by Cassandra
He put his hands on his hips and shook his head. The two victims were beyond help, and he needed to get to the coven as soon as possible. They would be awfully pissed off if they found out about tonight from some morning radio jock rather than him, and he certainly didn’t want to listen to their nagging.
Police sirens howled down the road. He swore again and wondered what he could possibly tell them. Maybe he should simply hide so he wouldn’t incriminate himself.
Realizing that he didn’t have much time in which to make a decision, he crossed the graveyard hurriedly and ignored the pain in his leg. As he hobbled along, he saw flashlight beams dart across the silent burial ground. To avoid discovery, he ducked behind a tall headstone and sank into its shadow.
“Do you see anything, partner?” one officer asked another. Chad peeked around the headstone and saw Officer Jenkins with his partner. Jenkins’s eyes were wide and his gaze roamed constantly, likely looking for Chad—or, rather, hoping he wasn’t visible.
The demon hunter crouched farther and made sure he couldn’t be seen as he continued to watch as the other officers arrived. One man shivered and clearly looked spooked. “God, I hate this. I’m not superstitious or anything, but being called to a damn cemetery in the dead of night ain’t exactly the kind of night I ever look forward to having.”
Chad suppressed a laugh, practically squirming with impatience. As entertaining as it would have been to listen to them try to figure out what had happened, all he wanted was to get home and jump into bed. Being a professor by day and a demon hunter by night was exhausting.
“What the devil?” Chad overheard an officer say.
Devil? Not exactly, he thought to himself. Here we go.
Right on cue, the yelling and swearing started, a clear indication that the slain officers had been discovered.
“Oh, geez, here’s Duran,” one called. “What the hell happened here? There are no gunshot wounds or anything.”
From his hiding spot, Chad glanced toward the cemetery gates and wondered if he could escape unnoticed. The last thing he needed was for a nosy vigilante to look out a window somewhere and see him sneak off. He glanced back to check how far away the officers were. One of them made their way toward Jenkins again.
“I know this will sound stupid,” the officer began, “but if I didn’t know any better, I’d say these fellas were literally scared to death. But there’s no such thing, right?”
Of course, there is, Chad thought.
“Could have been massive heart attacks, you know?” Jenkins suggested.
“Two different men having massive fatal heart attacks at the same time? Come on, give me a break, Jenkins.”
“Well, what other explanation do we have?”
“I don’t know, but somebody’s gotta know something.”
Jenkins shrugged and scanned the cemetery again. His gaze finally landed on the headstone Chad crouched behind and nodded almost imperceptibly.
“I’m sure something will turn up,” Jenkins assured the man as he clasped his partner’s shoulder and steered him away.
The demon hunter drew a deep breath. He knew that was his cue to escape and wasted no time. He had to report to the coven.
Chapter Two
Jessica glanced at the clock on the wall above the blackboard. Perhaps it was simply her imagination, but the second hand seemed to tick especially slowly today. It was close to three o’clock in the afternoon, which meant the day was almost over at Bishop Fenwick High School. She only had to remain focused for less than a half-hour, then she would be in the clear.
Just because Jessica was an honor-roll student who took her grades seriously didn’t mean school automatically came easy for her. Most people thought she was some kind of genius, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. She worked hard for her grades, especially when it came to those subjects she wasn’t exactly fond of. This class—history—happened to be one of them. Each day, it took extra effort for her to keep her history grade up, but she managed. Most of the time.
A major test was scheduled, and Jessica knew it was of the utmost importance that she paid as much attention as possible to Ms. Mitchell’s lecture. Unfortunately, paying attention was easier said than done, thanks to the ridiculous girls at the table next to her.
Their constant muttering made it difficult to hear Ms. Mitchell, their voices like the buzz of mosquitoes in Jessica’s ears. How she yearned to swat each one of them. She tried hard to hold in her exasperated sigh and managed to do so, but she couldn’t help a quick glance their way. They didn’t seem to notice when she shot daggers at them with her eyes. She didn’t want trouble with them, but that didn’t excuse the fact that they worked on her very last nerve. If it had been possible to take an x-ray of her nerves at that very moment, she was fairly certain that she would find each one of their faces tattooed across her neurons.
Focus. Drown them out. Her right fist balled around the pen in her hand as she attempted to take notes. She clenched her jaw and tried to block their voices out as she wrote, but she wound up pressing the pen into the paper so hard that she poked a hole through her notebook.
She swore inwardly.
At that very second, one of the girls snickered. Her laughter was like nails on a chalkboard. Jessica glanced at them again. Had the snickering hyena really seen her poke a hole in her notebook all the way from another table?
No. She wasn’t looking Jessica’s way. Instead, she stared down at her phone and grinned. The hyena nudged the girls who sat on either side of her and showed them her phone.
Jessica looked at their oblivious teacher. Is Ms. Mitchell deaf or something? she thought irritably. Why doesn’t she ever notice them disrupting the class? Or does she simply not care?
After another fierce look at them, Jessica rolled her eyes. She halfway hoped they saw her.
