diabolical plot to prove how powerful she is. We just have to avoid her until we know if the binding spell worked.”
“I guess,” he said, his lips pressed together in a grimace. “I hate this.”
“Me, too,” I said, and we continued shelving the rest of the books in an uncomfortable silence. I much preferred it when he joked about indulging in some un-librarian-like shenanigans.
We only had about ten books left when Brendan leaned forward, resting the palms of his hands on his knees, taking a deep breath.
“I’m going to sit down for a second,” he said, shaking his head back and forth rapidly. “I feel weird.”
“Weird how?” I asked. He looked a little pale.
“I don’t know. Just weird. Light-headed. Maybe it’s a panic attack?” Brendan replied, his voice hoarse as he pulled out the nearest chair and crumpled into it, his head in his hands. His fingers were gripping the black locks behind his temples, pulsating as he rocked back and forth.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about Megan being nearby.” I sat next to him and put my hand over his very clammy one as it gripped his hair.
“I’m over that,” Brendan said, laughing weakly. “I just feel…so off. Like I’m falling asleep while standing or…”
His voice faded out until it just trailed off. I wasn’t sure if he was having a panic attack or was just sick, so I put my arm around him and rubbed his back. I’d meant it to soothe him, but Brendan started violently shaking. I could feel his heart beating rapidly through his back.
And then panic started to attack me as I got a terrible sense of déjà vu. Just two nights ago, Ashley acted the same before collapsing—at Megan’s direction.
Megan—who was promising payback.
“Stay awake, fight it, please!” I pleaded with Brendan. I tried to hold him but he pushed me away with considerable force. With a pained gasp, Brendan’s chest pitched forward as his head rolled back, limply hanging off his neck.
And then, just like Ashley had, Brendan slumped to the floor.
Chapter 13
I screamed Brendan’s name, kneeling by his side as he lay crumpled on the floor. His skin was clammy, his eyes were shut—squeezed shut, as if he were in agony.
I grabbed my phone out of my backpack and returned to his side. Magical cause or not, he needed medical attention. Who knows if what Megan’s doing could give him a heart attack?
“Don’t worry, I’m calling 911,” I cried, more to reassure myself than him.
“Don’t.” His hand shot forward and clamped around my wrist—tightly. Relief flooded through me. At least he was conscious—he was fighting Megan’s spell, if that’s what this was.
Brendan’s face twisted in pain. He arched his back, opening his mouth in a silent scream as his other hand formed a fist, which he pounded into the polished floor in protest.
I ignored the pain in my wrist and grabbed my phone with my other hand, trying to dial left-handed.
Brendan had stopped struggling, but his eyes were still closed as his other hand found mine. He snatched my phone out of my fingers and flung it across the library. I heard it collide with something and fall to the floor.
“I said don’t!” Brendan growled through clenched teeth, his eyes screwed shut.
“Why won’t you let me…” My words trailed off. That wasn’t Brendan’s voice. It was deeper. Meaner.
“Stay away from me, Emma. Get away.” Brendan—this time, sounding like my Brendan—pleaded, his voice labored as if he were lifting something heavy. His hand dropped my wrist, and it tingled as the blood flowed back into my fingers.
He grunted, pushing himself blindly off the floor, his eyes still squeezed shut in pain as he stood above me, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, his chest heaving.
“What’s happening to you?” I asked, my voice coming out very small.
My question was answered when Brendan opened his eyes.
The familiar green eyes I knew, and gazed into countless times, were gone. His eyes were black—it was as if the pupil had overflowed, spilling past the green and staining the white. And those glassy black eyes appeared to focus on me as I crouched on the floor before him in terror.
“You’re pathetic,” Brendan said in a deep, guttural voice foreign to the one I knew. “Look at you. You disgust me.”
My eyes stung with tears as I flinched at his cruel words. “Not his words,” I told myself. Think of how he acted only today around Kristin, in English…
“Brendan, can you hear me in there?” I asked calmly, trying to blink back the tears as I slowly rose from the floor with my hands up in defense. He crossed the space between us in a second, grabbing my shoulders. His fingertips pressed painfully into my skin and I cried out in pain.
“Oh, does that hurt poor pathetic little Emma? I thought you’d be used to pain by now.” His menacing face was inches from mine. I could see my own reflection in his onyxlike eyes—eyes that held no glimpse of the Brendan I loved.
