Hidden (Hidden Series Book One) Read Online Free Page B

face pleading for me to
take it.
    They saw her too. Their faces were as
frightened as mine must have been. They screamed and scattered and
I stood there frozen. Sister Phyllis limped away, fell, and
continued her escape in a crawl.
    “Hello, Christine,” the woman whispered. I
trembled as she stepped closer. Christine? No one had ever called
me that. “I’m Sophia. I’m a witch. I’ve been watching you. Don’t do
this. Come with me.”
    “Watching?” I mouthed. I couldn’t manage the
sound.
    She nodded.
    I was right about the feeling, about the
eyes. Hers were a sparkling blue, like water glimmering under the
sun. Something in them made me reach her my muddy hand.
    She pulled me closer to her plump frame. She
whispered something too soft for my ears to decipher, and my body
lifted from the ground. My hair and pajamas blew violently in the
seconds that we soared through the air or through the light, I
couldn’t tell. Even when I opened my eyes, I could only see the
white of her hair.
    We landed with a thump in a fancy kitchen.
She dropped my hand, and the fear that should have struck me at my
dorm pommeled me. A witch? How? How was that even possible?
    Another wave of fear rocked me as I realized
I’d almost become a murderer. Sienna and Whitney were
sixteen-year-old girls, and I almost ensured that they wouldn’t
turn seventeen for startling me. I’d fallen on my own. I’d freaked
out about my blood by myself.
    I was the worst kind of evil.
    Shame and fear pushed on my stomach,
dredging up the rest of my dinner. She snapped her fingers, and a
trashcan appeared in front of me. I hurled and cried as she rubbed
my back.
    Soon, the vomit stopped, and I was only
gagging on spit and guilt. She swept my curls up and placed a wet
cloth on my neck. Her touch didn’t carry anything with it. I
couldn’t hear her thoughts and I didn’t feel a thing, unlike the
times I’d accidentally touched a human.
    She stared at me as she wiped my mouth,
carefully and gently. “You wouldn’t have hurt anyone,” she said,
almost like she’d just discovered that. “You would’ve stopped
yourself without me.”
    She sighed and brushed my hair out of my
face. She smiled like she liked and was surprised by what she saw
there. She stepped away and pulled a cell phone from her
pocket.
    “Hi,” she said to the person she’d called on
the other end. “New Orleans. I … I took her. I had to. I thought-”
She paused and brought her free hand to her hip. “I know. I know. I
can handle it. She’s …” She looked over her shoulder to me. “This
situation is … fragile. I’ll call you.”
    She turned around to me and smiled
again.
    “Who was that?” I asked.
    “My …” She paused, taking my hands in hers.
“My husband. I needed to tell him what I did. We’ve both been
watching you for a while. I thought I needed to stop you from…” She
flipped my hands over and stared into my palms. She must have seen
the fire come from them in the bathroom.
    “Why would you care if I stopped?” I
asked.
    “Because you’re not hateful. I don’t want
you doing hateful things just because you’re upset. I think you
need to rest a while. Do you want to stay here until you calm
down?”
    She pulled two of the four tall chairs out
from under the large island in the center of the kitchen. I perched
on the edge of the seat. It was cream, like the billions of
cabinets in here, and I didn’t want to get it dirty. She sat next
to me and put an arm around my shoulder.
    “I’m too young to leave school,” I said. I’d
been plotting my escape for years. I knew the day, down to the
hour, that I’d have custody of myself. When I could make my own
decisions and head to Florida.
    “You’ve already left school. You’re in New
Orleans, Louisiana right now, and you can stay as long as you want.
As long as it takes you to feel differently about those girls.”
    “What would time change? I’ll still be a
witch.” The impossibility of her