Wiccan, A Witchy Young Adult Paranormal Romance by M. Leighton Page A

wouldn’t be
jogging today and how he wouldn’t want to walk me to class anymore.
I didn’t know how my influence worked really, whether I had to be
within a certain distance or what, but I was willing to try
anyway.
    The incident at the party had been a
shocking reality check for me. Though Jake was good looking,
athletic, popular and probably had a bright future, he’d lost any
appeal for me. I required a man with depth and it was depressingly
apparent that he had none. He was a typical college guy and that
was something I could do without.
    I was relieved when I reached the
sidewalk and he was nowhere to be found. I hurried along toward
class and was pleased when I found myself safely seated in Dr.
Bradbury’s room and there was still no sign of Jake. Maybe my trick
had worked.
    After class, I was crossing the quad in
the direction of my next class when I saw a terrible commotion in
front of another building. There was a huge horde of people
hovering around what looked like several cops at the center of
their group. I only had to change my course a tiny bit to get close
enough to the crowd to see what was going on, so I did. I was no
busy body, but I was just as curious as the next person. I planned
just to get a quick glimpse of whatever was going on and then be on
my way.
    Shortly after I’d gotten to the edge of
the crowd, the police began to move, making a path through the
onlookers. I stepped back to allow people to shift, which put me
near the end of what ended up being a line. I leaned forward to
look and see what they were doing and when I did, I was
stunned.
    Jake Wheeler was handcuffed and flanked
by two of the three cops that had apparently come for him. The
third walked in front of him, clearing the way. Jake’s face was
blood red and his hair was tousled. He looked either furious beyond
description or like he was about to cry. I couldn’t tell
which.
    I could hear him saying through gritted
teeth that they had the wrong guy. He kept saying it over and over
and over, but the policemen ignored him. The one in front just
called something quietly into the radio at his shoulder and they
continued on their path to arresting Jake.
    When the cops had led Jake away, a
couple of guys in front were whispering to one another and I
couldn’t stop myself from asking, “What happened?”
    The one with glasses and terrible acne
answered me first. “They just arrested Jake Wheeler.”
    I wanted to say Duh!, but I didn’t.
Instead, I turned my attention to the other guy, a fresh-faced boy
who looked like he wasn’t a day over fifteen. “What did they arrest
him for?”
    “ Killing his girlfriend,
Lisa Bauer,” he said in his pre-pubescent voice.
    I tried Jake’s image against
the one that I had of Lisa’s killer and I just couldn’t get it to
jibe. The hands I remembered from the vision just weren’t…Jake’s.
Or maybe any man’s
unless he was a small guy with particularly fine bones. And what
about the wig? The girl at the party hadn’t mentioned Jake as one
of the masqueraders wearing a red wig.
    For the rest of the day, amid the buzz
of speculation about Jake, I replayed the images I’d seen of Lisa’s
murder. The more I tried to visualize what I’d seen, the more
confused I got. It’s amazing how you can talk yourself into or out
of things if you think about them long enough. It did, however,
serve as an incredibly effective motivator to call Detective
Grayson. I might not be onto anything at all and he might not tell
me even if I was, but I had to at least try.
    In a flash of devilish insight, I
thought to myself that maybe I ought to try to work my “magic” on
Detective Grayson. A stab of conscience reared its ugly head,
telling me that doing something like that was hardly ethical, but I
quickly buried it.
    Later, on my way home, I
focused all my energy on Grayson, concentrating on how I wished he
would tell me everything about the case, on how he wanted to tell me
everything about the