Chapter 01
Chapter 02
Chapter 03
Chapter 04
Chapter 05
Chapter 06
Chapter 07
Chapter 08
Chapter 09
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Italian class is like one of those cliché horror-movie villains who just refuses to die.
You think you’re done, that the awfulness is over, that everything is finally going to be okay. You think that it’s time for you and the other survivors — exhausted, bloodied, but still standing, if only barely — to share a moment of relief or grateful tears or maybe even some shaky laughs. Maybe you’ll all go out for pizza or something and talk about how lucky you are to be alive. But — nope! — suddenly the hellscape is before you once again, the monster back for one final attempt to drag you kicking and screaming into an early grave, all of your happy visions of the future dissolving into tattered, broken, hopeless dreams.
Okay, it’s possible that analogy got a little bit away from me.
I suppose it’s not really quite that bad. And it’s entirely my own fault that I’m sitting here right now. I could have left Italian behind with my junior year, but did I? No. No, instead I signed up for AP Italian, which was completely voluntary, which means, to be clear, that I could have not signed up for it. Somewhere in an alternate universe there is an alternate Cyn blissfully napping in study hall right now or taking an extra elective or going out for coffee, thinking about how nice it is that her days in Italian are finito.
Sometimes I make really questionable decisions.
Not always, though. I look to my left, where my lovely boyfriend, Ryan Halsey, is sitting, still so completely worth staring at, and also still my boyfriend, and I congratulate myself on the decisions that led to this happy result. Well, to be fair, there were plenty of questionable decisions involved in there along the way. But the main decision, to fall in love with Ryan, was truly outstanding, and so let’s just think about that one, okay?
I also stand by my decision to save Annie from her demonic would-be abductor/husband and evil former librarian, Mr. Gabriel. Both the first time, last fall, and then again this past summer at camp. She is also here, sitting to my right. One of the few good things about how Signorina Benedetti runs her classroom is that she lets us sit wherever we want, just like actual college students supposedly do.
And really, other than forty-five minutes of advanced Italian three times a week under the firm, merciless, and often incomprehensible hand of Signorina Benedetti, things are actually pretty great right now.
The main great thing, of course, is that we — Annie, Ryan, Leticia, Diane, William, Peter, and me — are all still here and alive. In case you have forgotten, there was a lot of almost-dying over the past several months. (There was also some actual dying, by other people, but I’m trying to focus on the positive at the moment.)
Also great: no one has broken up since the summer! Ryan, as I have mentioned, is still my lovely boyfriend. William is still Annie’s lovely boyfriend, and Leticia and Diane are still each other’s lovely girlfriends. We are all deliriously besotted.
So we are back at school for our senior year, there is lots of love going on, and no one has been killed or damaged by demons for just over two months now. In fact, there have been no demons at all since we saw the last of Mr. Gabriel and his horrible little brother at camp over the summer. Well, except for Peter, who is, of course, one of the rare non-evil demons. And who is lovely in his own way. Ways. Shut up. And he’s not actually here; he’s at some other high school, pretending to be a normal if especially attractive human boy who just happens to have amazing musical-theater writing and composing skills. But he checks in from time to time. Which is not confusing or distracting to me at all.
Another super great thing is that Mr. Henry has announced the musical for this fall, and it is Les Misérables. Which has me all excited because the barricade, and has Ryan all excited because Javert, and has Mr. Henry all excited because apparently he’s always wanted to do this show and this is the first time all the stars have aligned or whatever and he has the budget and the resources and everything else necessary to achieve this lifelong dream. Which we are all very happy to be a part of. Because we love Mr. Henry, and this will be the last show we ever get to do together. And also we love Les Misérables.
We just found out this morning, and so Ryan and I are especially not very focused on Italian at the moment.
Javert is the role that Ryan has wanted to play pretty much since birth. He loves Les Misérables even more than The Scarlet Pimpernel, and trust me, that’s really saying something. I’ve already caught him singing “Stars” under his breath twice since the period started.
As for me, I am busily drawing little preliminary sketches of what the barricade might look like for our show. Mr. Henry has already named me tech director again, so I can get started right away. Ryan has to wait until this Friday’s auditions, and then callbacks, to really know the part is his, but of course there’s no question he’s going to get it. And then we’ll be able to work on the show together, which we haven’t done since Sweeney last year. But this time we’ll be together-together the whole time, and I’ll get to watch him at rehearsal possessively instead of longingly, and we’ll get to experience the magic of the show coalescing side by side, which is pretty much the most romantic thing I can think of.
Once upon a time, I would be getting very nervous right about now. Nervous that everything is a little too good, and that surely something terrible is about to happen and screw everything up.
