Free The Darkness Within by Kelly Hashway Page A

looking for us. Disowned us, I guess.”
    But why? There had to be more to this. People didn’t disown their kids for no reason. “What did you do? How did your magic go wrong?” Dylan obviously didn’t want to talk about it. He would’ve explained more if he’d wanted to, but I needed some indication of what might happen to Ethan, how bad things might get.
    “You sure you want to know?” He leaned back against the sink, trying to act casual, but the tension in his face said otherwise. “Because we’re linked now. If I tell you what happened and you end up hating me, you’re still going to have to be in the same coven with me. Can you handle that?”
    I wasn’t sure. He was seriously scaring me now, but if I didn’t find out after all this, I’d never trust him again. I’d always wonder what horrible thing he’d done, and my mind would probably think up things that were ten times worse than the truth. “I want to know.”
    He stood up straight and looked down his nose at me. “I killed Ben’s girlfriend.” He walked out without another word, leaving me with weak knees and my stomach doing flips.

9

    I LUNGED for the toilet and threw up my breakfast. I’d killed people. Multiple people. And that had only been a month ago. But somehow hearing Dylan say he was responsible for the death of his brother’s girlfriend sent my cereal hurtling into the toilet. Dylan had been using magic his whole life. He should’ve had it under control. He had never returned from his grave a monster and the pawn in a witch’s game of dark magic and revenge. I didn’t know the details, but I could tell that Dylan blamed himself for the girl’s death. And not in an it-was-just-a-tragic-accident sort of way.
    My mind raced back to the way he’d reached for my hand in this very bathroom. Maybe he did have feelings for me. Maybe those feelings were pushing him to the edge and thoughts of Ben and his dead girlfriend were surfacing, confusing him. Maybe it all felt a little too familiar to Dylan.
    No, he wouldn’t hurt me. We were in the same coven. We were linked by magic. But Ben was his blood, his brother, and Dylan had killed his girlfriend. Had he fallen for her, too? Was it a jealousy thing? I had to find out more. I had to know if I was in danger around Dylan. But how would I find out? I couldn’t exactly ask Dylan. Did Shannon know? She was the one who had told me to ask Dylan those questions. She might have been trying to warn me. I had to talk to her.
    I splashed water on my face and rinsed my mouth. Luckily, I hadgum in my pocket. I popped a piece in my mouth and headed back to class. Mr. Ryan shook his head at me as I entered the room. I went to his desk and whispered, “I’m sorry, but I got sick. It came on suddenly.”
    His expression softened. “Are you all right now? Do you need to see Nurse Wentworth?”
    “No. I think it was just my breakfast not sitting right with me. I’m okay now.”
    “All right, but if you start to feel sick again, you have my permission to just leave.”
    “Thank you.” Just leave. I could take Shannon with me as an escort. Then I’d be able to talk to her about Dylan.
    I sat down and pretended to follow along for a few minutes. I texted Shannon under my desk. Going to fake sick. U R taking me to nurse .
    She read the text and nodded her head slightly. Two seconds later, I was covering my mouth and rushing out of the room with Shannon following behind, carrying my stuff for me. I waited until we were around the corner before I took my shoulder bag from Shannon.
    “So, where are we going?” she asked.
    “The nurse. I’m sure Mr. Ryan will check up on me, so I have to at least show up at the nurse’s office and pretend to be sick.”
    “I thought you wanted to talk to me. That’s what it seemed like, anyway.”
    “I do. We’ll have to use a bubble spell so Nurse Wentworth doesn’t overhear us.” The bubble spell was one of my favorites. You could talk and no one could