Beautiful Secrets (Cranksepticeye Fanfiction)

~10.09~ The Greats

It had made sense when a beautiful boy was saying it. Now that I was back home, alone, and in my own bed, I was finally losing it. Even Mark wouldn't believe any of this. I tried to think about how the conversation would go - the guy I like, whose real name I don't know, is a witch - excuse me, a Caster, from a whole family of Casters, and in five months he's going to to find out essentially if he's good or evil. And he can cause hurricanes indoors and break the glass out of windows. And I can see into the past when I couch the crazy locket Anna and Macon Ravenwood, want me to bury. A locket that materialized on the neck of a woman in a painting at Ravenwood, which by the way, is not a haunted mansion,, but a perfectly restored house that changes completely every time I go there, to see a guy who burns me and shocks me and shatters me with a single touch.
And I had kissed him. And he kissed me back.
It was too unbelievable, even for me. I rolled over.

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Tearing.
The wind was tearing at my body.
I held on to the tree as it pounded me, the sound of its scream piercing my ears. All around me. the winds swirled, fighting each other. their speed and force multiplying by the second. The hail rained down like Heaven itself had opened up. I had to get out of here.
"Let me go, Ethan. Save yourself!"
I couldn't see him. The wind was too strong, but I could feel him. I was holding his wrist so tightly, I was sure it would break. But I didn't care, I wouldn't let go. The wind changed direction, lifting me off  the ground. I held the tree tighter, held his wrist tighter. But I could feel the strength of the wind ripping us apart.
Pulling me away from the tree, away from him. I felt his wrist sliding through my fingers.
I couldn't hold on any longer.

I woke up coughing. I could still feel the windburn on my skin. As if my near-death experience a Ravenwood wasn't enough, now the dreams were back. It was too much for one night, even considering I had been locking my door at nigh lately. The last thing I needed was Anna planting some crazy voodoo charm on my in my sleep. I was sure I closed it.
I stared up at my ceiling. Sleep was not in my future. I sighed and felt around under the bed. I flipped on the old storm lamp next to my bed and pulled the bookmark out from where I'd left off in Snow Crash when I heard something. Footsteps? It was coming from the kitchen, faint, but I still  heard it. Maybe my dad was taking a break from writing. Maybe this would give us a chance to talk. Maybe.
But when I reached the bottom of the stairs, I knew it wasn't him. The door to his study was shut and light was coming from the crack under the door. It had to be Anna. Just as I was ducking under the kitchen door way, I saw her scampering down the hall toward her room, to the extent that Anna could scamper. I head the screen door in the back of the house squeak shut. Someone was coming or going. After everything that had happened tonight, it was an important distinction.
I walked around to the front of the house. There was an old, beat-up pick up truck, a fifties Studebaker, idling by the curb, Anna was leaning in the window talking to the driver. She handed the driver her bag and climbed into the truck. Where was she going in the middle of the night?
I had to follow her. And following the woman who may as well have been my mother when she got into a car at night, with a strange man driving a junker, was a hard thing to do if you didn't have a car. I had no choice. I had to take the Volvo. It was the car my mom had been driving when she had been in the  accident; and it was the first thing I thought every time I saw it.
I slid behind the  wheel. It smelled of old paper and Windex, just like it always had.
. . .
Driving without the headlights on was trickier than I'd thought it would be, but I could tell the pickup was heading toward Wader's Creek. Anna must have been going home. The truck slowed down and pulled off Route 9, toward the back country. When it finally slowed don and pulled off to the side of the road, I cut the engine and guided the Volvo onto the shoulder.
Anna opened the door and the interior light went on. I squinted in the darkness. I recognized the driver; it was Carlton Eton, the postmaster. Why would Anna ask Carlton Eaton for a ride in the middle of the night? I'd never seen them speak to each other before.
Anna said something to Carlton and shut the door. The truck pulled back onto the road without her. I got out of the car and followed her. Anna was a creature of habit. If something had gotten her so worked up that she was creeping out to the swamp in the middle of the night, I could guess it involved more than one of her usual clients.
She disappeared into the brush, along a gravel path someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to make. She walked along in the grass beside the path to avoid that same crunching sound, which would've given me away for sure. I told myself it was because I wanted to see why Anna was sneaking home in the middle of the night, but mostly I was sacred she would catch me following her.