Demon High

by Lori Devoti

  With it tucked under my arm, I scurried back home. I didn’t want to waste his good intentions by getting caught.

  The muffins were done, so I pulled them from the oven and arranged them on a plate. Then I set the table, placing the paper folded lengthwise next to Nana’s setting. As I did, I couldn’t miss the headline.

  “Three College Students Missing.”

  My heart dropped an inch and my butt hit the seat I’d just pulled out in preparation for Nana.

  “Two nineteen-year-old and one twenty-year-old male students at State College at Bethel disappeared after a night drinking. Witnesses saw the boys buying large quantities of alcohol early in the evening. They attended a party together, but left early. Although their car was recovered a few miles south of Bethel, the boys have not been seen. There was no sign of foul play obvious in the vehicle.”

  The paper went on to report that the store that sold the three the alcohol had been shut down for selling to minors. The paper seemed to think the boys’ disappearance was related to drinking.

  My heart beating loudly, I dropped the paper onto the table. Related to alcohol? If the boys were the three I thought they were, yeah, you could say that. Except probably not exactly in the way the reporter imagined.

  I picked up a muffin, and turned it around, studying its perfectly domed top. But their car had been found. That meant they had left the field. Of course I knew that already. Even as shaken as I was the night before, I wouldn’t have missed something as big as a car.

  So, since they had left the field, their disappearance couldn’t have anything to do with the calling, or the dark shapes I had seen flowing around the circle. Could it?

  Unable to stand the direction my thoughts were going, I dropped the muffin onto the table, and went to get dressed. Looked like Brittany’s and my silence was over. I needed to get to school and talk to her. Hopefully, she would tell me it was three totally different boys, that I was freaking over nothing.

  But as I knotted my “vintage” red and purple striped cardigan around my waist, I couldn’t really get myself to believe it.

  o0o

  Brittany kept her back to me as I walked up. I knew she had seen me though; I could tell by the quiver of disapproval that traveled through her body. She shut her locker door with a click and spoke into the metal. “Smoking rock, three minutes. And, dear God, lose the sweater.”

  It was chilly out, in that summer-is-gone, but too-early-for-fall kind of way, and I’d planned to wear the cardigan when outside, but I could tell by how Brittany shook her head, as if she was clearing some kind of hideous image from her brain, that she wasn’t going to give on my apparent fashion no. I jerked off the sweater and shoved it into her locker.

  With luck it would fall out when the fashion foursome, as I’d termed a particular clique of popular juniors, strolled by. That would teach my childhood friend to shudder at my wardrobe.

  After that uncharitable act, I hauled myself out to the rock and waited. She arrived ten minutes later.

  She had a denim jacket in her hand. “Here, classic fifties. It was my grandfather’s.” She thrust it toward me. “Not quite the statement of your sweater, but at least people won’t be looking for your little car and big shoes.”

  I took the jacket, but after her gracious comment, kept the thanks to myself.

  She plopped onto the rock next to me. “You saw the paper?”

  I pulled on the jacket. It was big, but not sloppy. Her grandfather must have been tiny. My hands in the pockets, I pulled it around me and nodded. “It wasn’t them, was it?”

  She leaned her head to the side and studied me for a second, then reached over and grabbed hold of a daisy that was appliquéd to my shirt. With a quick pull, she jerked it free.

  “‘Fraid so.” She dropped the flower onto my lap. “You think it’s related?” She was acting nonchalant, but I could read her. There were circles under her eyes, and her skin was lacking its normal glow, as if she’d rushed the get-ready process.

  She was as worried as I was. “They found the car. It was parked outside one of the guy’s apartments. My aunt and uncle weren’t concerned at first. Joshua’s done this before, taken off with his buddies for some cross-country fling. He could be doing that again.”

  “He could,” I replied, but my mind was whirling. It would be a huge coincidence and if Joshua had done this before, I was guessing this was the first time the police had been called in. Which meant this time was different.

  “Those shapes…” Brittany’s voice dropped. “Could they have been…”

  “Demons?” I finished for her.

