Spellcaster (21 page)

“I don’t blame you. I’d hate it if it was the other way around.”

“Your ex-hookups are omnipresent. They’re everywhere I look and it drives me up a wall.” I got off my bed to pace around my bedroom. I hoped I’d burn off some of the energy before I launched into the full-fledged—and long-overdue—rant I could feel coming on. “Those annoying girls from the bodega mentioned it, you know. Kendall and Kristin talk about it so much you’d think they got paid in Brendan bucks every time they say your name. It’s like there’s a Brendan booty brigade just marching through my living room.”

“But they meant absolutely nothing to me! I know that doesn’t make it any better for you but there were no emotions involved. I know it’s hypocritical of me to say this,” he said, sounding embarrassed, “but you have no idea how jealous I am of Matt.”

I stopped pacing and pulled the phone away from my ear, staring at it confused.
You must have heard him wrong.
“Matt—my freshman-year boyfriend Matt?”

“Yep.”

“He’s in New Jersey,” I reminded him.

“I know.”

“He’s not in
your
face every day.”

“I know.”

“You’ve never even met him or seen a picture of him.”

“I
know.
Like I said, hypocrite here. But in my head, he’s been inflated to a superhuman point, you have no idea. You actually had feelings for him.” Brendan sounded like he was pouting. “I never had any deep feelings for anyone before you. Minor crushes, yeah. Girls I thought were hot, sure. But nothing that made me want a relationship with them. It drives me nuts that Matt got to have that with you.”

I couldn’t have been more stunned if Brendan had told me he was pregnant. “I can’t believe you’re jealous.”

“Insanely so.”

I grinned evilly.
Well, well, well. Brendan’s jealous. Let’s have a little fun.

“Matt wasn’t
that
hot,” I said casually. “I mean, he was hot, but he wasn’t a movie star or anything.”

“Ugh, stop,” Brendan groaned.

“What?” I replied, feigning innocence. “I think it was just because he was an underwear model.”

“I deserve this but you’re killing me.” He paused. “Was he really an underwear model?”

“No,” I admitted, laughing at the thought of my ex-boyfriend working a catwalk. He’d probably fall off it. “Sorry, just having a little fun.”

“At my expense,” Brendan said wryly. “I know you’re pissed at me and I deserve it, but…ugh.”

“I’m not pissed
at
you. I’m just—I’m a little pissy,” I said, sitting down on my bed again. “I really hate this. And honestly, it’s less about thinking of you with other girls. Although, don’t get me wrong, I’d rather punch myself in the face than picture that. It would be less painful. But it’s more that I hate thinking of you as this…callous heartbreaker,” I admitted. “It’s hard to reconcile the Brendan I know with the Brendan who used girls.”

He was quiet for a moment, and I looked at my phone, afraid the call had dropped.

“Are you still there?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said then exhaled a short breath—as if he were steeling himself to say something. “Emma, guys don’t like to admit this kind of stuff—and it’s embarrassing to admit it—but I was…kind of…lonely before I met you.”

“You didn’t seem to be lacking in company,” I snorted, then instantly regretted my snarky comment. “I’m sorry. That was bitchy.”

“That stung a little,” he admitted quietly.

“Sorry,” I apologized guiltily.
He opens up to you and you shut him down. Way to be supportive, genius.
“That really wasn’t fair. Like I said, I’m still pissy.”

“Oh, I can
definitely
tell,” Brendan replied quickly. “And look, I know I kind of deserve it. I know I was no saint. But, Em, I had no idea anything close to you even existed. What was my life like, really? My parents are gone
all
the time. I can’t stand most people at school. And I was fine with it. I had my distractions and I didn’t have to think too much about stuff,” he insisted, and I heard his desk chair move as it sounded like he was getting up.

“Look, before you, what did I have? I had
that.
Sneaking into clubs with friends, music, playing basketball and
that.
And if I had the slightest hint that you were going to come into my life—and that my, um, activities would interfere with our happiness at all—I would have been the biggest virgin this side of the LARP Club,” he said, bringing up the two seniors who dressed in homemade armor and ran around the halls of Vince A throwing invisible lightning bolts at each other.

“Really?”

“Of course. Don’t you think I wish my first time was with you?” he asked, and my jaw dropped.

“Guys care about that?” I asked, incredulous. Most guys I had known treated their virginity like it was a CDC-level illness that needed to be cured.

“This one does. Well, I do
now,
” he amended his statement. “Obviously at the time, I didn’t. But just so you know how things used to go down, Emma, I never used to go after girls. I’m not trying to sound like I’m the
man,
” he said, laughing nervously, “but they came to me. I treated them the exact same way after the fact as I had before. So maybe I did know, somehow, that you were coming. Because I didn’t pursue anyone until you. I never actually
dated
a girl before you.”

“Are you serious?” I asked, surprised.

“Yeah, I am,” he admitted, a little shyly.

I smiled at his confession.
I won’t be his first, but I am his first love.
And that was infinitely better.

“Em, I can’t change who I was,” Brendan said. “But please believe me when I tell you that I never
used
anyone. Not on purpose. I mean, I never tried to rack up numbers or use girls for sport like some people I know. I was honest and never led anyone on—and I would
never
do that. And I really, really don’t want you to think of me like that.”

He sighed. “It
kills
me that you think of me like that.”

“I don’t—well, I don’t now,” I admitted, stretching out in my bed and feeling the relief wash through my limbs. “But thank you for telling me all of this.”

“It’s why I avoided you at first,” he said sheepishly. “I know I told you that I was a little gun-shy, because I liked you so much, and that’s true, but it’s not the whole story.”

I raised my eyebrows, surprised. “So what is?”

