The Hunt Read Free Page A

promise.”
    â€œHow? We are in over our heads, Cassie. This isn’t like anything we’ve ever faced before.” Laurel started to cry so furiously Cassie was afraid someone in the hallway would hear them. “I don’t want to die,” she said.
    â€œ Shh . Nobody is going to die.” Cassie lowered her own voice to a whisper. “I’ve been talking to my mom about my father. Just last night in fact. And I’m learning things, Laurel. Ancient things that will help us.”
    Laurel’s sobbing quieted and she wiped the tears from her rosy cheeks. “Really?” she asked.
    â€œReally. When my father was young he saved a friend of my mother’s who had been marked. I know it can be done.”
    â€œAnd you think you can figure out how he did it?”
    â€œI know I can,” Cassie said. She said everything she could think of to try to help Laurel calm down, but in her mind she feared they were running out of time. She had to do something about this—and her father’s book—before the hunters picked them off one by one.

CHAPTER 3
    Pink and white banners advertising the spring dance hung on all four walls of the school cafeteria. On a different day, or maybe in a different life, Cassie would have been excited for the dance. But this afternoon’s lunch was going to be all business. Suzan arrived a few minutes after the others and dropped her tray on the table with enthusiasm, seemingly oblivious to the group’s mood. “Is it that time already? We have to go shopping before all the good dresses disappear.”
    â€œIs that seriously what’s on your mind right now?” Melanie said, her mouth half full. “A stupid dance?”
    Suzan crossed her arms over her cerulean blouse. “We’re supposed to act normal, right? So we don’t seem suspicious to the principal or anyone else. I’m just acting normal.”
    â€œYou can act however you want, as long as you don’t perform any magic,” Cassie announced. “The principal knows who we are. We confirmed that this morning.”
    Suzan took a seat between Faye and Deborah. “Oh.” She pushed her tray away dejectedly. “Nobody told me. I’m always the last to know everything.”
    Cassie looked around the table at her friends. Of course the hunters had figured them out. Not only were they always together, but none of them seemed average, even when they were alone. Adam and Nick, the Henderson brothers, and even Sean carried themselves with a pride and independence that set them apart from other guys at school. Their fellow students were terrified and awestruck by them. It was no different for the girls. Diana was the most admired, and Faye the most feared—but Laurel, Melanie, Deborah, and Suzan were no less intriguing to their classmates. Something about them sparkled. They were unlike all the other girls in school; their problems were so much larger than boys and clothes. It was stupidof Cassie to assume any of them could have remained unrecognized by the hunters.
    â€œAfter what happened earlier today,” Diana said quietly, “school is no longer safe for those of us who’ve been marked.” She’d directed the comment at Laurel, but Laurel just played with her sandwich, not eating and not looking up. Cassie had never seen her this depressed, even when the hunters first burned their symbol onto her front lawn.
    Faye also pretended not to hear Diana’s warning. She refused to acknowledge that she’d been marked at all. Cassie noticed she was still wearing the opal necklace Max had given her, the one he’d stamped with the hunter symbol.
    â€œYou can take that off,” Cassie said, pointing to the necklace. “You don’t have to keep wearing it like some kind of scarlet letter.”
    Faye shook her head. “I’m not about to let on that I know about the mark. He’s not the only one who can