  She nodded. “Or ghosts?”

  I hugged myself.

  Brittany kept talking. “If demons escaped, we would have known, right? They would have shown themselves. They wouldn’t just sneak off.”

  When I didn’t reply, she kept talking. “How do demons travel? Walk? Float? Appear?” She pulled her fingers together then shot them out wide, mimicking an explosion.

  “Steal a car?” I murmured.

  She dropped her hands to her lap. The nail on her ring finger was broken, jagged. “You think?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know. I’d never seen a demon out and about in the real world. I knew it happened, but… “I think they are like us—you know corporeal. So, I guess they’d walk.”

  “And drive,” she added.

  “I guess.”

  “Would they know how?”

  I looked at her, and one brow shot up. She could be such a strange mix of super smart and total neon head. “Remember Theodore? What he told us about learning?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She exhaled. “So a demon could have escaped and could have my cousin and his idiot friends.”

  “Seems like it.” Neither of us moved, as if moving would make it all real, or more real than it already was.

  “So, what are we going to do? We have to get them back, Lucinda.” It was as close to a plead as I’d ever heard from Brittany. Too bad pleading wouldn’t help. I had no clue how to find those boys.

  o0o

  After our chat at the smoking rock, Brittany and I returned to the school. I followed her to her locker. We had killed most of first hour outside, but there were still a good fifteen minutes left before the halls would fill again. Or there should have been.

  When I looked up, two of the fashionable foursome were headed our way. Their perfectly waxed brows arched when they saw me standing next to Brittany. Unaware the “in” crowd was bearing down on us, she jerked open her locker. My sweater fell out.

  With a curse, she picked it up and spun. The too-cool-to-be-cheerleaders pair ground to a halt.

  It was exactly the moment I’d hoped for when I’d shoved my moth-eaten sweater into Brittany’s locker, but as I saw the pair’s expressions go from surprise to smirk remorse smacked me in the gut. I reached for the sweater.

  “You two sharing clothes now?” Tali, half of the pair, whipped a length of ruler-straight black hair over one shoulder. “I didn’t realize you were so…tight.” She angled her eyes towards the second most fashionable one, Rach.

  Brittany stiffened.

  Realizing being seen with me, with or without my ragged sweater, would do Brittany’s reputation no good, I mumbled something about shoving it into the wrong locker and jerked the offending article from Brittany’s grip. Without looking at any of them, I took off down the hall.

  “Hey!” Brittany called after me. “That was a fair trade.”

  I stumbled.

  She jogged up beside me and grabbed the sweater. “Everyone at the college is wearing stripes. Just because you figured that out a little late doesn’t mean the trade is off.” I stared at her as she pulled the sweater from my limp fingers.

  Over her shoulder I could see the fashionable ones exchanging shocked glances.

  “And don’t forget lunch. You have to tell me where you found that shirt.” With that final shot, she turned and strutted back to her locker.

 
; My hand still outstretched, I stood there for a few seconds. Finally, I realized how stupid I had to look. I shoved my hand back into Brittany’s grandfather’s jacket and went to stand outside the door of my next class.

  Brittany had stood up for me in front of the fashionable ones. It made me rethink every uncharitable thought I’d had about her in the last ten years, and there had been a lot of them.

  Made me wonder what else I needed to rethink.

  o0o

  Despite Brittany’s parting words, for lunch I stuck with my normal schedule. Brownbag in hand, I wandered to an empty English classroom. I knew she had just invited me to shock our audience.

  As I ate my standby PB&J I mulled things over some more. It wasn’t like there was someone I could go to for advice. If a demon had escaped and taken the boys, what could I do? If I learned his name I could call him, maybe.

  Or I could call a demon whose name I had, not Theodore. He, I had decided, was useless. But there was another, the demon lord Kobal.

