Demon High (9 page)

Nana waved her hand, saying she didn’t want to talk about the Georges—something I’d planned on.

“She needed a tutor in biology.” It was a bit of a lie. Brittany wasn’t known for good grades, but I didn’t think it was because she was lacking in smarts, more likely just another facet of her carefully crafted image.

“You helping her?”

It was a direct question, but one easily avoided. I waved my hand at her medications.

“I know you said you don’t need them, but with me getting some extra money, and there being nothing else we need—” An obvious lie, but manipulating Nana was a bit of an art. “—I figured it would be as good as anything else.”

Her gaze was on the bottle in her hand. She shook it, listened to the pills rattle, and then turned toward the sink to fill a glass with water. “Since you bought ‘em, I’ll use ‘em, but I don’t want you sacrificing your own grades to make money for me. Like you said, we’re doing just fine.”

I didn’t glance toward the living room where the piano still sat, but I could feel it there, looming. I held my breath until after she’d opened the second bottle and swallowed that dose too.

Something inside me unwound then, a wire that had been wrapped around my chest. I exhaled, loud enough she turned to look at me.

“There something else you need to tell me, girl?” she asked.

“Nothing much. Just that there are crustless PB&J’s in the fridge. I thought we could have them for dinner.”

After that the night was a dream, the best one we’d shared in months. Nana flipped on one of her favorite reality shows, and we ate crustless PB&Js while yelling at the judges.

It was a simple night, probably boring in most people’s book, but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. I would have faced Kobal a thousand times over just to experience it again.

And that was the only dark moment of the evening—when that thought snuck out of hiding in my head, and I realized just how true it was. I’d do anything to keep my life like this. Anything.

And I wouldn’t suffer a second of guilt for the decision.

Monday morning I got up earlier than usual. After my realization, I hadn’t slept that well. Nana and our life together was my Achilles heel in the demon world. I couldn’t help but wonder if my mother’d had one too—me, Nana. If that was how she’d got caught.

Then there was the fact that I had lied to Nana, not directly, but through omission. She wouldn’t see the difference. So I’d tossed and turned, and tried to convince myself none of it mattered because I everything had worked out. That was how you learned, right? Close calls?

We just needed a few more ground rules. No alcohol being at the top of the list.

No drunks. No problems.

I told myself all of this, but despite the fact that I knew getting a regular job wouldn’t bring in the money we needed and that I couldn’t tell Nana what I was really doing to make the cash I’d made, the guilt lingered.

So, unable to sleep, I whipped on my clothes and trotted downstairs. Nana’s passion for PB and J included muffins with the two tucked inside. I’d taught myself to cook early on. Neither Nana nor my mother had been all that traditionally nurturing. In elementary school, the other kids’ moms always brought cupcakes and brownies for the class on their children’s birthdays. If I wanted to blend, I had to learn to make my own. I learned quickly that muffins were easy. I had about a thousand variations now, but the PB and J ones were Nana’s favorites.

Baked goods might not make up for demon-calling in my grandmother’s book, but they might make it easier for me to face her.

While the muffins were baking, I went out front to swipe the neighbor’s paper. Nana loved reading the daily, but had stopped our subscription a year earlier. Conveniently though, our neighbor three doors down left his lying in the gutter for days. I half suspected the older man ordered the paper just so I could steal it.

With it tucked under my arm, I scurried back home. I didn’t want to waste his good intentions by getting caught.

The muffins were done, so I pulled them from the oven and arranged them on a plate. Then I set the table, placing the paper folded lengthwise next to Nana’s setting. As I did, I couldn’t miss the headline.

“Three College Students Missing.”

My heart dropped an inch and my butt hit the seat I’d just pulled out in preparation for Nana.

“Two nineteen-year-old and one twenty-year-old male students at State College at Bethel disappeared after a night drinking. Witnesses saw the boys buying large quantities of alcohol early in the evening. They attended a party together, but left early. Although their car was recovered a few miles south of Bethel, the boys have not been seen. There was no sign of foul play obvious in the vehicle.”

The paper went on to report that the store that sold the three the alcohol had been shut down for selling to minors. The paper seemed to think the boys’ disappearance was related to drinking.

My heart beating loudly, I dropped the paper onto the table. Related to alcohol? If the boys were the three I thought they were, yeah, you could say that. Except probably not exactly in the way the reporter imagined.

I picked up a muffin, and turned it around, studying its perfectly domed top. But their car had been found. That meant they had left the field. Of course I knew that already. Even as shaken as I was the night before, I wouldn’t have missed something as big as a car.

So, since they had left the field, their disappearance couldn’t have anything to do with the calling, or the dark shapes I had seen flowing around the circle. Could it?

Unable to stand the direction my thoughts were going, I dropped the muffin onto the table, and went to get dressed. Looked like Brittany’s and my silence was over. I needed to get to school and talk to her. Hopefully, she would tell me it was three totally different boys, that I was freaking over nothing.

But as I knotted my “vintage” red and purple striped cardigan around my waist, I couldn’t really get myself to believe it.

o0o

Brittany kept her back to me as I walked up. I knew she had seen me though; I could tell by the quiver of disapproval that traveled through her body. She shut her locker door with a click and spoke into the metal. “Smoking rock, three minutes. And, dear God, lose the sweater.”

It was chilly out, in that summer-is-gone, but too-early-for-fall kind of way, and I’d planned to wear the cardigan when outside, but I could tell by how Brittany shook her head, as if she was clearing some kind of hideous image from her brain, that she wasn’t going to give on my apparent fashion no. I jerked off the sweater and shoved it into her locker.

