by Cassandra
“You couldn’t have told us that sooner?”
“Well, I’m telling you now,” Jessica pointed out and tried to keep her voice lighthearted.
“Yeah, at the ass crack of dawn on a Saturday morning. What are you even doing up this early?”
She flinched. She had already forgotten again that it was Saturday morning. Ashley had obviously still been asleep like any normal teenager who didn’t have Saturday detention. “Sorry. It’s just that I’ve only now seen all my missed texts and stuff. I saw how panicked you guys were, so I called you without thinking.”
“Still, why are you up so early?”
Jessica sighed. “Because I have a stupid Saturday detention.”
Ashley was quiet for so long that she thought the call had been dropped. She took a brief look at the phone to make sure they was still connected.
“A Saturday detention?” Ashley finally ventured. “You? Whoa. This is major. What on earth did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. Really.”
“A likely story.”
“It was in history class. I was with Chad.”
“Oooh, the hot pretend-cousin?”
“Okay, stop calling him that. It’s weird.”
“Whatever. Anyway, what happened? You two were canoodling in class?”
“Eww. No. And who uses words like canoodling?” Jessica shuddered.
“Well, what happened?”
“We were talking, that’s all.”
“About what?”
“Stuff.” She realized far too late how incriminating that sounded. It was still too early, and her brain wasn’t functioning quickly enough to come up with a believable lie.
“Stuff?” Ashley repeated, her interest entirely too piqued.
“Family stuff,” she said by way of explanation and tried to dilute the salaciousness of the word.
“Oh,” Ashley grunted. Much to Jessica’s relief, she sounded a bit disappointed.
“Anyway, he was particularly chatty during our history test, and Ms. Mitchell got all ticked off about it.”
“Well duh. What did you expect if you two were talking through a test? Come on, Jess. Miss Goody-Two-Shoes. You should have known better than that. Ms. Mitchell probably thought you guys were sharing answers.”
“That’s exactly what she thought. So now we both have Saturday detention and have to take the test over.”
“That sucks.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What kind of family stuff was so important that your cousin couldn’t wait until after class to talk to you about it?”
Jessica swore inside her head and tried to think fast. “Um… It was nothing. Just…Grandma Ethel and… One of her favorite cats has been sick so we needed to go to the pet shop after class to get medicine and—”
“Yeah, okay, whatever,” Ashley cut her off, not interested in hearing about a sick cat.
“Well, I have to get going,” she lied because she needed to end the conversation before her friend could ask anything else she couldn’t answer. “Tell Erik and Sara I’m all right.”
“Hey—want to go back out for ice cream again? We’ll pick you up this time. That will save you from walking through creepy alleys. You know, after you get out of your detention with your hot cousin. As a matter of fact, bring him along too!”
“Um… I’ll have to take a raincheck on that.”
“Jess—”
“My grandma’s cat—we’ve got to go with her to the vet.”
Ashley sighed, and Jessica could practically see her rolling her eyes. In all seriousness, she wasn’t too keen to go anywhere near that area of town again. The demon attack was still far too fresh in her mind. Even though Debbie McCrow and her friends were unlikely to send anything after her after Chad had literally scared the puke out of her, Jessica still needed time.
What are the chances that they might try to retaliate through my friends? The thought drifted through Jessica’s mind.
“Hey Ash, do me a favor. If you guys do go out for ice cream again—how about going to Betty’s?”
“Betty’s? You can’t be serious. The old people’s ice cream shop? It only has like three flavors. And all they play is old music.”
“Not old. Vintage. I think it’s pretty cool.” Jessica hoped she sounded convincing. She hadn’t forgotten that Betty’s was the only ice cream parlor in town that had protective charms over it.
“I think you’ve hung out with your grandma too much,” Ashley teased.
“Come on. We could use a change in scenery.”
“Does that mean you and your cousin will come?”
“Maybe. We’ll have to see what the day brings.” She smiled coyly and didn’t want to make any commitments. Her days had been so crazy lately that she knew she couldn’t afford to make any promises.
“We’ll take a raincheck on that. I’ll talk to you later. Let us know when you and your cousin are done with detention.”
“All right. Later.” Jessica ended the call.
She ventured downstairs and headed to the kitchen, where her father listened to the news on the radio and started the coffee pot.
“Morning, Dad.”
“Morning, Jess. Are you hungry? There are some donuts on the counter.”
“Awesome,” she cried. She selected a strawberry donut and retrieved a cup from the cabinet.
Mark cleared his throat awkwardly, turned to her, and watched as she poured herself some orange juice. “So…this Chad boy…”
She paused. His tone was discomforting and she hoped this discussion wouldn’t go where she thought it was going. She clutched her donut for dear life and stared back at her father with something akin to terror.
“This Chad boy,” he repeated. “Now, I don’t want to know all the details. I simply want to know—is he close to finishing his investigation?”
Jessica exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. With her donut and juice in hand, she took a seat at the kitchen table. “I don’t know. Really.”
