Betrayal Read Online Free Page A

demon. That had been hard to see.
    But was she flipping too much the other way? Was she getting so excited about her powers that she wasn’t going to be careful enough with them? She was part demon …
    That didn’t matter. Eve had had the blood the whole time he’d known her. That meant she was the same girl he met back in September. The same completely awesome girl.
     
    The next morning, Eve found herself sitting on the same bench in town where she’d sat with Luke the night before. This time she was waiting for Jess to finish up with her kung fu class. Eve leaned back and tapped on the big window at the front of the hardware store behind the bench. ‘Hey, Spiffy,’ she called, and the cat inside patted the glass with the pink pads of one paw.
    Eve said hi to the kitty pretty much every time she was downtown, and she had since she was a little girl. She was glad to see that Spiffy wasn’t one of the currently missing pets.
    ‘Hi-yah!’ Jess burst out of the door next to the hardware store, and grinned at Eve. ‘Thanks for meeting me. You should have come up and watched for a minute. I am getting to be ridiculously kickass.’
    ‘You always have been,’ Eve told her. Jess had been a cheerleader since the beginning of middle school, and she could jump, flip, kick, cartwheel, all that. But after they found out about Deepdene’s demonic history – and Eve’s powers – Jess had decided she wanted to learn martial arts. Luke had the demon-killing sword that was given to him by Willem Payne, a high-ranking member of the Order who had died fighting the wargs alongside Eve, Luke and Jess, and Jess wanted to make sure she had something to bring to demon fights too. That’s just how Jess was as a friend. If you needed her, she was all in.
    ‘Master Jonah says I’m a natural. He thinks I’ll be ready to go for my blue belt by the end of the summer,’ Jess said as they started walking towards her house. Luke and Seth were supposed to pick them up there for their mega shopping trip into New York City.
    ‘I tore out a bunch of magazine pictures to give us ideas for your perfect prom dress,’ Eve said. ‘Not that we don’t already have a million ideas ourselves. There’s one with these cool off-the-shoulder mesh straps. It has a square neckline, which would really show off that pendant you bought. It might not be The Dress, but the neck and straps are pretty close to perfection.’
    ‘Oooh. Thanks, Evie!’ Jess exclaimed. ‘Good eye! You’re right. The pendant would look great with something like that.’
    ‘Did you have the tux conversation with Seth yet?’ Eve asked.
    ‘Uh-huh. I just came out and told him that he had to let me be in charge of what he was wearing. He didn’t care,’ Jess said.
    ‘He’s a guy,’ Eve replied with a good-natured shake of her head. ‘He’s probably relieved that he doesn’t have to figure it out himself. Are you going to tell him what kind of corsage to get you?’
    ‘No, that doesn’t seem romantic enough,’ Jess said.
    ‘Well, no …’ Eve let her words trail off.
    ‘So I think I’ll go with hinting, really obvious hinting,’ Jess went on. ‘Seth’s the best, but he doesn’t always pick up on things all that fast.’
    ‘Especially when it’s about flowers and not about throwing a ball of some sort.’ Seth was on the football and basketball teams at school.
    ‘True that,’ Jess agreed.
    ‘On the other hand, he looks very cute when he’s throwing a ball of some sort, so who cares if you have to toss him a little suggestion once in a while,’ Eve added.
    ‘Very true that!’ Jess said. She grabbed Eve’s arm. ‘Look up there!’
    Eve gasped. There was a box on Jess’s porch, a blue box with a brown bow.
    ‘MarieBelle,’ they exclaimed together. They both j’adored the excessively yummy chocolates, not least because they were so beautiful, with little scenes hand-painted on every one.
    ‘I take it all back, Seth surprises me,’ Eve admitted.