Dead Is a Battlefield (13 page)

I was being pretty ridiculous. Selena wouldn’t create a zombie outbreak just to get a boyfriend. Would she?

“You’re busy,” Dominic said. The hurt in his voice pulled me out of my reverie. “I’d better let you get back to it.”

I watched him leave and then sighed. What was I going to do about Dominic Gray?

“Trouble in paradise?” Edgar’s oily voice interrupted my train of thought.

“None of your business.” I tried to leave, but he blocked my way.

“Going somewhere?”

“Get out of my way, Edgar,” I said. “What do you think you’re trying to do?”

“Trying to change your mind about me,” he said. He put an arm up and leaned on the wall behind me.

“Don’t bother,” I said. “I’m leaving. My friends are waiting for me.”

“They left five minutes ago, when you were occupied,” he replied. “We’re all alone.” He stepped closer to me, but I ducked under his arm and ran out of the library.

I was surprised to see Eva outside in the parking lot, looking in one of the big windows of the library, so I ran out to meet her.

“I have to tell you something,” I said.

“I saw what you did,” she replied accusingly.

My jaw dropped. “What I did?”

“Flirting with him like that.” Her voice started to rise. “I thought you were my friend.” She grabbed my arm and gripped it tightly.

“Eva, what’s wrong with you?” I said. She was squeezing my arm so hard that I was sure to have bruises in the morning. I broke her grip, but it wasn’t easy. Where was my alleged super virago strength when I needed it?

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” she said. “Leave Edgar alone.”

“With pleasure,” I replied. “He’s a creep.”

“Ha!” she said. “You were all over him in the library.”

“Listen here, Eva Harris,” I said. “I’m only going to say this once. He was all over
me,
not the other way around.”

She glared at me. “Of course the only guy who has ever paid attention to me
has
to be interested in you, not me. After all, you’re Jessica Walsh.”

My mouth hung open in surprise before I gathered myself enough to ask, “Where were you today, anyway?”

“I was sick,” she said, but I could tell she didn’t even believe her own lie.

“Eva Harris, you haven’t missed a day of school since I’ve known you, until now. You’ve been missing a lot.”

“Okay, but you can’t tell a soul,” she said. “Promise?”

This wasn’t going to be good. “Promise.”

“I spent the day with Edgar.” Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy.

“You what?” The thought made my skin crawl.

“We hung out at the store,” she continued.

“What exactly did you do all day?”

“Get your mind out of the gutter, Walsh,” she said. “His mom was there, too.”

“His mom knew you were skipping?” I asked.

She nodded. “He showed me his ant farm. He’s so cool.”

“Ant farm?” That didn’t sound that cool to me. It sounded creepy, but I didn’t like things that crawled.

Eva didn’t pick up on my unease. “It’s not one of those little kiddie farms,” she said. “It’s enormous and they produce this special fungi.”

“That’s interesting,” I replied. I was just trying to be polite, but an ant farm made me want to yawn. “You guys have science together, right? Maybe you can use the fungi stuff somehow for your project.” School had barely started before the teachers had assigned semester-long, major-part-of-our-grade type projects in every class.

She clapped her hand over her mouth. “I promised him I wouldn’t say anything about the fungi.”

She was so nervous about it that I finally felt a trace of interest. Why was Edgar being so secretive about such a harmless hobby? I assumed it was because he would get grief if word got out.

“It’s forgotten,” I told her. Then I noticed Edgar glaring at us from the other side of the library window. “Now, about the topic. What do you think of doing our project on the history of Nightshade?”

What was with my best friend? We’d had fights before, but never over a guy.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Eva and I made up
the next day, when she was back in school, after I told her I was sorry about a hundred times. But she had some conditions. “I want you to have lunch with Edgar and me today,” she said.

“I told you I wasn’t interested in him,” I said. “Don’t you believe me?”

“I believe you,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking. But you also said he was a creep. I want my best friend and my boyfriend to be friends.”

Boyfriend?
I thought of Ramona and Shannon’s conversation in the library yesterday. Edgar didn’t seem to be interested exclusively in Eva. But I knew better than to say the thought aloud.