How they hadn’t managed to flunk out of school already was beyond her. She supposed that when you were popular and pretty you didn’t have to work as hard as everyone else. At least, that was the case until karma turned them old and ugly. Jessica hoped that at their twentieth high school reunion she would be the one to have the last laugh. They would probably all be fat and their faces would already be wrinkled like prunes. The thought brought a smile to her face, but it was short-lived. After all, their twentieth reunion was so very far away.
She shook her head as if the act would clear it, then turned her attention toward the front of the classroom where Ms. Mitchell now read something aloud from their textbook. Jessica flipped hurriedly through the pages of her own book in an attempt to find the passage.
Only a little while longer, she told herself and glanced at the clock again to make sure it was still ticking. Almost there.
She shifted in her seat and prepared herself mentally to ignore the girls for the rest of class. Unfortunately, their words finally caught her attention. She froze in her seat, not looking at them, but listened intently and her stomach lurched.
“…the cops? Their dead bodies were found in the cemetery.”
“Where? Here?”
“Yes! At Greenlawn.”
“Okay, now that is creepy.”
“I know, right? You know what they’re saying though, don’t you? About what caused their deaths?”
“What?”
“Witchcraft.”
A new round of snickering ensued, and Jessica felt her blood begin to boil.
Don’t look at them. Don’t look at them. Don’t look at them, she chanted in her head. Her leg began to bounce under her desk in agitation and she stared holes in the blackboard although her vision had temporarily clouded over. She gripped her pen so tightly that her knuckles ached.
“Jessica… Hey, Jessica…” One of the girls chanted her name in a mocking, sing-song voice. Jessica bit her bottom lip, swallowed, and tried to ignore them despite the certainty of what would come next.
“Jessica, we know you hear us,” one of the others crowed. “Are you responsible for t
his? Tell the truth. Where were you this weekend? Please don’t tell me killing cops has become one of your pastimes.”
Don’t look at them. Don’t look at them.
“Or was it your grandmother? A batty old cat woman like her? I can’t believe she had it in her. She doesn’t really interact with people very much, does she? Only her filthy, smelly cats. What do you witches call cats, again? Familiars or something like that?”
Her jaw still clenched, Jessica glanced at them. Talking about her was one thing, but her grandmother? That was something else entirely. Her blood boiled so badly, she was certain that smoke came out her ears.
Even more frustrating was the fact that they clearly noticed her fury. They didn’t care. The angrier she became, the harder they laughed.
“Girls!” Ms. Mitchell reprimanded and glared at them.
Finally! Jessica thought. It’s about time.
“I’m glad you find the material so entertaining,” she reprimanded, “but I need you to keep it down back there.”
“Sorry, Ms. Mitchell,” the middle one whined with an apologetic look. She put her head down and pretended to focus on her book as if she actually paid attention. Of course, as soon as the teacher resumed her lecture, the girls refocused on tormenting Jessica.
“So, Jessica—come on, tell us. Is your granny a nasty ol’ cop-killer? What happened? Did they ask her about her potions books? Or did they try to give her a ticket for flying too fast on her broom?”
“Neither, actually,” Jessica spat back in a low voice. “They questioned her about the spells she put on your parents that potentially altered their DNA and caused them to have such stupid children. They wanted to know how strong her curse had been to make your IQs so god-awfully low, and whether there were any counter-spells. After all, if any of you ever have children, nobody wants them to be as intellectually inadequate as you. It would do too much damage to society.”
The girls fell silent, their mouths pressed into tight and offended lines as they struggled to find a retort. Jessica had the feeling that much of what she’d said had gone over their heads entirely.
Moments later, the ringleader gave Jessica a feral sneer and opened her mouth as if she had finally figured out what to say in response. Before she could speak, the bell rang.
Thank God. Jessica slammed her book shut and gathered her notes.
“Study hard, class,” Ms. Mitchell called as students shuffled out the door. “And for homework, finish reading the chapter and jot down any questions you have. I’ll answer them all tomorrow. Happy studying!”
Jessica grabbed her books and allowed herself a brief, smug smile in the girls’ direction before she darted out of the classroom. More than ready to leave school behind for the day, she practically ran to her locker. She paused for an instant and checked her schedule to make sure she had all the books she would need for her homework. Satisfied that she did, she pulled on her coat and fumbled in her pocket to retrieve only one of the two pairs of gloves she had with her.
In the back of her mind, she still thought about what the girls had said—not the part about her grandmother, but the part about the cops. Two cops actually had been killed at Greenlawn Cemetery the previous night. Their causes of death were unknown, according to the news report she’d heard on TV that morning. Though she hated to admit it, she’d thought about it all day and wondered what could possibly have happened to them. Something about the story shook her to her core.
She supposed it was unsettling for that kind of thing to happen in her neighborhood, especially when no one could even be certain of what exactly had happened. If someone had been arrested for the crime, it would have at least provided some peace of mind. But the police department was as baffled as everyone else. That didn’t exactly soothe her nerves. She felt like it was the kind of thing she’d expect to happen in a movie, not in real life.
