Demon High (28 page)

At school things were weird. During lunch, none of the usual groupings seemed to be in effect. Nellie sat on a table at the back of the lunch room, where the pops normally sat. A mix of angry and stunned faces stared up at her from their benches below.

The table’s usual occupants, the pops—cheerleaders, some football players, and a few super smarts—were scattered around the room, staring at empty trays or worse, eating. One cheerleader, who I hadn’t seen eat anything more calorically-dense than a diet pop and a mini bag of pretzels, was mindlessly munching on a corn dog.

Performing her normal uninterested stroll through the lunch room, Brittany ground to a halt and stared openly. The girl just dipped her dog into melted cheese and chomped off another hunk.

“This is
so
not right,” Brittany mumbled.

I turned to the left, looking for my favorites, the lit chicks. They were together. Astral, she of the poetry, was sitting with her back to me. A pile of books was spread across their table. As I walked closer, I could see the titles. Everything from some obscure French phrase I couldn’t pronounce to skinny romance novels with words like “virgin” and “sheik” displayed prominently on the cover. I picked up a mystery with a bowl of spaghetti decorating its front and pretended to page through it. “You finally decide to read some real books?”

I expected some response, like they were collecting them to save the world from our own lack of taste and sophistication, but they each just picked a book at random from the stack and started reading. When I saw Astral had selected one of the romance novels, I almost dropped the book I was holding. The lit chicks didn’t read popular fiction. In fact, making fun of those who did was one of their favorite pastimes.

In our English class last year we got to suggest books for everyone to read. My list had been full of fantasy and paranormal romance titles. The lit chicks had practically rolled in the aisles with amusement.

“Astral, did you reschedule your reading? I’d like to go,” I said.

She blinked, her face bland. “Sure, why not?” Then she stood, flipped to the center of the book she held and began to read aloud. “His lips captured the tip of one breast. She let out a sigh and wove her fingers deeper into his hair, held his head against her. She’d never been touched like this, never realized how wrong and yet good it could feel.”

Her voice was flat, as if she was reading the back of a cereal box, not explaining in detail how a virgin bride ached for her deflowering. I jerked the book from her hand and shoved the mystery into her grasp instead.

Without missing a beat, she started reading. “The kitchen was splattered with red. Blood I thought at first, then the enticing scent of oregano calmed my beating heart.”

I waited for her to laugh, to start with the cutting jokes, but she didn’t. She kept reading, just as seriously as if it was one of her valued literary classics.

Unable to stand anymore, I walked on.

Brittany had made her way to the outcast table. One boy, a cutter, was reading People magazine. Another had on a bright purple tee with some tween idol on the front.

“It’s his sister’s,” Brittany mumbled. “It was on top of the laundry basket.”

“Astral is reading romance. The kind where no one dies,” I replied.

“Things really are fucked up here. What happened?” Brittany asked.

A chair flying across the room cut off my response.

Shane Bollock stood with his hands over his head and his chest heaving. Two guys, a geek and a way-smart, twirled around Nellie’s table their hands wrapped around each others’ throats. Shane spun and grabbed a fourth boy, this one an outcast, by the front of his gray T. The boy’s sullen face furrowed in rage. He picked up a bowl of melted cheese and smashed it into Shane’s face. Shane retaliated with a fist to his nose.

Blood and cheese were streaming, chairs were flying and through it all, no one not involved in the brawl said a word. Every student sat at their respective tables watching the action with absolutely zero alarm and only a modicum of interest. You’d have thought we were enduring an in-depth analysis of depression-era economics rather than a raging food fight.

Then there was Nellie. She sat as she had when we entered, on the top of her table. She had kicked off her heels. The balls of her bare feet were balanced on the bench below her, and she was smiling.

I cut through the middle of the brawl, smacking Shane with the heel of my hand when he teetered toward me.

“What did you do?” I asked her.

Her eyes alight, she kept her gaze on the fight. “I think it’s more what you’ve done, or haven’t done.” She turned to me then, her eyes tilting like a cat’s. “My power is growing.” She cocked her head toward the outcast table a good twenty feet away. The boy in the purple tee stood, knocking against his People-reading friend as he did. His gaze never wavering, he walked toward us.

Like me, he tromped through the middle of the fight. Unlike me, when Shane bumped into him and the boy bumped back, Shane charged him like a bull. The boy’s body folded over Shane’s back as the wrestling star raced forward. They collided with a table and sent it sailing across the room.

I narrowed my eyes. “This has nothing to do with me.”

“Ah, kitten. For someone who insists on playing with demons, you are so uneducated. Oscar visited you last night, didn’t he?

I stiffened.
Oscar had spoken of what happened between us to Nellie.
I had told Brittany, of course, but that was different. Brittany was my friend and
not
Nellie.

She sighed. “Don’t bother answering. I know he did. You’re having some effect on him. He really shouldn’t be here. Not all demons can handle living with humans.” Her gaze flicked to Brittany andthen shifted quickly to Shane, who had dropped the outcast and returned to the center of the battle. “Anyway, he explained why Kobal wants you to release more demons under him, right? That Kobal draws power from us being here? What he must not have mentioned is that it can go both ways. A demon lord, if he chooses, can channel power into demons under him. And, I think—” She blew a kiss at the outcast who was still lying on the floor where Shane had left him. The boy shook his head and tried to stand. “—that is what he’s done. My guess is, it’s to teach you a lesson. If you won’t release the two demons you agreed to, he’ll just channel more power into the two who are here.”

“The two— Where’s Oscar?” I asked

“Where are the teachers, is what I want to know.” Brittany shoved her way through a crowd of girls who had gathered nearby. They seemed torn between staring at Nellie and gazing blankly off into space. “There isn’t a one in sight.”

