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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

She stumbles into the room looking rumpled and under-rested. One black brow shoots up when she sees me. “What on earth are you doing in my bed?”

I rub my bleary eyes and sit up. I could lie to her. It would be so much easier. There was a spider in my bed might work, but it doesn’t explain why I’m fully dressed. So I say matter-of-factly, like I have nothing to hide, “Because Leo fell asleep on mine.”

She whirls around like she’s going to catch him still lying there. When she faces me again, both eyebrows are up by her hairline. “He fell asleep on your bed?”

“Yep.”

“Without you?”

“Yep. ”

“Betts—”

“We were just hanging out and talking. And then he fell asleep.” I shrug.

“I didn’t have the heart to wake him up.

” I swing my feet to the floor and stretch while she watches and rubs her forehead.

My strategy worked. I’ve given just enough information to confuse her; she doesn’t even know what to ask next.

Like the well-bred young woman I am, I pull up her comforter and fluff her pillows, leaving her bed in better shape than I found it. “How was your night? What did y’all do?”

She shrugs. “Oh, you know, the usual.”

“Who’s the Smash Bros champion?”

“They didn’t play Smash, they played COD, and the champion would be Cole.” She kicks her shoes into her wardrobe. “God, I need a shower.”

“How’s Braden?” I’m hoping there’s news about her being Sweetheart, but I don’t want to bring it up if there isn’t.

“Fine. We’re going out tonight with Trevor and Jenna.”

“Good,” I say. I’m happy for her, even though I can tell by her tone that she wants Trevor and Jenna to be Zander and me.

She glances at me and sighs. “Don’t get mad at me, but I have to tell you—it was so weird last night without you there.”

I want to tell her it was weird for me too, but it wasn’t. I hardly thought about O-Chi all night.

“What’s this?” She swipes something up off her desk and holds it out to me. It’s Leo’s black candle and the ziplock bags of herbs.

“Oh, uh. Sorry,” I mumble, taking them and hastily tossing them in my desk drawer. “Just some stuff from last night. You were saying?”

Liv busies herself with her jewelry, removing earrings, necklaces, and bracelets, and placing them in the ceramic dish in her desk drawer. “Zander’s in a bad way.”

“Is he?” I have no idea what to say.

“He misses you, Betts.” There’s a plea in her voice that, while it doesn’t surprise me, still rubs me the wrong way. “Couldn’t you at least, you know, talk to him? He said you haven’t taken any of his calls or texted him or anything.”

Zander started leaving me messages late this week. I’ve read and listened to them all, but I can’t bring myself to respond. I tell Liv, “I’m not ready to talk to him yet.” Hopefully I will be soon. We have too many friends in common to ghost one another for the rest of our time at Brownhill.

Liv wraps herself in her lime-green fleece bathrobe and shimmies out of her panties. She avoids looking at me as she collects her toiletries and towel. “It was so sad. He hardly talked to anyone last night. He just kinda sat there looking all lost and whatnot.”

I mutter, “I’m sorry,” as I unhook my robe from my wardrobe door. “It wasn’t my goal to hurt him.”

“I know,” she sighs. “I’m not trying to guilt-trip you. I just thought you should know—you know, in case you thought he didn’t care.”

Sure, I know that, in his own way, Zander cares.

And I know he might even think he loves me.

But the way he has of showing it, with that over-inflated sense of ownership, that’s exactly what I need to get away from.

I can’t help but compare him to Leo, who’s protective but not possessive.

Zander is vice versa, and there’s something really warped about that, like he doesn’t care who I am or how I feel, so long as no one doubts I’m his.

Liv waits for me to get ready before we head down the hall to the bathroom. “Everyone was talking about the masquerade ball,” she tells me.

“That’s in a couple of weeks, isn’t it?”

She backs into the swinging bathroom door and holds it for open me. “And you have that gorgeous dress?—”

I know what she’s getting at, but I play dumb. “Do you wanna borrow it?”

“No, I have my black one, but thanks.”

We find shower stalls side by side, the metal doors banging simultaneously as we pull them closed .

Liv says, “You should still go.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Not with Zander, just with all of us.”

