Mystify Read Online Free Page A

morning asking him to bring the journal to school.
    Heading to the cafeteria I look around one more time just to make sure Antoine and his crew aren’t around. I can’t believe how lucky I’ve been not to run into him for this long. Still, Idon’t want to tempt fate, so I hurry into the cafeteria and sit at the table Jake, Krystal and I usually occupy.
    “So I was thinking we should meet tonight, at the library,” Jake says while chewing the biggest bite of a hotdog I’d ever seen. His cheek looks like he stuck a golf ball inside his mouth, and I sigh in disgust.
    Krystal, who just started eating like a normal teenager a couple of weeks ago, shakes her head in agreement. I think Krystal is going through a lot with her mom. In the first few weeks we’d known each other, I figured she just had the regular teenage woes that all of us have. But turns out hers are a little different. Krystal’s real father is a real idiot. He cheated on Krystal’s mother with the nanny—how clichéd. Then he got the nanny pregnant and moved to the West Coast to be with her. Krystal was stuck here in Lincoln, a small, behind-the-times town, with her mother and her stepfather. I don’t think either one of them is that bad, but then I don’t have to live with them.
    From the outside looking in, people probably think Lidia and Marvin Carrington are the best parents a girl could have—they work all the time and give me about as much attention as they do the other furniture in the house. They make sure I’m always dusted and shined to perfection when guests come to the house. Otherwise, I’m sort of just there.
    “That’s a good idea,” Krystal says, her voice bringing me back to the current conversation.
    “Can’t,” I add, chewing on yet another celery stick. My mom might not know what classes I’m taking this semester or my favorite color, but she knows what size clothes I wear and will bust a button in her designer suits if she finds out I’m eating anything other than health food.
    “C’mon, Sasha,” Jake whines. “This is important. You remember Krystal’s vision. It’s coming for us, for everybody.”
    Krystal is a medium. She can see, hear and talk to ghosts. And just recently we found out that she has visions. However, we aren’t all that sure whether those visions are of the past or the future. The Darkness, that’s what we call the black fog and the blackbirds that seem to always flock around us. It’s some type of evil. That much we all agree on. How to fight it is the question.
    “I know. I know. But my parents are having this cocktail party thing and I have to be there.”
    “You never go to their parties,” Jake argues.
    And he’s right. I always try to get out of going to whatever gatherings my parents are having, because I already know I’ll be bored out of my mind. Not to mention they never care if I’m there or not. But a couple weeks ago, right around the time we came into our powers and this freaky dark cloud started surrounding us, my mom started asking me questions about some of the kids at school. Other Richies, of course, because those are the only people my parents care about. The other day I found out why they’ve been asking all those questions. They want me to be some kind of recruiter of the rich kids at school for this new exclusive club they are starting. I don’t want to be bothered, but don’t really have a choice.
    “Look, I just have to be at this thing with them or they’ll freak. So Jake, did you bring the journal?”
    “Yeah,” he answers, taking another bite of food. He pulls it out of his backpack and pushes it across the table to me. “What do you need it for? We’ve all read it over and over again and agreed there aren’t any new clues in there.”
    I was already flipping through the pages, looking for the letter. “I’ve got another lead. Remember we read the letter from Mary Burroughs that seemed to connect us to the Salem Witch Trials.”
    “Mary was hanged