Chapter 9 (Raven)

"You are insane. A bunch of lunatics." Beth looked at us as if she wanted to send us all to a mental institution. The four of us gathered in the dining room. The only person that wasn't in his pajamas was Adrian, who had arrived a few minutes ago. After the events on the roof, we decided to tell my sister everything. Even though it was the middle of the night no one wanted to sleep, Beth was jittery and didn't know what was going on, and the rest of us was too nervous to sleep.

The three of us tried to convince Beth that the letters and the witch were real. It wasn't going well. As expected, Beth didn't believe a single word we said.

Finally Ashley got up from her chair and walked over to my sister.

"Beth, I know what that sounds like. Some chick sends mysterious letters saying you're going to die. If I were you, I would think we are crazy too. But the truth is, you saw what happened today. You didn't control your body and you almost jumped off the roof. Please, trust us that we know what we're talking about and believe us." Beth stared at us for a moment, and if looks could kill, we'd all be lying dead on the floor by now. Finally, the blonde just nodded.

"Okay. I still think you're all nuts, but let's assume that theoretically I believe you. What the hell happened on that rooftop?"

This question was answered immediately by Adrian.

"After Raven sent me a photo of the bracelet, I searched through all the supernatural books I found in the witch's house. Unfortunately for me, her grandparents practiced magic, so she inherited a lot of them. After many hours of flipping through the pages, I came across a certain spell. It's called a Puppet Spell. In short, you take the hair, fingernail or blood of the person you want to hex. You set them on fire and say some Latin words that I won't repeat. Then you take the red diamonds and cast a spell over them too. You send diamonds to your enemy, but here is the catch. The diamonds must touch the skin of the person you want to control. That's why they put them in a bracelet. Then you just sit in your room and control the enemy with your mind from a distance. The spell doesn't have to be used to kill someone. You can do what you want with this person, although most just use it to murder.

"Is it possible to find out who cast the spell on Beth?"

"Yes, I mean kind of. We can find out, not who, but where the spell was cast. We just need to cast a locator spell. I'll read more about it and we can perform the ritual tomorrow night, for example, if everyone agrees. From what I know so far, you need something that the attacker touched."

I bit my lip after that sentence.

"Shit. I burned that bracelet like you said." "But you didn't burn the note they left. The one with for Beth written on it." Ashley said. "I think we can use it. Right?"

Adrian nodded.

"I think so." But before the boy could say anything else, Beth spoke up.

"Why do we need a locator spell? It's just a waste of time. We know who did it. Roy and Lucy have cast the spell. They have a motive to kill me. They hate me! They attacked me at the mall and I'm sure that's when they got my hair. They distracted me and pulled my hair out while I was lying on the railing!"

"Possibly, but before we accuse them, we need evidence that they are evil." Adrian reminded but Ashley interrupted him.

"Sorry to butt in, but what are we going to do if we even have evidence? We go to the police and tell them that two teenagers tried to kill Beth with witchcraft and a magic bracelet? We're going to be the one arrested for talking nonsense."

No one responded to Ashley's words, and though I didn't want to admit it, she had a point.

"We'll think about it later. For now, we need to make sure they don't attack again. We'll have to watch their reactions at school to the fact that Beth is alive."

They all agreed with my words. We spent another hour discussing how to prove that Lucy and Roy are murderers and how to stop them from attacking again. Then the girls and I went to sleep, and Adrian went to his house. **************************************************

I slammed my locker shut and walked over to Beth and Ashley. My sister was glaring at Lucy while her friend was typing on her phone. As I came to the girls, the cheerleader captain started a conversation.

"Look at that idiot. She makes me look like shit cause I didn't sleep well and now she is acting like nothing happened."

"You would look worse if you fell off that rooftop." Ashley interjected, still not taking her eyes off the phone.

We stood for a while looking at the girl. At one point, Lucy looked at us with anger and disgust.

"Did you see that?" Beth began talikng again.

"She's mad that I am alive. You've seen that look, haven't you?"

"In my opinion, she looked at you the way she always did. The truth is, you two don't like each other, and you're tormenting her sister. It doesn't mean she wanted to kill you." Ashley replied irritably, stuffing her phone into her bag and heading to class. Beth and I looked at each other, but I just shrugged at the blonde's strange behavior. The usually cheerful teenager seemed irritable and not in the mood. Although it didn't surprise me because none of us were rested, and the blonde that cared about her appearance was probably worried about her pale skin and bags under the eyes.

