~CJ ~

I realized sleep wasn't something I'd be getting anytime soon when I walked down the hall toward my room. I could hear raised voices, and I sighed. Gran's walls were thin, and hearing CJ and whoever argue all night was not something I wanted to deal with. Guests or not, they were going to be quiet. I knocked forcefully on her door. Jeff opened it, surprised to see me. I could say the same. I'd expected her and Ethan, but Jeff? Nope. Threw me for a second.

"Hey," he smiled, his cerulean blue eyes lighting up. "You okay? I was worried. You didn't return any of my texts."

"Sorry, my phone was out of commission for a while." I peeked over his shoulder and saw Ethan lounging on the bed. So maybe my first thoughts were wrong. "Um, I just stopped by to see if you guys could keep it down. My room is right next door, and I'd like to sleep sometime tonight."

Cassie stopped pacing and turned to look at me, her face flaming up. I quirked an eyebrow. I didn't think she realized I could hear them. Ethan laughed and grabbed her as she passed the bed, pulling her down. She buried her face in his shirt. Jeff looked pained, but he didn't say anything.

"Why don't you come in, Melinda?" Ethan suggested. "Your grandmother said you are very adept with witchcraft, much more than either Jeff or I. You might be able to help."

"Help?" I asked, curious. What in the world would a Coven Mistress need my help with?

"We're trying to figure some stuff out," Jeff told me. "CJ's sister left her a warning about something coming, and we're trying to figure it out."

"Sure," I said. "Let me change, and I'll be back in a few minutes." I needed out of these clothes, which felt a little grimy after everything I'd done outside today. Jeff nodded, and I went to my room. I grabbed a pair of flannel pajamas and then went to the bathroom to clean up. Once I was done, I wandered on back down to CJ and Ethan's room.

CJ answered the door this time and stepped aside so I could come in. Both Ethan and Jeff had vacated the room. If my curiosity hadn't been eating away at me, I'd have just gone back to my room. I didn't do girlfriend/boyfriend drama.

"Do you like Jeff?" CJ burst out as soon as she closed the door.

Both my eyebrows met my hairline. "What do you care? You're dating Ethan."

CJ started to pace again. "I am, but..."

"But you enjoy stringing Jeff along?" I asked softly, the anger plain in my voice.

"What? No!" She stopped pacing and stared at me, horrified.

"Then what, CJ?" I asked. "If you want Ethan, then end things with Jeff. If you want Jeff, get rid of Ethan. It's that simple. Jeff doesn't deserve the misery you're putting him through."

"It's not that simple," she sighed and fell down on the bed. "I wish to the Fates it was that simple."

"Seems pretty cut and dry to me," I said, my tone as sarcastic as I could make it.

"You don't know a damn thing about it," CJ said, her own tone sharp.

"Jeff told me all about it," I refuted.

She groaned. "You don't understand. I love Jeff, but..."

"You love Ethan more," I finished for her. "But you can't bear to give Jeff up either?"

"I don't know!" she yelled. "I've known Jeff my entire life, and I've only known Ethan for a couple of months. How am I supposed to trust what I feel for him? It's too soon. Everything in me tells me it's too soon to feel like this, but when he died, I died a little inside too..."

"Wait, he died?" I interrupted.

"I thought Jeff told you what happened?" CJ asked, sitting up on the bed.

"The gist of it, yeah. Your Coven tried to kill you to fulfill some age old vengeance curse."

"It was the curse of the thirteenth daughter," CJ said wearily. "Back in Salem during the Witch Trials, members of our Coven betrayed other members to protect themselves. One of those who died put a curse on the people of New Salem. The Curse of the Thirteenth Daughter – she would be the vessel of their vengeance. Only glitch? She had to die to unleash fury upon the descendants of the betrayers. The old Coven Mistress, who died as well, cast her own curse. She split the soul of the thirteenth daughter into two people. It ended up being me and my best friend. We both had to die in order for it to work. Ethan knew the only way to break the curse was to substitute his blood for mine. He jumped in front of me when the old Coven Master went to stab me. It killed him and broke the curse."

"How did that break the curse?" I asked.

"The ritual had started, and there were only two ways to end it. Our blood fulfilled the curse, or the whole thing got ruined if another's was substituted. Ethan's blood tainted the whole thing. It wasn't what the gods were promised, and they refused to fulfil their end of the bargain. Didn't stop all the destruction it caused me, though."

My eyes were wide by the time she finished her explanation. She'd been through a lot, but that still didn't explain everything. "Jeff said he took a bullet for you?"

CJ groaned. "Yeah. The day of the ritual, I didn't know who I could trust. I found my sister's Book of Shadows, and it explained everything about the curse, including Ethan."

