No Thanks, Mate [Completed]

Chapter Sixteen

She kept laughing.  “Hold your hair down, Lainey.”

Confused by that, I lifted my hand to my head, adjusting the rear view mirror.  When I could see myself fully, I gasped.  “Put my hair down!”  My hair was floating around my face, sticking up on end. 

She laughed again and my hair fell to my shoulders again.  I looked at her and saw her smiling.  “You don’t look like that took anything out of you.”

“Sometimes it takes a while.  But I’ve done so many spells, that something small like levitation hardly ever affects me anymore.  Think about it like exercise.  After running a mile, you can run a mile easily.”

“You seem really proud of yourself,” I stated.

She frowned.  “Well, remember how I used to get bulled in elementary and middle school?  I guess after all that crap about not being good at anything, I always wanted to be the best at something.  And now that I practically am…”

“You feel like you can stand up to the jerks that made fun of you, because you know you’re good at something.”  It wasn’t a question.  “I’ve felt that way.”

“Yeah, well, I doubt this much.  When I turned sixteen my aunt introduced me to other witches she knew.  One of them had a son, who she made me talk to.  See, male witches aren’t common, and they’re called warlocks.  Anyway, so I was forced to meet him, and even though I hated him, I loved his friends.  They were all upset, though, because the twelfth member of their circle had just moved away, since her parents didn’t know about magic either.  But since she was gone, they just had a broken circle.  So they asked me to join.”

“What’s a circle?”

“A group of people who are sort of bound together.  As long as they’re close enough, they’re strong enough to put their powers together to cast big spells.  It’s a lot safer, too, since it doesn’t drain all your energy and power.”

“But you don’t need a circle to do smaller spells, though, right?”

“No.  But you can have help.”

I nodded.  This all made incredible sense to me.  “So do your parents know?”

“No.”  She looked a little sad about that.

“Why didn’t you tell them?”

“Well, I tried at first.  But they were drunk, so they started laughing.  Then, when Aunt Becky found out, she gave me a ten minute lecture about how they’re too old to learn about witchcraft now, and it’s too late, and even if I told them, they wouldn’t believe me.  Some people don’t have the power to believe, even if you can prove it.  You know?”

“Yeah.  So why’d you tell me?”

“I figured you might as well know.  Your brother was a vampire, your mate-“

I cut her off.  “Not mate.”

“Is a werewolf, and you were making out with a… well, I think a drunk James is more dangerous than all those others combined.  You were pulled into the magic world, whether you like it or not, and you might as well know about me.”

I took a deep breath.  “So now, I have to go tell Katie her boyfriend is dead.  Any advice?”

Her eyes widened a bit.  “Don’t tell her what he was.  It’s not your secret to tell, Lainey.”

I laughed once without humor.  “Not my secret?  My brother just got killed, a werewolf kidnapped me on Monday, and apparently, you’re a witch.  I think it involves me enough.”

She was about to argue with that, when she closed her mouth and a minute later said, “you have a point there.”

“Lainey?”

Katie opened the door, squinting in the sunlight.  I could tell she had a huge headache, too.  “Yeah.  Do you remember anything from last night?”

She started leading me into the living room.  “I remember you got really drunk.  well actually, I don’t remember that, but I keep getting texts about that.”

I grabbed her arm and changed our course to the balcony up stairs.

“There’s something that happened last night that you really need to know about.”  I opened the balcony door and walked over to the blanket, which was still covering my brother.

I lifted the cloth and saw a small pile of dust.  She stared at me confused.  “What’s the big deal?  It’s just a bunch of ashes.”

I frowned.  If only.  “Actually,” tears sprung to my eyes as I remembered the previous night’s events so clearly, “that’s Luke.  I’m about to tell you something huge, and you have to promise me you will listen to the whole story, okay?”

She looked down at the pile of ashes that used to be my twin.  The idea that that was him obviously hadn’t sunken in yet.  “Um, okay.”  I lead her back to her room.  We sat down on her bed and I told her the whole story, starting with the abduction on Monday, leading to last night.  I left out the part about Carly, and the part about James.

She stared at me like I was crazy for a minute, but after studying my face, spoke.  “Please tell me you’re joking.  Lainey, please.”

But I wasn’t.  I wished it was all just a dream.  I wished I could wake up from this terrible nightmare, and have Luke right next to me, but it was all real.

“I wish I was making this up, I really do.  But I’m not.  Please don’t think I’m crazy.”

She stared at me a moment and then nodded.  “You’re not that good of a liar.”

I smiled, even though tears were starting to fall down my cheeks.  I stood up and started walking away, ignoring the headache I had.

“Where are you going?”

I turned my head and called over my shoulder, “To bury my brother.  You want to come help?”

[A/N:  sorry this one kind of sucked.  It took forever to write, because I wanted to write about witches and everything, but I had a hard time figuring out how to write accurate emotion for this.  No one close to me has ever died, so this was a challenge for me.  Vote and comment if you like it, or even if you don’t!]