by Stacey Jay
"Um, stare much, Megan? Don't you have somewhere to be?" She crossed her arms, wincing as her hand brushed against the bandage.
Looked like whatever was under there hurt way more than a tiny needle hole as well, like it ached the way a zombie bite (or two) would ache. The RCs last night definitely would have had to take a chomp of their Maker before they went back to their graves, and Monica had most certainly been near the scene of the crime.
"What happened to your arm? That looks pretty bad," I asked before I could think better of questioning the mistress of evil.
Her eyes got bigger, but she only paused a second before speaking. "I had an allergic reaction to that orange stuff they put on my arm at the blood drive. Just shows what you get for trying to help those in need."
"You only did it because Andy bet you five dollars that you wouldn't," London said, obviously amused by Monica's plight.
"Whatever," Monica said, giving me the signature what-kind-of-scum-are-you Monica glare. Like I was the one who had offended her instead of London. "This is the senior girls' class, Megan. So why don't you make like a milk-carton kid and get missing."
"Yeah, come on, Meg." Ethan bounded across the room and grabbed me around the waist, pulling me out of the room with Jess following close behind. "See you girls later."
I was so freaked out by the touchy-feely thing Ethan was pulling, gluing me to his side, that all thoughts of zombie bites fled my mind and I almost missed Monica and London looking at me like I was some total skank. Then I was so freaked out trying to figure out why they thought I was a skank that I didn't realize Ethan was pulling me toward his lips until said lips were pressed against my cheek.
For a split second, the entire world disappeared. Nothing existed except Ethan's strong arm around my waist and the feel of his lips pressing softly against my skin, only inches from my mouth. If I were to turn the slightest bit to the left, our lips would be touching-we'd really be kissing, just like we should have been last-
"You looked great in there, babe. I better step up my game before the homecoming dance," Ethan said, pulling me even closer before heading to the door.
Babe? Homecoming dance? I didn't have time to pick my jaw up off the floor before he was shooing me out to his car, Jess hot on our heels.
"What the-"
"You need a ride somewhere, Jess?" Ethan interrupted before turning back to my poor, stunned best friend.
"Um, no, just let me grab my sweater," she said, sticking her head in the backseat.
"Are you sure, Jess?" I asked.
"Yeah, I'm meeting Dad and Clara and James for pizza down the street." She slammed the door and started backing away. "But I'll talk to you guys later."
As Ethan turned back to me, Jess made a classic "ohmygod what haven't you been telling me" face and mouthed that I should call her and spill all as soon as possible. I smiled, trying to act like I knew what I was going to say to her.
"What the hell was that about?" I snapped at Ethan as soon as Jess turned.
"Your leotard crawl up your butt or something, Schmeg?" Ethan asked as he opened the door for me.
"I'm not wearing a leotard, doofus," I said, sinking into the passenger's seat, sensing he wouldn't give me a straight answer until we were alone.
"Doofus? Are we in third grade?" he asked once he was in the driver's seat.
"Fine, do you prefer assface?" I asked, turning to glare at him. "What was with the kissy-kissy?"
"I figured I would need a cover for hanging around you so much. Pretending to be your new boyfriend and date to homecoming solved that problem." He shrugged as if this were no big deal while I did my best to control my fury and embarrassment.
Fury because he'd decided this without even asking me. Embarrassment because I'd nearly taken the fake kiss and turned it into a real kiss, right there in front of everyone.
"But what about Monica? She's never going to buy-"
"She'll buy it. We've been friends forever. She knows I fall hard and fast if I fall at all."
Fall hard and fast? Did that mean Ethan had been in love before?
Better question, of course, was why did I care?
"What do you mean 'hanging around me so much'?" I asked, that part finally penetrating. "You're my tutor. How long can it take to learn whatever I need to-"
"That's not why I'll be babysitting you for the next week or two."
Babysitting? What was I, two years old? "Then why will you be-"
"Nope, can't tell you. Classified information." He dropped that bombshell and calmly continued to drive, as if the subject were closed.
