Here is an excerpt from CRUSHED:
Zach slammed the door so hard that it
rattled the diamond-cut windows. He
stormed through the foyer and thundered past the hand-carved staircase on his
way to the study where he could contemplate his revenge in private. That little witch was going to be sorry. Fists clenched, he walked past the stone
fireplace without looking at it.
Changing direction with a sharp turn, he went into the family room
instead.
Furious, he stood in the center of
the massive room and released a slow, audible breath.
The mansion shook. A picture fell off the mantle; a vase toppled
off the corner table and shattered.
Hearing glass break fueled his anger.
The mansion shook harder, but he didn’t care if the roof caved in on his
head. He was so angry that not even a
ton of wood and stone could hurt him.
He turned around slowly and found
his sister below the great arch between rooms, hands covering her head in an
effort to protect it from the falling debris she probably imagined was on its
way. In his need to blow off some steam,
he had forgotten she was in the house.
Her dark brown eyes were wide, terrified.
“Are you okay?” he asked,
immediately concerned.
“In an earthquake you are supposed
to stand in a doorway. There are
earthquakes in California. We live in
California now. You should stand over
here in the doorway. You’re supposed to
stand in the doorway during an earthquake, and this is an earthquake. I’ve never been in one, but I’ve read about
them.”
Physically, his sister was twenty;
mentally, she was a great deal younger.
His parents had figured out there was something wrong with her when she
turned five, but they couldn’t take her to a doctor because she was already
using her powers. Their mother had
turned to the Internet, researching Morgan’s behavior, and she’d come up with a
few possibilities. Autism had been at
the top of the list.
Morgan thought as a child, but she
could do some pretty amazing things like remember everything she read word for
word. Other people called it a
photographic memory. He just called it
awesome.
Shame filled him, and the house
stopped shaking. “It wasn’t an
earthquake, Morgan. It was just me. I’m sorry.
I lost control of my powers for a second. It won’t happen again.”
“Why are you home?” She lowered her hands. “This morning you told me you would be here
at three o’clock. I wrote it down.” Morgan marched over to the coffee table where
she’d left her notebook. She opened it
and showed him a page. “See? It says right here that Zach is going to be
home at three. We’re going to have a
snack together, and then you’re going to make dinner for me at six.”
“I had a small problem at school.”
“But you told me you had to go to
school and blend in. You said you needed
to fly below the radar. You told me we
had to be careful so no one would figure out our secret.”
Leave it to Morgan to remember
every single word he ever spoke. She
probably wrote it down in her notebook, every syllable. He sighed and rubbed the throbbing place
between his eyes. No one could make his
head ache like Morgan. He said, “I tried
to stick to the plan, but something happened.”
“You aren’t supposed to be home
until three o’clock. It isn’t three
o’clock yet. I haven’t had lunch. I was about to have my snack, peanut butter
and graham crackers, but the house started shaking. I forgot to eat.”
Zach dropped on the sofa, arms
crossed, feeling guiltier by the second.
It was his job to take care of Morgan, not to scare her to death. He stared at the paneled wall without seeing
it and mumbled, “You can have your snack now.”
Morgan dipped her head to look at
her watch. Dark brown hair fell forward,
covering her quizzical face. “I can’t
eat my snack now. The time is six
minutes after ten. I have to eat my
snack at ten o’clock.”
“It will be okay, Morgan. This one time you can eat a few minutes
late.”
She shook her head stubbornly. “I can’t eat my peanut butter and graham
crackers. The time is six minutes after
ten. I eat my snack at ten o’clock.”
The anger began to build in his
chest again, but he swallowed it quickly
She was the reason he hadn’t done
anything about the Noah sisters. He
didn’t want anyone to find out about Morgan and tell the witch’s council, so he
had watched those girls from a distance as they’d played their stupid game. No one knew it, not even Morgan, but he had a
small vial of blue dust hidden in a secret drawer in his cherry wood headboard
upstairs.
He had made his own love spell
potion after realizing what the Noah sisters were doing. Daydreaming about enchanting the triplets and
making them do humiliating things had gotten him through some tough times his
Junior year, but he’d been afraid to actually do it. Love spells had a tendency to not work
properly when used on other witches; although, he suspected he had enough power
to make it work.
To get her mind off her missed
snack, he decided to tell Morgan about his day.
“That stupid little witch blew pink crap into my face. I should have melted her on the spot.”
Morgan looked faintly alarmed. “Are we allowed to do that? You told me we aren’t supposed to hurt
people.” She flipped her notebook to
another page and shoved it under his nose.
“See? Right there.” She pointed at the neatly printed
sentences. “We aren’t supposed to hurt
anyone. It’s an important rule. You said so.
I underlined it three times.”
Indeed she had.
Zach swallowed his anger at Kristen
Noah and chose his words carefully.
Empathy was a foreign concept to Morgan.
If he didn’t spell it out for her, she could use her powers to hurt
somebody… again.
“The girl I’m talking about is a
witch, not your average person. She has
powers of her own and obviously isn’t afraid to use them.”
“It’s okay to hurt witches
then. Just not regular people.”
“No. That isn’t what I’m saying.” He got up and paced the length of the room
while trying to come up with a reasonable argument that Morgan would understand. He needed to keep it simple. “If we are attacked, we have to defend
ourselves. Make sense? We shouldn’t hurt anyone unless our lives are
at stake.” He forced a smile and lowered
his face a bit so he could stare straight into her eyes in order to keep her
attention focused on him long enough to get his point across. “I was joking about melting her. We don’t do that, not ever. Okay?”
“Will you get in trouble for
leaving school early? You told me you
wanted to look normal. I wrote it down
in my notebook, but I remember it too. I
remember you telling me you had to act like a normal teen.”
“Cutting school is what normal
teens do. The wild ones anyway.” He shrugged and dropped his hands back to his
sides. “Remember me telling you about
the witches at school last year?” Once Morgan nodded he said, “Well, one of
them tried to enchant me today.”
Morgan’s brows knitted
together. “But you can’t be enchanted.”
“I know that.”
“She doesn’t know.”
Her usual matter-of-fact tone fell
on his ears like a cat’s claws on metal.
He sighed. “No, the witch doesn’t
know about me.”
Crushed is available at Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords.
Links can be found on buy links page here on my blog
Crushed is available at Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords.
Links can be found on buy links page here on my blog
