Page 7 of The 13th Daughter

"What are you doing here?" I blurted in a breathless voice.

"I could ask the same of you." He gave me that devilish smile I was coming to love. "You won't come tonight, but you're hanging out in a cemetery?"

Great. He thinks I'm some kind of weirdo.

"I'm visiting."

His gaze flickered to the headstone and lingered. He gave me a curious look.

"My sister," I told him softly.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to intrude."

"No, it's okay," I said in a rush, afraid he'd leave. "I was about to head home anyway. I just wanted to talk to her for a bit." Brilliant, CJ, I groaned as the words came out. Now he probably thinks you're even weirder for talking to a headstone.

He nodded as if that made perfect sense. He came over and sat down across from me, our knees just centimeters apart. He looked into my eyes, searching. I had the distinct feeling he could look into my soul with those piercing gray eyes. I shivered in response.

"You were close?" he asked me.

I smiled. "That's putting it mildly. We were inseparable."

He took my hands into his own. I marveled at how dainty they looked wrapped in his larger ones.

"You still miss her don't you?" he whispered.

"Every minute of every day."

"I know how much it hurts to lose someone you love," he told me. "It never really goes away. You just learn to live with it."

I looked up into his smoky gray eyes and my breath caught. They were full of a sadness I knew intimately, a wound so deep, time would never touch it. This boy, this stranger, understood my pain better than anyone I'd ever met. Better than Kay. How could that be?

"So, what are you doing here?" I asked him softly. I couldn't take my eyes away from his face. He was staring at me with such a tender expression that I had the sudden urge to cry. His eyes told me he felt my pain and was sorry for it.

"I was taking a shortcut and saw you sitting up here," he told me, shifting our conversation to something lighter. "The opportunity to talk to you alone was too good to pass up."

"Were you heading over to the Hall?" I asked him, feeling suddenly shy, a first for me. His thumbs started to stroke my hands.

"Yeah," he nodded and leaned closer. "So tell me, Cassie, were you up here confessing your undying love for me?"

"Certainly not," I replied tartly. "How can I confess my undying love for you when I don't even know you?"

"That's easily fixed." He stood and pulled me to my feet. "Come with me tonight. We can get to know each other better."

I sighed. He had to put it like that didn't he? "Do you really believe in all that?"

He shrugged.

"I can't," I told him. I'd debated about it, but in the end, I just couldn't. I'd promised Emily I'd stay away from the Coven and I wouldn't break my word to her.

"Sure you can," he smiled. "It's as easy as putting one foot in front of the other."

"I have stuff to do." I tried to pull my hands out of his, but he pulled me closer instead.

"Like what?" he purred.

My mind went completely blank staring into his eyes. "Stuff."

"You already said that, Cassie Jayne Bishop," he whispered, leaning even closer. "What kind of stuff?"