He shook me by my shoulders again, his black eyes dead and cruel.
“You’ve never been good enough for me. You know it, too,” he sneered with the sinister—almost demonic-sounding—voice.
“I know this isn’t you. Please come back to me,” I pleaded tearfully, putting my hands on his face, trying to talk him out of this trance. My Brendan had to still be there somewhere, right?
But he just smacked my hands away and pushed me back. I stumbled a few feet, knocking into the metal cart of books. The cart toppled over, the remaining books scattering across the floor. Brendan ignored the commotion, keeping his malevolent black gaze focused on me.
“Do you know how many girls I’ve had? You’re a joke compared to them. You don’t even satisfy me,” he growled, baring his teeth at me. Even though I knew it wasn’t him saying it, I flinched, the tears flowing more freely. One of my biggest insecurities, hurled in my face. By some otherworldly version of my boyfriend—the one person I felt the safest with.
“This isn’t you,” I whispered shakily. “It’s not you.” I looked for my phone, spying it in the corner where he had thrown it near a bookshelf.
I ran across the library, keeping a few tables between me and Brendan. But he sprang up with an almost superhuman strength, crouching on a glossy wood table. His black glass eyes clocked my movement, his coiled body more animal than human as he launched off the table, tackling me as I dove on my phone. Whatever was possessing him might not have his kind heart, but it sure had his reflexes. In one deft move, Brendan grabbed my shoulder and flipped me on my back on the hard floor. He restrained my hand, holding it down over my head. He wrenched the phone out of my fingers, flinging it across the room. Brendan kept me pinned on my back underneath him, snarling out insults that were laser-accurate, hitting their intended emotional targets.
“You’re not worth my time. You’re just Jersey trash—my mother is right,” he hissed, those terrifying black eyes just inches from mine. I winced at his cruel words, my tears streaming down my face. You always knew his mother hated you.
“This isn’t you! Brendan, come back to me, please,” I screamed, squirming underneath his painful grip, pushing against his chest with my free right hand. I might as well have been trying to move the Empire State Building—he didn’t budge. My Brendan would never hurt me…but I didn’t know where My Brendan had gone. This wasn’t his voice—hell, this wasn’t even his face, with black eyes narrowed, twisted down with rage.
His face…this wasn’t even his face.
The spell. The spell I joked about doing on Kristin. I could use it here. Maybe it would work…maybe it would bring My Brendan back.
Useful for glamours, curses, Randi had written.
Brendan was definitely cursed. My Brendan would never treat a girl like this, especially me. And he was still hurling insults at me—seeking out my most intimate insecurities, fears I hadn’t even confided in him. It was like my deepest, most vulnerable internal monologue had taken a corporeal form to verbally smack me in the face.
“You’ve never been pretty enough for me.” He sneered, his black eyes like slits. “You’re an embarrassment. Everyone you love abandons you and I will, too.”
And then, the insult that could have broken me.
“I’m only with you because I was forced into it. Because I was drawn to you because of a spell. Because we’re soul mates.” He growled the word mockingly, his eyes terrifyingly alien-like in their emptiness.
“But I’ve never really loved you.”
“You aren’t Brendan!” I screamed again in his face, and he shoved me back down against the glossy hardwood floor of the library, his hand maintaining a viselike grip on my aching wrist.
Balling my one free hand into a fist, I said a silent apology to My Brendan as I aimed for his eye. His head jerked back when I made contact and his hands flew up to his cheek, cursing my name. My Brendan had taught me how to throw a punch—something I was aching to remind Megan about as soon as I could. I flipped over and ran across the library, overturning chairs in my wake to slow Brendan down as I tried to recall the lines of the spell from Randi’s grimoire.
“You stupid bitch,” Brendan snarled in the unfamiliar, unearthly voice, his hand to his face. His black eyes were barely slits as they targeted me. He stepped forward, kicking a chair out of the way. I heard the wood splinter under the force.
“Goddess I beseech you in your grace, show me his soul’s only true face,” I whispered as quickly as I could with my trembling voice. Brendan’s body twitched as he stopped his advance.
“Goddess I beseech you in your grace, show me his soul’s only true face,” I repeated, the tears streaming freely as I said the spell with a stronger voice. I sure wasn’t having any trouble finding my emotional center—he was standing in front of me, needing me to save him. Brendan’s shoulders shook, and he reeled back as if he had been punched, heatlike waves radiating from his chest.
