Second Skin (Skinned) (22 page)

“I almost did take that kid’s head off.” I tucked my dagger back under my jacket.

“Forgive them, they know not what they do,” Brit said.

The halls began to fill with every creature from angels to zombies. The cool kiss of an evil stare settled on my shoulders. I turned my head, meeting the gaze of the smirking Victorian doll in the glass cabinet.

Those ancient, evil eyes. I couldn’t look away. My stomach flip-flopped like an unbalanced washing machine. Again, my near-liquid breakfast threatened to make a cameo appearance.

Beside me Brit cleared her throat. She hissed something at me, but her words came as if from a great distance. I wheezed as her elbow struck my ribs, but the sharp jab steadied the world once more. I shot a glare at Brit, and then realized why she’d clocked me.

“Ladies,” Mr. Philips said, giving us a regal nod. “I see Gertrude is dressed for the day’s festivities, Brit, how nice.” He glanced pointedly at my backpack, my orange-haired Reality Babe nowhere in sight. “Have a spectacular day, you two.” He headed down the hall.

“My kid’s with a sitter at the moment,” I said, calling after him. “I’m heading to pick her up now.”

He waved a hand, but didn’t look back.

Ugh. In case of further run-ins with Philips, I’d have to bring

Demon Spawn out of hiding.

The first bell shrieked.

Welcome to my nightmare indeed.

A chorus of ear-splitting shrieks echoed in the hall. Brit and another kid from our CALM class gave each other’s Reality Babes assessing looks, comparing accessories. Gertrude’s baby- bat costume and skull-and-cross-bones blanket earned a raised eyebrow and a quick spin in the opposite direction.

“Don’t you fret, Gerty, they’re just jealous,” Brit said and adjusted the baby carrier more securely in her grip as we entered the Home Economics lab and approached our workstation. Each station had been provided with a copy of the assigned recipe, and it was our job to get organized, collecting the ingredients and forming a plan of attack regarding who would be responsible for what part of the actual cooking, before our teacher addressed the class.

We set to work, looking through drawers for just the right stirring spoons and riffling through our workstation’s apartment- sized fridge for the proper ingredients.

I felt a twinge of regret that while I’d retrieved my demon spawn, I’d promptly stuffed her into my backpack. But then…it was only a twinge. I just couldn’t handle those wonky eyes. Or the fake breathing. And I’d been feeding her when she cried, most of the time. So she wasn’t as pampered as Gertrude. And maybe I’d crammed her into dark, confining places instead of showing her off to the world. At least I hadn’t knocked her out because she was annoying. She still had it better than Paige.

“So Paige is out cold?” I pulled a jug of milk out of the fridge, opened the lid, and took a sniff. Seemed okay. “No chance of her waking up and crashing our night mare ousting tonight?” I plunked the jug down on the counter, needing to hear confirmation that my cousin was under control. She was such a chronic pain in my ass.

I didn’t need to be worried about her getting herself killed or ending up as bait. Again. Not when things were so iffy. I’d never taken down a creature in the dream realm before. Here’s hoping I’d keep my clothes on and the whole thing wouldn’t turn into one of those naked-in-the-raw-hamburger-aisle dreams. Though I’d rarely had any that normal, they did happen.

“Marie gave her enough to knock out an elephant.” Brit held up a hand at my double take. “Kidding, I’m kidding,” she said, waving a wire whisk. “Mostly.”

I groaned. Though I liked Paige about as much as gargling salt water with a mouthful of canker sores, I really did have much to make up for when she was back to normal.
If
Kate could bring her back.

My stomach lurched. Best not to think of Paige for now. I had other beasties to contend with, ones even more demanding, although I wouldn’t have thought it possible. Like the monster I held in my hands. A real recipe for disaster.

“You sure you know what you’re doing?” Brit stared at the mélange of ingredients I’d collected. Vials of dark liquid, small bowls with precise measurements of fine white powers.

“Oh, course,” I lied, skimming the paper I held once more.
Had I missed anything?
“Kate does stuff like this all the time. How hard can it be?”

“You could poison us, or worse.”

“Come on, Brit,” I said, rolling my eyes. “It’s not like I’m working a spell. I agree that would be life-threatening for everyone involved.” I gestured to the other students, also arranging their ingredients according to the photocopied recipe Mrs. Rodale had handed out. “I cook. I find it relaxing.” A flash of me swinging a black cast-iron frying pan at my demon-possessed uncle. “Usually.” The witch at the front of the room finally addressed the class. Students weren’t the only ones to partake in the spirit of Halloween. Ms. Rodale had replaced her usual chef’s uniform and
toque blanche
with an ankle-grazing black dress and two-foot tall witch’s hat. Her choice of costume was so apt, I wasn’t sure anyone had really noticed she was wearing one.

“Our desserts today all have a high egg content,” Rodale said, her voice piping through the speakers built into the ceiling. Ugh. Teachers with voices like gargoyles should never use the hands- free mics found in each Redgrave High classroom. Ones dressed as witches? Went without saying. “Egg-based dishes require a delicate hand. If one is told to whisk, one must keep the motion all in one’s wrists.”

“One must hold one’s vomit in one’s mouth,” Brit said under her breath.

I choked back a laugh.

Rodale’s pale blue eyes sought out the sound.

Brit, Gertrude, and I were suddenly transfixed by the carton of eggs I’d placed on the counter earlier. Such a wonderful carton of eggs.

