Which Witch Switch - Julie Steimle (book series for 10 year olds .txt) 📗

recognized the voice shouting for me. It was coming from down in front of the school.

“Eve!”

Walking slowly over the rooftop, I went to the edge and peered over. Far below I spotted Rick on the front walk calling up to me, his hands cupped around his mouth. When he saw me, he sighed and shouted up. “Stay there! I’m calling my dad! He’ll pick you up and take you somewhere safe!”

Though I trusted him, my gut was telling me that trouble would find me if I stayed right there. Unfortunately, my gut instinct was too slow this time around. Down below a car pulled into the school drive. Aunt Margaret climbed out and open the back passenger side door, peering right up at me.

“Eve! Get in the car.”

I don’t know why I did it, but I hopped onto the railing, opened my wings and soared off the schoolhouse roof straight to the open car door. I heard gasps from those at the classroom windows accompanied by screams from a few. The cries of Rick shouting for me to stop and not do it were punctuated by the cries of the Seven screaming ‘no’ at me and Danna’s mocking laugh. Something inside me made me want to turn around and slap her, but I didn’t. Instead, I folded up my wings as soon as I climbed into the back seat of the car, and Aunt Margaret shut the door.

She hopped into the front just as Rick ran up to the car grabbing the door handle. The Seven hurried after him with the same stricken expression when he failed to open the door, which was locked anyway. I don’t know why I just sat there staring at him, wondering at his terror stricken face, but I watched him go half wolf and chase after the car, then ditch his shirt and go all wolf. The Seven ran after him, or maybe it was after me. Jessica was shaking her head, panting hard. But soon we turned a corner and got out of the school zone. Then Aunt Margaret drove faster.

She took me back to her house then up into the driveway, straight into the garage. The door closed, though behind it I could have sworn I saw a wolf run up the drive, skid and then scamper back down the street in the opposite direction.

The Coven

 

Aunt Margaret turned around in the front seat, looked at me and said, “Follow me.”

There was something irresistible about the things she said. I wasn’t sure why, but it was hard to deny her anything. So when she said to follow her, I got out of the car and followed right on her heels. We went into the house, up the stairs and up another set of stairs where there was a spacious room, clean, with an open floor. The curtains were drawn. On the floor was a drawing of a large circle and a pentagram in white. Creepy writing was written all over it. I took a step back.

“Sit there.” She pointed to the center of the circle.

Despite the irresistible urge to do exactly what she said, I held back, feeling a shiver run up my arms.

“I said, sit there.” She gave me a small nudge.

I staggered only an inch, not going to the center like she had wanted. Just treading on the lines I felt as if an incredible evil was about to be committed. The circle reminded me of a book I once saw with blood spots on a page describing how to make the horrific demon that I was. It was then I realized that Aunt Margaret could not possibly be my real aunt and that I did not belong there at all. I tried to back out.

“See? What’d I tell you? Willful.” My PE coach stepped from the wall where she had been standing. She grabbed hold of me. I had not noticed her or the other woman who had walked up to me and traced her finger over my forehead just as Danna had done, muttering something. Though that smothering sensation returned to keep me still, I fought it.

“That’s not enough,” another woman said, though I did not recognize her voice or face.

I attempted to focus my eyes and tried to shove off the hands that grabbed at me, but they apparently were prepared for whatever I could dish out; because the next thing I knew, I was flat on my back staring up at the ceiling. My arms and my legs were stretched out, practically pinned there. I was unable to move.

The room began to fill with women of all shapes and sizes, entering through the door we had used. They looked like they could have been members of LASS; the ladies aid society in my hometown, their clothing as ordinary as any woman. Homemaker, businesswoman, crone, and teenager. All of them peered at me with a certain degree of glee mixed with eagerness to accomplish whatever they had planned.

When they were all gathered, they started to chant. As they chanted different odors of incense burned in the room. It stung my eyes, my nostrils and made my stomach churn. They also brought in candles, holding them and swaying. And then jars of foul smelling whatever-it-was, dipping their fingers in it then bringing it around to me, crouching over me and painting lines of it on my forehead, my arms, the front of my legs and the tops of my bare feet. I had no idea what it looked like, but the stuff was cold and it stung my already sunburned skin. Then they carried in a silver goblet full of something with an aroma that wafted on the incense-filled air, but this one smelled wonderful. I knew my eyes were glowing red with hunger.

