“Oh. Um, okay.” I didn’t know if I was secretly a little relieved, or mostly disappointed.
“Well, I don’t have to,” Brendan said hastily, his gaze shifting from his couch to his bed, and then to me. “I thought you’d want me to.”
“I mean, it doesn’t mean, you know, mean anything, you know?” I said. Way to be eloquent, Emma. You aced your PSAT writing test and sound about as coherent as a drunk kindergartener.
Fortunately for me, Brendan was as coherent as a drunk baby.
“No, I know. I mean, yeah. I mean, I won’t, like, try anything, you know? Unless you wanted to. Not that I’m trying to…” Brendan trailed off, leaning against the doorway of his bedroom and looking down at the bag of popcorn.
“Brendan?” I asked timidly, and his eyes rose to meet mine.
“I didn’t know what to expect tonight. When Angelique said you were off meeting Megan, all I could think about was Anthony. How you were in trouble, again, because of me. Getting hurt all over again…” Brendan explained, his face pained. I took the bag of popcorn from his hands and put it on the floor before wrapping my arms around him.
“That’s all I could think about, was Megan doing that to you, but with some magical thing that I couldn’t save you from,” Brendan said, his hands gripping me tightly. “And then she tells me you’re doing it to save me.”
“I know I lied to you. I’m sorry,” I whispered, my voice muffled against his body, which rumbled against my cheek as Brendan laughed humorlessly.
I looked up at him, my chin resting against his chest.
“Why are you laughing?”
“I’m the one who needs to apologize,” Brendan said, holding me close with one hand and brushing my hair off my face with the other. “You should have been able to talk to me.”
“You would never have let me go.”
“That’s the problem,” Brendan said bitterly, shaking his head. “I guess I need to trust that you can take care of yourself.”
“If the situation was flipped, I’d have acted the same way,” I confessed, slipping my hands under the back of his shirt to hold him closer to me, feeling his shower-heated skin warm my fingertips.
Brendan tucked his fingers under my chin and lifted my face to look at his.
“You know I’d do anything for you,” he said, and my heart—which was already beating like an overzealous drummer—went into overdrive. I nodded, glancing at his bed, which suddenly seemed bigger. And closer. And scarier.
And Brendan noticed where my focus was.
“Emma, about tonight…” he began, his eyes flickering quickly to the bed before returning to meet my gaze. “I just want to hold you and fall asleep with you in my arms. I just want to know you’re here and we’re together. That’s all. Is that okay?” He’d barely finished the question before I grabbed the back of his neck, pulling his lips down to meet mine. I heard Brendan lock the door behind him, before his hands gripped my waist, returning my kiss as I let him lead me back across the room. The back of my legs hit the foot of his bed, and I collapsed onto the wide expanse of mattress, the soft navy comforter cushioning my fall as my legs dangled off the edge of the bed. Brendan fell on top of me, his kisses alternating between gentle and demanding, until the gentle fell away and there was nothing but urgency left in his touch.
We inched our way farther into the bed, until we were fully intertwined in each other, wrapped up in the middle of the big bed. I lost myself in Brendan, in his touch, which at the same time set me on fire and soothed me. I lost myself in his smell, which surrounded me. It was already on my skin. I liked it on my skin.
And that’s when I made my last decision of the night.
I’d spent all day—hell, all week—making hard decisions. I made a life-or-death one tonight. I made a decision tonight that likely ruined Megan’s life. I was tired of making decisions. I was tired of thinking of consequences. I was just tired of thinking.
So I decided I wouldn’t stop Brendan. If he touched me, well then, okay. If something—anything—happened, so be it. I loved him. He loved me. And I needed to lose myself, to abandon Emma somewhere and live in someone else’s skin for a minute. Someone who didn’t consider murder a viable option today. Someone who didn’t almost die today. Someone who just felt and breathed and reacted and didn’t think about tomorrow. Someone else.
