Fearless The King Series Book One - By Tawdra Kandle Page 0,133

of witchcraft to her, I had no doubt that Ms. Lacusta had encouraged Nell to push the envelope. Whether she knew it or not—and I had dark ideas about that—the teacher had played on Nell’s longing for a mother figure in order to manipulate the girl. Now Nell was paying, and Ms. Lacusta had received a figurative slap on the wrist. It wasn’t fair, and that frustrated me.

I also worried about how much Ms. Lacusta knew or suspected about me, and how long she would keep quiet. I had a sense that she would use the information if she had to. For the immediate future, though, I was fairly certain that she was going to maintain a low profile, at least until the whole Nell situation had died down.

The nursery had extended hours through the holiday season, and Michael offered to work later that night in exchange for some free time after school. It was a rare dreary day, with spotty showers, so we drove over to Lancer Park and sat in the car. I was just glad for some peace and quiet away from the inquisitive thoughts at school and the anxiety of my parents at home.

We held hands and gazed out at the lake, gray in the dim light. Michael’s eyes were half-closed as he leaned his head back against the seat. A small flesh colored tape still covered the wound on his cheek, and every time I saw it, a trace of the panic I’d felt when Nell had cut him surged through me.

“Do you ever wonder what it all means?”

I wasn’t surprised by his words, since I’d been picking up his brooding thoughts since we left school.

“Maybe you should be more specific about ‘it’,” I suggested. “You’ve been thinking about quite a few things. Do you mean everything that happened with Nell, with what goes on in King… or do you mean us?”

His hand tightened around mine, and he lifted our joined fingers to lightly stroke my cheek.

“I think I mean all of it. But not—I don’t mean that I have doubts about you and me. That’s the one thing that seems completely right, without question. I was just thinking about all the circumstances that put us here, together, in this time and place.”

I shifted in my seat and pulled my feet up to curl under me. “What brought this on?” I wondered.

“I don’t know. I guess some of it is my parents. They got talking the other night, about everything that had happened, and my dad said that maybe it wouldn’t hurt us to check out Reverend Pryce’s church. I thought my mom would freak out a little, but she actually said that he might be right.”

“Why are they thinking about church right now?”

“My dad said that after seeing some of the real evil that’s out there, the stuff that Nell was messing with, he thinks it wouldn’t hurt to find out what the good guys are up to. That’s how he put it. Maybe they’re looking for reassurance… don’t know. He sat with Cara’s dad for quite a while at the hospital the day everything went down. Mr. Pryce was talking about demonic spirits and all that. I guess he thought that Nell’s witchcraft involved that kind of thing.”

“So now that’s got you thinking, too.”

“Yeah, I guess. I was remembering you said maybe your gift was given to you for a reason, that you’re suppose to use it for the greater good. So you think that it came from God. And I thought about how we met. Could that really be a coincidence? Or were we meant to be together—were we brought together by some higher power—like God?”

I leaned my head against the seat, considering. We’d skirted around this conversation before, but Michael had never seemed so troubled by the possibilities.

“Are you feeling manipulated? Are you questioning. . .why we were brought together?”

“No!” He was emphatic. “No, I told you, I don’t have doubts about us.”

“I’m not suggesting that you do. I’m only saying that it wouldn’t be wrong for you to feel—to feel that you didn’t really have a say in this. If things work in your family the way you’ve told me—well, it’s occurred to me before now that eventually you might resent your lack of choice. And I would understand that.”

No longer leaning back, Michael fastened his incredulous gaze on me. “So you’re saying that if I told you now, today, that you’re right—that I feel like fate or God or