And with the hope that I’ll end up with Zander by the end of the night.

“But you’re going with Braden,” I argue as I crank on the shower. The water pressure is so strong that the streams hit the concrete floor with reverberating slaps.

“Yeah,” Liv shouts over the noise. “But it’s not like I’m gonna be with him every second of the night.”

“I’ll think about it,” I lie. I don’t see myself surviving an entire evening around Zander, even if he’s not my date.

Back in our room, scrubbed clean and considerably more awake, I check my phone. While I was in the shower, Leo texted.

Leo: I’m sorry I stole your bed.

Me: Rude.

Leo: You could have joined me.

I consider it—in vivid detail—and blush as I type my reply.

Me: I wanted to, but I was worried Liv would come home.

Leo: I thought so. That’s why I left when I woke up.

I’m beginning to resent this double life, all the sneaking and half-truths.

Liv is supposed to be my best friend. I may not be ready to tell her what happened between Leo and me last night—not when I’m not sure yet what any of it means, and not while she’s so pro-Zander—but there are other things I could share with her.

Things about the Clairs. And things about my ability.

I resolve to make progress on this front, then turn my attention back to Leo.

Me: I’m the one who should apologize. I stole all your energy.

Leo: So my experiment convinced you?

Me: Yes. Even if it was unethical.

I can harness the energy of emotions. I don’t really understand why or what I’m supposed to do with them, but Leo and Avery are right, harnessing is something I can learn to control. Something to practice and build on. And not as scary as I’d feared.

Leo: I was a willing lab rat. Btw, thanks for the candy. Without it I don’t know if I would’ve made it home.

Candy? I’d nearly forgotten about it. I peer over at the pile of chocolate bars on my desk. He took the Nestlé Crunch. I tell him I’m glad he got home in one piece, and he reminds me not to do any ancestor work if he’s not with me. All this fussing and worrying; we sound like we’re married.

As I settle at my desk to do some homework, my mind keeps wandering to him and to last night. To how fiercely he kissed me. My blood and skin grow hot. My fingers tingle.

I hear his breathless groan, It’s you I want.

And his sigh. I shouldn’t, but I do.

He’s wrestling with something: guilt, doubt, I don’t know what. Does it have anything to do with what he wanted to tell me before he fell asleep? Worry worms its way into my chest. As close as Leo and I have gotten, I know I’m not getting one hundred percent of him.

What—and why—is he holding back?

On Monday afternoon, low clouds blanket the sky and wet snow dots the grass and bushes.

Liv will be in class for another hour, leaving me alone in our cozy, quiet room.

It’s the perfect time for some witchcraft.

Now that several days have passed, our ancestor ritual seems a little less traumatic and a lot more intriguing.

I’m not stupid enough to try it again when I’m alone, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do some research on it.

I go to Avery’s book first and look up ancestors in the index, but the only reference is a brief section on setting up an ancestor altar. Meditation , maybe? As I flip to the M listings, my eye catches on an item under H: hedge riding . Wasn’t that the term Avery used?

According to a short passage near the end of the book, “hedge riding” is what witches call traveling, in your spirit body, to other realms during a trance-like meditation.

Because it’s considered an advanced practice, the book doesn’t tell me much about it, only that it’s important to protect yourself while doing it.

If you don’t, you could—as Avery warned us the other night—lose your way home, or find yourself attacked or possessed by a harmful spirit.

I’m not sure why Leo had to shake me out of my meditation—if I’d gotten lost or led astray or what?

But if there are things I can do to “travel” more safely, I want to learn about them.

My gut tells me that my swimming experience was significant, that someone was trying to reach me, trying to tell me something important.

And the only way to learn more is to go back. Not right now, but someday.

I search the internet, hoping to find some hedge riding protection practices I could experiment with this afternoon.

Of course, carrying a black crystal is at the top of every list. Too bad the black tourmaline didn’t work for me; maybe I need a whole handful of crystals.

I could try envisioning a red thread tying me to this realm, a technique called “tethering.” Or I could use an animal guide to scare away malevolent spirits and lead me back home.

As an animal-lover, I like this idea best, but since I’d have to go into a deep trance to meet my guide, it’s not an option for today.