The Awakening Read Online Free Page A

though, they were in the cool autumn of October in Massachusetts, they had just come from a week in the Florida Keys, and he was solidly bronzed and sleek, and ever more appealing.
    She turned, lying back on her pillow, facing away from him.
    A moment later, he was at her side.
    She felt his fingers feather down her back. “All right, Megan, I’m sorry.”
    â€œI imagine it was the fireside tales,” she murmured, still resentful, but not wanting the argument to go on.
    Wrong thing to say. “You’re from here!” he said with something that sounded like a snort. “You’re the one with family around here. And you were frightened by stories about Salem?”
    â€œThey were different stories, not really about Salem, and certainly not in the historical sense,” she said.
    â€œOh, right, let’s see, All Hallow’s Eve is coming, and evil is something that grows, that feeds on the atmosphere, and clings to the places where man’s cruelty to man has been strong? Get serious, Megan, consider history, and that would be almost anyplace on earth.”
    â€œOf course, you’re right,” she said stiffly.
    â€œAh, but then, a full moon will be rising. And the fog and the mist will swirl, and there are those living today who believe in the dark powers, who mean to raise the dead from their unhallowed graves, and set dark winds of evil free to haunt the world.”
    She sat up, suddenly feeling defensive. “Finn, contemporary Salem is a lovely place peopled by those who scoff at witchcraft, and those who believe in their pursuit of Wicca as a real religion, those who have darling shops and make a nice income off history, and those who run great restaurants and couldn’t really care less. And yes, sadly, the victims of the persecution here were surely innocent of the crimes attributed to them, but do you know what? There always were—and perhaps still are—those who believed in witchcraft, or not witchcraft, Satanism, or whatever you want to call it, and they do bad things in their belief. Damn, Finn—think about it! Are there still bad people out there? Wow. Yeah, I think so. So I listened to stories about the evil in men’s hearts, in their beliefs in the powers of darkness and things that go bump in the night, and I had a bad dream. That’s not so bizarre, or unforgivable.”
    He laid back down, fingers laced behind his head. “And you have a cousin who operates a witchcraft shop.”
    â€œThere’s nothing evil about Morwenna.”
    â€œI didn’t say there was.”
    â€œIt isn’t illegal to be a Wiccan now. It was illegal to practice any form of witchcraft in the sixteen hundreds.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œMorwenna believes in earth and nature, and in doing good things to and for people, especially because any evil thought or deed is supposed to come back at a Wiccan threefold.”
    â€œAnd her freaking tall, dark, and eerie palm-reading husband, Joseph, is a fucking pillar of the community?” he said sarcastically.
    â€œWhy are we fighting about my cousin and her husband?” she asked a little desperately.
    â€œBecause I’m starting to think it was a major mistake to come here,” he said.
    â€œYou wanted to come,” she reminded him curtly. “This was a good move for your career.”
    â€œI didn’t think you’d come home and turn into a screaming harpy.”
    She turned her back on him once again, hurt more than she could begin to say. A mistake? Had it all been a mistake?
    From the moment she had first seen Finn, her first day of college, she had begun falling for him. She’d never wanted someone so badly in her life. She had just about chased him shamelessly, but it had been all right, because he had returned her mad obsession. In a matter of days, she’d just about lost all thought of her classes, eager, anxious, desperate, to be with him at any given