Jessica closed her locker, tossed her backpack over her shoulder, and made her way down the long hall. She moved swiftly and barreled through her noisy classmates until she reached the school’s back exit, which led to the parking lot. Along the way, she heard snippets of conversation here and there. She was dismayed to find so much of the talk revolved around those dead cops but supposed it had to be expected. It was such bizarre news that it was bound to be a hot topic, and not only among those annoying girls but throughout the whole school. Heck, throughout the whole town.
Now, the problem was that Jessica had to get into her Jeep and drive home alone without freaking herself out over the mysterious murderer who could take down victims without a trace.
It would be a long ride home, to say the least.
Okay, Jessica. You will not be murdered on the way home, she thought to herself. So chill out. She repeated the inner pep talk in her head as she left the building and crossed the school’s parking lot. She tried to distract herself from thinking about the cops by attempting to recall Ms. Mitchell’s lecture, but her thoughts returned to the cackling girls from her history class instead.
She sighed and wondered if her smart-aleck remarks would come back to bite her later. While she wasn’t one to start trouble with anyone, there was only so much she could take. Besides, she knew those girls were harmless. Idiots and cruel to boot, but harmless nonetheless. Anyone could look at them and tell that they were all bark and no bite. If they had a problem with her, fine—she didn’t really care. Her grandma, on the other hand? They needed to leave her out of it. Messing with Jessica was one thing. Messing with her family was another.
Her old Jeep was a beaten and battered yellow, although both sides were newly decorated with dried dirt acquired over the weekend. She headed toward it and fumbled for the pair of extra gloves in her coat pocket. The heat in the Jeep had stopped working long before, so it was necessary to add extra layers for warmth while driving. Jessica marveled at how it was possible for the vehicle to somehow manage to feel colder inside than it was outside.
She was fairly certain that if there was any witchcraft in the world, it didn’t come from her grandmother. It came from her raggedy Jeep. The thing defied all rules of logic. It must be cursed. How else could you explain the twenty-degree temperature inside her Jeep during forty-degree weather?
The yellow popsicle. That was the private nickname she had given it.
Jessica tossed her backpack into the back seat and slid in behind the steering wheel. She put her extra gloves on over the ones she already wore and retrieved a warm knitted hat from the glove compartment. She dragged it onto her head and made sure to pull it over her ears. The two pairs of gloves stiffened and thickened her hands so she then struggled with her coat zipper for a moment before she managed to pull it all the way up to her chin. The layers were inconvenient, but it was either wear two pairs or risk having frost-bitten fingers by the time she got home.
No one wanted to go through their teenage years with no fingers. A time or two, she had considered getting mittens because she’d heard they were warmer, but they made her hands look like flippers. No one wanted to go through their teenage years with flippers, either.
She sighed again and felt all-around irritable. It was simply a miserable day. Her double pair of gloves felt more inconvenient than usual. She was scared someone would jump out of the bushes and kill her for no reason. And to top it all off, she couldn’t shake the memory of those girls and their stupid comments from running through her head.
Jessica fiddled with the radio dial in the hope that music could provide the distraction she needed but found no solace there. Even the radio was annoying. Every station she tuned to either played something old and outdated or the station was in the middle of a commercial. She was about to give up when she found something decent to listen to.
“All right!” she exclaimed and cranked the volume up so loud that she couldn’t hear herself think.
Her hands wrapped securely around the steering wheel, she pulled out of the parking space. She sang at the top of her lungs and beeped her horn at students who st
rolled innocently through the parking lot before she sped up and swerved around them. They shot her dirty looks and flipped her off, but she simply continued to sing. By the time she was a block away from school, she had almost managed to forget about the girls and everything else entirely.
The drive was short but had successfully managed to put Jessica’s mind temporarily at ease. Yet, once she pulled up in front of her house, she found a new distraction to occupy her.
She swore and wondered who had stolen her parking spot. Most of the neighbors had learned to stay far away from it. After all, she was a teenage driver with a very large and very dented and scratched vehicle. They didn’t want to risk their gleaming, properly functioning automobiles in harm’s way by parking too close to her designated space.
Clearly, someone hadn’t read the memo. Someone driving a gorgeous red Mustang convertible.
What was that kind of car doing parked outside her home?
Jessica stared at it, confused. Not to mention it almost blinded her. The car shined so brightly it was almost like looking into the sun. She kept her gaze glued to it anyway. As far as she was concerned, it was such a beautiful sight that it was worth the risk of blindness.
After she’d reluctantly parked across the street in front of someone else’s house, she cut her Jeep’s engine and simply sat there. She practically drooled as she fantasized about owning a vehicle like that herself one day.
What would those obnoxious girls say if they saw her driving in a car like that? All their witch jokes would probably freeze in their throats. Jessica grinned at even the thought of it. Until her teeth began to chatter, at least. Her darn Jeep was even colder when it wasn’t moving.
She sighed and watched her breath fog as she stripped off some of her layers and returned them to the glove compartment. The process had become routine since she had learned the hard way that it was best to keep them in the car. The year before, she constantly forgot them in the house and found herself unable to warm up again until her third-period class.
