by Bree Despain
I looked down at my white polo. The Gelal acid had apparently eaten away little holes in my shirt, and traces of the black ooze lingered around the edges of each.
“Oh, guts,” I said.
Claire made a gagging face. “What did you guys have to do?”
“Oh, um. We were helping out at some old guy’s house, and it turns out it was all infested. We had to squash some bugs.”
“Sick!” April said. “Dude, I’m so sorry. All we had to do was help paint a fence behind an elementary school … and then we got cookies!” She pulled a cookie wrapped in a napkin out of her purse and handed it to me. “Seriously, I think you deserve it.”
“Oh, thanks,” I said.
But I didn’t know when, or if, I’d ever be able to eat again. Not after what Talbot found in the master bedroom of that run-down house. That old man had never stood a chance against those monsters. At least Talbot had called the police so the old man’s body would be found soon and be taken care of. The only thing keeping me from bursting into tears over a total stranger was knowing that I had at least—in a way—been a part of destroying the demons that had killed him.
Claire gave my clothes another once-over. “So what kind of bugs did you have to kill anyway?”
“Really big nasty ones,” I said. Then I mouthed the word demons to April.
Oh, she mouthed back. She grabbed Claire’s arm and pulled her toward the bus. “Let’s not make a big deal about Grace’s nasty assignment,” she said. “You don’t want to make people jealous or anything.” April laughed uncomfortably.
“But I want to know what …,” Claire said as April pushed her up the bus steps.
“Hey, did you know that Jeff Read said you look hot in that sweater?”
I followed them into the bus and sat a row behind them. I listened as they chattered on about what else Jeff Read had said recently about Claire. I smiled and nodded in all the right places, but I didn’t really feel like talking anymore.
When we pulled into the parking lot of the school, I saw Gabriel waiting for us by the front doors. I knew I could fool Claire about the damage to my shirt, but I figured Gabriel would be a harder audience—besides, he could probably smell the Gelal and Akh stench that clung to my hair—so I made a beeline for Dad’s Corolla in the parish parking lot.
I pulled from my backpack my set of house keys, which also happened to have a spare to the Corolla on the ring. Hopefully, Dad wouldn’t mind if I borrowed it to get home. I even called and left a message on his cell phone, telling him I was doing so. He could always take the parish’s truck if he didn’t feel like walking.
I parked in the driveway and ran into the house. Mom called my name from the kitchen—followed by the wafting goodness of her pork tenderloin in Marsala sauce—but I pretended not to hear her and dashed up to the bathroom. I pulled off my nasty shirt, wrapped it in the towel I’d used to clean up with at the old man’s house, and shoved the bundle deep inside the bathroom trash can. I pulled off the rest of my clothes and stepped into the shower.
I lathered and rinsed my hair three times before I felt like the noxious scents from the afternoon had been washed away. But what were impossible to scrub out were the memories of the day that clung to me now—wiping down a crime scene, watching a demon die right in front of me, the expression on the face of that bodiless head, and Talbot finding that dead old man. I scrubbed and scrubbed. I sat in the shower with my knees pulled up to my chest and let the scalding water rain down on me. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t rinse those images out of my mind.
My life had changed in the last few hours.
I’d changed.
I felt like a different person, and part of me longed for Daniel’s arms, strong and true, to wrap me in his warm embrace. I wanted to hear him tell me that it was okay for me to be different now. That he still loved me no matter what.
When the water turned cold, I got out and changed into fresh clothes. My plan was to hide in my room for the rest of the night. I still buzzed so much from what had happened this afternoon I worried that if I spent too much time with anyone, they’d be able to tell I was hiding something. They’d be able to see the changes in me. I was just about to start in on homework at my desk when Charity knocked on my door.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Dinner,” she said, and gave me a weird look from the doorway.
“I’ll just get some leftovers later.” I turned away and gazed down at my book. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“No … Mom says everyone has to come. It’s a family dinner. Mom cooked, and we’ve got company.”