It was as if Brendan knew of my decision—or maybe he just needed to be close to me—because my shirt disappeared like it was on stage during a Vegas magic show. His hands were strong against my skin, but his lips were soft, tender, as they worshipped the hollow at the base of my neck.
This is it. This is going to happen. My heart thudded, my mind raced. If Brendan ever had a shirt on, I didn’t remember it. His bare chest met mine, and in spite of the overheated room, I trembled with chills at his touch, at being this close to him, his skin on my skin for the first time.
Brendan’s hands brushed my hair back, gripping a fistful of it, his breathing heavy as he paused, his lips just inches from mine, his green eyes dark and smoldering.
“Why are you stopping?” His half-lidded bedroom eyes closed at my question, asked breathily and urgently as my fingers raked along his back, pulling his body down over mine.
“I meant what I said,” Brendan murmured, dipping his head as his lips (and tongue, damn him) traced an invisible trail from my shoulder back to my neck. His hand slid down my side, gripping the fabric of my pajama pants at my hip but leaving the thin pink cotton firmly in place.
“What did you say? Oh…” I moaned as his mouth found an especially sensitive spot just above my collarbone. Brendan could have told me the secret of life and I wouldn’t have cared. Or remembered.
But Brendan remembered—he especially remembered what he’d told me earlier.
“You caught me off guard when you kissed me like that. But I meant it when I said I only wanted to stay with you tonight,” Brendan whispered in my ear as he balanced his weight over me. He rolled over onto his back in the bed, and pulled me with him, tugging at the corner of the comforter to cover my bare skin.
“I think I want to…you know,” I said, embarrassed, as I rested facedown on his chest.
“Want to what?” Brendan asked innocently, and I wanted to hide under the bed.
“You know,” I said, and Brendan tilted my chin up, forcing me to meet his eyes.
“If you can’t say it out loud, then we probably shouldn’t be doing it.”
“Fine. I thought I might want to…take the next step,” I mumbled into his skin, still not quite able to say the words. Brendan’s fingers combed my braid loose, my damp hair falling against my bare back.
“This is a next step for me,” he said. The sincere tone in his voice kept me from snorting in disbelief, because what he said next shocked me. “I’ve never had a girl stay over before.”
“How on earth is that possible?” I blurted out.
“Jeez, Em. I wasn’t that big of a slut,” Brendan said, sounding offended.
“Sorry.”
“Why are you so surprised? I told you that you’re the first girl I’ve ever brought home,” Brendan pointed out, the tips of his fingers brushing along my exposed back.
“Bringing someone home and bringing someone home are two different things,” I reminded him, and Brendan just shrugged, his hands brushing my hair back off my face as it fell on his chest.
“I know I’ll regret this tomorrow, because in spite of how I’m acting now, I do want you. I mean, really want you,” he said, raising a black eyebrow at me. I ducked my head back into his chest, embarrassed and flattered and more than a little aroused. “But I can’t help but feel like you’re just reacting to tonight.”
“I am,” I admitted, my words barely audible.
“I want to—no
, I need to do some things right,” Brendan said seriously. He tucked his fingers underneath my chin again, forcing me to look up and meet his earnest eyes.
“What feels right tonight is for you to be the first thing I see when I wake up tomorrow,” Brendan said simply. If I weren’t lying down on top of him, I would have passed out from the sheer awesomeness of his statement. Instead I opted to rest my cheek against his chest, hearing his heart beat almost in time with the music slowly floating across the room from Brendan’s stereo.
It wasn’t quite the ending to the night I’d settled on, but then again, my first time probably shouldn’t happen on a night I’d “settled on.” It also shouldn’t happen after I’d defeated an evil witch who possessed my boyfriend.
Then again, welcome to my life.
“Love you,” I whispered, and Brendan just held me closer.
“So this is okay?” Brendan asked, his casual tone doing little to hide the meaning behind his short statement.
“It’s more than okay,” I said, shutting my eyes and letting the heavy sleep that had threatened me all night advance. “It’s perfect.”
