Demon High (14 page)

“You don’t know your friend very well.”

I tensed. “We’re not that close.” I couldn’t admit I was beginning to look at Brittany as a friend. Not when I wasn’t sure how she saw me.

He pulled one side of his mouth back in a sad, lopsided smile. “That’s too bad.”

I stood there, one foot on each side of the wall, not sure what to do. Part of me wanted to race to Brittany and part of me wanted to stay and talk to Oscar while he seemed willing. I placed my foot back on the side of the wall where he stood.

Brittany was either locked in a time warp as he said, in which case she was hopefully fine, or she was patiently waiting for me. He was right, the last possibility was insane. “She’s really okay?” I asked. It was a direct question, but he wasn’t under my control. He was free to lie to me.

“Go check if you don’t believe me, but what difference will it make? If I did something to her, it was before I arrived here. The harm would already be done.”

His words weren’t exactly reassuring, but I didn’t think he meant for them to be. I decided he was testing me, but I wasn’t sure which reaction would be a pass and which would be a fail.

Finally, I gave up analyzing and went with my gut. I sat down. “Why are you here?” I asked.

He sat down too, across the space from me, but directly facing me. It felt odd, formal almost, even though we were surrounded by nothing but debris and weeds.

“Where else would I be?”

I got it then. I looked around at where we were sitting,
how
we were sitting. “This was your house, wasn’t it?”

He ran his hand over the remains of the wall on which he sat. A bit of rock and ancient mortar crumbled off in his hand. He let the pieces fall through his fingers onto the ground. “My family’s home.”

“Do you miss them?”

“No. I wish I did. I thought if I came back again, I might.”

When he looked up the hollowness I’d noticed before was in his eyes.

“You were human, weren’t you? Not like Nellie?” I asked.

He laughed, really more an explosion of air than a laugh. There was no humor in it. “No, I’m not like Nellie, never was. Although….” He picked up another hunk of foundation and crushed it in his fist. “In my own way, I’m just as destructive, just as dangerous. You should keep away from me.”

I knew then, of course, that I couldn’t, that I wouldn’t. I’d already decided what kind of demon he was, the second way for a human to turn demon, the human who lost all hope, happened to die at the one point when they cared about nothing. It seemed an unfair way to be made a demon.

“Why’d you walk in front of the bullet?” I asked. “The Internet…Brittany and I looked you up. People called you a hero.”

He raised a brow. “Did they? They were wrong. I wasn’t saving anyone, wasn’t doing anything. It was all just so ridiculous, the fight I mean. Men screaming at each other, threatening each other, and over what? I don’t even remember.” He threw a stone across the clearing. It bounced twice then sank in the overgrown grass. “At that one moment everything was clear, how little any of it mattered, how unimportant any of it, all of it…” He held up his hands. “…was…is. I just started walking and the bullet hit me. Simple as that.”

“And you died.”

He shrugged. “Apparently.”

We were silent for a few minutes. It seemed wrong to keep asking him questions after that.

Finally, he spoke again. “All demons want to visit the human realm. It goes without saying. There aren’t many opportunities, but I’ve had two.”

I blinked. I wasn’t sure where the confidence came from, but it was intriguing too. He’d been here before, since he died.

He waved his hands. “I thought if I could see this place, I’d remember what it felt like to be alive, that enough time had passed, I’d feel something again. But I didn’t, not then.”

I tore off a piece of grass and ran it through my fingers. “How about now? Do you feel anything?”

Oscar didn’t reply. When I looked up, he was studying me. My question had been casual, but my heart was beating loudly. I wanted him to feel something now; I wanted him to feel something because I did.

He glanced away. “I’m an oddity. Most demons are the opposite; they feel too much, make humans feel too much. I’ve often wondered which is worse, but I think I know.”

He hadn’t answered my question. Maybe it was for the best. Maybe I needed to control my own caring. Feeling awkward, I ran my hand over the grass and changed the subject. “Nellie said something about serving Kobal. What did she mean?”

He raised a brow. “You called him, but you haven’t declared your allegiance. He wants it.”

My hand stilled. “I didn’t call Kobal. I called Theodore.”

“The vaudeville performer? Same difference.”

“No, I specifically called Theodore. I used his full name and an image.” I wasn’t stupid.

“Theodore belongs to Kobal. You open the door to him; you open the door to his owner.” Oscar stood and brushed his hands together, looked as if he were going to leave. The intimacy that had peaked and flowed between us disappeared.

I stood too and let the grass I’d gathered drift to the ground. “I’ve never heard that before.” It couldn’t be true.

Already in the process of stepping over the wall, he paused and looked back. “Really? And you’ve been calling demons, how long? You are in over your head, Lucinda. Your mother was in over hers too, but nothing like you.” With a shake of his head, he walked out of the clearing and toward the cemetery.

I balled my fists. What did he know about my mother? One of my knuckles cracked. I took a step to follow him.

“Lucinda! Where are you?” Brittany rushed out of the woods.

o0o

The next day we were all back at Caldera High pretending we knew nothing about demons or demonology. The three college kids had been missing long enough their story had disappeared from the headlines, but Brittany’s family was getting more and more worried. The other two boy’s families had, according to Brittany, arrived in Bethel two days earlier. They were going door to door, looking for their children. While I was standing outside my biology class waiting for Mr. Parsons to open the door, Brittany walked by and dropped one of the fliers onto my notebook.

My stomach curled.

By the time I’d looked up, Brittany was gone. She hadn’t been pleased with me when she’d found me standing in the foundation of Oscar’s old home. I hadn’t told her that Oscar had put her in some kind of time warp, but she seemed to sense something had happened. The fact that Nellie and Shane were gone when she arrived, when in her mind she had just heard them, didn’t help. But I wasn’t telling anyone what happened with Shane, not even Brittany.

