Free Spellbound (Spellbringers Book 1) by Tricia Drammeh

what’s happening.”
I pushed the thought outward and felt the moment it connected with
Jace.
    “We’ve been looking for you,” he
whispered.
    “I’m here. I’ve been waiting. This is
what I’ve been waiting for.”
    Jace’s voice moved through me again, a
soft caress inside my head. “Release me, Rachel.”
    “What?”
    “Release me. Pull back before other
people notice. We can’t let others know what we are.” Jace’s
thoughts were probing and insistent in my brain.
    “What are we?” I asked, but he didn’t
answer.
    I tried to break away, but I couldn’t
sever the connection between us. Suddenly, something jolted us
apart. Not an electric jolt of passion like in the romance novels,
but a clumsy nudge from a fellow student. The moment between me and
Jace had passed.
    Jace led me to the bleachers and sat
down, motioning for me to sit next to him. His easy smile was gone
and his eyes were troubled. He started to speak, but stopped when
he saw Alex moving toward us.
    “Hey, there you are,” Alex said,
sitting down on the other side of me. “Me and some other guys are
going out after the dance. You wanna come?”
    I glanced over my shoulder to look at
Jace, but he was already gone, moving through groups of students
toward the other side of the gym. Probably looking for Alisa, I
thought. My bizarre line of communication had startled both of us,
it seemed. Jace obviously had some power of his own. Instead of
getting the answers I desired, I ended up with tons more
questions.
    Turning my attention back to Alex, I
said, “Actually, I’m not feeling well. I think I’ll go home. But
thank you for a wonderful time.”
    I couldn’t bear to spend the rest of
the evening pretending to be normal. I wasn’t normal. Deep in my
soul, I now possessed the knowledge that things would never be the
same for me. Everything was different because I was not who I
thought I was.

Chapter Nine
    Alisa
    As I watched Jace dance with Rachel,
my whole life fell away. Rachel was the one his family was looking
for. The Innocent, the special one, the one who would take my place
in their lives. The agony of knowing I would once again be standing
in the shadows alone and ignored was beyond anything I could take.
I tried to turn away from them, but my pain held me in
place.
    The first part of the evening had been
like a fairy tale. My mother helped me select my dress weeks before
and we paid a small fortune for it. I submitted to her pampering,
polishing, and painting, and by the time she was finished with me,
I looked like one of the models in the fashion magazines, only
happier and less hungry.
    By the time we walked into the gym, I
didn’t feel like myself at all. Many of my classmates showered me
with compliments, and it was the first time I didn’t feel like a
complete misfit. For some inexplicable reason, Becky had decided to
leave me alone as of late. Her lack of open animosity combined with
Jace’s friendship pulled me from the abyss of high school hell. I
now skipped along the path toward relative social
tolerance.
    Draped across Jace’s arm, I stood
taller and possessed a confidence I hadn’t felt since I was six
years old and learned to ride a bike on my own. When Jace and I
twirled around the stained and scuffed gym floor, it was one of the
happiest moments of my life.
    Just before my whole world fell apart,
Jace spun me around and asked, “So, why haven’t you ever been to
one of the Homecoming dances?”
    “No one ever asked me. Jace, you know
how it is for me,” I said.
    “Yes, but I don’t see why. I can’t
believe none of the guys here ever asked you out.”
    “Why? Look at me,” I said, whirling
away from him.
    He reached out and pulled
me back toward him. “Alisa, I am looking at you. And I see a beautiful girl.” I
blushed and looked away. “Can I ask you something?” The song ended
before I could respond.
    When a freshman came up and asked me
to dance, Jace disappeared. The kid I danced with was as