"No way," I said, really getting angry. Angry enough to forget how cute he was and that he'd had me feeling all mixed up and crushy for the past day and a half. "If you're babysitting me, I deserve to know why. Just like I deserve to know what is happening at my school."
"No, you don't." Argh! "Haven't you heard ignorance is bliss?"
"So you're just going to boss me around and pretend to be my boyfriend and I have nothing to say about it?"
"Yeah, that's about it."
"Well, that sucks," I said, doing my best not to scream when he shrugged again. Fine-I would destroy his calm with logic. "What if I already have a date to the dance? Ever think about that?"
"You don't. Your mom told me last night."
God, Mom! When would she learn to keep her mouth shut? "So what? Josh was about to ask me. We're dating, and London and Monica…" Oh crap, the arctic looks they'd given me suddenly made sense. I groaned. "Now they think I was leading Josh on."
"They'll get over it."
"No, I don't think they will," I said, really starting to lose it. "And that means I might not make the pom squad."
"Then you'll get over it."
"Arrr!" I screamed, banging my hand against the glove compartment. "You are ruining my life!"
"No, I'm saving your life," Ethan yelled, so loud I jumped back against the door.
Jeez. Where had freak-out boy come from?
Neither of us said anything for a few moments while Ethan turned off on a side street and parked. He turned off the car and just sat there, staring straight ahead. I was getting ready to say something, just to break the totally weird and uncomfortable silence, when he started talking, really softly. "I carried you across the cemetery that night. You were so small and… you were bleeding so bad it was all over me by the time I reached the Elder who was supposed to be teaching all the new second-stagers how to seal their first grave."
I didn't know how to respond to the obvious pain in his voice, so I didn't say anything, just sat there trying to swallow past the lump in my throat. Wow, who knew he was still so upset about the night of my attack?
"I was pretty sure you were dead, and I was bawling like a baby." He took a deep breath and let it out really slowly. "Because I knew it was my fault. If I hadn't dared you to come, if I hadn't told you which cemetery we'd be at, you would have been at home in bed."
He turned to look at me, though I could tell it wasn't easy for him. "You would have been safe."
"Ethan, you didn't know there would be RCs in the graveyard. And you didn't really think I would take the dare. You were joking, I-"
"No, I wasn't. I knew you would come." He laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound. "I thought you were ready to move up. Sure, you were just a kid, but you were so powerful back then. You were way stronger than I was, and I knew how upset you were that Monica and I were going to second stage without you."
"So you didn't want me to be upset. How is that being-"
"It was being stupid. You were ten years old. You weren't ready, just like you're not ready to know Protocol secrets now. SA has assigned me to be your bodyguard for a few weeks, so just deal with it and don't ask questions you know I can't answer."
Oh. My. God. So that was it. Ethan felt guilty and thought he could protect me if he kept me in the dark. It was really sweet.
And really freaking stupid. Ignorance was not bliss. If I was in danger,
I needed to know about it. Knowledge could mean the difference between knowing how to stay out of trouble and walking right into it.
This argument made sense to me, but I knew I would have to have something better to convince Ethan to talk. He'd been feeling responsible for my near death for five years. That was a long time for guilt to make him crazy.
Mind racing, I tried to figure out how I could have gone from a person in need of training to a person in need of protection in twenty-four hours. What had changed between last night and-
"The RCs. SA thinks they were after me," I said, with total assurance. That had to be it. "But why? They ran right past me."
"Megan, I mean it, I-"
"So… that means they were after someone else. Someone I know, probably," I said, thinking out loud. "Has to be, or I wouldn't be getting a babysitter. Did they find the RC graves and recover a totem? Something recognizable?"
I was so going to have to thank Mom for making me cram Settler stuff all day Sunday so that I was all up on my black-magic practitioner trivia.
