The Hunt Read Online Free PDF

there. She couldn’t say why. She was sure it would burn her again, but her desire for even that brutal punishment was so strong, it was like a craving. The need came from somewhere deep inside her.
    She looked around the room and listened for her mother’s footsteps upstairs. No one would know. Not her mother, not the Circle. It would be her own secret—all her own.
    The book seemed to be calling her, beckoning her.
    But Cassie thought back to her mother’s warnings, and shook her head to resist the urge. She quickly shoved the book under her shirt and ran upstairs to her bedroom before she had the chance to change her mind.
    She would wait until Adam was with her to open it—that was the smart thing to do. Until then she would conceal the book out of sight. She knew just the place: Beneath her bed was a gunmetal chest that locked with a key. Cassie kneeled down, pulled it out into the light, and stuffed the book inside. It pained her to let go of the book when she so badly wanted it near her, but she forcedherself to slam the chest closed, lock it, and shove it back underneath her bed.
    The golden key to the chest felt warm in the palm of Cassie’s hand. She squeezed it tightly in her fist, realizing she would have to hide it in a separate place. She decided on her old wooden jewelry box, which had a hidden pullout bottom nobody knew about. Cassie gently placed the key inside, just beside the chalcedony rose Adam had given her. The two of them can keep an eye on each other , she thought, and then realized how ridiculous that was. Inanimate objects didn’t live and breathe. Right?

CHAPTER 5
    It was the middle of the night, dark and quiet, when Cassie unlocked the gunmetal chest and reached inside for her father’s Book of Shadows. She held the book close to her face, and took a deep breath in. It smelled musty and old. She ran her palm over its soft, faded cover and traced its inscription with her finger. She wanted to absorb every detail. Finally, she pressed her thumb onto the worn oval on its corner—Black John’s fingerprint—and found it was a perfect fit.
    Cassie knew what she was doing was wrong. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t open the book without Adam. But she couldn’t control her own hands. Theyshook with excitement as she flipped through the book’s yellowed pages. The words printed there still appeared as wavy lines and ancient symbols, but they were somehow more familiar to her. She could sense their meaning; she could almost taste it. And as she continued scanning each page, from top to bottom, left to right, she could feel herself getting sucked into the book itself, like she was becoming a part of it and it a part of her. That dark feeling she was beginning to know so well filled her stomach, and then her heart. Soon it was shivering provocatively through her whole body.
    With a final shudder, Cassie startled awake. All was still and silent in her room. It was just a bad dream, she thought, but a painful throbbing ran from the tips of her fingers up the length of her wrists.
    Cassie reached over to her lamp on the nightstand and found she could barely grip the switch to turn it on. But when she did, the light revealed an alarming sight: The marks on her hands had deepened to a shocking crimson. And, Cassie noticed, there was a dark red, cruel-looking welt on the inside of her left palm. It was a new mark.
    But the book was locked away—there was no way Cassie could have actually touched it. Could she?
    She ducked under her bed to check for the gunmetalchest. She’d positioned it just so, perfectly aligned with a faint line on the floorboard, so she could easily tell if someone discovered and tampered with it.
    The chest was in place with its lock still fastened. Next, Cassie checked her jewelry box. The key was there, lying innocently beside the chalcedony rose, just as she’d left it.
    But Cassie was sure she’d had the book