Mr. Parsons opened the door and I found my seat. Oscar and Nellie came in right after me. I didn’t look at either of them. I knew I was going to have to, but I wasn’t ready yet.

The class was settling in and I had managed to relax a bit when the police showed up.

They pulled Mr. Parsons out of the room. The police didn’t come to Caldera High very often. While a couple of boys joked about him getting caught selling school pig fetuses on eBay, I looked at Oscar and Nellie. Nellie seemed oblivious. She was using the time to suck yet another male into her web, another wrestler. He and Shane were friends, or had been. I wondered if Shane knew. But the thought was fleeting. I didn’t want to think of Nellie or Shane, especially Shane.

I turned to Oscar and found he was watching me. I got the feeling he’d been staring at me for a while.

I fidgeted in my seat, then picked up a scalpel and practiced dropping it into the waxed bottom of my dissection tray. I’d managed to get it to stick perfectly upright when Mr. Parsons came back in the door.

His face was pale and his hair was mussed. He pointed at my lab partner, Sheila.

My scalpel flopped over onto the wax.

“Sheila, you’re needed in the office.” Normally those words came out in a terse you-have-so-fucked-up-tone but today Mr. Parsons actually made the sentence sound comforting.

All chatter and movement stopped. The entire class watched as Sheila slipped off her stool. When she glanced at her books, Mr. Parsons gestured to them. “Might want to take those too.” His tone was still soft, still understanding.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I glanced at Shelia’s now empty stool. Oscar did too, but he didn’t look back at me. He turned to stare out the window instead. Something was wrong, and somehow I knew demons were involved.

The bagel I’d had for breakfast jumped up into my throat.

After Sheila had shuffled out of the room, Mr. Parsons got us back on track, or pretty much on track. Oscar’s lab partner, a Latino boy who normally answered questions before Mr. Parsons had a chance to ask them, seemed side-tracked by the operation of his Bunsen burner. While Parsons lectured on amphibian lung function, he sat screwing and unscrewing the main pipe. Finally, Mr. Parsons took the thing away, leaving the boy to stare at the spot where the burner had sat.

The rest of the class was distracted too, but in a completely different way. Police were in the building, in the office, and we knew which student was in there with them.

The majority of the class was buzzing with the need to escape and spread the word. Gossip was currency at Caldera High. And our pockets were stuffed.

When the bell rang, everyone rushed out with fevered urgency, everyone except me, Oscar’s lab partner and the demons. I cornered the demons right outside the door.

“We need to talk.”

Nellie ran her middle finger along the edge of her perfectly glossed lower lip, then stared at the pad of her finger for a second. In other words, she flipped me the bird and then grinned.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have prey to stalk.” She took a step.

I grabbed her by the arm. Touching her was hard, but if my hunch was right—

Nellie’s brows lowered, and her pupils turned to slits, like a snake’s. “Do you really want to play now, kitten? You seemed so reluctant last night.”

I dropped her arm. With a smile and perfectly round pupils, she turned. Oscar extended his arm so his hand touched the bank of lockers beside us. Nellie’s escape was cut off. “Why not talk to her?” he asked. “She’s why you’re here, isn’t she?”

I darted my gaze between them. I wasn’t sure what his last question meant—that I had released her, or that I was her purpose for being here. I didn’t like either, but the second made my chest tighten, reminded me of their confusing talk in the woods.

Instead of answering him, Nellie lolled her head to one side and heaved out a breath. While still in the middle of her act, her gaze shifted past me. “Why look. It’s kitten’s little pal. Maybe she’d like a romp. Kitten does neglect her.”

I turned to see Brittany winding through the crowd toward us. I’d forgotten this was her hour as office helper. Others hadn’t. Every student she passed stopped her. She smiled and tilted her head back and forth in animated conversation.

“Looks like the plaything isn’t as worried as kitten,” Nellie added.

The she-demon was right; Brittany didn’t appear concerned or in any rush to get to us, but I could tell by the way her fingers gripped her book bag, then moved up and down as she chatted, she was tense. Finally, done with the gossip hounds, she wandered our direction, but barely slowed down to say, “Smoking rock.”

I wasn’t sure if the demons were included in her order, but for whatever reason, they both followed when I tromped out to the rock. Spending this much time around demons, it was getting tiring trying to figure out their motives for every little thing. I decided to not analyze their sudden cooperation too much and just be grateful that they were there.

“Angie has disappeared,” Brittany announced.

Angie Hastings, the girl Doris had been annoyed with for quitting her job with no notice. She and Shelia were best friends. As I let that sink in, Oscar and Nellie walked up behind me.

Brittany was sitting on top of the rock. She didn’t comment on their appearance. So, I assumed they had been included in her invitation/command. She continued, “The police questioned Sheila, but she didn’t know anything. She said Angie got a new job last week and hasn’t been around as much as normal. Then they asked her all the usual, does she have a boyfriend, use drugs, you know typical crap.”

“Does she?” I asked. A nice jealous-boyfriend-snatching would have been awfully reassuring at the moment.

“No and no. At least not according to Sheila, and I think she’s right.” Brittany shrugged one shoulder. “Angie’s pretty milquetoast. I can’t imagine her getting mixed up in anything…well, anything.”

“People probably say that about kitten.” Nellie ran her fingers through my hair, fluffed it. I slapped my hand against my scalp, flattening my naturally spiky locks back down. Either Oscar was right and I had it completely within me to block Nellie’s power or she hadn’t used it on me today. Maybe she was bored with me.

I twisted away from Nellie’s reach. “Is this a demon thing?”

Nellie wiggled her fingers, then smiled. Oscar, who was slouched against the closest tree, just stared at me.

I now understood some of our teachers’ frustrations. “Anyone? Demons? Involved?”