Homecoming by Amber Benson Read Free Book Online Page A

or
someone
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    â€œWe’re not alone,” Eleanora said suddenly, her eyes returning to Dev’s face. “Do you feel it? Someone else is here. They won’t show themselves to me, but they’re here.”
    Dev shivered. The Victorian was old and drafty, but that wasn’t what she was feeling. Eleanora was right. There was something else in the kitchen with them.
    Without warning, the light outside shifted, and the room dipped into shadow. Underneath Dev’s hands, the table began to shake.
    â€œEarthquake,” Dev said, starting to stand up—but the tremors ceased before she was fully on her feet.
    Almost as abruptly as it had disappeared, sunlight flooded the kitchen again, and the room returned to normal.
    â€œShe’s left,” Eleanora said, a secret smile playing across her taut lips. “She didn’t want to be seen.”
    And Dev realized she was right: Whatever spirit had been there was gone.
    â€œTell me what the cards say, Devandra.”
    The older woman’s dark eyes bored into her own, and Dev shivered.
    â€œOnly the Innocent stands in the way of the Devil’s dominion over the World,” she began, staring down at the cards, “and the Teacher will be the one whose balance decides all of our fates.”
    Dev looked up, and from the smile playing on Eleanora’s lips, it was clear the master of the Echo Park coven was well pleased with her hijacked reading.

Lyse

    L yse lit the Saint Anne candle with a match she’d found in the kitchen, the flame flaring to life beneath her fingertips. The glowing wick cast flickering shadows across the white walls of the hallway as she headed toward her old bedroom. Outside, the sky had grown even darker, and the light that came in through the windows was a dusky shade of charcoal gray, giving the glow from Saint Anne a surreal quality—as if Lyse were a ghost moving through the murky underworld, the candle her only touchstone to human reality.
    Lyse stood in the doorway for a few moments, her eyes scanning the room’s contents. It was the first time Lyse had been back in her old bedroom in years, and she felt all the awkwardness and angst of adolescence fighting to recapture her—as if they didn’t realize she was an adult now and relatively immune to them.
    She crossed to the solid oak dresser, the heavy piece of furniture pressed up against the wall by the half-open bedroom window. Outside, she could see that the heavens were threatening to open, and soon rivulets of water would condense against the windowpane like teardrops.
    She grimaced as she caught sight of her reflection in the “dead mirror” hanging across the room. She’d given the antique wall mirror this name because once upon a time, magazine tearaways of Vivien Leigh and River Phoenix had been nestled in between the silvered glass and wooden frame, the dead keeping Lyse company during the long, dark purgatory of her adolescence.
    After a moment, she looked away from her reflection, absently picking at the forgotten tchotchkes still littering the top of the dresser, the detritus of her teenage years gathering dust: the June bug preserved in pale green glass, the tiny porcelain ballerina fixing her bun, the steel artist’s rendering of a skeletal hand.
    She sighed and walked over to the edge of the antique brass three-quarter bed, its brown duvet cover still spotted with pale stains from her one attempt at bleaching her hair. She set Saint Anne down on the small side table next to the bed, careful not to get it too close to the lamp and its pale yellow shade.
    No house fires needed, thank you very much,
she thought.
    She was overtired from her trip and totally hungover. The stress and alcohol might have blotted out her feelings for a little while, but now the fear and worry were returning with a vengeance—and she felt unsettled by an odd feeling that’d been growing inside her ever since she’d gotten