At lunch, I found Eva at a table with Edgar and the other Love groupies. She was sitting on his knee and his arms were wrapped around her. There was a strangely blank look on her face. Was she pretending not to see me or was she just wrapped up in Edgar? Either way, my best friend was acting like a brainless idiot.

I hesitated, unsure what to do, but then Edgar spotted me and waved me over.

While we ate, Edgar and I were both on our best behavior, but we were both faking it. I was doing it for Eva, but I wasn’t sure why he was pretending.

“So Eva tells me you have an ant farm,” I finally said, after searching for a neutral topic.

“It’s a formicarium, or, for the uninitiated, an ant terrarium,” he said.

“Isn’t that just another way of saying ant farm?”

Edgar didn’t look too happy at my comment and Eva kicked me hard under the table.

“I mean, I don’t really know much about the subject, so you could definitely describe me as uninitiated.” From the look on his face, he
wanted
to describe me as
stupid.

He droned on about ant habitats for the rest of the lunch period. Eva and the other girls hung on his every word. I spotted Raven and Andy across the room and rolled my eyes.

In Biology class, Raven leaned over and asked, “What was the deal with you today at lunch? You looked like someone was making you eat sour lemons.”

“Worse,” I said. “I was forced to talk to Edgar for an entire hour.”

“Why?” she asked.

Raven always cut to the heart of the matter. “To make Eva happy, of course. She wants me to like him because she likes him.”

“But he’s loathsome,” she replied.

I shrugged. I was still hoping Rose’s analysis of the perfume might explain some things, so I was eager to get home.
But first, I had to endure a special assembly that afternoon.

“What’s the assembly all about?” Raven asked me as we made our way to the gym.

“It’s supposed to be a BMX team,” I replied.

High school seating could be tricky. I looked around and tried to find the best place to sit. Claudia and Wolfgang were making out in a dark corner, but none of the teachers seemed to be paying attention to them.

Selena Silvertongue was in the front row with Eva and the other Lovelies. They all wore identical large sunglasses. Eva sat next to Edgar, with Selena on his other side, so I didn’t even try to sit by her. Andy waved to us, but she was sitting with a bunch of other juniors, including Bethany and Tiffany.

“Want to find somewhere else to sit?” I asked. “I can only take Eva’s sister in small doses.”

“There’s an empty spot over there,” she said.

The curtains were closed, and we sat there for several minutes, but nothing happened. Dominic rushed in and scanned the crowd. Raven and I waved to him and gestured to the empty seat next to me, but his gaze skipped over us until he found who he was looking for.

I swallowed hard when I saw him join Selena and Eva in the front row.

Raven followed my gaze. “It doesn’t mean anything,” she said softly. “He probably didn’t want to climb through all those people to get to us.”

But he should, I thought. If he really liked me, he would want to climb a thousand bleachers just to see me.

Principal Amador strode onstage and went to the microphone. “Unfortunately, our guests had an emergency and are unable to be here.”

There was a chorus of groans from the crowd.

“Now, settle down,” the principal said. “We were lucky that a local celebrity was able to fill in at the last minute. Please give a big Nightshade High welcome to Circe Silvertongue.”

The curtains opened to reveal Circe Silvertongue standing in front of a stage kitchen. Her assistant scurried around, stirring pots and pans, while Circe checked her makeup in a large ornate mirror suspended from the ceiling, kind of like a giant disco ball.

“Oh, no,” I groaned. “Anybody but her.”

The rest of the school seemed thrilled with the idea of free afternoon snacks, but I remembered the nasty taste in my mouth and how she’d set off the fire alarm during the television show taping.

But this cooking demonstration went off without a hitch.

“I’d like a volunteer from the audience, please. Anyone?” Only a few people raised their hands, including Dominic.

Raven nudged me and I nudged her back.

“You, there. The young man in the black T-shirt,” Circe said. She pointed straight at Dominic, just as I had known she would.

Dominic jogged up to the stage.

“Since I specialize in cooking romantic dinners for two, I’d like a female volunteer now,” Circe continued.

