Free Supernaturally by Kiersten White Page A

because I was too freaked out.
    Lame.
    I turned onto my side. The pendant Lend gave me sparkled on the nightstand and I reached out to it, running my finger along the side of the heart.
    Why didn’t things ever get easier? Sometimes I wanted to take a memory—one perfect memory—curl up in it, and go to sleep. Like my first kiss with Lend. I could live in that memory forever. Just us and our lips and figuring out how well they fit together. If things always felt like that, life would be better.
    “Honestly, Evie,” I huffed, flopping back to the center of my bed and glaring at the ceiling. “Why don’t you whine some more instead of actually doing anything?”
    “Talking to yourself is the first sign of madness,” Arianna volunteered, leaning on the frame of my open door.
    “Yeah, so’s seeing things no one else can, but people seem to like that about me.”
    “Good point. Odds are, you’ve been crazy for years now. I’m probably nothing more than a figment of your imagination.”
    “If that were true, I’d imagine you as less of a slob.”
    She sighed. “Isn’t it sad that you hate yourself so much you can’t even dream up a pleasant roommate?”
    “Not as sad as the fact that you admit how bad you suck as one.”
    Flashing a wicked grin, she narrowed her eyes. “I’d use the term ‘suck’ sparingly around me. Don’t want to go planting ideas in my pretty, dead head.”
    I threw a pillow at her.
    “Anyway,” she said, fixing her spiky red and black hair (far nicer than the strands that clung to her shriveled head under her glamour— don’t look , I reminded myself yet again), “It’s dark out. Let’s go to a movie. I’m so bored I could die.”
    “Too late.”
    She threw the pillow back and went out into the main room. I sat up on the side of my bed and heaved a sigh. The communicator radiated waves of guilt from its position next to my pillow, but I couldn’t call Raquel. She’d figure out I wasn’t coming in about—I glanced at the clock—ten minutes.
    It was probably for the best.
    Oh, bleep, like I knew what was for the best anymore. Shaking my head, I picked up Tasey and walked to my dresser, opening the sock drawer.
    “Sorry, friend,” I whispered. “Maybe another time.”
    I heard the front door open, and Arianna shouted. “I’m leaving now. Meet me there if you want to come.”
    “Yeah, let me get my—”
    A light flashed as a hand reached through the wall, grabbed my arm, and pulled me into the infinite darkness.

Old Haunts
     
    I screamed as the tiny rectangle holding the door to my room—my life—winked shut, leaving me in the darkness so thick and complete I could feel it on my skin.
    “Whoa, calm—”
    I whipped around, slapping my palm flat against the chest of—Jack. Again. Seriously, one of these times I was going to kill him by accident. Or on purpose. And I wasn’t going to be sorry. “What’s wrong with you! Let go of me!”
    He raised his eyebrows and loosened his grip on my wrist. “Really? Okay, if you insist.”
    If he let me go, I would be lost in this darkness. Alone. Forever. The only thing you could see on the Paths was the person you were with—there was nothing else there. I hadn’t wanted to use the Faerie Paths ever again, and now that I was here the familiar dread filled my entire body. I clutched his arm with my free hand. “Stop it! Why did you grab me like that? Terrorizing me at school wasn’t enough?”
    He shrugged. “Raquel told me to get you at eight.”
    “It’s called knocking , dimwit!”
    “I know I make it look effortless, but creating doors between realms isn’t exactly simple. Pulling you through was easier than coming in for some polite conversation and perhaps a bit of tea, at which point I would have had to make another door. I didn’t know you’d scream like a little girl.”
    “I did not scream like a little girl.”
    Flashing his dimples, he took a huge lungful of air and burst into an earsplitting—and