Life's A Witch

Chapter Eight

A knock pulled me from my dream and I shot up in bed, reaching out for my mom, who was no longer there. I looked over at my door for some sort of evidence that it hadn't actually been a dream, but saw that I still had on the same clothes from earlier and realized the truth.

She was really gone.

The loss began to hit me in waves, slow and dull at first, and then increasing to an almost crippling pain that grew from my chest up to my throat and finally to my eyes. Just as I was about to let my grief brim over, there was another knock at my door.

Go away!

I wanted to scream at whoever was on the other side, but I collapsed back onto the bed and buried my head under my pillow instead. My guest must have taken my silence as an invitation to come in though, and I heard the muffled sound of the knob turn and the squeak of the door swinging open.

Oh, for the love of . . .

"Hadley?" It was Jasmine. "We need to talk about what happened."

It was getting hard to breathe with my face pressed into my sheets, but I didn't want to turn around and look Jasmine in the eyes. I just wanted to be left alone with the memories of my mom. I could tell she was waiting for me to say something though, so I sighed in frustration before answering.

"Don't you get it, Jasmine? We're on our own now," I said. "What's there to talk about?"

The room grew silent and for a few seconds I thought I'd succeeded in driving her away. I was wrong. Before I could react, the pillow was ripped away from my head and hit the wall opposite us. I jerked around to shout at Jasmine but stopped when I saw her face. "Stop being such a witch and snap out of it already," she growled.

Her usual indifference to everything and everyone had turned into a laser-like focus I hadn't seen before. For the first time, I saw what most people outside of our coven probably saw: Jasmine looked scary. Like crazy scary. Her black hair shot up in all different directions and her eyes were fiery. She adjusted her stance like she was about to attack and I couldn't help but back up on my bed.

I opened my mouth to speak, but she wasn't done yet.

"Look, I know you're used to being little miss Teen Queen and that your witch duties usually come in second place, but you seriously need to rearrange your priorities," she said. "We let you come and go before, because it didn't really affect us, but now it does. And I have no idea why, but you are more powerful than any of us. So we need you to step your homecoming-court, rah-rah ass up to the plate and start swinging."

Something inside me clicked. Commanding crowds at school came so easily to me, and it shouldn't be any different with this particular group of twitches. Hadn't my mom basically said this to me in my dream? That I needed to take control of the situation?

In my heart, I knew she was right. I was stronger than the others, and given my natural abilities, I was likely the only one who could lead this group. But how could I possibly do that when I felt seconds away from falling apart?

Jasmine relaxed a little as she watched me process what she'd said. When I didn't respond, she took her time walking away. She placed her hand on the door, but instead of leaving she looked back at me. I could tell the fight that had been in her was now gone.

"I know this sucks—it's hard on all of us. And you're not the only one whose parents are gone. But bottom line, we really need everyone to rally now, including you."

Jasmine walked out of the room without a backward glance, closing the door behind her. I blinked back my tears and stood up, walking slowly over to my bathroom. Inside, I splashed water on my face and paused to study myself in the mirror. Only this time it wasn't for beauty reasons. I was trying to see what the others saw in me.