Demon High (25 page)

“So,” I said, “you think I can just call him, that that will be enough to fulfill my part?”

His last counter didn’t detail what happened when you called him or even the length of the call. I’d say you can call him and immediately send him right back to hell.”

“What about the demons?”

She shook her head. “I think you’re stuck with that. Like you said, you didn’t set a date, but if you don’t do it, you’re always under contract, so-to-speak. If you do it, then every day after you make your call to him, you are contract free at least until midnight. So, if you—”

“Die,” I finished for her. “If I die at any time, he gets my soul.”

“But if you let his demons through, you’ll have a shot at dying during a time your contract is fulfilled. And when you got older, were sick or something—”

“I could kill myself, and do it when I knew I was in the contract-free part of my day.”

She nodded.

Good God, what had I gotten myself into?

o0o

I went back home without calling Kobal. Brittany offered to let me do it right there next to her canopy bed, but I wasn’t ready. I guess I was hoping something would happen, change if I put it off.

Later that morning I took the bus to school. It seemed safer than walking or riding my bike, and it gave me time to think. Well, after I gave a few freshmen the death stare. I was way past worrying about what people thought of me, or if they thought of me. Having a demon mark burning into my skin put a new perspective on a lot of things.

The halls were buzzing, but it was an excited happy buzz. Word was out that Angie had been found, along with two of the three boys. Angie’s friends were elevated to a whole new status of celebrity. Sheila had visited her in the hospital that morning before school. She said Angie was doing well. She seemed strangely happy even.

I glanced at Nellie. The succubus blew me a kiss.

At lunch, Oscar left his fan club and sought me out. I was standing outside the bathrooms. The English room had been locked up, and Brittany had a report or something she had to work on. Leaving me alone and with nowhere to hide.

I pretended not to notice as Oscar wandered up behind me. I just kept my gaze on the “Ten Smart Choices for Snacks” poster.

“You haven’t called Kobal yet,” he said.

Pretending surprise at his arrival, I turned. He was standing close, boyfriend close. He placed his palm on the wall behind me, so he was leaning against it and looking down at me. It was a classic pose, one I’d seen acted out in Caldera High halls thousands of times, but I had never been one of the participating actors. My heart skipped a bit, and my palms grew damp.

The lit chicks shot needle-sharp glares my direction.

I stared back at the dark haired one, the one who’d invited Oscar to her reading. My demon mark throbbed. “Did you go?” I asked, my stomach clenching.

He frowned and glanced over his shoulder in the direction I was looking. “Where?”

“To her reading. The other day she invited you to her poetry reading.” My voice had taken on an edge I hadn’t intended.

He looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “I’ve been busy.”

“Oh, guess so.” I slapped my lunch sack against my leg, embarrassed. I wanted to run away and hide. I was acting like a jealous girlfriend, like I
liked
Oscar, a demon. “Well, I better go eat.” I tried to duck under his arm, but he moved in, blocking me with his body.

“Are you going to?”

“Eat lunch?” Pretending not to understand what he was asking, I glanced down at the sack. I was being purposely difficult, but I didn’t want to talk about Kobal. Didn’t want to think about him, not until I had to. And right now, my heart still beating loudly in my chest and jealousy still raging through my veins, I didn’t want to talk to Oscar either. Something was going on with me, and I needed to stop it. I didn’t think standing this close to Oscar, almost touching him, was going to help me do that.

He just stared at me.

I sighed and leaned back against the wall. “I don’t have a choice. Do I?”

He dropped his arm and stepped back. A mixture of relief, that he was giving me space and loss that he hadn’t moved closer, passed over me.

“What about the other part, the demons?” he asked.

“Demons?” Miss Lit Chick had prowled up behind him. “Is that a band? I love dark rock.” She had added purple stripes to her hair, and the length of her skirt made me want to ask if she’d forgotten her pants.

“Get a make-over?” I asked. It was bitchy, but it was Oscar’s fault for stopping me from running when I had wanted to. Besides, I was sporting a demon mark, I deserved a little bitchy.

She glanced at me and edged away. A tiny thrill shot through me, but then I realized her avoidance of me only took her closer to Oscar. Her eyes and her hands on him, she said, “A group of us is going to The Cave this weekend. You want to come? The band’s new, but solid.”

I answered even though the question clearly hadn’t been intended for me. “Sounds fun. Too bad I’ll be busy unleashing hell and losing my soul.” I swiveled the opposite direction and made it past Oscar. My lunch bag smacking against my leg, I went to look for a table.

After school Brittany drove me to the pasture. I realized I couldn’t ask her to cart me out there every day, but she and I had discussed the options and for now it seemed like the best one, the quickest one.

My skin was crawling, and my mark throbbed. After I’d walked away from Oscar, the throb had moved into curling-iron-accident pain. The little amount of lunch I’d eaten I’d tossed back up twenty minutes later. Now, it felt like the curling iron was still on and pressed to my raw bubbling flesh.

In other words, I was doubled over in Brittany’s car, trying not to vomit yet again.

“He didn’t mention this,” she said.

“Shocking,” I blurted. “A demon left something out.”

She didn’t say anything, just slammed on the brakes and threw the transmission into park. I fumbled for the door handle. She got there first.

“Guess this means you need to rethink what time of day you call him,” she said as she held onto my elbow to keep me from tumbling over into the grass.

“If it goes away after I do,” I muttered.

“You don’t think it will?”

I started to shake my head. A new pain shot through me. Sweat broke out over my body, but I managed to stay upright and walking.

