Free Charmed Ever After (The Halloween LaVeau Series Book 6) by Rose Pressey Page A

rear-view mirror.
    “You messed up the spell,” I said.
    “What happened? What do you mean she messed up the spell?” Annabelle leaned forward from the backseat and looked in the rear-view mirror. She screamed. “Oh, my God. I can’t see myself. Where am I?”
    “What did you do, Hallie?” my mother glanced in the rear-view mirror.
    I stared at the bottle. “It’s your magic dust. Why do you assume I did something?”
    My mother frowned.
    “Okay, so I messed up somehow. You shouldn’t have let me touch it.”
    “You have to do something. I don’t want to be invisible.” Annabelle’s voice was a high pitched screech.
    "Don’t panic. The spell will wear off in just a few minutes and you’ll be back to normal,” my mother said. “It’s not even supposed to work on people.”
    The last sentence she said under her breath.
    “I sure hope you’re right,” Annabelle said.
    “Me too.” I stared at Annabelle.
    Surprisingly, after a few minutes Annabelle was back to normal. That was a relief. One less thing to panic about.
    My mother steered around the curve practically on two wheels. We managed to lose sight of the black sedan for a moment and I released my pent-up breath. Up ahead was what looked like a driveway. It was almost covered from the overgrowth of trees.
    I pointed. “Take a right on that drive. Maybe we can hide from them.”
    It couldn’t be any worse than it was right now, right? My mother whipped the car down the gravel road with dust kicking up under the tires as she sped along. I hoped this didn’t end in a swamp. Annabelle was looking out the rear-view mirror for the sedan. Trees surrounded us on both sides of the road, making visibility difficult.
    It looked as if this road went on forever, stretching out in front of us endlessly. The further we traveled, the narrower the road became. If we met another car coming from the opposite direction it would probably end in a crash.  
    That was when I spotted the old rundown-looking house up ahead. It looked as if it might fall in soon.
    “Look, there’s a house. Maybe we could hide the car behind there and they wouldn’t find us. It doesn’t look like they’re going to come down this way.”
    “Surely we won’t get away from them that easily, will we?” my mother asked.
    “Usually, nothing is ever that easy,” Annabelle said.
    My mother slowed down as we made it closer to the house.
    “What should we do now?” my mother asked. “I don’t know if the road ends soon. I’d rather not keep going.”
    We were almost in front of the house now.
    “Yeah, I guess we can stop here, but drive around to the back of the house.”
    The gravel led around to the back of the dilapidated structure. My mother pulled the car around back and stopped.
    “We can wait here a while. Surely they won’t keep looking for us for long,” I said.
    Although I had no idea how Monique had known I was headed this way to begin with. It was like she knew my every move before I even made it. If that was the case, then I expected her to show up here any time now. My mother shoved the car into park and cut the engine.
    “I hope no one really does live here,” she said, peering up at the house. “They probably won’t like that we’re doing this. ”
    “They might make us stick around and clean up this place,” Annabelle said.
    That was probably Annabelle’s wishful thinking. She was a complete neat freak and no doubt she wanted to clean the place.

Chapter 11
     
    As we sat there, I felt eyes on us. When I looked at the back of the house, a man was standing in the doorway. He had a rifle in one hand. He had little hair left on his head. What remained had turned gray. He wore jeans with holes in them and a red flannel shirt. He was small in stature and I’d guess we might be the same height at five foot two. 
    “Looks like we have company,” I said.
    Annabelle gasped.
    My mother said, “Oh, dear.”
    He opened the screen door and stepped out onto the