been able to protect herself too, though in the end they accused her of being a witch, and they killed her.
In the darkness of the night, Angel had conjured up a vision of what it must have been like. She’d pictured Forbearance Wynton and her mother bound to the great oak tree in the old cemetery, with wood, kindling, and brush piled around them.
She saw a man step out of the crowd to ignite the fire.
Margaret Wynton’s husband.
Forbearance Wynton’s father.
Angel had imagined herself tied to the tree then, her father coming toward her, bearing a great flaming torch that he held high as he gazed furiously into her eyes.
“You should have loved me,” he whispered. “All you had to do was love me.”
He bent forward to kiss her, but she pulled away, and after gazing at her one more time with eyes that were filled with a fury greater than any she’d ever seen before, he touched the torch to the piled brush and the flames began to dance around her, leaping ever higher until—
She’d shut down her mind then, but the memory of what she’d already thought and pictured lingered.
A witch.
Josiah Wynton had called his daughter a witch.
And in the night, stroking Houdini’s soft fur, she’d known he was right. Forbearance had used the strange book she and Seth had found to protect herself.
But Angel was certain that Nate Rogers’s daughter had never found it at all. And she had died. Her father had killed her.
But it hadn’t happened to Angel.
She and Seth had found the book, and used it, and it had protected them.
So there it was — Forbearance Wynton had been a witch, and so was she.
And so was Seth…
But they didn’t burn witches anymore. In fact, no one even believed in witches anymore. So she was safe.
She and Seth were both safe.
Finally, she’d fallen asleep, and when she awoke this morning, she knew exactly what she would do.
She would be herself. Not the self she’d always hated, but the one that Seth had shown her when he first put the makeup on her face, accentuating the features she’d always hated. So she dug through her drawers and found a black turtleneck shirt and black jeans, and when she put them on and looked at herself in the mirror, she realized that Seth was right. She wasn’t as fat as she’d always thought; in fact, if she lost ten or fifteen pounds, she might actually have the beginning of a real figure!
And when she threw the black cape over her shoulders, she saw that Seth was right again. She didn’t look terrible at all.
And she didn’t feel terrible either. She felt better than she’d ever remembered feeling on any morning of her whole life, and when she went downstairs and saw the look on her father’s face, she felt even better.
This morning she hadn’t been afraid of him; this morning, he’d been afraid of her.
And it was true at school too. After Seth had told her what had happened last night, she decided to wait in the upstairs corridor until Zack showed up, just to see the look on his face when he saw her. When Chad and Jared showed up without Zack, she’d been afraid that her cousin might not show up at all, that perhaps he hadn’t come to school that day. But the expressions on the faces of both Chad and Jared told her that the effect she was having on them was what she’d been hoping for. And then when Zack finally showed up and looked like he might actually faint at the sight of her, it had been all she could do to keep from laughing out loud.
She’d managed to keep a straight face, and when she walked straight toward him, he hadn’t tried to block her. He just got out of her way, as if afraid she might put some kind of hex on him.
Now, in the silence of the hallway, Angel took a deep breath, pulled the door to her classroom open, and stepped inside.
Mrs. Brink was just turning to write something on the chalkboard, but catching sight of Angel, she froze, her mouth hanging open, the chalk hovering in her fingers a few inches from the board.
The entire room went dead silent as her classmates turned to stare at her.
Yesterday, Angel would have wished she could fall through the floor and vanish.
Today, she simply went to her desk, took her textbook and notebook out of her backpack, settled herself into her seat and let them stare.
It felt good.
In fact, it felt very good.
Chapter 40
LAKE BAKER KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG THE moment Ed Fletcher walked unannounced into his office. He assumed it had to be the golf game — the game Ed had not won. “Hey,” he said, holding up his hands in an exaggerated gesture of mock defense. “I don’t like being sandbagged any more than you do, and I told Seth as much. I don’t know when he’s been practicing, but the way he was playing those last nine holes, he looked like a scratch golfer!”
Ed Fletcher’s countenance only darkened. “So what else has Seth been working on that you don’t know about? Martial arts, maybe?”
“Seth?” Baker said. “You gotta be kidding. He’s—” He hesitated, then shrugged helplessly. “Look, Seth’s my kid, but let’s not kid ourselves — he’s not what anyone would call the fighting kind.” When Fletcher said nothing, Baker went on, now uncertain where the conversation was headed. “Come on, Ed — we both know how the other kids have always treated him, and I’ve been telling him for years that sooner or later he’s got to learn to take care of himself.”
“Think there’s any chance that he finally did?” Fletcher asked coldly.
“You want to tell me what this is about?”
“Zack got beaten up last night,” Ed Fletcher said, keeping his unwavering gaze on Blake Baker.
“By Seth?” Baker asked incredulously, as what his client was implying dawned on him “Come on, Ed, Seth’s afraid of his own shadow, for Christ’s sake!”
“According to Zack, the shadows were exactly where Seth was waiting for him,” Fletcher said sarcastically.
As he related Zack’s version of what had happened last night, Blake’s incredulity only grew. “What time did all this happen?” he asked, interrupting before Fletcher was finished.
“About six-thirty. That’s when Sheila Jacobson called, anyway.”
“So why didn’t you call me last night?” Baker asked.
Fletcher glared at him. “By the time we got back from the emergency room and got Zack cleaned up, it was late.”
Baker’s eyes narrowed. “Not that late. Especially given what you claim happened.”
Ed Fletcher took a deep breath. “Which is part of the reason I didn’t call last night,” he said. “The thing is, Zack gave us a couple of different versions of what happened. First he said Seth hit him, then he said Seth threw him into a tree.”
Blake Baker’s brows arched. “Oh, yeah,” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “My hundred and thirty pound kid who spends most of his time at a computer screen is going to throw your hundred and eighty pound football player into a tree. I mean, come on, Ed!”
“I’m just telling you what Zack told us,” Fletcher said.
“What about Sheila Jacobson?” Blake asked. “What did she say?”
Fletcher shrugged. “She didn’t see it — she just found Zack and called us and the ambulance.”
“So all you have is Zack’s word.”
