Dead Spell Read Online Free Page A

heightened.
    Brea walked past with “Abercrombie” and that bitch Rachael Warren at their heels. She was yelling something Harmony couldn’t hear and Jaxon seemed to be holding her off.
    Harmony dialed again. “Come on, Brea, answer.”
    Pete Mackey grabbed Rachael by the arm and pulled her away from Jaxon. Their conversation slowly became clear.
    Brea was a bit ahead of them and turned her back to the crowd. Harmony saw the top of her ponytail.
     “What did you do now?” Brea said.
    “Oh, thank god. What do you see?”
    “See? I can barely see anything. Why are you whispering? Where are you?”
    It was hard to concentrate with Pete and Jaxon arguing right outside the door and Rachael wailing, “How could you?” over and over.
    “I’m around. Look, there’s nothing in there. I swear it.”
    Jaxon was in her sightline, blocking her view of Brea. “Listen,” he said to Pete. Rachael had already walked away. “It’s for my old man. Brea’s mother wants her away from that freak show Harmony and I told my dad I’d handle it. In return, he gets the all clear on his rezoning. Her mother’s the head of the town planning committee. He gets a project green lit, I get a new Audi. Everybody wins. Just stay off my back about it and be nice. Can you manage that?”
    Harmony did all she could to keep from gouging his eyes out with her nails. She stifled a growl.
    “Harmony, are you there?”
    “Yeah, I’m here. I have to get lost for a while. I’ll see you tonight.”
    The first period bell rang and the few that moved cleared a path enough for Harmony to see the sizeable Principal Reilly holding up his infamous pink slips.
    “Everyone, get to class. Now. ”
    There were grumblings and a few anonymous profanities, but the crowd broke up. Through the thinning herd came the pop of the combination lock finally pulling loose.
    The cop went straight for her backpack and the dog’s reaction was unmistakable.
    Whatever they were looking for, they’d found it.

 
     
    8 .
     
    It was 2:00 a.m. and the Pinewood Estates trailer park was quiet except for the low hum of The Cure still playing in the living room where Harmony and Lance’s escapade started. She lay next to him on the floor-bound mattress trying not to feel like a cheater.
    She shook her cutting-scarred leg loose from the tangle of sheets and twirled her dyed hair between her fingers.
    You’re supposed to be different. Better than this place, she thought and yet here she was, 17 years-old, seducing a drug-dealing tattooist into free art and about to steal his car. Just like her mother.
      It was a truth that was hard to swallow.
    She covered her breasts and reached across Lance’s naked tattooed chest for the half-smoked joint in the ash tray next to him. His long, brown hair spilled out on the pillow behind him and his mouth hung open. He was knocked out cold, drugged on the sleeping pills she crushed in his drink.
    She pinched the joint between her lips and inhaled, tracing her black lacquered fingernail over the ladder of wounds from her elbow to the new tattoo he inked on her wrist: “Summerland”— the Wiccan equivalent of heaven.
      It took him almost two hours to get the lettering perfect and more than twice that long to convince him to do it. Her skin was swollen and red beneath the clear plastic covering and it burned, but pain she was used to.
    She considered her explanation to Adam, how she got the tattoo without money or her mother’s consent, and quickly decided she owed him nothing. She had never agreed to be exclusive and him saying, “I love you” didn’t obligate her.
    She snuffed the joint on the ash-stained crate Lance used as a nightstand and sat up, the threadbare carpet scratching her bare feet.
    “F.M.L.,” she said turning on the top light of the tree lamp.
    She pulled on a pair of thigh-high argyle socks and tall leather boots that just about covered them. The zipper caught at the inside of her right calf and she sucked in