“We didn’t like how they treated Beth, so we chose to stick with our best friend and not a bunch of women we barely knew,” Deva said, turning to grin at me from the front passenger seat.
“All for one and all that jazz,” Carol said with a wink at me in the rearview mirror.
We pulled up at a stoplight, and I glanced over at one of the few restaurants with a drive-through. Some teen boys had just ordered, and they were all smirking, windows down, while one of them readied his phone, holding it out like a camera. My karma sense started to tingle, and my eyes narrowed. When they drove around to the window, the first guy was handed a giant shake. I pointed a finger at him as he opened the lid and threw it at the drive-through worker. Only, with karma doing its thing, the drink hit the side of the window and bounced back, soaking the whole inside of the car, and the jerks.
I could hear their howls of outrage. And the drive-through worker, a young girl, began to laugh hysterically, before slamming the window closed on them.
“Was that you?” Carol asked, and I could hear the amusement in her voice.
I shrugged. “They had it coming.”
Everyone started laughing, and I felt glad that my powers could ease some of the tension we were all feeling. One day I’d have to ask them if life was this complicated before I came back into town, because if it was, their lives were pretty dang tough. And if it wasn’t, I’d start to question if I’d brought more trouble into their lives than it was worth.
As the laughter died down, Carol started to talk, “I remember Bryan worked there in high school and he’d always tell me about--” she abruptly grew silent, and a pained look came over her face.
Beth and I exchange a look. We always suspected that the reason Carol had never gotten married, or even seemed to take an interest in dating, was because she’d never gotten over Bryan. Not that we blamed her. Out of all the kids in high school who dated people and seemed to think they’d always be together; Carol and Bryan were the only ones I thought were meant to be together.
But I’d heard, Bryan had simply left town one day with nothing more than a curt letter breaking up with her. He’d never explained why. And she’d been heartbroken.
“It’s okay,” Carol said, but her laugh lacked sincerity. “He was my high school boyfriend. I don’t care about him anymore.”
“It’s alright if you still do,” I said, gently.
“It’d be stupid to care about someone who couldn’t so much as tell me goodbye in person.” Her voice was firm, edged with anger.
“You’re right,” Deva forced out, a little too chipper. “Screw him!”
I frowned, an old memory surfacing. “Wasn’t Bryan related to Cliff somehow?”
Darn it. I’d managed to make everyone uncomfortable again.
“Yeah,” Carol said, softly. “He was.”
She stopped talking. I looked at Beth, and she gently shook her head, so I knew it was time to shut up. I’d have to ask the others about the whole situation soon. But for now, we’d focus on figuring out which witch could possibly want revenge against Roger. And more about how witch magic could be used to kill someone.
A couple of minutes later, I knew we’d reached the right place. Surprisingly, the coven house was closer to mine than I expected, and yet, I wasn’t sure I ever even knew there was a house over this way.
“I can’t believe all this stuff went on right under my nose and I never even knew,” I muttered as Carol turned up a long driveway. Halfway up it, a gate appeared from between two huge hedgerows ahead of us.
“To be fair, a lot of stuff is bespelled, so humans don’t grow suspicious,” Deva said with a shrug.
“Okay, that makes me feela littleless stupid,” I muttered.
Carol smiled. “You were never stupid, Emma.”
“You guys had to have been laughing at me at least a tiny bit in high school,” I said.
“Never!” Deva exclaimed.
And, strangely, it made me feel a little better.
“If we could’ve told you, we would have,” Carol reassured me.
“But now you’re not getting rid of me,” I said with a grin.
“Never!” They all said at the same time.
We kept going slowly toward the gate, but we didn’t have to even roll down the window before the gate opened and Carol drove on through. I realized as we entered that the hedge wasn’t just around the gate but around the entire property. It ran into the woods, or maybe around the woods as far as I could see on either side of the car. It explained why I’d never seen the house before. The thing was in no way, shape, or form visible from the road.
