Spells Trouble - Kristin Cast (mobile ebook reader .txt) 📗

no school tomorrow for us.” She chewed her lip and then added, “And we have to be there for Em.”

“I wonder what happened to her dad?” Hunter mused as she started the car and began backing carefully to the blacktop.

“I don’t know, H. Everything feels so wrong. I can’t even.”

“I know, Mag. I know.” Hunter’s bloody thumb rubbed Tyr’s amulet.

Silently, they drove through town—each girl lost in her own thoughts. Mercy stared out the window, overwhelmed by a terrible foreboding that had her feeling like she might puke again. Could Hunter’s devotion to a god and not a goddess be the match that will light the fire that will burn down the gates? She didn’t want to believe it, but the more the idea circled around her mind, the more it made sense in a world that had suddenly turned dark and chaotic and strange.

Sixteen

Mercy hovered between awake and asleep—and for a few precious moments her world felt normal. Birdsong and a gentle, corn silk–scented breeze wafted in through her open window. From the crack under her closed door the rich aromas of coffee and toast slathered with homemade strawberry jam teased her, and she imagined she heard Abigail’s Pandora station—perpetually set to her favorite singer, Tina Malia—drift up the wide stairway as the songstress’s sweet voice told tales of this world’s magic and beyond.

“Mag! Psst! Mag! Are you awake?”

Mercy rubbed sleep from her eyes as she came fully awake, and with consciousness also came reality. Abigail Goode was dead. The trees that kept this world safe from ancient evils were sick. Emily’s father had been killed. The world was upside down.

And Hunter’s face was peeking into her room.

“Are you awake?” her twin repeated.

“I am now,” she grumbled, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “What time is it?”

“Late. Seriously. Like, past noon. You’ve been sleeping forever. FYI, Jax is here. He’s going to take me to the nursery. Xena has about a zillion old grimoires put out for you to go through. She just discovered coffee—heavy with cream and sugar—but apparently caffeine works on a cat person the opposite of how it works on people persons. She was practically falling asleep on her feet and had to excuse herself to Mom’s room to nap.”

Mercy yawned. “Then why are you waking me up?”

Hunter leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms. “Because Jax just told me your boyfriend got permission from his parents, with his coach’s okay, to skip a couple of his afternoon classes and come over here to ‘check on his witchy woman,’” she air quoted as she rolled her eyes. “So, he’ll be here in a while. Thought you’d want to brush your teeth or whatever.”

Mercy sat up and stretched like Xena—in cat or human form. “Aww, that’s sweet of him. And as Abigail would say, if you keep rolling your eyes, someday they’re going to freeze like that.”

“Oh, please. Just don’t let him distract you for long. I’ll be back with whatever stuff the tree person—”

“Arborist,” Mercy supplied.

“Yeah, that. I’ll have what the arborist recommends as mundane help for the trees when I get back. You, Miss Green Witch, need to have the magic part ready. Tonight, we fix this mess with a double-whammy—muggle stuff and witchy power.”

“Stop stressing. I already have a few ideas. Why do you think I’m so tired?” Mercy jerked her chin at the pile of old grimoires on her bedside table. They had colorful sticky notes protruding from their closed pages like paper fringe. Then her eyes widened and she reached for her phone. “Oh, bloody buggering hell! Have you heard from Em?”

“I texted her and called her. Twice. I didn’t get any answer until I told her you were sleeping and that I was checking on her for you. She only answered with two words: I’m okay.”

Mercy ran one hand through her hair as she squinted at her phone and read through the six texts she’d sent Emily last night and early this morning while she’d been going through the grimoires. No response. Em hadn’t answered her even once. “She’s not okay. No damn way. I’m texting her right now. Again.”

“Hey, Mag?”

Mercy looked up from her phone. “Huh?”

“Remember that we all grieve differently. Be there for her, but don’t be surprised if this changes her. Mom’s death has changed us.”

“You’re right. I’ll remember. Thanks. And good luck today.”

Hunter smiled. “You, too. Later gator.”

Mercy’s response was automatic. “After ’while crocodile!” Then she returned her attention to her phone, texting:

EM! SORRY. I JUST GOT UP. U OK? CALL ME!

While she waited for a response Mercy brushed her teeth, piled her hair up in a loose knot, and took a quick shower before putting on her most comfy Free People boho dress. It was the color of moss with blue flowers embroidered down the bodice of it and an adorable high-low ruffle that made it sexy and cute in the front, but long enough in the back not to cause stress whenever she had to bend over.

Her phone rang as she was sliding her feet into her favorite moccasin slippers.

“Em!”

Emily’s voice was muffled, like she had a cold that had completely clogged her nose. “I can only talk for a sec.”

“It is awful?” Mercy asked.

There was a long pause—so long that Mercy frantically wondered if she’d asked the wrong question—when Em’s shrouded voice finally replied. “Mag, his eyes are gone.”

Mercy’s stomach rolled in rebellion. “Your dad? His eyes?”

“Yes,” Emily whispered. “The sheriff told Mom.”

“Oh, Freya!” Mercy’s legs stopped working and she sat hard on the end of her bed as bits and pieces of the sheriff’s creepy words about Mr. Thompson, the dead guy he’d found by the olive tree, lifted from her memory:… dead man … with no eyes … Ripped right out of his head …

“It’s so terrible I don’t want to think about it, but I can’t stop thinking about it,” said Emily.

“Is that how he died?”

“No. He—he was strangled and then the murderer took his eyes. Mag, I just—” Emily’s words ran out