"It would have to be something recognizable if they traced it back to me so quickly," I continued. "So what was it-a picture, a doll? Something that looked like one of my friends?"
"Stop, Megan. Please." The pleading looking in his eyes almost made me shut up.
"If one of my friends is in danger, shouldn't you be protecting them, not me?" I asked in my most reasonable voice. "I'm not trying to be difficult, I swear, but-"
"Good." Ethan started up the car and pulled out onto the street, clearly done with the conversation. "So, what do you Carol kids do for fun on a Thursday night? Let's go blow off some steam."
"I am not interested in going on a fake date with you."
"Who said it was fake?" he asked, shooting me a look I wanted to believe meant he thought of me as more than a kid he had to protect. Too bad I already knew the truth. Ethan had spilled his guts, and now I knew for sure he would always think of me as a little girl. A little girl he cared about, but not in the way I wanted him to care.
And I did want him to care. I really did. That made it all even worse.
"I want to go home. Now, please," I said, suddenly feeling very tired.
"Either come out with me and pretend to be half of a happy
couple to help cement our cover-"
"Cement our cover? Really Ethan, we're not spies for-"
"Or come with me to the graveyard for another Settler lesson.
Your choice."
I sighed. I'd had more than my share of graveyards the past few days. "Fine. Sonic. There should be lots of people there to observe our newly discovered love."
"I think we should have been going out for a while. Like, since the summer."
"That makes me look like a skank for going out with Josh. And remember Monica. Since you two 'hang' all the time and my powers only just came back?"
"True. Okay, so it was just fireworks at first sight that night at Mount Hope. I saw what a hottie you'd become and stole you from
Pickle." He smiled, obviously pleased with himself for his make-believe girlfriend stealing. "Who is a dink, by the way. His older brother is in my Psych 101 class."
"You're in college?" I asked, ignoring both the hottie and the dink remarks. Ethan didn't think I was hot. He was just building his little cover story and having way too much fun doing it, if you asked me. And Josh… well, maybe he was a little bit of a dink. But that didn't mean he wasn't gorgeous and a great football player and basically nice and completely boyfriendworthy.
"Yeah. I take classes up at Williams on Tuesdays and Thursdays," he said as he pulled into one of the empty spaces at the drive-in. "I'm going part-time until I decide my major."
We chatted about his classes and my classes and other neutral topics while we placed our order with the carhop and then ate our chicken sandwiches. Aside from feeding me a few of his fries, however, Ethan did nothing at all to act like we were a couple. Maybe he thought sitting in the car together was enough. We did get some curious looks from a couple of Josh's friends and his ex, Beth, flat-out stopped to stare.
She actually looked kind of pissed to see me with another guy, which was weird. Josh said he broke up with her, but maybe it was the other way around. That would sort of explain the anger, I guess. Maybe she didn't want him back on the market and potentially trying to hook up with her again.
Jeez… maybe Josh really was a total loser and I had been too blinded by his man beauty to see it. He had been fairly annoying last night with the arm pulling and the refusing to give me any attention once he was racing for beer money.
As far as Ethan and I went, however, I didn't know whether to be happy about the lack of fake PDA or not. I mean, how lame is it to enjoy having some guy pretend to like you? But then, it certainly was nice to be close to Ethan, like… the kind of close that seemed to occur only when I was about to pass out or he was playing my fake boyfriend.
I was so pathetic, especially considering I had much bigger things to worry about, like figuring out which of my friends was in danger. By the time we pulled up to my house, I was more mixed up than ever and very ready for a quiet evening at home.
Too bad the thing that came rushing around the side of my house had other ideas. It took me a second to realize it was a zombie gunning for Ethan's car, however, because the corpse was on fire. On fire… and wearing my homecoming dress!
CHAPTER 7
Ah!" I screamed as the zombie lunged on top of Ethan's car, hitting the windshield with a loud thunk. The glass didn't shatter, but it was only a matter of time.
