The Inner Circle, Book 3 of the Glass Wall ( A YA Urban Fantasy Romance ) by Carmen Caine, Madison Adler Page A

Jareth—whenever I
could get him to sit still long enough to watch it. We would have
to figure out what Melody was doing to him.
    I dug my notebook out and added it to my list
of issues to resolve, and then quickly glanced over the other
topics to see if I’d made any progress. I drew a line down the page
to make a column and titled it ‘Update’.
    First of all were the Mesmers.
    Jareth’s rune seemed to be working well, and
they were obviously steering clear of the house since he’d burned
his symbols in the garage. And Al was working on the Faraday idea,
so I felt that everything was progressing ok. Enough so that I
could work on something else for the moment, anyway.
    I stared at the next words of “Inner Circle”
and glanced away.
    Rafael kept sidetracking me. It was hard to
play the spy when my emotions were wrapped up at such a deep level.
Grimly, I pinched myself and promised that I would be more focused
the next time I saw him. “Ask about the tulpa” I wrote in tiny
letters in the update column.
    That brought my attention back to the evil
tulpa.
    I frowned.
    I was on my own here. But then, being a
human, maybe I really was the best person for the job. I drummed my
fingers on the page, wondering how to get it back from Rafael and
destroy it.
    Thankful that Al had given me a phone with a
data plan, I dove under the covers and began to search the web.
    I didn’t learn much.
    There weren’t any eHow articles describing
how to destroy evil tulpas.
    I finally gave up and lay in bed, wondering
if it would be possible to create a good one, as kind of an agent,
to destroy the bad one. The more I thought about it, the more I
liked the idea. Not really sure how to intentionally create a
tulpa, I just settled for imagining something beautiful and before
I knew it, I’d started to drift.
    I woke to Grace giving my shoulder a friendly
shake.
    It was morning. A weak ray of sunlight
streamed in through my bedroom window.
    “Ellison’s here to take you to work,” she
said. “I’ll keep him entertained while you get ready. Hurry
up!”
    I was ready in five minutes, shower and all.
Ellison shot me a mile-wide grin when I dashed into the kitchen,
and then we were flying to work in his Volkswagen. The thing I
liked most about Ellison was the fact that I could totally be
myself around him. I didn’t have to chit-chat if I didn’t feel like
it. Neither of us said a word the entire trip.
    And when I walked into the coffee shop, I
found Jareth already there, dressed in a maroon shirt, black
leather pants, and chains. He was lounging in an overstuffed chair
with his boot propped up on Samantha’s coffee table.
    Samantha herself was standing over him with a
bright red scarf draped over a trench coat. She’d apparently just
come in.
    “I’m not responsible for the fact that people
around me feel a sense of inferiority.” Jareth was saying. “I can’t
help it if I’m perfect, even though it does get a bit
tiresome.”
    “I’m guessing you haven’t been diagnosed
yet,” Samantha responded, reaching down to whack his boot off her
table.
    Jareth gave her a wide grin and then spying
me, lifted his hand in a cheerful wave.
    The coffee shop was a madhouse that morning,
filled with teenage girls snapping pictures and sending Jareth
doe-eyed looks. They had all frowned when I walked in.
    But Samantha was pleased to see me. With a
crisp nod of greeting, she pointed at Jareth. “He’s all yours,
Sydney. Make him behave.” And with that, she sailed into the
backroom.
    Jareth shot me another cocky grin.
    I hesitated. He was clearly in a good mood.
But I knew I had to show him the video. And now, before he
disappeared again.
    Approaching him, I thrust my phone into his
hands.
    “What’s this—” he began, but then his brows
rose to his hairline and a horrified expression crossed his face as
his eyes locked onto the tiny screen.
    He watched it several times. I could hear
Melody’s voice squeaking in the earphones