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25
I woke to the sound of my cellphone screaming in the distance. Lifting my head from Jamie’s chest, I squinted at the dark room around us, and frowned. Who was calling me at such a late hour? No one calledmeanymore.
Slipping from the bed, I walked over to the dark pile of fabric on the floor and dug my cellphone out of my jacket pocket. Wincing at the sudden brightness, I saw the clock at the top read three in the morning, but the name on the screen was Zach. Why was my brother calling me?
Swiping my finger over the lock, I lifted it up to my ear. “Hello? Zach?”
“Evie? Thank God. I’ve been calling you for hours, where the hell are you two?” He demanded. “You were supposed to check in.”
I blinked a few times and pinched the bridge of my nose. My head throbbed. “We’re still in Estelle Falls. Why what’s going on?”
“The sickness is spreading. Dillon’s not the only one who’s been infected. We need answers.”
His words hit like a freight train. More people were sick. We’d forgotten. The memory of the woman on the street popped into my head, she’d done something to use, thrown something at us.
“Shit,” I swore. “We’ll be on the road in a few minutes. In the meantime, I need you to use whatever tech skills you have to find someone with the name Claudette who lives in this town. It’s an odd name, I doubt there’ll be more than one. Once you have that send me the details. Jamie and I have to find something before we can take her on.”
“Claudette. Alright, just…get here soon, Sis. We need you. And be safe.”
Something about his tone sounded off. “Are you okay?”
“Just get home in one piece, and fast,” he said, and the line disconnected.
“Snow?” Jamie yawned from the bed. “What’s wrong?”
I stood up, slipping my jeans back on. “We’ve gotta go. We need to find Selene’s talisman, and the witch responsible. If I can kill her—”
Jamie shook his head. “Talis—shit, we got dosed, didn’t we? It was that girl on the street, the one who was looking through the car window.”
“I think so.” I said, shoving my feet back into my boots. How could I have been so stupid, to let that girl get so close? “I think she was the other witch from the woods. The one that wanted to kill me.”
“What was that stuff she threw at us?” He asked, gathering his own clothes.
“No idea, but I get the feeling someone didn’t want us to go home,” I said.
“Apparently.” He grunted.
“Did we bring any bags?” I asked, scanning my eyes over the room. “I can’t even remember how we got here.”
“No. We left them in the car,” he said. “We were a bit preoccupied.”
My cheeks burned. “That we were. Do you have everything you need?”
He nodded and we both made our way to the door, picking up the keys we were given on the way in. We started down the stairs, and just as Jamie pulled a few bills out of his wallet to leave with the check in book, a figure appeared at the far end of the house.
“Hello? I’m sorry, is there a problem?” Called the woman who’d checked us in. We’d never gotten her name.
“Hi, we have to go. We forgot an appointment we have to get to,” Jamie said. “How much do I owe you for the night.”
“Oh, you can’t leave,” she said, hurrying toward us. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“We don’t have a choice, I’m afraid,” Jamie added, peeling another bill out of the stack in his wallet.
“Please, it’s three o’clock in the morning. A few more hours of sleep won’t kill you, will it? It’d be irresponsible for me to let you leave. You were both exhausted when you got here.”
At the word exhausted I felt a faint wave of foreign energy wash over me, and Jamie yawned beside me. I blinked up at her and narrowed my eyes. “You’re in on it.”
She pouted at me. “I’m sorry?”