With luck it would fall out when the fashion foursome, as I’d termed a particular clique of popular juniors, strolled by. That would teach my childhood friend to shudder at my wardrobe.

After that uncharitable act, I hauled myself out to the rock and waited. She arrived ten minutes later.

She had a denim jacket in her hand. “Here, classic fifties. It was my grandfather’s.” She thrust it toward me. “Not quite the statement of your sweater, but at least people won’t be looking for your little car and big shoes.”

I took the jacket, but after her gracious comment, kept the thanks to myself.

She plopped onto the rock next to me. “You saw the paper?”

I pulled on the jacket. It was big, but not sloppy. Her grandfather must have been tiny. My hands in the pockets, I pulled it around me and nodded. “It wasn’t them, was it?”

She leaned her head to the side and studied me for a second, then reached over and grabbed hold of a daisy that was appliquéd to my shirt. With a quick pull, she jerked it free.

“‘Fraid so.” She dropped the flower onto my lap. “You think it’s related?” She was acting nonchalant, but I could read her. There were circles under her eyes, and her skin was lacking its normal glow, as if she’d rushed the get-ready process.

She was as worried as I was. “They found the car. It was parked outside one of the guy’s apartments. My aunt and uncle weren’t concerned at first. Joshua’s done this before, taken off with his buddies for some cross-country fling. He could be doing that again.”

“He could,” I replied, but my mind was whirling. It would be a huge coincidence and if Joshua
had
done this before, I was guessing this was the first time the police had been called in. Which meant this time was different.

“Those shapes…” Brittany’s voice dropped. “Could they have been…”

“Demons?” I finished for her.

She nodded. “Or ghosts?”

I hugged myself.

Brittany kept talking. “If demons escaped, we would have known, right? They would have shown themselves. They wouldn’t just sneak off.”

When I didn’t reply, she kept talking. “How do demons travel? Walk? Float? Appear?” She pulled her fingers together then shot them out wide, mimicking an explosion.

“Steal a car?” I murmured.

She dropped her hands to her lap. The nail on her ring finger was broken, jagged. “You think?”

I shook my head. I didn’t know. I’d never seen a demon out and about in the real world. I knew it happened, but… “I think they are like us—you know corporeal. So, I guess they’d walk.”

“And drive,” she added.

“I guess.”

“Would they know how?”

I looked at her, and one brow shot up. She could be such a strange mix of super smart and total neon head. “Remember Theodore? What he told us about learning?”

“Oh, yeah.” She exhaled. “So a demon could have escaped and could have my cousin and his idiot friends.”

“Seems like it.” Neither of us moved, as if moving would make it all real, or more real than it already was.

“So, what are we going to do? We have to get them back, Lucinda.” It was as close to a plead as I’d ever heard from Brittany. Too bad pleading wouldn’t help. I had no clue how to find those boys.

o0o

After our chat at the smoking rock, Brittany and I returned to the school. I followed her to her locker. We had killed most of first hour outside, but there were still a good fifteen minutes left before the halls would fill again. Or there should have been.

When I looked up, two of the fashionable foursome were headed our way. Their perfectly waxed brows arched when they saw me standing next to Brittany. Unaware the “in” crowd was bearing down on us, she jerked open her locker. My sweater fell out.

With a curse, she picked it up and spun. The too-cool-to-be-cheerleaders pair ground to a halt.

It was exactly the moment I’d hoped for when I’d shoved my moth-eaten sweater into Brittany’s locker, but as I saw the pair’s expressions go from surprise to smirk remorse smacked me in the gut. I reached for the sweater.

“You two sharing clothes now?” Tali, half of the pair, whipped a length of ruler-straight black hair over one shoulder. “I didn’t realize you were so…tight.” She angled her eyes towards the second most fashionable one, Rach.

Brittany stiffened.

Realizing being seen with me, with or without my ragged sweater, would do Brittany’s reputation no good, I mumbled something about shoving it into the wrong locker and jerked the offending article from Brittany’s grip. Without looking at any of them, I took off down the hall.

“Hey!” Brittany called after me. “That was a fair trade.”

I stumbled.

She jogged up beside me and grabbed the sweater. “Everyone at the college is wearing stripes. Just because you figured that out a little late doesn’t mean the trade is off.” I stared at her as she pulled the sweater from my limp fingers.

Over her shoulder I could see the fashionable ones exchanging shocked glances.

“And don’t forget lunch. You have to tell me where you found that shirt.” With that final shot, she turned and strutted back to her locker.

My hand still outstretched, I stood there for a few seconds. Finally, I realized how stupid I had to look. I shoved my hand back into Brittany’s grandfather’s jacket and went to stand outside the door of my next class.

Brittany had stood up for me in front of the fashionable ones. It made me rethink every uncharitable thought I’d had about her in the last ten years, and there had been a lot of them.

Made me wonder what else I needed to rethink.

o0o

 Despite Brittany’s parting words, for lunch I stuck with my normal schedule. Brownbag in hand, I wandered to an empty English classroom. I knew she had just invited me to shock our audience.

As I ate my standby PB&J I mulled things over some more. It wasn’t like there was someone I could go to for advice. If a demon had escaped and taken the boys, what could I do? If I learned his name I could call him, maybe.

Or I could call a demon whose name I had, not Theodore. He, I had decided, was useless. But there was another, the demon lord Kobal.

Calling a demon lord. That was serious. Just thinking about it made my palms sweat and my appetite disappear. I balled up the bag with my half-eaten sandwich inside and tossed it in the trash.