“Now drink up. Get the taste on your tongue,” Aunt Margaret said with a voice that was nothing like the kind homemaker she had acted during breakfast.

Three of the women held me up, either to keep me still or to make it easier to drink. Aunt Margaret brought the goblet to my lips. I peered inside. It was thick and red.

I shuddered.

“Look at that,” one of the women in the back murmured. “The vimp actually doesn’t want to drink it.”

“Make her drink it,” Ms. Whittaker hissed out.

They pressed the goblet to my lips, forced my mouth open, and poured it in. The first swallow was the worst.

Yes, it tasted just as luscious as I remembered from the time I had bitten a hunter, bringing a flood of sensations over me that I often compared to a gigantic wave that I could ride out and overcome—only this time the wave of passion swallowed me up, drowning every sense I had in it. I gulped down the rest of goblet, greedily feeling my hunger swell within me. And I wanted more. My hunger became insatiable, especially after that lunch when I lost everything in my stomach. I was starving.

Then they let me go.

That was their mistake.

I don’t recall exactly what happened. But the aroma of blood was soon everywhere. The witches all screamed and scrambled to get away from me, though most of them failed. The floor became red and smeared. Only when Aunt Margaret called to me to stop did I actually stop. And as the sobbing of the women subsided and Ms. Whittaker walked up to me in her blood-stained business suit with her chin high, though she stood angered, I returned the glare as my chest heaved with satisfaction.

“You’re ready,” she said to me. She then gestured to the far window where the light was dim because the curtains were drawn. “Now go and fulfill your destiny. You have been wanting to drink their blood for a long time.”

“Wanting?” I said, blinking at her, and licking the remains of my latest snack off of my lips. “You don’t know what I want.”

But she lifted her chin up higher, looking down on me. “That blood you drank from the chalice was the blood of Seven we accumulated and preserved just for you. Was it not better tasting than ours?”

Two things happened in me at once. Part of me shuddered, trembled as I realized what I had truly done—but the other part of me shook with an eager joy at knowing there was more of that marvelous drink to be had.

“That’s right.” Ms. Whittaker’s voice cooed into my ear. “Go get it.”

My wings popped right out and spread large.

I jogged through the tattered and frightened women who were gripping their wounds. I went immaterial and invisible, then soared straight through the house wall. Outside the sun was still up, though looking at it, surprisingly, it was setting. How long had that ritual taken?

But that still meant that I could get sunburned. I immediately flew straight back into the room where all the women stared at me. But I did not even pause there. I jogged to the stairs then ran into the bathroom to search for suntan lotion. Several of the women followed me.

“What are you doing?” Danna asked, chasing after me. Her left hand clenched her right forearm where I had obviously bitten her.

“Sunblock,” I said, flinging out all the contents of the medicine cabinet and then the cupboard below the sink onto the floor in search of a bottle.

“What happened to the one I gave you?” she snapped.

I hardly gave her a look as I said, “SPF 45? Give me a break. I had to put it on every fifteen minutes. I’m nearly an albino, you know. We use a high SPF at home.”

I froze, crouched on the floor with my hand on a toilet paper roll and the other on a package of maxi pads I was chucking out. Home.

“She’s spacing it again,” someone said.

Danna leaned over and whispered, “Tasty blood waiting for you, and there is more of it.”

“Go when the sun is down.” Ms. Whittaker added.

“I don’t want to wait that long!” I shouted, and I searched some more.

Gleeful cheers erupted from some of the women, though a good number still whimpered and wept. When I found no sunblock there, I rushed to the downstairs to search the other rooms.

“I know,” Danna said, and she jogged on her heels down the hall. While I tossed the contents of their cupboards in the washroom, she ran down the stairs and then handed me a pair of long leather pants. “Here. Put this on. It will cover your legs. I have a backless shirt that will at least cover your arms.”

Peering at her body and then at mine, I figured we were comparable in size though she was much curvier than I was. In my eagerness to get to dinner, I just changed my clothes right there even as the women watched. We were all women anyway. But as I dressed they cheered, some of them leering at me in the way the boys did at school.

“That outfit suits you,” one of them said.

I walked over to a mirror to look, but of course my reflection wasn’t there so I had to take her word for it. When I stepped out the door and pulled out my wings, the sun was low in the sky—and I was ready to