"Wait, what do you mean, including Ethan?"

"Ethan is from the past," CJ explained. "The Coven Mistress who died was my ancestor, Sara Bishop. Ethan was betrothed to her. He died trying to save her, and essentially became part of the curse. His desire for vengeance bled into the curse, and it gave him eternal life so he could make sure it was fulfilled. Then he met me and couldn't go through with it, but he couldn't let Mr. Martin know he'd changed his mind. Ethan pretended to still want me dead. I even believed him, so did Jeff, who tried to rescue me, but got shot in the process. He didn't know Ethan had a plan. None of us did."

"So Ethan died?" I prompted when CJ stopped talking. I could see how hard this was for her. Jeff said her best friend had tried to kill her too. She'd felt betrayed on all sides. I could understand how difficult talking about that kind of betrayal could be.

"The ritual took place on Samhain, the night when the veil between the living and the dead is at its weakest. My sister gave Ethan back his life. She'd found out the Coven planned to kill either me or Kay and had tried to warn us, but the Coven killed her first. Specifically Kay's dad and my mother."

Damn. Her own mother? Jeff had told me that earlier, but I didn't even know what to say.

"I guess you could say it was a miracle he came back," CJ continued. "Emily convinced 'The Powers That Be,' for lack of a better term, to let him come back. He sacrificed himself to save me, and that earned him a second chance. He came back for me, when he could have spent eternity with Sara, the woman he'd loved for forever."

"Wow, that's like the most romantic thing ever," I said, a little awed at the thought of someone dying for me and then coming back because they couldn't bear the thought of living without me. Ethan must really love her.

"I know, right?" she laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound. "I shouldn't even question my feelings, but my head knows it's too soon to feel like this, that feelings this deep can't just develop overnight."

I frowned. Well, yeah, they could, especially for us. She should know this. "CJ, what are you talking about? Of course you can feel like that overnight. You're a witch."

She stared at me like I'd lost my mind. "You grew up in a Coven, and you don't know this?"

She sighed heavily. "I did not grow up in the Coven. My parents, my sister, and all my friends were part of the Coven, but I never believed in any of it. I thought it was all just a bunch of nonsense. I had no idea magic was real until I started looking into my sister's death."

OMG. She really had no idea? This girl sitting in front of me was probably the most powerful witch I'd ever met, and she had no idea? I sat/fell down on the floor and just gaped at her. How was this even possible? How could her parents, witches themselves, let her be so ignorant of her own heritage, her power?

"Okay," I said at last. "I'll explain it for you. Witches are more in tune with nature, with the Elements, than humans. We know things instinctively, recognize things faster than the average human. Like love. We're hardwired that way. When we fall in love, it's usually within a matter of days, sometimes hours, because our instincts latch onto what the Elements are telling us. If you love Ethan, no matter how many days or weeks it's been, it's true. You can trust it. Trust in your magic to tell you the truth."

"That's just it!" she all but yelled. "I never wanted this, any of it. I hate magic! I don't want any part of it. It destroyed my family, took my sister away from me. How am I supposed to trust it when I feel like that?"

"CJ, it wasn't the magic that did it," I said softly. "It was people. They used magic to do it, but you can't blame the magic for the evil in people. Magic can't make you evil."

"That's not completely true," she countered. "My dad told me that if you use dark magic, then it will eat away at you, it will make you a dark witch, turn you into the evil you're talking about."

Well, damn. How did we get onto this subject? It wasn't something I wanted to talk about, because it brought my own situation home to me. Dammit.

"Magic is neither good nor bad. What people do with it, that's what makes it either white or dark magic. It's the intent that matters. You and I could cast the same spell, use the same type of magic, but if our intent was different, then our outcome is different. If I cast a spell intent upon harm, then it's dark magic. If you cast the same spell intent upon not doing harm, then it's white magic. Does that make sense?"

"Sort of," she sighed. "I just need time, I guess, to wrap my head around it. Everyone expects me to take over the role of Coven Mistress, and I can't. I just can't. Those people tried to kill me, killed my sister. And yet I'm just supposed to forget about all that? How do you even do that? How do you pretend everything is fine, that I don't hate them for killing her? I want to make them all pay for her death, but my dad says thinking like that will lead me down the wrong path, that it'll make my soul fill up with blackness. How do I stop from feeling like this, though? They killed her and tried to kill me! I can't forgive and forget so easily. I'm just not built like that."

Damn, damn, damn. She sounded just like me. Our situations were eerily similar as well. Maybe Fate was working here. Or Jeff, I thought darkly. He knew both our stories, and maybe he thought by helping CJ, I might help myself. Damn his nosy hide! He could be right, though.