“You don’t know? Then what the heck have you been doing all this time if not…helping him with…whatever?”
Fighting demons and learning how to knit with old ladies, Jessica thought but knew she couldn’t say that out loud.
“Making sure he seems like a believable high school student.” She took a bite of her donut and talked around it. “You know, I give him tips on how to be a realistic teenager. That kind of thing. He’s kind of old and out of touch.”
Mark grumbled. “Well, what do you have to help him with today?”
She swallowed the bite of her donut and licked frosting off her fingers as she thought quickly. Honestly, she was surprised that her father had asked her about anything at all. It was obvious he had little interest in magical endeavors. Then again, she supposed she should appreciate his fatherly concern. At the end of the day, he merely wanted to know she was safe.
“I guess I’ll have to, um…sort of create a map of the school for him. So when we get a break, he can sneak off to do whatever it is he has to do. I, on the other hand, will simply finish my history test.”
He nodded, apparently satisfied with her answer.
The doorbell rang.
“That’s probably him. I’ll see you later, Dad.”
“All right. You be careful out there,” her father muttered.
Jessica grabbed an extra donut and headed to the front door. She opened it to find Chad on the doorstep. “You ready?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yep. Donut?”
“Don’t mind if I do.” He graciously accepted the donut and took a big bite while they descended the porch steps.
Jessica closed the door behind them. “Um…what? Where’s your car?”
He smiled at her. “It’s a nice morning. I thought we could walk. Get some exercise.”
She groaned. “It’s Saturday morning. I’m tired, and it’s too early for exercise. Look—wanna take my Jeep?”
“By Jeep, do
you mean that pile of rust over there?”
“Excuse you,” she snapped, “nobody calls my baby a pile of rust but me.”
Chad grimaced. “I’ll pass. I’d much rather walk. But if you want to take your uh…rust baby, you go right on ahead.”
Jessica sighed. “Never mind. I didn’t dress warmly enough. I don’t feel like freezing.”
“Huh?”
“My Jeep is an icebox. The heat doesn’t work.”
“Well, it’s not that cold today.”
“But it is inside my Jeep, trust me. It’s always several degrees colder than the actual temperature outside.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I know it doesn’t. Come on.”
They walked in silence, or at least Jessica did. Chad, on the other hand, felt the need to whistle, much to her frustration. The farther along they got, the more his whistling grated on her nerves.
“For God’s sake, Chad. Shut up! You sound like a screeching cat.”
He stopped. “I beg your pardon. All of that wasn’t me.”
She looked sideways at him. “What are you talking about?” She noticed him look off to the side and upward. Confused, she followed his gaze and spotted an actual cat stuck in a tree. The creature looked at them and screeched. “Oh, hell, it really was a cat. What’s it doing up there?”
Chad shrugged. “Something probably scared it.”
Jessica shook her head. “I will never understand cats. Why do they climb trees and then get too scared to come back down?”
“You should ask Grace one day.”
Jessica paused. “Ha. I never thought about that. I’ll definitely have to do that one day soon.” She looked at the cat again. “Well, we can’t leave it there.”
He turned and looked at her, his eyebrows raised.
“Have you forgotten who my grandmother is?” she asked. “She would never forgive me if I left a cat stranded like this.”
Chad sighed and lifted his palms up toward the cat.
“No! Wait!” she yelped when she realized what he was about to do.
Jessica knew she was being silly and that Chad could have gotten the cat down in the blink of an eye with his magical prowess, but she wanted to be the one to rescue it. She supposed being the granddaughter of a cat lady had made her feel some kind of moral obligation to help cats in need.
“We’re wasting time,” he cautioned.
“I’m not exactly in a hurry to get to Saturday detention,” she argued. She dropped her backpack on the ground. “Besides, maybe a rescue mission will help me finally wake up.”
“Suit yourself,” he conceded and folded his arms.
She approached the tree, grabbed hold of a low branch, and hoisted herself upward. As a child, she had been quite the tree climber, but it had been a few years since she’d done it. She was glad to see that the skill came back to her fairly easily.
The cat hissed as she drew closer to it. “Come on, kitty, kitty,” she cooed. “I won’t hurt you.”
When she reached for the cat, it lashed out and scratched her hand.
“Ouch!” she cried, annoyed.
“Are you all right?” Chad called from below. “It didn’t break the skin, did it?”
Jessica looked at her arm, grateful for the thickness of her jacket sleeve. “No,” she muttered. She looked at the cat, dismayed to see that it had climbed even higher. “Oh, come on. Why must you make this so difficult?”
She stared at the cat, exasperated when she realized that she only scared it farther up the tree.
I need something to scare it down, she thought.
Absurdly, she began to envision the ugly little imp that had flooded her bathroom. She was fairly sure that if something like an imp magically appeared and gave the cat a good poke in the ass, it would come down the tree in no time.
“Come on,” Jessica pleaded. She stretched and tried to reach for the animal again, desperate to get her hands on it and lower it to safety. It simply hissed again and scrambled farther and farther out of reach.