We entered the classroom, Beth sat next to Ashley, and I sat in the desk behind them. I had barely taken out my books when the bell rang and the teacher started talking about the Second World War. I sighed, knowing that I would learn nothing new about this topic. World War II was discussed every three years, and it was getting boring. As I prepared myself for forty-five minutes of torture and boredom, my phone vibrated. A message from Adrian appeared on the screen.

'Get out of class. I'm on the corridor.' Intrigued, I asked if I could use the restroom and then quickly left the room. A boy was leaning against the wall by the door. As soon as I closed the door, teenager handed me a letter.

"From a witch." he said and fell silent waiting for me to open the envelope. Feeling a tighteness in my stomach, I quickly tore open the paper and pulled out the page inside. There was more written on the piece of paper than usual. 'Somewhere in town there is an old house with a red door that lead to the basement. The person who wanted to kill your sister performed the ritual there. Find the red door.'

I looked up from the page at Adrian feeling relieved.

"It's good. I thought it was another vision of death, but it's a clue. We need to find the old house with the red door, if we find it, we'll find whoever tried to kill Beth. Do you know if the witch saw anything more in her vision? Didn't she see the bastard's face or something?" I asked hoping that the boy knew something more but the teenager just shook his head.

After a moment, Adrian grabbed my hand and began to lead me in an unfamiliar direction. When I looked at him questioningly, he began to explain his behavior.

"You said we had to find an old house with a red door. Let's go to the computer room, if no one has classes there, we can look on the internet or on google maps for this characteristic doors. Maybe we will get lucky and we won't even have to cast a locator spell.

"Wait." I stopped rapidly "How do you know where the IT room is?"

"Raven, you do realise that I graduated from this school a year ago, don't you?"

"What?" I asked shocked. "I've never seen you in the corridor."

"I saw you. And your friends. Maybe you're blind or something." The boy shrugged and took out his phone, checking the classrooms on the schedule.

"We have an hour and a half until next IT lesson. Come on." He said, and we ran towards the classroom. **************************************************

After an hour of searching, we found absolutely nothing. I was tired of this Sisyphean labor, and the feeling of defeat made me want to throw the computer out of the window. Seeing the expression on my face, the boy came over to my chair and began to comfort me.

"Don't worry. We'll find who tried to kill Beth, we already have two suspects. If we don't find this door on the maps, we'll perform a ritual. We won't let them get away with this." The boy gave me a smile which I returned.

"You know what? Screw it. We're taking a break. Follow me." The boy said turning off our computers and grabbing my hand. We left the room and the teenager closed the door. After a while, we were out of the school grounds, heading towards the city. **************************************************

"Escape room?" I asked in disbelief, looking at the entrance to the building. "You need a break from all this chaos. And an escape room is a lot of fun.

"You want me to take a break from riddles and mysteries by solving riddles?"

"Yup." I laughed at the thought and followed Adrian as he entered the building. We spent the next hour solving puzzles, searching the room for more clues, and deciphering various codes. When we were done and managed to leave the room before the time run out, I felt really happy. After playing, we went to the cat cafe where we started talking about our favorite movies and TV series while drinking tea. From time to time we also petted the cats that jumped on our table. One, the one I was petting was white and black, and the one that looked at Adrian with interested look was white and ginger.

"What kind of house are you in?" Asked Adrian referring to the Harry Potter books

"Gryffindor," I replied with a smile.

"Huh, that makes sense. You are very brave, always defending your sister. I truly admire you." I blushed at his words.

"And you?"

"Ravenclaw."

"Cool. You are smart. You proved it in the escape room."

Our conversation was interrupted by a call from Beth. I picked up the phone and put it to my ear.

"Where the hell are you? We were worried about you. You left the class and never came back. I thought you were run over by a car again."

"I went out to spend some time with Adrian."

"Go home. Let's do that voodoo shit and prove once and for all that Lucy is the one behind all of this."

"Okay." I replied, mad that our fun had been interrupted. The next words I directed to the boy.

"We need to go do that locator spell. Beth is getting impatient." The smiley face of the boy immediately became serious and after a minute we started gathering our stuff, saying goodbye to the cats that kept us company.