Epilogue
I knew I was in the middle of a dream—even though the sidewalk I was on felt very real underneath the soles of my Vans. The roots from a tree had caused the concrete to buckle, and I felt every broken fragment of concrete as I walked down the sidewalk.
It was dark, but I knew where I was going. I knew this street. I was walking past the redbrick house Ethan and I had lived in with my mother—long before she met Henry. Long before our lives changed. But I didn’t stop at the house—I kept walking, closer to Keansburg Beach, just a few blocks from our house. The sand spilled into my slip-ons as I climbed the first dune, staring out at the star-speckled dark blue sky until the black waters of Raritan Bay came into view.
The briny, familiar saltwater smell filled my senses, and I recognized my brother, walking along the water’s edge, kicking bits of sea glass with his foot. I called out to him—and then I was standing next to him. He smiled and took my hand, leading me to the old pier that disappeared into the horizon. We walked along, the wooden planks creaking underneath our feet. We were talking, carrying on an easy conversation, even though I couldn’t remember what we said.
I looked down at the cracks in the wood, watching the waves crash against the support beams underneath my feet. Then Ethan tugged at my hand, grabbing my attention. I looked at him, and he pointed in the distance, to the end of the pier. A woman was standing there.
She turned around, and I dropped Ethan’s hand, running right into her arms.
“I’m so proud of you, honey,” she said, holding me as I breathed her in.
“I love you, Mom.”
* * *
I was glad I woke up in Brendan’s bed, considering the emotional wreck I was for most of the morning. There was no way I could have hidden that from Aunt Christine. He held me all morning, as we whispered, keeping our voices low not because we were trying to keep my presence a secret, but because it somehow felt more intimate. We lay there, curled up under his soft navy comforter, telling each other secrets and stories. We didn’t leave our little sanctuary until our grumbling stomachs drowned out our hushed conversation.
Later on, when Brendan went online, we got the news that Megan’s parents came home and found her sitting in the middle of their white leather couch, drawing pentagrams with her blood and insisting that she needed to find someone in love to bleed. Seems the sisterly bond was as strong as wet tissue paper between Jenna and Megan, because Vince A’s former valedictorian was the source of the story, ranting on Facebook about her embarrassing younger sister and her rampant attention-whoring.
Megan was going to spend the immediate future in a safe place with no sharp objects and a lot of antipsychotic medication.
The first twenty-four hours of my spring break were more emotionally jarring than those animal-charity commercials with the abused puppies. Brendan and I spent nearly every waking hour together, mentally recuperating from our week from hell.
Angelique even gave me the week off from any spellcaster duties, declaring that I’d had a crash course, cramming for what amounted to the witch SAT and crowing that I deserved a break. Part of me agreed with her—it was refreshing to have no schedule, no schoolwork, nothing to do but luxuriate in uninterrupted time with Brendan.
But a growing part of me craved more. I wanted to perfect more spells. Having that taste of power was beyond intoxicating. It was a high. And a very small part of me—barely a sliver, but it was there—empathized with Megan, especially after her sister publicly sold her out. I knew what it was like to be undervalued and out of place. Like Megan, I relished the memory of terrorizing my tormentor, even though my rational side berated me every time I grinned at the mental images of Kristin, cowering against the lockers in fear of the faux flames. I wondered if the tables were turned, and I didn’t have my family or friends, could I have gone down the darker path? Could I have turned into Megan?
It was a thought that kept me up late at night—once I’d caught up on my sleep. Finally I confronted Angelique about it, and she admitted that she was deliberately keeping me witchcraft-free for a few days.
“How can I put this?” she mused, and her blue-gray eyes casting upward as she searched for one of her classic Angelique metaphors. “You’re like someone who’s been partying too much, and needs a break. You’re not an alcoholic or an addict, but you need to sober up for a bit.”
