4. Evalee

EVALEE

I hurry up the stairs to my bedroom and peel my pajamas off, nearly tripping over Maple as I do. She hisses at me as if I’m the one who was laying in the middle of the room, just waiting around to be tripped over. Shaking my head, I throw on a pair of cut-off shorts and a black tank top, before tying a plaid jacket around my waist since the fall weather in Mystic Willow Bay can be sort of iffy. To top off the look, I trace my eyes with kohl liner, comb my hair, and slip on a pair of clunky velvet boots.

I don’t bother glancing in the mirror before I head out of my room, but I do grab the emergency wad of cash I keep stashed in my sock drawer. I have an unsettling feeling that today is going to turn into an emergency cash sort of day. I’ve had these unsettling feelings previously, and usually I’m not wrong.

As I’m rushing down the cluttered hall toward the stairway, Opal bounces out of her room right in front of me. Thankfully, I manage to slam on the brakes before I topple into the diamond encrusted, paper thin wings spanning out of her back. Otherwise, I might have ended up taking a trip to faerie land (FYI, because fey wings carry the power of realm teleportation).

“Hey!” she chirps, her eyes bright and shiny, her wings flapping behind her. “I was just about to go look for you.”

“Really?” I question. “With your wings out?”

A crease forms between her brows as she cranes her neck to look behind her. “Whoopsie. I thought I put those bad boys away.” With a snap of her fingers, her wings fold and shrink until they vanish completely. “There you go.” She dusts off her hands. “You’re officially safe from any accidental teleportation.”

“Thanks. Although, it is a shame you can’t keep them out more. They’re so pretty.”

“And it feels great to stretch them out, too” She twists her wavy brown hair into a messy bun and secures it with an elastic. “But you know the rules. Faeries can only keep their wings out while they’re around other fey or in the fey realm, which makes sense. I mean, can you imagine if we walked around all the time with them out?” She visibly shudders. “We’d have a real traffic problem going on in the path to the fey realm.”

“Has any fey ever accidentally sent someone there?” My phone goes off in my pocket, and I realize I never did check the message from early. You know, back when Hunter wanted to get all intimate on me and tried to share his magic. Although, to him, he probably looked at his sharing time as a friend helping out a friend in need, because that’s the kind of person he is. A guy who would do anything to help the people he cared about.

She nods, zipping up her hoodie. “It’s happened a few times. And there has even been a couple of times when someone forced a fey to let them touch their wings so they could go to the fey realm.”

“Why would anyone want to go there if they aren’t fey?” I ask as I swipe my finger across the screen of my phone.

“To steal power,” she says, causing me to glance up at her. “It grows all over the trees. And anyone who goes there can take it.”

The craziest thought crosses my mind in that moment. There’s extra power in the fey realm that anyone can just take? If I took it, would I become more powerful?

I quickly dropkick the ludicrous thought from my mind. Seriously, Eva? You’re getting so desperate now that you’re thinking about stealing power from a different species?

Witches of all witches, what the hell is wrong with me?

“That’s crazy.” I redirect my focus back to the phone. Three missed messages ? “That power just grows on trees.”

“Well, the fey realm is a magical, magical place,” she singsongs through a laugh. “I wish you could see it.”

“Me, too …” The words taper off from my lips as I read the missed messages. One is from my mom, reminding me to check on the house while they’re on vacation, but the second sends a chill up my spine.

Unknown: Time to play a little game with my favorite archenemy. It’s called: payback is a witch in the ass.

At first, I think the text is from whoever took my sister’s body, but then I read the third message and become aware that I have other problems on top of finding the body snatcher.

Unknown: Remember that day you told my longtime crush that I liked him and he never spoke to me again? And then I got teased so badly at school I had to be sent away to boarding school across Mystic Willow Lake? Well, I’m back now, and I’m seeking revenge. I’m going to be real nice about it, though, and give you a hint. An eye for an eye. Or, in our case, a lost crush for a lost crush.

I press my fingers to the brim of my nose.

Great. Now, on top of finding my sister’s body, I have to worry about a crazy witch hopped up on revenge.