Chapter 20: Chapter 20

When a door bangs in the hall, we go still at first. Then footsteps sound, coming our way. Elijah wheels for the pantry, but I catch his arm and mouth, “No hiding spot.” He hesitates only a moment before realizing I’m right. Once we’re in that pantry, there’s no place to go. If someone else is coming for food, they’ll head straight for the pantry.

The question is: What other option do we have? Only one. I run and duck behind the kitchen island. Elijah frowns, and I know what he’s thinking—that it’s hardly a perfect spot. But he slips over and crouches beside me, and I whisper a plan.

The footsteps approach. They stop at the door. It creaks open. We’ve left the lights off—we can see well enough with the moon filtering through the skylight overhead. Whoever it is doesn’t hesitate at finding the lock undone. Footsteps enter. The person pauses. I wait for the click of the lights, but the room stays semidark. The steps sound again, heading for the pantry.

The setup of the room puts the pantry on the intruder’s right. To get to it, though, they’ll step past the island, meaning if they look left, they’ll spot us. I track the intruder’s steps as I creep toward the left side of the island. As soon as the footsteps pass the right edge, I zip around, and Elijah follows.

We’ve left the pantry door open, but the person doesn’t seem to notice that. When the footsteps move into the pantry, I lean out, just a little, and

inhale deeply. I don’t pick up a scent, which is odd.

I creep out from my hiding spot. We’re on a direct path to the door here. We just need to get to it while our fellow camper is inspecting the snack options. I dart soundlessly across the room. Elijah follows, bare feet padding as he carries his sneakers. I’m opening the kitchen door when I hear Elijah stop. I look back to see him frowning in the direction of the pantry. He mouths something I don’t catch.

I wave for him to get over here. He starts my way . . . and the footsteps head from the pantry. I look around wildly, but there’s no place to go. I yank open the door and swing out, but that leaves Elijah in the kitchen, and I’m not going to abandon him.

I reopen the door and step through, ready to take my punishment as Elijah says, “Kate?”

He’s standing in the middle of the room. And he’s alone.

I look around. Then I circle the island, checking the pantry as I do. “We didn’t both hallucinate those footsteps,” he says.

I shake my head.

“And we heard them stop right about here.” He stands on the right side of the island. “No one could have gotten past you.”

“No one did.”

“I don’t know much about magic,” he says. “Any spell that can do this?” “A blur spell distorts your form,” I say. “That’s sorcerer magic. A cover

spell hides you. That’s witch magic. You’d need to use both to slip past and then disappear.” I clear my throat and say louder, “If someone’s in here, it’s cool. We just came for a snack, same as you.”

No answer. I turn on the light, and Elijah paces off the room while I watch from the corner, looking for a blur of movement. We don’t see one. We check the pantry, too.

It’s not foolproof. We could have missed that telltale blur. When we finish, I call, “You know the lock’s on the outside, right? I can lock you in

here.”

Silence.

“Do you smell anyone?” Elijah asks.

I shake my head. Then I think of something, walk to the door and drop to all fours. I sniff the ground. The only recent scents I pick up are mine and Elijah’s.

Hairs prickle on the back of my neck. “No one but us, right?” he says.

I nod. “It’s not a ghost, though. They couldn’t open the door.” “So . . .” he says.

“I’ll talk to Holly tonight and Logan tomorrow,” I say. “Maybe I’m missing a spell or a subtype power. One of them will know. For now . . .” I scoop up the rest of the chocolate bars and return the peanut butter to the pantry. “Time to clean up and clear out.”

I slip into my room fifty-five minutes after telling Holly I’d return in an hour. I’d have been sooner, but when I noticed I had fifteen minutes left, Elijah found a way to fill ten of them.

I slip back into our room to find Holly reading. I toss her a Hershey bar.

She looks from it to me and back again.

“Is this what you ate?” she asks. “Because I want whatever you had. You can flick off the lights—your face is glowing enough for me to read by.”

“You can have what I did, but I’d rather not offer up Elijah. Give me a room number, and I’ll fetch you a proper midnight snack.”

“I don’t think it’ll have the same effect.” She flips onto her side, head braced on her arm. “You really like him, don’t you?”

“He’s really likable. A nice guy in a very nice package. Also, an amazing kisser.” I thump onto my bed and sigh at the memory.

“So that line you gave him about not looking for a boyfriend. Changed

your mind yet?”

“It wasn’t a line. I’m on dating hiatus.” I tug off my shoes. “I’m still in recovery from the last one. First longterm boyfriend. First longterm burn.”

“Jerk.”

I smile at her. “Thanks. I want to be one of those girls who bounces back and says it’s his loss, but I’m not bouncing. Not mooning over him, either. I just . . . I got hurt worse than I expected.”

“What happened?” She sits up. “Sorry. You don’t have to tell me, obviously.”

But I want to. The thought surprises me. The only person I’ve told is Nick, because he’s the one I’ve always gone to for stuff like this—he dated a lot before he got married.

