Read Hidden (Hidden Series Book One) for Free Online

there, wrapped in the huge towel,
dripping on the tile, until she got the hint that I wouldn’t get
dressed in front of her.
    I inhaled the steamed carrots and baked
chicken in the sitting room, hungrier than I thought I was. After,
I followed her order to get in bed.
    Sophia rolled up the leg of my sweat pants
when I sat.
    “Flesh be healed, flesh be sealed,” she
whispered over the scrape. My knee tingled, and before my eyes, the
skin closed like nothing was ever wrong with it.
    “Magic can heal?” I asked.
    She pulled back the thick comforter and
motioned me to get under it. “Of course. What do you think magic is
for? Killing?” She laughed like that was the most ludicrous thing
in the world. I stared at her, waiting for something to be funny to
me. She took a deep breath to settle herself. “Oh,” she said. “Is
that really what you think?”
    I nodded. “I just thought … since magic is
evil, that it’s for evil things. I mean … we’re soulless for a
reason. Satan … um … made us to-”
    She held up her hand and sat on the edge of
the bed like my words had taken something out of her, made her
tired.
    “Soulless? Satan? Like … the Satan?
You can’t be serious.” She patted my leg, the one she’d healed.
“Your parents made you, Christine. If you’d like me to
explain how, I can also get into that.” She smiled, but it didn’t
reach her eyes. “Is that what you meant about feeling?” I nodded.
“What don’t you feel?”
    “Happy. Anything good,” I whispered.
“Because I don’t have a soul.”
    “That’s what they taught you there?”
    Tears filled my eyes. “Yes.”
    “You have a soul, sweetheart. One as
beautiful as you are. A sweet and generous soul. You have been
taught wrong, love.”
    “Then why did I almost kill someone today?”
The cry distorted the question. “Why am I always so angry and sad
and never happy.”
    Sophia scooted closer and wiped my cheeks
with her thumbs. I needed to stop crying. I hated how it felt, the
liquid weakness on my face. “There is a far less mystical
explanation. You’re always down, sad. You’re always in bed and eat
very little. When I would watch, I never once saw you talking to
someone or doing much of anything. I’m not a therapist, but I would
say you are depressed, love.”
    I stared, at her at first, then at the
flowers on the comforter, considering that. I’d never thought
something could be wrong with me … that way. I’d thought it was the
magic.
    “Do you think that’s possible?” she
whispered.
    I hunched my shoulders. “All I know about
myself is that I’m a witch.”
    “Who you are has nothing to do with magic.
It’s about your desires, the things you love, the things you stand
for.” I desired for people to die today and many times before it. I
loved nothing. I stood for … nothing. So Sophia was wrong. I rolled
over, turning my back on her and her theory. She whispered,
“Goodnight," and turned the lights off in the room.
    The seriously insane night crashed down on
me hard, but I refused to cry again. I’d done enough of that
tonight for a lifetime.
    I couldn’t stay in bed. My mind kept
shifting, racing. There was entirely too much to think about to
sleep. I’d almost burned Sienna and Whitney to death. I’d ached to
hear the sound of breaking bones. I’d met a witch who informed me
that magical creatures were not extinct. My parents, who I rarely
even thought about, left me fifty-two million dollars – an
inheritance creatures have been after for years, and I’d vanished
from the courtyard in front of everyone.
    I went into the sitting room, well my sitting room that I’d paid ten thousand dollars for, and flipped on
the TV.
    A woman with seriously skinny fingers
showcased a sparkly ring for the low price of 29.99 on the first
channel. As I flipped, looking for something decent to watch,
BREAKING NEWS flashed across the bottom of a news screen. But
that’s not why I stopped. The rest of the headline