Disclaimer: I do not own any content or characters related to The Covenant, nor do I have any intention of trying to make any money off of this strictly recreational work of fiction.
Sweet Dreams
Though her mind was heavy with new information, Sarah fell asleep easily that night. Unfortunately, that was to be the only easy part of her night. She woke in a dream with a spider in her hair. She was initially grossed out by the idea of the creepy crawly walking across her face, but her demeanor quickly escalated to a full blown panic as she pulled the blanket back to reveal more spiders. Why were there suddenly so many spiders?! Stomping in place, she attempted to shake them off, killing them with her feet and the palms of her hands. It was as she watched a spider slip into the still slumbering Kate's nostril (how the hell was she sleeping through this?!) and tiny baby arachnids erupt from her forehead that Sarah registered something wrong beyond the obvious.
She gasped as she sat straight up in bed and frantically looked around the room. There were no spiders and Kate was sleeping peacefully unmolested in her bed. As her breathing slowed, Sarah's eyes narrowed and her teeth ground audibly in her skull. Oh, hell no.
Anyone else who'd had such a dream would be terrified, but would write it off relatively quickly as an overactive imagination or a reaction to bad tacos. Sarah, however, was not anyone else and she could practically taste the lingering magic clinging to her bed sheets. Someone had not only been in her room—someone had just used on her. Before getting out of bed, she closed her eyes and extended her senses, but came back empty. Barring the quickly dissipating residual power, there was nothing.
Comfortable in her solitude, Sarah sent a small burst of power toward Kate to ensure she stayed asleep and then dropped to the floor beside her bed. She pulled a large plastic tote out, popped the lid off, and removed an innocuous looking boot box. From this box, she removed a large book bundled in muslin cloth and rooted around until she found a thick black marker. Unwrapping the book, she set it on the floor and her fingers flipped pages rapidly as she looked for the protection spell she knew was there. Finally, after almost turning past it, Sarah laid her fingertips at the bottom of the yellowed page she required. She looked over the large sigils that took up the top of the page and scanned the French instructions underneath.
This book had been passed from woman to woman in her line for hundreds of years, each owner leaving her own notes and spellcraft for the next generation. From what she'd seen of the Sons' powers thus far, they didn't seem to use any actual spells, but rather intent based telekinesis. They probably had their own grimoires and traditions, but she would actually have to talk to them to find out anything for sure. This brought her to a difficult dilemma. She'd had no immediate plans of confronting the boys, but now that she'd been attacked, she was hesitant about how to proceed.
Thoughts turning over and over, Sarah lay on the floor and shimmied herself underneath her bed and began copying the necessary sigils on the underside of the wooden frame. Given how vehemently Caleb jumped Reid's ass about using his powers, she sincerely doubted he was behind the dream. She also liked to think she had a good thing going with him (new though it was), so a great deal of her faith in his innocence was actually hope.
She also doubted Pogue would send her a dream in which his girlfriend's face erupted with spiders…hopefully. That left Tyler and Reid. She knew nothing about Tyler, aside from the fact that he was an Omega among his Alpha and Beta friends. He seemed content to follow the others and despite his clear friendship with Reid, had not stepped in to stop him getting his ass kicked. Though Reid was the obvious contender for using his powers carelessly, he didn't seem to be truly malicious. And while she'd believed him to have watched her in the shower just yesterday, she genuinely believed him when he told Caleb he hadn't been using after fixing her car.
As she finished the symbols under her bed, she was no closer to an answer than she was when she started. Chewing her lip thoughtfully, Sarah pulled herself out from under her bed and glanced at Kate, still sleeping peacefully, still spider-free. Shrugging, she pulled a couple boxes from beneath her slumbering roommate's bed and shimmied under to repeat the protection she'd placed on her own.
To be honest, though she didn't know the Sons of Ipswich well, she struggled to imagine any of them attacking her. First of all, there was no reason. Even if she entertained the idea that someone was jealous that she'd started hanging out with Caleb, nothing could be gained by scaring the shit out of her with spiders. Secondly, none of them knew she was anything more than a normal seventeen year old girl. Normal seventeen year olds had nightmares all the time and didn't put stock into them. Thirdly—she glanced up and saw a spider just like the ones in her dream building a web under the head of the bed. Eyes narrowed and glazing over black, Sarah froze the spider mid-spin and floated it out from under the bed so she could see it properly. It looked eerily like the spider that had crawled up Kate's nose.
Fuck. That.
Leaning against the side of the bed, she concentrated and tried to sense anything strange about the arachnid. There was the slightest tinge of power to it… so faint that she hadn't felt it under the residual power in the air and wouldn't have noticed it if it hadn't been literal inches from her face. But why was it under Kate's bed and not her own? The questions were mounting and she still had no answers. Eyes narrowed and still pitch black, Sarah set about finding a jar for her new roommate. As much as she wanted to stomp on it, she needed to find out if it had any instructions beyond visiting her dreams. Creation spells were easy enough to break if you caught them early and knew both their purpose and caster (but she didn't know shit right now).
Spider safely stowed in a mason jar and spelled to stay there (just in case it decided to grow thumbs and learn to unscrew things), Sarah slid back under Kate's bed. Her motivation for protecting her friend's bed had before been because she was nice and deserved a reprieve from any bad dreams she might have. Now, though, she was concerned that the protections would actually be necessary. By the time she finished, it was nearly six in the morning. Replacing everything to its rightful place, the young witch stood and stretched before gathering her shower caddy and a change of clothes. No sense in trying to sleep now.