She was right. Even the lunch ladies seemed to have taken a coffee break.

Nellie slid off the table, then scooped up her shoes. With the stilettos perched on her fingers, she smiled. “Last I saw Oscar he was standing outside the teacher’s lounge. If you don’t believe what I’ve said, maybe you should check it out. Now get out of my way. I see a table I haven’t conquered.” She shoved me aside, and sashayed toward the back of the room where a few lost-looking druggies sat staring at the empty table in front of them.

I honestly couldn’t tell if they’d been hit by the current demon fever or not.

Brittany, her lips pressed together in a thin line, watched Nellie go. “I wish I didn’t care,” she muttered.

I grabbed her by the arm. “Don’t say that. You’ve seen what not caring did to Oscar. Pain is better than nothing.”

She pulled her gaze from the retreating succubus. “Well, then I’m living the high life.”

Someone else I might have hugged, if I was a hugger. But not Brittany. Instead I stepped into her space. “She’s a bitch. I know you’re too much in the hurt stage to see it, but it’s true. Focus on that.”

She tightened her jaw. “No, that’s what’s so bad. I do see it. I see everything. I don’t think she’s even using her powers on me. I think I just….I think I love her.”

Crap
. I stepped back. Not sure whether to scream or slap her.

But Brittany being Brittany, she closed her eyes, took a breath, and then opened her eyes back up. “But, hey, that doesn’t make me special does it? Like you said, I need to get over it. Get over myself.” And she smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes, but it was a start.

I didn’t give her a chance to slip back. I grabbed her by the wrist and strode toward the door. “We’re accomplishing nothing here. We better find the teachers.”

Never in my life had I thought I’d be looking for teachers, planning to rat out the entire school and hoping like hell someone would care.

o0o

The teachers were easy to find. They were in the teachers’ lounge, and they were definitely lounging. A few were pushing comatose.

The lounge was strictly off limits to students. There was a giant sign stating as much. The year before someone had planted a bug behind the “Six Signs of Abuse” poster. The tape made it onto the Internet. After that the lounge got unofficially renamed “the rod,” based on the gym teacher’s rant about sparing the rod spoiling most of the freshman class.

Anyway, since then security had been a lot tighter. But today the door was actually ajar. I shoved it open with my foot.

Mrs. Adler was laying on the ancient green couch that dominated the room with her feet propped on Mr. Swenson’s, the algebra teacher’s, lap. When Brittany walked in, her fingers fluttered like she was going to say something; then she just dropped her arm back to her side. Across the room, four more teachers stared out the window. They had a direct view of the lunch room. As we watched, a chair crashed through the lunch room window. Two of the teachers turned to each other as if they were going to say something but then turned back, silent.

I’d seen enough. I walked into the room and bent down next to Mrs. Adler. “Where’s Oscar?”

Frowning, she pushed herself onto her elbow. “Lucinda. I don’t think you’re supposed to be here.” Then the blank look I’d seen way too many times today rolled back over her face, and she lay back down. I grabbed her by the chin and stared her in the eyes. “Where is Oscar?”

“That new boy?” Mr. Swenson asked. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “He was here. We were talking about…something…nothing important.”

“What is…?” This from one of the teachers by the window.

Another tapped lightly on the window with a plastic spoon. “Is that him? Walking toward the parking lot? He knows this is a closed campus, doesn’t he?” She looked at Mrs. Adler, who shrugged.

I jumped to my feet and jogged from the room. Brittany followed.

“What now?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but I need to stop Oscar before he leaves campus. We can’t risk him wandering around town and turning Caldera into brain-dead central.”

“What about Nellie?”

I stopped mid-stride. “Good point. Can you talk to her? Get her to go somewhere? Somewhere away from people?”

Brittany hesitated. I could see the war going on inside her. I hated that I’d had to ask her to confront Nellie. But I had to go after Oscar, and Nellie was way more likely to listen to Brittany than she was me.

“Where do you want us to go?”

Relieved, I let out the breath I’d been holding. “The pasture? I’ll figure out a way to get Oscar and me there too.”

She nodded, but as I started to walk away, she stopped me. “You aren’t thinking of doing what Oscar said, are you? Calling on a more powerful demon? Remember what he is. Don’t trust him. Please.”

I smiled and squeezed her arm to let her know I hadn’t forgotten anything, but as I jogged across the outside eating area and saw Oscar sitting at a table in the cold, any doubts that Brittany had managed to create in my mind evaporated like mist in the sun.

He was alone, at a table covered in snow, and his face was so sad, so lost. How couldn’t I trust him? How couldn’t I want to save him?

I stopped running as I approached and forced myself to relax. Perhaps he had caused the weird state of the teachers, but he hadn’t done it on purpose, I knew that. And maybe he hadn’t caused the state at all. What evidence was there that he had? Nellie’s word?

When I sat down, he looked up. “You saw the teachers, didn’t you? I’m sucking out their life. Do you believe me now? You have to send me back.”

His hand was resting on the table. He didn’t seem to notice the snow piling up around it. I placed my fingers over his. “Nellie thinks Kobal is channeling more power into the two of you. Is there a way to stop him?” Oscar’s power had been manageable before. He hadn’t been a threat to anyone. If I could undo whatever had happened lately, he could stay. We could keep working on saving him.

His eyes were sad when he looked at me. Sad, but not lost. I knew he was feeling emotion, that he was with me. It made his words all the harder to hear.

“You know the answer to that, Lucinda. I can’t change what I am. My fate was decided a long time ago. If it hadn’t been, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be in that grave under the headstone bearing my name. That was the only other fate for me.”

I swallowed. Somehow I’d forgotten that Oscar should have died one hundred years ago; that being a demon was what kept him alive.