When we reached the circle, Brittany walked it for me while I kneeled in the grass panting. She assured me there were no new breaks. I made her go back and check again. Then I called Kobal.

He took his sweet time answering.

“Lucinda. How has your day been?” He was reclining on an old couch, the kind with no arms that Victorian ladies used for fainting. “Holmes has been settling back in. I do hope for your sake he doesn’t get back out for a visit while you’re still alive.” He swung his legs to the side and sat up. “Of course, once your soul is here, the two of you will have plenty of time for reminiscences.”

My mark which had cooled considerably when he appeared in the circle pulsed. I stopped myself from slapping my hand over it.

He must have seen me twitch though. “How’s the mark? You did know what a mark was, didn’t you? What purpose they serve? They’re actually quite handy, reminding you when you start to stray. It can save so much heartache later.”

I ran my thumb over the athame’s handle. I’d been holding it since before he’d arrived. My plan was to call him and immediately cut him off—the call to him that was. But now I wondered if I should ask about the mark. If I continued to ignore his demand that I release two more demons, would it get worse? Would I soon be laying in bed unable to lift my head?

He stood. The couch disappeared. “I have your visitors chosen.” He raised his hand and a demon appeared on each side of him. One was an older woman complete with orthopedic shoes and blue hair. The other was a child, not more than ten.

For some reason they both creeped me out. I hid my shiver. Or thought I did.

“Cold?” Kobal asked. “It’s warmer here.” He grinned.

When I didn’t respond, he stepped back and placed a hand on each demon’s shoulder. “Who first? As you can see, I kept to our rules.”

“I’m afraid I can’t see that.”

He opened his mouth in mock surprise. “Are you suggesting that either of these—” He made a fluttering gesture toward the two demons. “—could possibly be higher or more dangerous than Oscar?”

“Outward appearances can be deceiving,” I replied.

He smiled. “Yes, they can.”

I didn’t like the way he was looking at me, as if he was holding in some gigantic joke and I was the butt of it.

“But I assure you, these two fit perfectly into the rules we agreed on.”

I glanced at Brittany. She was staring at the child, and her face had the same look of unease that I felt. Sensing I was looking at her, she darted her gaze my direction and mouthed, “Names.”

I looked back at Kobal. “It’s polite to introduce people.”

His wings moved forward a bit, framing him and his two companions. “Yes, it is. Something I’m sure you can rectify once these two are across.”

He wasn’t going to tell me their names. That couldn’t be good.

I chopped the end off of the candle. Chopped off his objection too. “Lucin—”

My mark immediately resumed its throbbing.

Brittany scrambled over the cemetery wall. I bent to gather my tools and tried to ignore the pulsing in the back of my neck.

“What do you think?” she asked.

I slid the athame into my bag. “I think those two gave me the willies.”

She ran her hands up her arms. “Me too.”

With all of my tools gathered, I stood. “I can’t let them out.”

“How’s the mark?”

I touched it. The skin felt cool and normal to my hand, but pain continued to shoot through it down my spine. “Feels like someone’s holding a Bunsen burner to my neck.”

She watched me, concern shining from her face. “How long can you live with it?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know. I suspected the pain was only going to get worse. That each day it would build until I called Kobal, but never completely go away, not until I had fulfilled the second part of the agreement, released his demons.

“Lucinda.” She glanced around the clearing as if someone might be there, listening. “Have you thought about how he worded the deal—no higher or more dangerous than Oscar?”

I paused, my bag knocking against my leg.

“Have you thought that maybe that’s a trick, that maybe Oscar is a lot higher and more dangerous than you think?”

I moved the bag to my other hand, wiped that palm on my jeans. “Oscar isn’t dangerous.”

“The holy water didn’t hurt him.”

“That doesn’t prove anything, maybe it wasn’t properly blessed.”

“It hurt Nellie. She told me about it, and Holmes. I saw you spray him with it. But it didn’t hurt Oscar.”

Something moved in the woods, a squirrel probably. I switched the bag back to the first hand and started walking. “It’s getting late, and I told Nana I’d be home for supper.” I didn’t look back, and Brittany didn’t say anything else.

However, as we drove back to town, her words played over and over in my head. I thought I’d been helping Oscar, but what if he didn’t need nor want my help? He hadn’t asked for it. What if I only thought he could be saved, but he wanted something completely different?

o0o

I skipped school the next day. I told Nana I was sick, which I was. The pain from my mark had kept me from sleeping. It wasn’t to the level it had been the day before when I called Kobal, but it was ten times worse than the slight burn it had been twenty-four hours earlier.

After Nana left to run errands, I took a cocktail of pain medicine and stared at the ceiling. I was in what you called a no-win situation.

I was in the process of deciding pain medication had zero effect on demon marks when the phone rang. It was Brittany.

“Hell has broken loose at school. You better get in here.”

I found a tube of topical pain medication Nana used for arthritis, slathered it on the back of my neck and called a cab. Cabs weren’t widely used in Caldera, but they existed. I didn’t really want to spend the money on one, but there was no way I’d survive the trip to school on my bike, and Nana had taken the car.

When I pulled up to school in the taxi, no one commented. I knew then things really were out of whack.

I went to the office first to check in. There was a police officer standing in front of Mr. Finnley’s door, and Mrs. Adler was the color of the piece of paper she was holding. When she saw me, she whooshed her hand for me to get to class. No signing anything or chatting about my grandmother’s health.

I rounded the corner on the way to my locker and plowed into Nellie. “What—” I glanced to her side. A woman, dressed in a suit, was standing beside her. “Where are you going, Nellie?” I asked.