I couldn’t talk to Logan—he and Brandon moved in the same school circle, and that was awkward. If Logan had asked pointblank, though . . .? But he didn’t, and I won’t deny that stung.

I’d have liked to tell Mom, but then Dad would find out, and while he wouldn’t exactly hunt Brandon down for what he did, he’d want to, and I just wasn’t ready to upset them both with a problem they couldn’t fix for me.

“It was sex,” I say as I lay back on the bed. “He wanted it, and I didn’t— not yet. He just . . .” I look over at her. “He wouldn’t stop pushing. Even kissing felt like a constant battle to keep his hands from sliding up my shirt.”

“Asshole.”

“Right? I eventually did let him go farther, because I wanted to, but he just plowed through that like it was a hurdle on the way to his real goal. He didn’t care about all the steps in between. I did.”

“You wanted to slow down and enjoy the journey, and he was powering through to the finish line.”

“Exactly. He was convinced I’d eventually give in. It wasn’t as if I have hangups about sex. Maybe the fact I was open about it led him to believe he could talk me into it.”

She gives me a hard look. “That sounds like taking responsibility for his

inability to hear the word no.”

“I don’t mean that. I just . . . It felt like there must be a solution to this situation, and I wasn’t seeing it, and that was my fault. I tried to talk to him, and he’d just say sure, yeah, he understood that I wasn’t ready, and that was fine, but then the next day, he’d go right back to pushing for more. Eventually, he came up with a solution of his own. He found a girl who said yes.”

“Seriously? What a jerk.”

“In theory, no. If he felt he needed sex, then it was his prerogative to end our relationship and find someone else. The problem was the he skipped the ‘ending it’ part.”

She turns so fast her bed squeaks. “He cheated on you?”

“Didn’t even try to hide it. He went to a party and screwed around with a girl from school and then told me about it. Letting me know someone else gave him what he wanted. Like that would make me see the error of my ways.”

“What the—?” She bites off the curse and throws her hand out, a tiny fireball igniting. “Take this. You know where to put it.”

I laugh. “Thanks. If I had one of those at the time . . .” I trail off and sit, pulling my knees in. “No, that’s a lie. I’d like to say I told him off or even threw him across the room. I didn’t. I just . . . I went into shock. I barely got home before I broke down.”

“I wouldn’t have made it out of the room,” Holly says softly, extinguishing the fireball. “I can pretend I’d use that fireball on him, but I would have been crying too hard to say the spell. I’m sorry. He’s a total asshole, and I’m really sorry.”

I nod, knees clutched tight. I’m looking at them, but she leans out and catches my expression. “There’s more?”

I hesitate. Then the words come, the ones that wouldn’t even with Nick,

that were too humiliating to tell him.

“People knew,” I say. “People at the party. The girl he picked . . . Of all the girls he could have chosen . . .”

“Uh-huh,” she says, and I know I don’t need to explain.

“He told her that I wouldn’t have sex with him,” I say. “So she offered to, thinking that would be her way to win him. Except he didn’t want a relationship with her. When he tried getting back together with me, she told everyone that they’d had sex and why. She’s the head of this clique I’ve had trouble with since I started high school, and this was exactly the sort of thing they’d been looking for. They started taunting me, sending stuff to my social media, even writing on the bathroom walls. At first, they said I was a frigid bitch, a prick tease. Then they decided I must be a lesbian. Then maybe, since I’m not exactly full-figured, I must actually be a guy, and I was afraid Brandon would find out. And then . . .”

Tears run down my cheeks, and I swipe them away, horrified.

“And then . . . ?” Holly says, so gently my tears only flow faster. “You don’t need to tell me. But if it would help . . .”

“My brother,” I spit out the words fast before I can change my mind. “They started saying I wouldn’t sleep with Brandon because I had a crush on . . .”

My gorge rises, and I can’t say the words. I don’t need to. Holly’s sharp intake of breath tells me she gets it.

“Those bitches. Those fucking bitches. I have never said that word before, but they deserve it.”

“Bitches?” I say, laughing softly through my tears.

She doesn’t return the laugh. “Why would they say . . . ? Oh, wait. Let me guess. The other accusations didn’t bother you enough. Calling you gay. Calling you trans.”

I shake my head. “I don’t consider those insults, either. They didn’t hurt me.”

“So they had to find something that would.” She goes quiet briefly before asking, “What did Logan say?”

My laugh comes harsher now. “I sure as hell wasn’t telling him.” “But what about the rest of it?”

What about the rest? What about the fact that Logan still talks to Brandon. Still hangs out with him and their mutual friends. Still hangs out with the girl and her clique.

“We’re fine,” I lie. “But that’s the reason I’m not looking for a new boyfriend. I’ll take the fake one, though. Now, speaking of Elijah and totally changing the subject, something weird happened in the kitchen, and I’m hoping you might be able to solve this particular mystery . . .”