“Fair enough,” I agreed, and the cravings to start casting wild spells did subside after a few days. Good thing, too, because I didn’t know how I would have reacted the Thursday before the end of spring break, when we got the call.
I was at Brendan’s house, in his bedroom, of course. Seriously, why would you go anywhere else? He had a big TV, more video games and music than a Sony warehouse and—most important—he was usually unsupervised. It was late afternoon, and I was sitting between Brendan’s legs, my back against his chest as he rested against the headboard. His arms were around me, his hands over mine as I held some complicated video-game controller that had more buttons than the elevators in the Empire State Building. Brendan was trying to show me how to pull off some intricate move so my guy could kill some other guy with some weapon… I don’t know. It was confusing. My guy may have had a flamethrower.
My phone went off next to me, around the same time Brendan’s phone started vibrating. We looked at each other nervously—Ashley was calling me, Cisco was calling him—and Brendan paused the game.
A thousand Megan scenarios raced through my mind as I answered the phone.
“What are you doing right now?” Ashley barked then paused. “Wait, you’re at Brendan’s house, right? Hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” she added saucily, and I could picture her winking exaggeratedly at me.
“We’re playing video games, what’s up?” I asked, trying to keep a casual tone in my voice. I overheard Liam in the background—it sounded like he was on his phone, as well. Ashley had been spending a lot of time with him lately, although nothing had been made quite official.
“Put on the news,” she ordered. “Like, right now.”
I turned to Brendan, who was cradling his phone against his ear with his shoulder as he apparently got the same directive from Cisco. He aimed the remote at the TV, turning off the game and turning on a news channel.
“Got it,” I told Ashley. “What am I…” My voice trailed off when I saw what she wanted me to see.
“Call me later,” she said, hanging up the phone as it dropped from my ear, falling on the comforter with a thud.
“Yeah, I’ll call you back,” Brendan said, dropping the phone and wrapping his arms around me as we watched the newscast, the silver-haired anchor delivering the somber—and shocking—news.
??
?…has been living in the Caribbean under an assumed name, but is really Anthony Caruso, who is wanted for arrest in New York for the assault and attempted murder of two classmates, one of whom is the son of real-estate tycoon Aaron Salinger. Authorities discovered Caruso’s identity during a routine questioning about missing spring-breaker Andie Reed, who disappeared on Sunday after reportedly leaving a nightclub. Caruso is now the prime suspect in the Reed disappearance… .”
The report went on to show footage of Anthony—now with slightly longer, dyed-brown hair—being taken away in handcuffs, his head hanging down. Even when he was shackled and shamed, he still looked menacing.
“Emma, are you okay?” Brendan asked, and I shook my head.
“If it wasn’t for me, that girl would be okay,” I whispered, staring at the photo of the laughing, pretty coed on the screen. “He wouldn’t have been there.”
“If it wasn’t for you, more girls would probably go missing.”
“Maybe.” I sighed, leaning against his chest. I felt guilty. I felt relieved—Anthony was finally no longer a threat. And then I felt guilty about feeling relieved.
* * *
And then when school started back up, I felt like there was a big spotlight shining right on me and Brendan. Students I’d barely ever spoken to found excuses to sidle up to me while I worked in the library, peppering me with questions about Anthony.
I found it embarrassing. Brendan found it annoying. But Kristin relished the attention, reinventing the whole scenario as she spun a new tale of how Anthony had attacked her as well, and she was oh-so-relieved that Anthony was in custody. Kristin was the real victim, you see, as she repeatedly told anyone who would listen.
I really wondered about that girl’s memory, because after a few weeks, she began returning to her usual demeanor, again regarding me as Public Emma-ny No. 1. At first, she skulked past me in class, barely daring to dart so much as an eye twitch my way. But as Kristin happily poised herself at the epicenter of all the Anthony talk, she got bolder. Kristin strode into class, first turning her nose up and sniffing the air around me, as if I smelled bad. Then, one Friday at the beginning of May, she flopped in her seat in English class, calling Kendall’s name loudly.