Coven - Book I

☆ 13

☆ thirteen

It was on Tuesday morning in the third period spare that the coven met in the empty classroom in the basement. Chloe was the last one there, since she'd had to drop her books off in her locker, and when she arrived everyone was looking at her warily.
"What?" she asked, setting her bagged lunch on the desk beside Eden. "What's wrong?" Nobody said a word. The atmosphere hung around the room like a blanket; dark and heavy. Meredith's manicured hands tapped away on her phone to fill the silence. "Have you checked your garden lately?" She glanced up briefly to smirk at Chloe, but the fear in her eyes was evident. Chloe thought for a moment; she hadn't checked on her flowers and plants for a few days. She figured that they'd need to be watered less since Eden had buried the crystals in their soil to help them bloom even into the late months.
"I haven't. Why?" Alec, who had been sitting in the back beside Dean with his eyes closed, opened one eye and yawned. "They're probably dead." He mumbled. Rose smacked his arm and looked around at everyone's faces. "Guys," she started in her authoritative Rose-voice  "we need to be serious about this. Someone knows about us." Chloe sat down in the chair beside Eden, whose eyes were brimming with unshed tears. She'd only joined The Group less than a week ago, and already something was going wrong.
"How do you know that?" She questioned Rose. The strawberry-blonde tilted her head to one side and, with one hand, fished around in her pocket.
"Someone planted these in all our gardens," she said, pulling free a small pouch. Chloe watched intently while Rose emptied the contents into her palm; it was a mix of crushed rose quartz shards along with large chunks of black stone.
"Breaking a crystal will render its power useless. Adding two crystals together in a natural environment such as dirt will cause a bad reaction, hence the hematite shards." She quickly put the crystals back into the pouch and sealed it shut, tucking it safely back in her pocket.
"How does that mean someone knows about us?" Chloe's head was beginning to hurt. She was almost positive she'd failed her trig exam earlier, she had a huge AP History test she needed to study for tomorrow, and now everyone was acting nervously.
 "Anyway, continue on with your day like normal. Check your garden when you get home, and then we're  meeting at the beach at midnight."
"I can't. I really need to study for this exam. . ." Chloe knew her excuse sounded bad, but truth be told, she was scared of what the coven could do. Her head still hadn't even wrapped around the fact that she was in a coven. That she was a witch by blood. That someone in her family had this same gene.  It couldn't be her father. And imagining her mother as a witch didn't seem right either. . . Rose snapped her fingers in front of Chloe's face to get her attention.
"The coven always sticks together. You're a part of that now, Chloe. You'd best remember that."

                    By the time school was over and Chloe was in her truck, relief flooded her veins. The familiar blue brick structure of a home came into view as she drove up the road and she sighed happily. Her head held strong to the belief that her garden would still be alive when she got there, but the nervousness of possibly being wrong distracted her. First she dropped her binder and bag on the couch in the living room. Then she moved to the kitchen for a snack, then back to the couch. She promised herself she'd check later, but the longer she sat there the more uneasy she felt. An hour and a half passed while she sat, knee shaking up and down, before the tossed the bag of potato chips aside and strode to the back door. Her fingers shook slightly but she pushed the door open and immediately wished she hadn't. Everything was dead. All her flowers, her herbs, her plants. All shriveled and brown. Clusters of petals clung to the damp soil from the rain the previous evening, the only things retaining their color. Chloe felt her legs jolt forward as she dropped to her knees by the nearest flowerbed and began hastily pulling out handfuls of dirt, feeling the sharp stab of crystal shards in her palms. She didn't care. She was furious. How dare someone touch her garden that Eden, kind, gentle Eden, had taken care of for her? How could they? The pricks of pain in her palms were growing steadily as she pulled out more and more, the pink and black slivers embedding themselves in her skin and in the lawn where she dropped them. She loved this garden. These were seeds that her mother had given her right before she died, and now the flowers were dead too. Frustrated tears sprung to Chloe's eyes and she hit her fists against the dirt.

"Montgomery?"

She held fast to the crystal shards and didn't turn. Her back stiffened and her breathing was frantic, but in her head she was calming down.
"I. . . Um. . ." Voice shaking, she shook her head and cleared her throat quickly. "I was just. . ." She couldn't think of an excuse fast enough as footsteps closed in on her.
"Your hands are bleeding, idiot." Chloe blinked and turned her head slowly.
"Meredith?" The red-headed girl rolled her eyes and eyed Chloe's hands with a grimace.
"Obviously. You left your pencil case in the basement classroom." She held Chloe's black-and-blue felt pencil case between two fingers like it had some kind of disease.
"Come on. You can't do anything with hands like that." She used her other hand to pull Chloe to her feet. She led Chloe through the house and up the stairs, down the hall, and to the bathroom that joined to Chloe's bedroom. Chloe's mind was stuck on her garden and thoughts of her mother, but she looked at Meredith's bouncing red curls with wide eyes. "How did you know where the bathroom was?" Meredith shrugged her shoulders, but Chloe saw a flash of emotion cross her face.
"I knew the girl who used to live here." Her ruby red nails knocked once on the door, as if anyone would be in there, before pushing it open. "Let's clean you up." Chloe didn't object; she wasn't going to push away any type of kindness Meredith was going to give her, even if it was a small victory.