“Really?” Regular family dinner had been a Divine family ritual for the first seventeen years of my life, but now I could hardly remember the last time we’d all sat at the same table together—let alone had company. I guess I should have put two and two together when I smelled good things coming from the kitchen.
“Daniel’s here.”
“Ooh.” I loved that just the mention of his name could make my heart skip a beat.
“And that cute new religion teacher at your school. Pastor Saint Moon.”
“Oh.” My voice had a very different inflection this time. Gabriel was the last person I wanted to see at the moment. “I really do have a lot of homework. Can you tell Mom that I can’t—”
“Yeah, right. Mom’s full-on Martha Stewart-ing it down there. She made a four-course meal and pulled out the good china. I wouldn’t mess with her if I were you.”
“Great,” I mumbled.
Mom shouted our names from downstairs. Charity jumped like a frightened cat and yelled, “Coming!”
I got up from my desk and checked my reflection in my full-length mirror, just to reassure myself that there wasn’t any physical evidence left of what I’d done with Talbot this afternoon. Charity still stood in my doorway, so I pretended I was checking my makeup—but then I remembered I wasn’t wearing any.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah.”
I followed Charity down the stairs. Daniel and Gabriel sat at the dining room table with Dad and Baby James. Mom gave us a what-took-you-so-long look as she set a salad bowl on the table.
Gabriel stood up as Charity and I approached, and he bowed his head to me as I sat. I wondered if that had something to do with all of that Divine One stuff he’d been talking about, or if it was just another of his old-fashioned mannerisms. Then Gabriel turned and bowed to Charity.
She totally giggled and blushed.
I totally rolled my eyes.
And Daniel totally snorted.
Charity had no idea just how too old Gabriel Saint Moon was for her to have a crush on him.
I sat next to Daniel. “Hey,” he said, and squeezed my hand. The edge of the bandage on his arm was all frayed—probably because he kept picking at it.
“Hey,” I said back, trying to sound as normal as possible. Because that was what Daniel wanted: normal. Not different, like how I felt now. I smiled casually, or at least I tried to make it seem as casual and natural as I could, but then I worried I was overdoing it. I couldn’t look Daniel in the eye, either. What if he could see right through my act? I dropped the awkward smile and turned my attention to Baby James, who attempted to pull a Houdini act with the straps of his booster chair. After I wrestled James back into his seat, Dad blessed the food and Mom dished up salad for everyone.
“This all looks excellent,” Gabriel said as Mom handed him back his plate. “I haven’t eaten like this since the last time I was in France.”
Mom smiled. “Why, thank you, Pastor Saint Moon. We’re actually having Italian tonight. Part of my family originates from Rome.” She then launched into our more-than-diverse heritage as Gabriel nodded along and asked questions about her family. Listening to Mom engage in a real conversation almost made me like Gabriel for a moment. Almost made me relax.
That is, until Dad turned the conversation in the opposite direction. “So, Gabriel, how is the s
enior community-service project coming along? I was afraid it would get cancelled altogether when Mr. Shumway quit.”
“Quite well,” Gabriel said with an ancient smile. “Don’t you agree, Daniel?”
Daniel had his cell phone out. “Yeah, I guess.” He checked the screen of his phone and then put it on his lap. “We’re hoping to have the store up and running again by Halloween. Katie had a great idea to host a holiday street festival outside the store as part of a grand reopening. Games, trunk-or-treating, concessions, fund-raising raffle.”
“That sounds fabulous,” Mom said. “I should make some caramel apples and popcorn balls to sell for the fund-raising.” She almost sounded like her old self. “I can even help with the decorating.”
Charity coughed and gave me a look that seemed to say, Do you think Mom will even remember offering her help by tomorrow?
I shrugged.
“That would be wonderful, Mrs. Divine,” Gabriel said.
