Witch in Hiding (#1 in the Witches Trilogy) (EDITING)

Twenty-Eight: Not-So-Divine Intervention

There's a sort of routine you have to appreciate at school. Like, if the rest of your life is falling apart, hey! At least math is still an hour and twenty minutes long and school food is still sucky and your attempted murderers are still in most of your classes!

Consistency.

De is back, Jess isn't. Her empty seat distracts me more than anything else. The jacket she leaves in school has been folded up and dumped into the cupboard at the back. Do wraiths get cold?

The lecture on precipitation barely reaches me. Jess aside, Esther and Remi are both in my line of sight and I am this close to going over there and punching them in the face really, really hard. Esther glances over her shoulder at me no less than four times (I counted). She's changed her stupid glasses since I last saw her: the new ones are thicker framed and black, hipster glasses that basically look like Remi's sunglasses without the dark lenses.

Everything that's happened—everything that's gone wrong—it's because of them. The postcard, the roof, Jess—and god knows what else they get up to that I don't know about.

The worst part is I don't get why. Why come after me? Sure, I'm supposedly one of the most powerful, etc etc, but I've never done anything to them. Nothing that would make me a threat. So why did they go and provoke me into becoming one? Not to mention my question to Abby still stands: why did they decide they needed to wait until my thirteenth was approaching before they started trying to kill me? To stop me from getting more powerful? Why not just kill me last year?

Esther is a dark fairy. An exile. The Fae are busy fighting off larger forces at their own borders, and Esther's slipped under the radar. The fairy kingdom hasn't come for her like they're supposed to. Jess was going to handle that; she said her dad knew how to contact the fairies.

Her dad knew how to contact the fairies.

Her missing dad.

Esther looks over her shoulder at me and smiles.

*

"Hey!" I grab Esther's shoulder harder than intended—she gasps—and spin her around. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Esther slaps my hand away with surprising force. "Yeah?"

Remi sighs, sets down her lip balm, turns away from the bathroom mirror and steps in between us. Her smile is dripping with poisonous honey. Instinctively, I look at her forehead instead of her eyes; they're covered, but I keep seeing the snake eyes, glaring at me as stone closed over my head. "Take this out of school, dear."

"Sure," I growl. "So you can try and kill me again, right?"

"It would have worked," Esther says, "if—"

"It weren't for you meddling kids?" I mock. "Gimme a break. You're scared of me, is that it? Scared I'm more powerful than you? Scared I'm going to get in the way of whatever evil plan you're cooking up?" I push at Remiko, who staggers into Esther. "Maybe you should be."

Remi's smile vanishes. "Who's crazy now?"

Esther holds up a hand. "It's fine, Remi. I can handle myself. Just give us a little privacy, please."

Remi's mouth thins, but she shuts the door. She tilts down her shades, and the door turns to stone.

Esther shifts her things from one arm to the other. Her hand goes over the top. Then something flashes.

I jump back, a little too late. The tip of the knife digs into my shoulder. Knife. She's drawn up and summoned a freaking knife.

I yank it away—or I try to. My mind hits a block—the same feeling when you're desperately trying to remember a word that you know you know but you just can't reach. Esther watches me cagily, expecting me to fight back, probably. But when I don't do anything, she lunges.