The female half of the student body raised their hands in unison, but Circe picked Selena. Of course.

The assistant carried out a small table and then came back with two chairs, a white tablecloth, candles, and silverware. She transformed the little space with a red velvet divider.

Circe instructed Selena and Dominic to take a seat while she whipped up their meal.

The assistant was joined by Eva and two other Lovelies. They grabbed the familiar silver trays and started passing out snacks.

“I have prepared more than sufficient for the high school,” Circe said. “There will be enough for everyone.”

When the tray came our way, I took the item gingerly. “It looks harmless enough,” I said. “Just a little mozzarella and tomato on toast. How bad can it be?”

But Raven was frozen, her food halfway to her mouth. “I can’t believe him,” she muttered.

I followed her gaze. Dominic was feeding Selena the same appetizer that lay in the palm of my hand.

“So much for his not being interested in her,” I said. Dominic was confirming their relationship in front of the whole school. My fist closed around it and smashed it flat. Juice from the crushed tomato spurted all over my pale blue top and stained it.

“Great, just great!” I said. “I’m leaving.”

“There’s still forty-five minutes left,” Raven said. “You’ll get into trouble.”

“I don’t care,” I said. I glanced at the stage again. Dominic was refilling Selena’s water glass and she looked in his eyes adoringly.

I left the gymnasium and decided to go somewhere to calm down. I needed a quiet place to hide, so I slipped into the nearest bathroom and stared in the mirror. Then I felt a familiar tingle on my arm, right before complete chaos erupted.

I raced back to the gym, only to be stymied by the flood of shrieking students fleeing the scene.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Run!” was the reply.

I finally managed to reach the double doors. Principal Amador was onstage, up to his knees in writhing snakes. “Stay calm, everyone! Exit single file. Remember your emergency preparedness drills.”

There were snakes everywhere. Of every color and size. I repressed a shudder as I waded through them to get to my fellow viragos.

Raven and Andy were standing on the top bleachers with Dominic. There was a large python wrapped around Selena’s waist. Her face looked purple. The others tried to get the snake to release her, but weren’t having any luck.

I ran up and grabbed one end of the snake. “Take the other end!” I shouted. “Hurry, there’s not much time.” Dominic joined me on my end while Raven and Andy took the other end and we slowly managed to force the snake off of Selena. We threw it and it slithered away, probably in search of easier prey.

“Did Eva get out?” I asked Raven.

She nodded, too winded to speak.

“Selena, what about your aunt and her assistant?” I asked, then I realized she’d nearly had the life squeezed out of her. “Just shake your head yes or no. Did they make it out?”

She nodded.

“Let’s go, then,” I said.

The principal had managed to clear the gym, except for a few stragglers in front of us. Raven and I carried Selena while Andy grabbed Principal Amador and dragged him with us, then shut and locked the double doors behind us.

There was already an ambulance out front, so we carried Selena there and left her in the crew’s capable hands.

The principal hustled the rest of us to the designated emergency location and started roll call. Eva, Edgar, and the Lovelies huddled together, but I noticed Edgar’s usual smirk had vanished. He looked scared, which was new for him.

Parents were pulling up to the school, and a couple of guys started tossing a football around. Everything looked normal on the surface, except it wasn’t.

Principal Amador managed to check off names from some sort of master list and determine that everyone was present and accounted for.

I was happy to hear that. I didn’t relish the idea of going back into the gym for a search-and-rescue mission.

“What the heck happened?” I asked.

“Circe was cooking the main course,” Raven said. “And then suddenly, snakes started coming out of the pots and pans, out of the oven, everywhere. It was gross.”

“It was magic,” Andy said importantly. “Someone used magic to get that many snakes into the school.”

“No duh, Andy,” I snapped. “What are we going to do about them?”

“How are we supposed to find out who did it?” Raven said.

“Did anything odd happen before the snakes appeared?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Andy said.

“There was one thing,” Raven said. “Claudia Dracul and Wolfgang got up and walked out in the middle of the show. They didn’t even try to hide it, either. It was almost like they wanted Circe to notice.”