But not this time. This time yours truly is going to trust all of this goodness with her whole heart and not be afraid. Because we have all suffered a great deal to get to this point, and we deserve every bit of this happiness. I’m not going to ruin it by thinking about unpleasant possibilities. Like, for example, about how easy it seems to be for demons to intrude into our lives on a fairly regular basis, or about that last trip I still need to make to the demon world to fulfill my deal with the demon queen. Besides, she seems to have things pretty well in hand down there, and Mr. Gabriel is locked up tight under her watchful eyes and teeth and stingers and other parts, and so there’s no reason she’d need to call on me and my special demon-resistant “super-roach” power (yay for flattering demon names for things) anytime soon. There is no reason to fear anything demon related at all.
The bell rings and we can all stop pretending to pay attention. Well, except Annie, who may possibly have actually been paying attention.
Ryan practically leaps out of his chair with all the excited energy he’s been holding in check. “I can’t believe auditions are this Friday. He could have given us more time.”
“Why do you need more time? You know what you’re going to sing. You’ve got all week to practice. And you know the part is yours, anyway.” I place a calming hand on his thigh. “Relax!”
“I can’t relax! I’m too excited! Come here and distract me.” He pulls me up into a deliciously tight embrace, as though he’s trying to absorb me by osmosis. But not in a creepy way. My mouth is slightly smushed against his chest, but I don’t mind. It’s hard to talk at times like this anyway, when I am temporarily overwhelmed by all the nice, warm feelings involved in the hugging. Ryan is very good at making me think happy thoughts. And feel happy feelings. Happy, warm, tingly, exciting feelings.
I hug him a little tighter. And then a l
ot tighter.
“Hey,” he says, laughing. “Careful, or you’re going to get us detention. Again.”
“Worth it,” I murmur against him. I am aware that my hands have started wandering outside the school-approved hugging zone, but I don’t care.
“Well, yes,” he agrees, “but it would be better not to get detention, and then you can come over after school instead of both of us having to sit and stare wistfully at each other across the room while Mrs. Manning glares at us for an hour and a half.”
He makes a good point. I put my hands back where they belong. They are sad, but I tell them we will make up for it later.
There is brief good-bye-for-now kissing and then we go to our separate classrooms. I have AP English with Annie and Leticia, which is generally a good time. But now that I’m not distracted by my warm, tingly Ryan-feelings, I find myself thinking again about how Old Cyn would totally be feeling anxious right now, worrying that we can’t trust the good times, that we are all just being lulled into a false sense of security by the cruel and tricksy universe.
But that’s dumb, I remind myself. Old Cyn is crazy. Everything is awesome!
I walk to class with Annie and smile very brightly and non-anxiously at Leticia, who gives Annie a what is wrong with our dear Cyn? kind of look that makes us all laugh, and soon enough I forget to think about all the things that aren’t going to go wrong and remember that things are really as awesome as I knew they were.
After school, Ryan drives the two of us to his house. We listen to the complete symphonic recording of Les Mis, singing along, and I love that Ryan doesn’t care how thoroughly I cannot sing. My enthusiasm more than makes up for my lack of musical talent, I believe. I shut up for all the Javert parts, though, because oh, my God I love listening to Ryan sing. Especially roles that he particularly loves, like this one. He starts off kind of just fooling around but he can’t help it, within a couple of lines he’s completely into it, eyes closed, hands outstretched dramatically, voice full and strong and powerful and amazing.
It’s adorable that he’s worried about whether he’ll get the part. He’s perfect.
We stop singing after Javert’s suicide, because I have to kiss him, and then there is a lot of that for a while. Kissing Ryan still makes my whole brain turn into a lovely sort of mush. I am vaguely aware that the music from the rest of the show is continuing to play in the background, but mostly I am just aware of Ryan and myself and the parts of us that are touching and how electric every part of me feels when we do this and there’s no sense of time or place or anything, just the kissing and being in love and absolutely nothing else.
I barely have any brain left at all by the time I make my way home.
When I arrive, there is a letter waiting from Peter.
Peter writes me letters now. It is a thing that he does. A very Peter kind of thing.
The whole Peter subject is still kind of a touchy one. Because of the way that I kissed him that one time. And I get it — of course I do. Ryan feels about Peter the way I feel about Jules, who is luckily far away and is only a summer-camp issue. I know Ryan is in touch with her, which is fine, of course, because they are Just Friends and they should totally be in touch whenever they want. As long as I don’t have to see her or hear about her and Ryan lets me sort of pretend that she doesn’t exist.
Peter, on the other hand, is only about an hour away. I have no doubt that his selection of high school was very deliberate: far enough that I couldn’t really object on any reasonable grounds, but close enough for him to be able to make a nuisance of himself. Well, a potential nuisance, anyway. To be fair, he has not once shown up or interfered in our lives or otherwise abused his relatively close proximity. But he likes to remind us that he’s there. A lot.
And the way that he does this is by sending me letters.
I told him from the very beginning that I show them all to Ryan, because I am not keeping anything from Ryan on that front. (Except, of course, for the dreams I still have about Peter, which do not count. I don’t discuss those with anyone. Not even Annie. There are some things a girl just has to keep for herself. To herself, I mean. To herself. And it’s not like I dream about him on purpose. Or that I would ever really do any of those things with him. Never mind what things. Leave me alone.) Unfortunately, this only makes Peter push things even further in the letters, because he likes to mess with Ryan. I think I have convinced Ryan that this is the case, and that if Peter were writing just to me, the letters would not be nearly so . . . provocative.
