Something Witchy (Mystics & Mayhem) Read Free Page A

like charred wood, though, I decided I’d had enough.   I asked him to take me home before we even made it to dessert. 
    Once I was home and was feeling normal again, though, I started to wonder if I was just plain crazy.  The food had looked fine, and I knew for a fact the building hadn’t been on fire—trust me, that’s something I definitely would have noticed.  So, crazy, right?  Just to test the theory, I agreed to one more date. 
    The second date went even worse than the first. After another disastrous evening of choking and breathing smoke that wasn’t there, I practically had to punch him to get him off me when he forced a good night kiss on me at my door.  I had never had such a horrifying kiss in my entire life.  The second he grabbed hold of me, I had the strangest feeling that he was going to hurt me.  Come to that, it did hurt me.  For one second, I felt like I was on fire.  Literally on fire .  I could even feel the flames licking at my skin.  By the time I got him off me, I was so terrified I was blinking back tears.
    There wasn’t a third date.
    And there never will be.
    At first, I felt kind of bad about it.  He took the rejection pretty hard when I refused to go out with him again.  Then he started to make me nervous, calling at all hours of the day and night.  When I refused to take his calls, the texting started.  When none of that worked, he decided to take his game up a notch and started sending me things like flowers and balloons and stuffed animals with notes begging me to give him another chance.
    By that point, he was seriously starting to creep me out.  Persistence is one thing, stalking is another.  Leave it to me to date one of those guys who simply couldn’t take a hint.
    Or an outright “Get lost, asshole!” either, for that matter.  Believe me, I tried that, too.
    Maybe in his mind it was just too hard to accept that a girl would dare to dump him.  That wouldn’t be entirely his fault since it was an idea ninety percent of the female student body—and a few of the teachers, as well, if the rumors were to be believed—at Oakhurst lived to encourage.  Even I had to admit he was cute…but not cute enough to make up for his other not-so-great qualities.  He was tall and broad in all the right places.  His blond hair was constantly falling into his big, baby blue eyes, and he really could be charming when he wanted to be. 
    But, on the downside, he had no concept of the word ‘no’, was seriously stalkerish, and he had these great big paws that he would not keep to himself.  Oh, and there was also that little problem of smelling something fleshy burning every time he got near me.  Don’t get me wrong, I believe every romance should have some fire, but that’s just going a bit too far.
    “Em!”  Jack called cheerfully as I marched past him to my locker.  “Where were you this morning?  I waited for you at the Coffee Bean, but you never showed.”
    Since he hadn’t gotten any of my other signals for the last two months, I did my best to ignore him as I turned the dial on my combination lock.  I’m a fast learner.  No eye contact meant no weird smoke inhalation.  Which meant I got to go home and actually eat something instead of choking up charcoal for the rest of the night.
    That still gave me chills.  At first, I thought I had been imagining it, or it had been dust from the air of the restaurant or something. But that kiss had been enough to convince me that it wasn’t all in my head, after all.  The second I got away from him, I had staggered inside to my bed to lie down and totally freaked out as I choked up what looked like finger-length chips of partially-burned wood all over my pillowcase.  There's no way I could've breathed those things in.  Just no way.  I'd called my parents in to take me to a doctor, but they'd thought I was playing some sort of prank.  They'd seen the inch-long shards of wood and gave each other a “whatever”