Free Warlock Brothers of Havenbridge 01 - Spell Bound by Jacob Z. Flores Page B

our usual bag of tricks. Hexes, spells, and power plays might backfire on us, especially if Drake had the power to hide from the Conclave. Someone with those skills had to be handled in a way he wouldn’t suspect.
    But when I’d realized he was a shifter, I’d had to improvise. Drake’s instincts would have told him I was a warlock. Maybe that was why I’d sensed Drake knew more than he let on back in the woods. Trust was one thing most people didn’t give us. Warlocks had a reputation for using whatever or whomever we needed to get what we wanted.
    “Did you mess up your assignment again?”
    The question pulled me out of my thoughts. Behind me stood Miranda and Charlotte with some other witches who’d come to town last week for the Mabon celebration and had yet to hop on their brooms to fly back to their respective cities. Shouldn’t they have gone back to school by now?
    Fuck. It really sucked to be me right now.
    “I’m not in the mood,” I grumbled, hoping she’d take the hint and leave.
    “Oh, but I am,” she said. She crossed into my line of vision and grinned. She was only ever that pleased when she was hell-bent on making my life more miserable than it already was. “You always have the same look when you’ve screwed up. Shoulders slumped like a vulture and pouty lips like Angelina Jolie after her collagen injections.” She leaned in close and whispered so the guy washing down the sidewalk behind us couldn’t hear. “So what did the little warlock who couldn’t do now?”
    The girls behind me giggled while Charlotte shushed them all. It seemed that news of my sucking at magic had spread beyond the borders of Havenbridge. “Will you please give it a rest, Miranda?” Charlotte was suddenly at my side, looking down at me as if I was some pathetic mongrel who constantly peed on the floor because he couldn’t help himself. Her pity pissed me off more than Miranda’s bitchiness.
    “Fuck you,” I said to Miranda before standing and looking over my shoulder at the girls behind me. They all wore white somewhere in their outfit, on their purses, blouses, shorts, or hair bows. They looked like those carbon-copy young actresses you could see on any Nick Jr. show. “And fuck you too.” They gasped in shock.
    “Mason,” Charlotte chided. She wasn’t a fan of cursing.
    “And you too, Charlotte.” She jumped back as I turned the gun of my anger on her. “I’m sick and tired of all of you. I don’t need Miranda’s crap and I especially don’t need your fucking pity.”
    Suddenly, Miranda stood between Charlotte and me. Her angry brown eyes had become slits. She was ready to throw down right here and right now. “Don’t talk to my sister that way,” she muttered. “She’s only ever been nice to you, even though you don’t deserve it.”
    “What’s going on here?”
    Adam stood behind me, his mouth slack. “Great! Just what I need. Another goddamn Proctor dressed in white.”
    “Whoa!” he said, walking toward me. “Where’s all this coming from?”
    He reached out to touch me, and I jerked away. What was up with this touchy-feely crap? It had started during the Mabon prayer and now it was happening here.
    “Mason, what’s wrong?” His voice trembled for some reason.
    “We’re not supposed to be friends, remember? Much less friendly.” I’d tried to make them see differently last week, but they’d left when the going got tough. They obeyed their parents like the good little magical soldier-children they were. What pissed me off even more was that they had all evidently agreed with me. Our ways didn’t make sense to them either. But instead of standing with me, they’d thrown me to the wolves. “We work together when we have to, and we get together for celebrations. That’s it. You have your assignment, and we have ours. Our kind doesn’t mix, remember?”
    Charlotte winced. “You’ve always been sweet to me even though it upset our parents. You never cared what we were