Rodale focused on a guy in the group at the cooking station beside ours. He wore traditional vampire attire, high-collared cape, red vest, and his hair slicked back. Uh-oh. Trouble. True to his vamp roots, he also appeared to be pulling an Edward, staring in fascination at a blonde zombie at the opposite sink, her clothing strategically torn to reveal some serious cleavage. She returned his interest with a hungry stare. The bowl and whisk drooped in his hands. He was clearly smitten.

“Jonathan, that soufflé won’t make itself.” Rodale all but glided down the aisle, her back hunched from years of toiling and bubbling around a cauldron. Or stove as it were.

The vampire Jonathan began to whisk like he meant it. Rodale’s evil eye slid over the class and settled on me and

Brit, the coldness of it like a winter wind. It seemed so long ago that Wade had first hinted that some of Redgrave High’s staff and student population might be a bit outside the box. If anyone fit the paranormal bill, it was Rodale. I made a big show of tossing some rock salt over my shoulder. Right? Left? I did both just in case. Rodale’s eyebrows rose at my challenge and for an instant her eyes glittered as if lit from within, then she turned away, blasting into another student. Forget melted butter and stale flour, I could smell the vanilla scent of unfamiliar magic in the air.

Brit’s jaw dropped. “She’s not human. She must be a witch. I never would have pegged that. But I mean, look at her, it’s too obvious.”

I’d learned long ago that the obvious solution was usually overlooked. Unfortunately there was nothing obvious about what Rodale wanted us to cook. She’d given each group a different recipe, and none of our papers included photos of the completed dish. I hated it when I didn’t have a visual to compare to. Brit’s instincts were bang on. Like magic, cooking held loads of room for error.

Still, how hard could it be to make a…I squinted at the heading of our recipe.

“Is that French?”

Brit snorted. “Italian. Tiramisu. It’s a kind of layered pastry dessert.”

“All right class, now for the eggs,” Rodale prompted.

In unison we reached into our cartons, selected an egg, and cracked it against the side of our glass bowls.

Screams rang out.

Cartons fell to the floor, their grisly contents spilling over the tiles.

Each egg contained either swirls of blood or the hairless, bulbous form of a chicken embryo. The bloody yolk in our bowl swirled of its own accord, taking the shape of a demonic scowling face.

Okay, so the night mare might be onto us.

Well, yeah, when he said it like that. . .

A few hours later, I stood pressed against the stage wall observing a human rite of passage known as the school dance. Truly terrifying.

Ghouls lined the walls in small throngs of witches, zombies, vampires—even political figures and WOW characters thanks to a few members of the Axis and Allies Club—leaving the center of the gym dead as a ghost town. Contrary to every teenybopper prom flick, I’d never experienced a whole lot of dancing at these shindigs.

Guttural, hissing vocals spat through the DJ’s speakers like a chorus of zombies doing karaoke. Perfect mood music for night’s festivities.

Though this pulse-pounding tunage did nothing to soothe my savage beast. If anything, it made my wolf restless, aroused.

“Boo…” Hot breath whispered along the nape of my neck, sending a rush of heat down my spine. The solid body pressed against my back invited me to settle in, take shelter. To
feel
. I bit my lip against a moan.
First Alec says he’ll never leave me, then he doesn’t speak to me, and now he’s sticking to me like melted chocolate on a ripe strawberry.
And, damn, but I liked it. I shifted forward as much as possible in the crowd gathered below the gym stage, farthest from where the DJ was set up and cajoling the costumed masses to get up and boogie.

“Do you mind?” I said through clenched teeth. “It’s roasting in here, and I don’t need you breathing down my neck.”

“It’s not roasting, you’re just
hot
.”

There was a moment of silence. When I didn’t respond to Alec’s double entendre, he gave a dry laugh. “Sorry for living. Breathing. Being human. I know you prefer those who aren’t.”

My jaw ached. I so wanted to show him some angry wolven fang right now, but I refused to get into a snarling match about Wade. The point was moot anyway. It wasn’t like Wade had shown up at the last minute and helped save the day. Though that would have significantly increased the chances of us coming out of this little adventure alive and kicking. Nope, I was going to fly this crazy train solo, so you’d have thought Alec would be more supportive.

A collective gasp of horror rang out as the supervisors, Mr. Riggs, the gym teacher, and Mrs. Rodale took to the dance floor. They began to slide into some swing moves. Rodale glided along the polished gym floor. Totally inappropriate for the theme of the night, but horrific just the same. I bet that, under the long skirt of Rodale’s witchy black dress, her feet weren’t touching the ground. “If you deadbeats don’t dance, it’s suicides all next week,” Riggs roared above the hissing speakers. “And not just members of my basketball team.”

Riggs wasn’t just the gym teacher/ basketball and volleyball coach. He also taught biology. His reach was far and wide in Redgrave High, assigning push-ups or suicide laps around the gym if you ticked him off. Inspired by his threat, a smattering of bodies joined the teachers. All eyes observed their zombie-esque jerking gyrations with glee.

“Now,” Alec said in my ear.

Hunching low, we slide behind the dance-floor wallflowers hugging the edges of the gym. In tandem we placed our hands on the edge of the stage and hopped aboard. Not a soul noticed as we skidded across the wood floor and ducked into the small storage closet along the far end of the stage.

I closed the door. Shutting us in. My vision allowed me to see in the dark, but Alec resorted to feeling the wall to get a sense of the room. The music droned on, the bass muffled but pounding in time with my heart. I didn’t want to be this close to Alec. Well, I did. But I shouldn’t even be in the same room with him. Not until we were on the same page, both agreeing that for his sake, it was best if we were apart. Goose bumps traveled the length of my arm and shoulder where we touched. Spikes of need shot through me, a yearning that festered in my stomach as I fought against the pull of Alec’s body so near mine.