If the fists slamming into the windshield were any clue, this dude definitely wanted in and believed in taking the direct approach. Reanimated Corpses, not so good with the whole door concept, apparently.
And this thing had to be an RC, although the telltale red eyes weren't visible through the flames. I'd never seen an Unsettled act so aggressively, not even a burning Unsettled. Which I'd seen once before, believe it or not. It was the summer of first grade, and the Unsettled had run through the park, where they were setting off a fireworks display. I opened the door and saw a fireball standing on my porch. Thankfully, everyone else in our neighborhood was down at the park, so no one saw my dad putting the flaming zombie kid out with a fire extinguisher.
But we weren't going to need a fire extinguisher for this guy. I rather liked the idea of sending him back to his Maker still burning. The twisted chick deserved it for destroying the world's most perfect dress. And it had to be a chick. No boy mind was capable of concocting something so purely, femininely evil.
I lifted my hands, focusing my power before I cast in the way Ethan had taught me to do the night before. "Rever-"
"Not through the glass!" Ethan yelled, slapping a hand over my mouth before I could finish the command. "Glass screws with paranormal vibrations. The command won't work and it might end up reflecting back on us."
"But Unsettled commands don't work on live people, do th- ohmygod!" The zombie slammed his forehead into the windshield, finally succeeding in cracking the glass.
"No, they don't, but it would sting like nobody's-" Another slam of the zombie head and the crack grew longer. "This isn't the time for a lesson. Stay in the car."
"No, I want to help, I-"
"Stay in the freaking car, Megan! That's an order!" he yelled before jumping out of the driver's side. The zombie snarled and leapt at Ethan, no longer interested in getting inside the vehicle now that his prey was on the outside.
He was after Ethan, not me. But why? And why had someone stolen my homecoming dress from the cleaners and dressed a corpse in it before…
The truth hit me just as Ethan lifted his hands and cast. "Exuro!" The zombie burned brighter and brighter, and then suddenly the fire went out and the charred remains of the RC fluttered to the ground. Ethan did a quick scan of the area, then whipped his phone out of his pocket. He was probably calling Settlers' Affairs, a phone call I didn't want to miss a second of overhearin
g.
I grabbed my bag and rocketed out of the car, running around to Ethan even as he gestured wildly for me to get in the house. As if. He might be my tutor and bodyguard and fake boyfriend, but he was not my father. The sooner he got that through his head the better, especially considering I had vital information he would want to tell the people at SA right away.
"Yes, I can hold, but it's urgent," he said to someone on the other line before turning back to me. "Get inside, Megan."
"No."
"Yes. Now. Or I'll hang up this phone and go lock you in your room before-"
"You do and I'll call the police and report you. This is the twenty-first century: You can't get away with kidnapping women and locking them-"
"You're not a woman, you're a kid, and-"
"Wait! I know why someone's after me. I can help," I said, holding up my hands and backing away as Ethan took a menacing step toward me. So much for the women's lib argument. What a chauvinist jerk.
"Talk. Fast," he said while I did my best not to break into a victory dance. Those two words had just confirmed the fact that someone was after me. Some Settler cop he was, getting outsmarted by a fifteen-year-old.
"Someone doesn't want me to go to homecoming. They're trying to make sure I don't go to the dance," I said, waiting for Ethan to work through the same logic that had brought me to this conclusion and congratulate me on my brilliance.
Instead, he started to laugh. "Right. Okay, I'll be sure to share your theory. Now get-"
"It's not a theory, it's the truth," I said, getting angry. "That zombie was wearing my homecoming dress. Why would someone go to all the trouble to steal the dress from the cleaners and put it on a corpse unless they were trying to send me a message about homecoming?"
"Megan, please-"
"And that thing was after you, not me. It stopped trying to get into the car when you got out."
"So?"
"So," I said, my tone making it clear he was the one with very little brain, "you said you were taking me to homecoming. Whoever doesn't want me at the dance must have found out and decided to eliminate my date and my dress at the same time."
