Free The Hunt by Amy Meredith

sarcastically.
    ‘Yes, wow – for Luke. That’s like two months in player time,’ Jess told her.
    Eve laughed. ‘Luke and I are friends. And he’s been awesome helping with the demon stuff. But that’s it.’ Except she’d thought about kissing him.
    ‘Haven’t you noticed the way he looks at you?’ Jess asked. ‘He doesn’t look at you like a guy looks at a friend, or even like a guy looks at a hot girl. It’s luuurve, I’m telling you.’
    Luke was extra sweet today , Eve thought. And it had felt so good snuggling up against his chest. Had it felt as good to him? He’d been trying to comfort her, but had something more been going on?
    ‘You’re thinking about it. You know I’m right,’ Jess teased.
    ‘I don’t have time to think about my love life, not with everything that’s going on,’ Eve protested. ‘I have to be ready to deal with … whatever it is that’s happening. Remember, I’m the Deepdene Witch!’
    ‘I say there’s always time to think about boys, but it’s your love life.’ Jess turned back to the computer. ‘Searching for animal attacks isn’t working so well. But like you said, you’re the Deepdene Witch. The first one – your Great-Great-Great-Grandmother Annabelle, I mean – was supposed to be obsessed with demons, and she fought them. If we can find out more about her, maybe it will help us.’
    ‘That book Luke found on the Internet didn’t have anything useful, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing out there,’ Eve said. ‘Try looking up Annabelle Sewall and Demondene.’
    Jess quickly typed in the words. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘You hardly ever get nothing .’ She tapped on the monitor. ‘If anyone’s in there, come out and I’ll giveyou a cookie,’ she said. ‘Then you blast it,’ she whispered to Eve.
    ‘Maybe just try the name, but put in her middle name. It was Amelia,’ Eve suggested.
    ‘We just went from nothing to way too much,’ Jess said as she started to scan the results. ‘There’s an Annabelle Amelia Sewall getting married. Getting promoted. Arrested. There’s a book with a heroine named Annabelle Amelia, but it was written a couple of years ago and is set in Hollywood, so …’ She scrolled through the pages, continuing to mutter to herself. ‘Wait. This might be something. Her name is in another book, but a non-fiction one. It’s a collection of writing from women’s journals, starting in 1650, up to the present. There’s an entry from an Annabelle Amelia Sewall. The year works too.’
    ‘Has to be her!’ Eve exclaimed.
    ‘Dang it. It’s on one of those research sites you have to pay for,’ Jess said.
    Eve grabbed her purse and whipped out her AmEx. Well, it was hers in that she used it; it was her parents’ in that they paid the bills. A minute later they were on the site, and a scan of the excerpt from the diary of Eve’s great-great-great-grandmother was on the screen. Eve leaned over Jess’s shoulder and began to read:
    20th of March
    It has been twenty-five years to the day since my Percy died, and there are times I feel his loss as keenly as I did in those first days after the Evil took him from me. My Talents were not at their full. Nay, that is an untruth. I was not yet experienced enough to wield them with the skill I needed to save him. If it were today the Demon came and tried to wrench my beloved husband from me, I believe I would triumph .
    It is foolish to ponder on such things. The past is done; regrets are futile. I must keep vigilant. I must be always attuned to the Darkness. I must continue to tend to my Talents, as when I do I continue to learn new ways they may be put to God’s use. The limitations are in myself; I have found no limits in the Gift .
    My Percy is gone. My time with him was much too brief, less even than one full cycle of the seasons. Yet there will always be others to protect, whom I may not love, who may fear and hate me, yet who deserve the safety my Gift, if that is what it is,