I don’t think Peter can feed (demonically) on any drama he might create between us from so far away, but I suspect it gives him great pleasure to try.
My mother hands me the letter when I walk in. She is wearing one of those I’m trying not to have any kind of expression expressions that drive me up the wall.
“That’s your camp friend, right?” she asks. She asks this every time.
“Yes.”
“And you’re sure he just —”
“Yes, Mom. He just wants to be friends. Ryan knows that Peter writes to me. We talk about theater and stuff. There is nothing shady happening here. Not that it is any of your business.”
“Okay, okay,” she says, retreating back into her office. But she pauses in the doorway. “It’s just . . . you know . . . he writes you letters. It’s so old-fashioned and romantic.”
“Peter’s an old-fashioned kind of guy. But they’re not romantic. Trust me.”
I head to my room and close the door. Then I sit on my bed and look at the letter.
My name and address are, as usual, written in Peter’s ridiculously elegant hand, with little flourishes on all the uppercase letters. The return address is ever so slightly darker, as though he were pressing just a little harder on the pen, as if to subtly call my attention to his location and how not-so-very-far away it is. This may seem a far-fetched interpretation, but I suspect I am correct.
With a sigh, I tear it open and begin reading.
My dearest Cynthia, it begins. The letters of my name are even more perfect than all of the other letters. As though he wrote them very slowly and deliberately.
I sigh again and read on.
After the usual opening pleasantries, he updates me on his current projects — the amazing material he submitted to the drama teacher was well received, and his one-act musical is currently in rehearsals. He promises to send tickets if I would like to attend. He shares his latest thoughts and plans about what he might do after graduation, where he might want to travel, where he might decide to go to college.
I know that he tells me all of these things because I’m the only one who really understands how important his hard-won faux-human life is to him, and how much he went through to get it. And I like hearing it, because I care about him and want him to be happy. And I owe him, because he helped us fight Mr. Gabriel and his horrible brother. Even though it was technically kind of Peter’s fault that we had to fight them in the first place. Well, second place. But it wasn’t on purpose. And without his help and the help of the demon queen (aka Ms. Královna, which was her temporary human name last fall and still the only name we actually have to call her), we never would have succeeded in driving Mr. Gabriel into captivity.
And during that whole camp struggle, Peter’s one true friend and human helper/companion-person died trying to save my life. (RIP Hector.) And so now Peter is pretty much alone in the human world, and I am the only one he can really talk to without having to hide who and what he is. And so it is fine that he writes to me, and fine that he wants to keep me up-to-date on all the exciting things happening that he always wanted to have happen.
But somehow the sight of his handwriting, the feel of the paper in my hand, everything that is so completely Peter about both the form and content of his communication always puts me back in that moment at camp when Ryan had abandoned me and Peter was the only one still standing by me, until he wasn’t standing, he was kneeling, and then he was kissing me, and then I was
kissing him back.
I don’t want Peter. I don’t. I want Ryan. I love Ryan. And I stopped that terrible, incredible kiss very shortly after it started, and it never happened again. Despite several offers of a repeat performance on Peter’s part.
But I can still remember how much I liked it. And there is a tiny traitorous part of me that wants to do it again.
It is seriously only a tiny part. Like probably just a single cell. Maybe just an electron or something. And if I could locate it and cut it out of my body, I totally would. Because I hate that reminder of my (brief! very, very brief!) betrayal, and I hate the way that part of me still gets excited when one of Peter’s letters arrives in the mail.
As always, I hope this missive finds you well. Please give my best to Ryan. Unless you guys broke up. Did you break up? Don’t forget to tell me if you break up. Remember, I am only an hour away. I can be there anytime you need me.
He always says something along those lines. He does it to irritate Ryan, of course. And asking him to stop would only make it worse, so I just ignore him.
I tuck the letter into my bag to present to Ryan in the morning. Full disclosure. No more secrets.
I feel a tiny electron-size twinge somewhere deep inside me.
Almost entirely no more secrets.
I sigh again and head downstairs to see what the story is with dinner.
Ryan grimaces through the letter in the morning. When he gets to the end he turns it over and goes back to the beginning.
“Stop,” I tell him, grabbing for the letter. “You don’t need to read it again.”
He pulls it out of my reach. “I can read it again if I want to.”
“But why do you want to?”
He shrugs and keeps reading.
I had hoped he’d start to get used to the stupid letters and not take them so seriously. Because it’s nonsense, all the flirty stuff. Which I keep pointing out. And a rational person would maybe laugh and brush it off. But Ryan is scouring each finely penned word, searching for secret messages and hidden meanings. Or so I assume. He won’t actually say.
Curse of the Evil Librarian Page 1
