Inner Demons by Sarra Cannon Read Free Book Online Page A

Lark showed me, I felt confident that if I found a cheap dress that was the right size and shape of the blue one that I liked, I could use magic to make it look exactly like the dress from the boutique store in the mall.
    As I walked up the stairs, I tried to think of a store where I could find a cheap dress. That's when I saw Mary Anne step into her bedroom.
    I hesitated in the hallway, then walked over toward her room. Her door was still open. I wasn't bold enough to walk in uninvited, so I knocked lightly on the door frame. “Mary Anne?”
    She peeked around her closet door. As usual, she was dressed in all black. Her jet black hair was so dark against her pale porcelain skin. She stared at me, but didn't speak.
    “Sorry to bother you,” I said. “Just was wondering if you were planning to go to the Homecoming dance.”
    She shrugged, then turned back to her closet. God, this girl never gave me a break! Was she super shy or did she hate my guts? I honestly couldn't tell.
    “I only ask because I thought you might have some ideas about where I could get a dress,” I said. She was always wearing the coolest stuff from some thrift store in town, but I had no idea where it was or what it was called.
    I stepped one foot over the threshold to her room, then immediately stepped back. An eerie feeling spread through my body. I'd never been in there before, but I didn't feel welcome. The room looked very similar to my own. Large wood-carved sleigh bed. Mirrored dresser. Private bathroom. But Mary Anne had put a black blanket over the bedspread and another one over the window. Like she was some kind of vampire in here. Geez. Depressing much?
    She looked over at me, and I smiled nervously. She sighed, then turned to me. “There's a place,” she said. Her voice was surprisingly soft and musical. “Downtown. They have some stuff.”
    “Oh,” I said. I was shocked she was actually talking to me. “So you're going to the dance, too?”
    She nodded. I wondered if she had a date. I'd never seen her with a guy before. Well, except Jackson. I'd seen them talking a couple of times before in the back yard near the garden. I wondered if she knew who Jackson was taking to the dance. I pushed away a slight sting of jealousy. I knew I was lucky to be going with a guy like Drake, but in the pit of my stomach, I felt a twinge of something like regret. I shook it off.
    “Cool. You wanna go look for dresses together then?”
    “No,” she said.
    I shook my head, not sure I'd heard her right. “No?”
    “No.” She walked toward me and started to shut her door.
    “Can you at least tell me the name of the store?” I asked.
    “Rags,” she said, then closed the door.
    I really didn't get her. What had I ever done to piss her off? I started to knock on her door again, but she started blasting her music.
    I decided to see if Courtney wanted to go instead. Ella Mae gave us each fifty bucks and dropped us off downtown while she went to run some errands.
    I was a little concerned at first since we had to walk down a dead alleyway to get to the thrift store, but I relaxed once we got inside. There were three full racks of dresses, and they didn't look terribly bad.
    Courtney wasn't going to the dance, so she walked over to the other side of the store to look for a new pair of jeans. Music blared in the background. Some punk band with a screaming female vocalist. I wasn't surprised this was Mary Anne's type of place. She seemed to fit here.
    A plain black dress caught my eye and I pulled it from the rack. I held it up against my body. The hem of the dress fell a few inches above my knee. I checked the size. Six. Perfect. Then I checked the price tag. Thirty bucks. Even more perfect.
    I made my way to the counter. “Is there a dressing room here?”
    The guy at the counter had six different piercings on his face. He gave me a nod and carried my dress to the back. I heard the bell on the front door jingle and looked to see who had come into the