“Goddess I beseech you in your grace, show me his soul’s only true face,” I screamed through my tears, holding out my hands as if I were trying to physically push the words into him. Brendan’s knees gave out, and he crumpled onto the floor with a loud thud. I couldn’t see him between the tables, so I stayed on the other side of the room, cowering against a bookshelf, my hands outstretched.
I stared at the row of glossy tables, half hoping for the top of his messy black hair to pop up and half terrified it would.
“Emma?” The tears came more freely when I heard his voice—my Brendan’s voice—hoarse and shaky. His fingers reached up and gripped the edge of a table—the one that bore his footprints—and he pulled himself off the floor. He was looking down, his palms flat against the table to steady his swaying figure. When he lifted his head up to face me, Brendan’s eyes were a clear green again. A little bloodshot, but they were his. He looked around his somewhat destroyed study area, his eyes a shimmering sea of pain and confusion as he took in the overturned chairs and toppled cart.
Brendan reached his hand out to me and I reflexively flinched. Stepping back, he slowly retreated from me, until his body hit a bookshelf. He slid down the length of it as he crumpled on the floor again. And then his eyes met mine, settling on my tear-streaked face and defensive position on the other side of the room.
“What happened? What did I do to you?” Brendan choked out, his voice fearful.
“It wasn’t you,” I whispered, reassuring him as much as I was reassuring myself.
“What happened?” Brendan asked again warily. He put his hands next to him as if he were about to push himself off the floor, but he took another look at the books scattered about, the upturned cart, and settled against the bookshelf, leaning back as if he were trying to get as far away from me as possible.
The look of helplessness that crossed his face physically hurt me worse than anything that had just happened, and I crossed the room to kneel next to him.
“I think you should stay away from me,” Brendan warned, leaning away from me. As agonizing as the past couple of minutes were for me, I couldn’t imagine how it was for Brendan to wake up from the most demonic blackout in history.
“You can’t keep me away,” I promised him, and he took my face in his hands and wiped away the tears with his thumbs. I put my arms around his shoulders and held him close, burying my face in his neck. Finally I felt his rigid frame relax and he slid his arms around my back, drawing me closer and holding me as if he were a drowning man gripping a life preserver.
“I don’t remember what happened,” he said into my neck. “It’s all so hazy.”
“Do you remember anything?” I sniffled, pulling back to look at his face.
He just shook his head, bewildered. “I started to feel weird, almost sleepy—” he stopped, correcting himself. “No. Not sleepy. Drowsy. Like I had taken too much cough medicine or something. And then it all kind of slipped away.”
He turned
his head away from me, staring at the overturned book cart. Finally Brendan looked back at me, and when he met my eyes, he blanched.
“Did I— Please tell me I didn’t—” Brendan’s voice broke as he stammered, and when he continued, he was barely audible. “Look at this place. Please tell me I didn’t hurt you.”
I shook my head, not wanting to tell him the truth. But a few more tattletale tears leaked out, betraying me.
“You’re lying. You’re lying to protect me,” he said, more to himself than to me.
“It wasn’t you,” I insisted in a rough whisper. I couldn’t bear to see Brendan beat himself up over something he had no power over. “And you didn’t hurt me. Not really.”
“Not really? Not really,” he repeated bitterly, mocking himself. “Oh, I didn’t really hurt you, so it’s okay.”
“It’s like you were possessed,” I explained, cupping his jawline with my hands, forcing him to look at me. “It wasn’t you. I know it wasn’t you. You didn’t look like you.”
His head jerked up.
“What do you mean, I didn’t look like me?”
“Your eyes were black,” I said bluntly, looking into his now-green ones. “And your voice was different. At one point, you came back—you told me to stay away. You were trying to protect me. I know it wasn’t you.”
“I kind of remember you needing to get away from me. It’s like trying to remember something from when you’re blackout drunk,” Brendan said, looking up as he rifled through his foggy memory. “I remember I felt something…dangerous coming. And then I woke up on the floor.”
“This was Megan, I’m sure of it,” I spat out bitterly. “This was the payback she warned of.”
“Can you please tell me what happened, Emma?”
He gripped my hand and I pulled back, my right hand raw and throbbing from when I punched him.
“I understand if you don’t want me to touch you right now,” he mumbled, his voice barely audible.