Suddenly, it gave a horrifically loud screech. Her heart pounded as she tried to figure out what had happened. Before she knew it, the cat leapt down. It landed on a lower branch and finally jumped entirely out of the tree to land perfectly on its feet. In the blink of an eye, it ran out of view.
“What the—” Jessica glanced back upward.
Surely, her eyes had to be deceiving her.
There couldn’t really be an imp in the tree. Could there?
But there was no mistaking it. It was small, ugly, and had wings.
It did a little twirl in the air and executed a sloppy bow. It then disappeared with a loud popping sound.
Jessica was so startled that she almost fell out the tree herself. Hastily, she climbed down, where she found Chad looking dumbfounded.
“Did you just conjure an imp to stab the cat in its ass to get it to jump out of the tree?”
“No!” she protested.
He nodded. “Yes, you did. I saw the whole thing.” He stared at her in simultaneous disbelief and amusement.
“But…but how?”
Chad raised his eyebrows. “That’s what I want to know. Did you think about imps?”
“I did, actually. I simply thought that the cat needed something to scare it back down. But I was…I was only imagining things, really. I thought about an imp coming and giving it a good poke and how that would probably scare it right down.”
“And that’s exactly what happened,” he marveled. He shook his head. “You really are something else, Jessica.”
“What are the chances that there was already an imp in the tree?”
“Zero to none. Regular people don’t simply think things into being, Jess. Not unless they are the descendant of powerful witches, that is.”
Jessica rubbed her forehead. She felt like she would have a headache. Despite her protest, she couldn’t deny that somewhere deep within her, there was definitely a feeling of…
Pride? Excitement?
Did I really make that happen? she wondered.
“Come on.” She plucked her backpack from the ground. “We better get to detention before we’re late and get ourselves in even more trouble.”
Chad fell into step beside her. He chuckled. “I never would have thought of something like that. I’ve rescued cats before. I usually simply levitate them out of trees. Before I had any magical training, I would lure them out with catnip.” He shook his head and laughed again. “Honestly, only you would have thought to get an imp to poke a cat in the backside.”
“Whatever. At least it worked.” She marched ahead quickly and only partially managed to conceal her grin.
Chapter Twenty-One
They had nearly reached the school when Chad’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket.
“Who’s calling me this early on a Saturday?” he muttered before he answered. “Hello?”
Jessica walked several paces ahead before she registered the absence of his footsteps beside her. She turned to find him practically frozen on the spot. He held the phone to his ear and listened intently. His brow had lowered.
Her skin prickled and she sensed that something was wrong. She walked back to him and tried to hear the voice on the other end.
“Right now?” Chad gasped. “How many?”
“What is it?” she whispered beside him.
He held a hand up to silence her for a second. She had a pretty good guess at what was going on. She was almost certain she’d heard the word ‘demon.’
Chad stared at the ground and closed his eyes for a second before he nodded. “Yeah. I had a prior engagement, but I’ll be there. I’m on my way now.”
Jessica’s stomach sank as he ended the call and returned his phone to his pocket. “Please tell me you’re not about to say what I think you’re about to say.”
“Well, you’re pretty intuitive, so I guess I better not say anything then.” He turned around. “Tell me, what happens in mundane school when y
ou miss a Saturday detention?”
She sighed. “More detention. Or possibly suspension.”
“Suspension?”
“That’s when you’re not allowed to come back to school for a while.”
Chad blinked. “And how exactly is that supposed to be a punishment rather than a reward?”
Jessica laughed, even though she knew it wasn’t funny. A Saturday detention was one thing, but a suspension? If she was suspended, her parents would put an end to her communication with Chad entirely, no matter how understanding they tried to be.
He sighed. “Well, even though I do not understand how a break from school is a bad thing, judging from your expression, you aren’t willing to risk it.”
“Because a suspension looks really bad on your school records. Extremely bad. It’s something colleges will most definitely notice. It basically means you’re so much of a troublemaker, even the school didn’t want you around for a while.”
“Ah. Okay. Now I get it.” He squeezed her shoulder. “I won’t do that to you. You go ahead and get to the school. I’ll handle this on my own.”
“Can’t you call Roger for backup?”
“Are you worried about me, Jessica?” He laughed and shook his head. “Look—just because you’re a girl with no training who can singlehandedly kill imps and demons, that doesn’t mean you need to be everywhere, you know. I can handle myself without Roger. He’s busy and probably doesn’t feel up to facing more demons in the first place.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” Jessica fumbled for words. “It’s just…”
“Just what?”
She groaned and actually stomped her foot but immediately regretted it when he snickered at the childish gesture.
By no means did she want to face demons again, but something told her she should go with him. That she needed to go with him.
Yes, he was a well-trained demon-hunter who knew what he was doing. But at this point, she genuinely felt like his apprentice to some degree. Plus, she couldn’t help but think that she actually needed some training.
But was it worth risking the trouble she would inevitably get in if she missed her detention?
She tried to imagine Ms. Mitchell’s reaction when she realized Jessica hadn’t shown up.