Daniel checked his phone again. “Katie will be really excited to have your help. I’ll give you her number.”
He looked at the screen of his phone one more time. Hopefully, he wasn’t expecting a text from Katie or something like that. But then a worse thought crossed my mind. It was hard to remember what had happened while I was in Mishka’s mind-control trance, but I suddenly remembered her saying something about partying with Daniel—tonight. But Mishka was dead, so if that was who he was expecting, then surely her text would never come.
“I’ll be pulling extra shifts until then to get the store ready,” Daniel said. I glanced at his phone, now just as anxious as he was to see if it beeped.
I wondered how I could ask him about what Mishka had said to me without giving away that I’d talked to her. Or the fact that I’d been involved with her death.
“And what about you, Grace?” Gabriel asked. “Are you finding your community-service project worthwhile?”
“Yes,” I said. Hopefully, he wouldn’t ask me anything too difficult to answer without red lie marks splotching up my neck. “More so than I thought I would.”
“Good. I was hoping you’d get into it. See just how much good a person can do in the world. I have a feeling you’ll be hooked by the end of the project.”
“I think I already am.” I didn’t have to hide any splotches on my neck—I was speaking the complete and total truth.
“Then perhaps my work here will be easier than I thought.” Gabriel stabbed a cucumber with his fork. I realized it was Mom’s special gold one, while the rest of us were eating with silverware. I couldn’t help staring at it.
Gabriel gave me a funny smile and wiggled his fork. “As you already know, I’m allergic to silver. It was kind of your mother to offer me such a nice alternative. I have to admit food doesn’t taste quite as good when eaten with plastic utensils.”
“That must be terrible,” Charity crooned. She sounded like she was trying to seem older.
Daniel’s phone beeped. I jumped. He grabbed it and practically shot out of his chair.
“I’m sorry, but I need to leave.”
“Really?” Mom said. “Are you sure? We haven’t even had the tenderloin yet.” She turned to Gabriel. “It really is magnificent, if I do say so myself. My mother’s recipe.” She looked back at Daniel with a sweet smile on her face. “It would be a shame for you to miss out, Daniel.”
I almost choked on an almond from my salad. That was the second time Mom had been nice to Daniel in one evening. Usually, she just tolerated his presence because Dad said she couldn’t forbid Daniel from coming into our house anymore. Mom turned her congenial smile back on Gabriel. Either Pastor Saint Moon was a great mood stabilizer for my mother, or she was trying that hard to impress him. Perhaps there was some benefit to having him around.
Daniel’s phone beeped in his hand. “Sorry, I really do have to run.”
“Where are you going?” I got up from the table. “I’ll come with you.”
“Grace,” Mom snapped. “We have company.”
“No.” Daniel was already in the foyer. He grabbed his jacket from the coatrack. “I told Mr. Day that if he needed me tonight, I’d come do an extra shift. I’ll be working late. Stay here and eat.” He went out the door before I had a chance to respond.
Why would he be so anxious about getting a text from Mr. Day?
But at least I knew it wasn’t from Mishka.
“Tell us more about France,” Charity said to Gabriel.
I sat back in my chair and stared at my food.
I suddenly had no appetite again.
AFTER DINNER
I was busy clearing the table while Mom had Charity and Dad helping her dig out all of our Halloween decorations from the basement storage room. She wanted to send them with Gabriel for the fund-raiser. Gabriel had offered his help, but Mom had shooed him off to Dad’s study, refusing to let him lift a finger.
I passed the study with an armload of dishes and saw Gabriel sitting in Dad’s chair, flipping through one of Dad’s many books. He ran his hand through his long, wavy hair. I was right; he and Talbot did look like they could be cousins sometimes—even if most of their features weren’t the same. I wondered if Gabriel really had done nothing to stop Talbot’s family from being slaughtered. How could he allow that after what had happened to his own sister?
I sighed. Is there a difference between being a pacifist and being a coward?