“I’m not stupid, I know what people said about me,” he said sourly. “And I didn’t want anyone saying that about
you
—that you were just another conquest to me. I didn’t know what I wanted you to be, but I knew it was more.”

“Aw, Brendan,” I murmured, turning over on my stomach on my bed. “That’s the sweetest reason for being a jackass that I’ve ever heard.”

He laughed on the other end of the line.

“So are we okay?” he asked hesitantly.

“We’re okay,” I told him. And I meant it.

“Good,” he said, relieved. “I was worried all day that you were going to hand me my walking papers.”

“Puh-lease,” I scoffed. “You’re
so
stuck with me.”

“Works for me,” he said, and I could picture his grin on the other end of the phone. “How’s Ashley, by the way?”

“She’s fine, and she’s going to milk this into not going to school for the next three days. Why do we get a week and a half for spring break anyway?”

“Two-day teacher conference at the school,” Brendan explained. “I bet Casey dresses up in the uniform and totally does some kinky ‘naughty student, bad teacher’ role-playing with Mr. Agneta in his classroom.”

“That’s the grossest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Sorry.” Brendan laughed. “So does Ashley still think she has a brain tumor?”

“Oh, um…no,” I said, adding, “I told her the real reason. She knows everything—well, almost everything.”

Brendan was quiet for a moment. “She hates me, doesn’t she?”

“No.”

“Are you lying to me?” he asked suspiciously.

“No, I promise you. She took it really well.” I thought about my cousin’s jovial mood—by the time I left her apartment, she was practically expecting me to snap my fingers and teleport out of there. “She’s pretty jazzed about the whole witchcraft thing, actually.”

“So you told her everything?”

“Not
everything-
everything. If I told her we were reincarnated soul mates that first met in the eleventh century, I think her head would have exploded.”

“You’re probably right,” he agreed, then paused. “You know, it still sounds weird when you drop that into conversation so casually.”

“I know, right?” I laughed. Brendan and I talked a little longer—I updated him on my conversation with Angelique, and reminded him that he shouldn’t go around punching everyone who insults me, even though I secretly loved how protective he was. After we hung up, I raced through my first round of homework, anxious to get to my
real
homework—which was contained between the leather covers of Randi’s grimoire, tucked safely under my mattress. I started at the beginning again, rereading all the instructions and spells I had read the day before. I memorized the spell I had originally wanted to do on Kristin—
Goddess I beseech you in your grace, show me her soul’s only true face
—contemplating it as a viable option to use on Megan. Although, considering her scraggy hair, bad skin and scrawny frame, it was possible someone had already beat me to it.

Around midnight, my lack of sleep the night before caught up with me. I could barely make it through a page without stopping to yawn. I considered making coffee—my body was shutting down, but my brain was screaming at me to continue reading—until finally, I closed the grimoire, giving up. Besides, I realized I’d probably need a halfway decent night’s sleep if I was going to make it through the next three days with Megan likely stalking me until the lunar eclipse.

I curled up, hugging my purple fleece comforter to my chest and shutting my eyes, trying to stop my inner monologue from hurling me into total brain overload.

But when I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in my room. I was back in my old Jersey Shore town, Keansburg, at the boardwalk amusement park that overlooked the beach. I could smell the familiar scents: the briny saltwater, the greasy, rich funnel cakes frying in a nearby stand, the creamy popcorn, practically floating in a bath of butter, the pungent scent of diesel from the bumper cars. The stretch of boardwalk looked a little different from what I remembered—and I realized it was the giant house of mirrors at one end, glinting in the bright sunlight and momentarily blinding me as the sunbeams reflected on my face, warming my skin.

I headed straight for the odd, castle-shaped house of mirrors, weaving my way through the crowd. Every person I passed stopped in their tracks, turning to look at me. The hair on the back of my neck began to tingle, and I paused, turning around to see a throng of people staring after me. Their faces began to contort, their hair growing long and stringy. I started backing away from them as they morphed into Megan—a legion of Megans glaring at me.

And then they looked up, straight into the sun. I followed their gaze, but the blazing light didn’t burn my eyes or sear my vision. A black dot appeared in the center of the sun, like a giant yellow eye. The blackness spread, overtaking the sun from the inside and bleeding out into the sky.

And then the Megan copies started running toward me. I raced as fast as I could to the house of mirrors, the overhead lights exploding as I ran by, showering me with glass and filaments. Claws scratched at my back, tearing through my T-shirt and pulling out my hair. I saw my own reflection in the door as the horde closed in on me, grabbing at me. I launched myself at the mirror, crashing through it, and the jagged glass sliced through my skin. I landed on the floor, at the black Converse-covered feet of a figure. I braced my palms against the floor and looked up—right into my brother Ethan’s face, a mirror image of my own when we were fourteen.

He held his hand out and I put my bloody palm in his. He pulled me up, the sound of broken glass crunching underneath my feet. When I looked behind me, the horde was scratching at the zigzag hole in the door, pounding on it as if there were an invisible barrier. I turned back to Ethan, who was wearing the Ramones T-shirt he’d been wearing when I’d last seen him alive—before what we thought was the flu turned out to be meningitis. He was still holding my hand.

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, mirror it or you’ll fall,” Ethan said, his light brown eyes sad.

My eyes snapped open, my breathing labored as I sat upright in bed, gripping my fleece comforter, which was covered in claw marks scratched in the soft fabric. When I first met Brendan, Ethan had tried to warn me in my dreams. But after the fight at Belvedere Castle, when he helped me pull Brendan to safety—I hadn’t dreamed of him. I hadn’t had any warnings, any signs—nothing. Because I was safe.