Vanish

Chapter 3

After welcoming me into her life, enrolling me in a new school and giving me a general rundown of the apartment and its surrounds, Aunt Angie disappeared for the next four months.

Not because of the spells she constantly performed, but away on frequent business trips. Being a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company was a far cry from her other career as high priestess of the Circe coven, but both kept her extremely busy, which suited me just fine.

I didn't want her privy to the stuff I was going through: the usual hardships of trying to fit in at a new school, the occasional meltdown as I struggled to catch up on a new curriculum, the angst of having no friends and being the new kid.

Because if she saw how much I was struggling, she might send me home. And that wasn't an option. Despite the tough stuff of living in a new place and the accompanying adjustments, I had no plans to return to Broadwater any time soon.

Judging from the regular phone calls I made to Mom, she hadn't changed. As long as she kept watching me in the hope I'd manifest spirit-listening skills, too, I would stay away.

The fact she'd implied that one of those spirits was Noah... Nope, I couldn't deal with that crap any longer.

In contrast, Angie left me alone for the most part. She asked the usual stuff an adult would: about my grades, friends, boyfriends. I was working on my grades. The other two? Nada.

As for Angie's Wicca ways, I could deal with that because my aunt could be a witch dabbling in the supernatural and still function as a levelheaded person in the everyday world. More than I could say for Mom.

School was tough but on the upside, I'd spent the last four months relishing my newfound independence. Exploring. Falling in love with the vibrancy of New York City.

After looking after Mom for the last five years, it was liberating to be on my own. And as I walked into Fields High on a murky Monday morning, the aroma of bagels heavy in the air, the sound of warring taxi horns filling my ears, the excitement of this city filling me with hope, I thought, I deserve this.

Until ten minutes later, when I sat at the back of chemistry class, trying to decipher the latest assignment, due tomorrow.

The longer I stared at the chemical equations, the more my brain fogged. When the chair beside me scraped against the floor, I didn't glance up. No one sat next to me in most of my classes and I had no interest in discovering which kid had mistakenly sat next to the class loser.

"Hey."

Male voice. Not too deep. Sounded friendly enough, so I glanced up, surprised to see a fairly cute guy smiling at me.

"Seth." He held out his hand and I bit back a grin. Not only had he missed the memo about me being a newbie dork, he actually wanted to know my name.

"Alyssa." I shook his hand quickly and released it, not wanting to give him the wrong idea. Worried I might actually hang onto it too long because he was the first person remotely resembling a friend I'd had in this place. "You new?"

He nodded. "First day. Moved here last week."

"Where are you from?" Not that I had a burning curiosity to know, but the longer we talked, the more chance he had of not swapping seats.

"Quest. Upstate Connecticut." He grimaced. "Small town with the mentality to match."

"Know what you mean."

"Yeah?" He tilted his head, studying me. "Figured you were a local."

"Nah, moved here four months ago from Broadwater..." I clammed up, not wanting to say too much.

If he noticed my sudden silence, he didn't seem to care. "My dad travels around for work a lot, doesn't like me unsupervised for months on end, so I'm stuck with my aunt here."

"I live with my aunt, too." Struck by our similarities, I decided to loosen up a little. "School's not so bad here, but there are a lot of cliques, kids who've been hanging around each other for years."

He grimaced. "The kind whose parents hang out together on weekends, too?"

"Yeah." And considering how they'd pretty much ignored me since I started, they didn't believe in rolling out any welcoming wagons.

He tapped the chem text in front of me. "Hey, seeing as you're a fellow newbie, maybe we could be lab partners? Study together? That kind of thing."

My trusty self-defense mechanism made the back of my neck prickle. I didn't usually allow strangers to get close and since Noah's death, I'd avoided guys altogether. But I didn't get a sleazy vibe from Seth. With his wide blue eyes flecked with violet, spiked blond hair, and guileless expression, he seemed like a nice guy. Friendly, without any come-on.

"I'm focused on my grades," he said with a bashful shrug. "Bit of a nerd back home, so I really want to do well here, too."

"And you think I'm a nerd?" It came out sharper than I'd intended, my social skills on a par with my social life: pathetic.

"Whoa." He held up his hands. "I just figured you're sitting back here poring over that book while the rest of the class is paired up discussing it, so thought you may want a partner. But if you don't, no sweat."

He didn't sound angry or judgmental or miffed, and that's what ultimately swayed me into accepting his offer.

"Could always do with the help," I said, managing a wan smile. "Let's get started."

I slid the textbook over so it lay between us, but rather than slide his chair closer, Seth edged away a little.

"Afraid of girl cooties?" I shot him a glance, expecting him to laugh. Instead, he stared at me with a frown that disappeared so quickly I wondered if I'd imagined it.

Ignoring my question, he dug into the satchel at his feet, pulling out a pen and notebook. "Guess I've got a lot of catching up to do, so where do we start?"

Cutting him some slack, I outlined my progress so far, increasingly relieved as we worked through problems. By the end of the class, I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time.

Almost happy.