I went to the kitchen and deposited the dishes in the sink. When I came back through the hall toward the dining room, I found Gabriel standing in the study’s doorway.
“Did you want to ask me something?” Gabriel stepped sideways so I could enter the study if I wanted.
I hesitated and almost said no, but I couldn’t shake the image of Gabriel standing aside while a mother and father were murdered at a little boy’s birthday party. Had he actually been there? Or was it merely something that had been out of his control? I followed Gabriel into Dad’s study and sat in one of the chairs in front of the desk.
The only thing was, I had the same problem here as I did with Daniel. How could I ask him the questions I had without revealing how I knew what I knew in the first place?
“Something troubles you,” Gabriel said. “Are you still not seeing the merits of your service project? I can assure you, Grace, charity and compassion will provide a much fuller life than any other avenue in front of you.”
“But everyone is capable of charity and compassion. What I don’t understand is why you don’t use your special abilities to make a difference. There are a lot of dangerous things out there. Shouldn’t we be doing everything we can do to stop them?” I couldn’t let go of the thought of that old man killed in his house by those demons. What if Talbot and I had been able to find them earlier? What if we could have saved his life? “I don’t understand you. You have the ability to make a difference, but you just hide up in the mountains with your pack, completely cut off from the world. Why would you turn your back on what the Urbat were originally created to do? Why do you want me to do the same?”
“Because I am one of those dangerous things, Grace. And I don’t want you to become one of them, too.”
I looked away from his steel-blue eyes.
“My pack lives in seclusion because we removed ourselves from society for the sake of mankind—and for our own safety.” Gabriel picked up the book he’d been looking through. It was one of Dad’s werewolf lore books, filled with mostly myth. Gabriel flipped it open to a page with a drawing of a strange hyena-wolf-like creature. “Have you ever heard of the Beast of Gevaudan?”
I nodded. It was one of the more gruesome stories I’d read in the book.
“What do you know about it?”
“I read that a beast terrorized the French countryside in the 1760s or sometime like that. In three years, it killed a hundred and two people. Mostly women and children. Finally, a poor peasant supposedly killed the beast with a single shot to the chest with a silver bullet. He took the body of the beast
to the king and was rewarded with a fortune. Scientists claim it must have been some sort of hyena, but many people back then believed it was actually a werewolf that had been responsible for all those deaths.”
“They were partially right. It was werewolves, actually,” Gabriel said. “And there were a hundred and seventeen deaths. This book isn’t accurate. Well, actually, none of them ever are, since there’re only a handful of us who know what really happened.”
“You were there?”
Gabriel nodded. “You see, there was a time when my pack lived close to society. We intermixed like normal people. I even tried my hand at being a priest for a while—not quite the same as a monk. But our alpha at the time—his name was Ulrich—let the werewolves in our pack hunt at will. They were discreet at first, but many of them got out of hand. They believed that we, as superior creatures, should rule the countryside with terror. Ulrich started to believe that he could overthrow the government if the peasants were afraid enough to revolt. Many of the pack took pleasure in attacking women and children and leaving their disemboweled bodies near roads and forest paths for others to find. They’d sit in the town’s square and joyfully listen to the wails of the bereaved and the cries of the frightened.”
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. This was worse than the account in the book.
“King Louis XV eventually listened to the concerns of his people and raised a bounty on the head of the supposed beast. He conscripted peasants as soldiers to kill wolves, and sent his greatest noble huntsmen into the surrounding villages and forests. The king’s men pillaged many of the peasants’ homes for food and supplies, raped their daughters, and decimated their farms—all in the name of finding the beast. It became a very dangerous time for anyone suspected of knowing anything about wolves. Many in my pack were shot by the hunters while in their wolf forms. They all survived, of course, but it was still a very unpleasant way to live. Yet Ulrich and many of the wolves in our pack continued to kill—even at the risk of exposing us all.”
“That’s terrible. What did you do?”