"My sister died last year," I said. "She killed herself."

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, her honey colored eyes horrified and full of sadness. I saw my own pain reflected back in hers.

"She was forced to kill herself," I continued. "People used magic to make her do it. I could blame the magic, because it was ultimately magic that caused her to want to die, but that wouldn't be fair. The magic can only do what we intend for it to do. They wanted her dead for some reason and cast a spell to make sure that happened. Their intent was to harm, to kill. Magic didn't do that, people did that."

"They used magic against her?" CJ asked, the sheer disgust and outrage in her voice made me like her just a little bit. "That's not fair! What happened to them?"

"Nothing...yet," I whispered. Soon, though.

"Um...Melinda, your eyes, they just..."

With a sigh, I looked her straight in the eye. "I know. They turned black for a minute, didn't they?"

She nodded.

"My intent is to do harm," I told her. "I want them to pay for what they did to Jenny. No one else will make them pay. The police aren't going to believe she was forced to kill herself because of magic, and the Witches' Council won't give them the same treatment they would a witch. These are humans messing with magic. Our laws don't apply to them. Getting justice for her, that's all on me."

CJ gave me a shrewd look. "I wanted to do that, too. When I found out the Coven killed Emily, I wanted them all to pay. The spell was right there in my head. I knew I could do it, but when it came right down to it, I couldn't. My dad worked hard to teach me right from wrong, and I kept thinking about what he'd do, what he'd say, how he'd look at me. I couldn't hurt him like that after everything he'd done to protect me."

Dammit, why did she pull the dad card? My dad had done so much for me. If I did this, he'd be devastated. Could I do that to him? Could I hurt him like that? Then where did that leave Jenny? There would be no justice for her.

"So, Jeff said you were trying to figure something out?" I decided to change the subject before I got led down the wrong path of giving up my revenge.

"My sister told me something dark was coming, and I can't figure it out. She wrote about it in her journal, saying she was going to name me the Junior Coven Leader so I could stand against it and lead the others. But I don't know what she was talking about." she said, frustrated, flipping her red hair over her shoulder. "I've read through her journals and her Book of Shadows, but she keeps making veiled references, and it just doesn't make sense."

"How did she know about this dark force?" I asked.

"She had dreams," CJ explained. "Emily always had dreams. I used to dismiss them, but I can't anymore. Not after everything that's happened over the last two months. If she tried to warn me, then I am going to take it seriously."

"What was her Element?" Sometimes our gifts were linked to the Element we had the closest affinity with.

"Earth," Cassie said, twisting a lock of her hair.

"Same as mine." I nodded. "Sometimes those of us steeped in Earth magic can see things, more so than anyone else."

"Because the Earth is always changing, but it always stays the same," Cassie said slowly.

"Exactly," I agreed. "Because of that we're given a glimpse into events that are locked in, but can change."

"That still doesn't help me," CJ grouched. "Dammit! Why was she so cryptic?"

My conversation with Xavier came back to me. There was something dark coming, something that required both of us in order to win. As much as I didn't want to tell her, I probably should. If I went through with my plan, the least I could was give her a head start on a losing battle. Who knew, maybe she'd find a way to defeat the Angels without me. I could hear my own magic laughing at my stupid naiveté, and I grimaced.

"Well, I might be able to shed some light on it." I got up off the floor and plopped down on the bed beside her and then related everything Xavier had told me earlier today, leaving out my trying to murder kids and the consequences of that action.

By the time I was done, CJ's eyes were glowing with excitement, the gold in them seemed to shine so bright, it looked almost like a light was shining out of them. Maybe it was. How was I supposed to know? She oozed power without even realizing it, and she had no clue how powerful she was. It still shocked me.

"Can I meet Xavier?" she asked when I was done. "I have so many questions!"

I nodded, not happy. I needed time away from Xavier, but now I was going to have to call him. "Sure, I can have him come over tomorrow since it's Sunday and we don't have school. Would you let me read your sister's journals? Not her Book of Shadows. I know how personal that is, but her journals? It might give me a better idea of what she was trying to say since we both shared the Earth Element."

Cassie frowned, but nodded. Getting up, she pulled a box out of the closet and then took out three journals. She stared at them, much as I did Jenny's diary. It hurt to look at them. She handed them to me, her fingers holding on until the last minute.

"I'll take good care of them," I promised.

"I know," she said, a smile ghosting across her face. "I think you're right, that her dreams were about the Fallen Angels. It fits, but I just wish I could make sense out of these journals. Hopefully you can."

I took them and headed to my room. Time to read.