  Calling a demon lord. That was serious. Just thinking about it made my palms sweat and my appetite disappear. I balled up the bag with my half-eaten sandwich inside and tossed it in the trash.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t leave my thoughts behind with it. Doubts, worries and general anxiety haunted me throughout Biology 101. I set my scalpel down on the table and let my lab partner, Sheila Reynolds, take over.

  “Cool,” she squeaked as the frog’s chest cavity fell open, revealing his lungs and guts.

  I stared at the clock, wishing I could move the second hand with my mind.

  “Don’t concentrate too hard, Ms. Dent. I’ll start to think you aren’t enjoying the lesson.” Mr. Parsons, the biology teacher, wandered by.

  I twisted my mouth into a half smile and picked up the forceps. I had successfully pinned back a flap of frog skin to the wax lined-tray, when Brittany appeared in the doorway. She didn’t glance at me, and I studiously followed her example, concentrating on my green friend.

  “Lucinda.” Mr. Parsons motioned to me from the doorway.

  I dropped the forceps with as much feigned regret as I could muster and moved his direction. He held up a hand to stop me. “Take your things. I don’t think you’ll make it back before the end of class.”

  He gave me a concerned smile that sent ice shooting through my veins. I grabbed up my books and jogged from the room.

  Brittany was waiting for me outside the door. When she saw me, she started walking.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, skipping steps to keep up.

  “Your grandmother called. She needs you to come home,” she said.

  “Nana? Is she—.”

  Brittany shot me a don’t-be-difficult look. I realized then this was a Brittany-thought-up plan to get me out of class.

  “I need to show you something.” She took a sharp left, cutting through the freshman hall to get to the office. “Caldera High has new students. Two new students.”

  I knew how she said it, this wasn’t going to be good.

  o0o

  I wasn’t sure what Brittany’s announcement meant exactly or how it affected me, until we rounded the corner of the office threshold and I saw the two students in question.

  Two of the demons from our Friday night circle. The lost-looking guy and the oversexed female.

  “Oh, Lucinda, you’re here. Your grandmother called. She isn’t feeling well and needs you to pick her up at the doctors’. I guess she took the bus there.” Mrs. Adler, the office secretary, pulled a red push pin off her bulletin board and handed me the note that had been tacked under it. “Here’s the number, if you need to call her back.”

  I glanced down at it. It was for the free clinic. Brittany was thorough.

  When I looked back up, the male demon was analyzing me. I swallowed and dropped my gaze. People didn’t look at me like that; they didn’t notice me at all.

  That he did made me forget for a second what he was. I smiled.

  “I hope your grandmother feels better soon,” he said. Despite his words, his face remained impassive.

  “Oh, yes, family is so important.” The female demon sidled up next to him. She was dressed differently than she had been in the circle. They both were, actually, but her change was more obvious.

  Her clothes were modern and expensive looking. Her hair was shorter too, still long but not twisted up in the painful way it had been in the circle. And she was wearing make-up with the same light but effective touch Brittany’s always had. She even had the smoky eye.

  She ran her fingers down the male’s arm, but her gaze was on me. She was smiling, as if she had a secret no one else was in on. Which, of course, she did, at least as far as the adults present were concerned.

  I tried to smile back, but my lips refused to move. The boy she was stroking didn’t smile either though. In fact he stiffened, and the girl dropped his arm as if she’d been shocked.

  I frowned wondering what had passed between them, but Mr. Finney placed a hand on my shoulder. “We all hope she’s doing well. We’ll plan on seeing you tomorrow.” And I was shoved out the door. Not literally, but it felt that way.

  The demons watched as I walked to the school’s front door. I could feel their eyes on my back. I had no idea what Brittany had been thinking. I couldn’t leave the school, not when two demons had just appeared.

  I stepped out the door and turned, determined to find an excuse to go back inside.

  “If you are going to hum, you might at least pick something up-to-date.” Brittany had snuck out a side door and circled around to the front. She stood with one hip cocked and her book bag slung across her chest. “Funny thing. I have a dentist appointment my mother totally forgot about. Looks like I’m leaving too.” She adjusted the weight of the bag a bit and waited for my reply.

  I shook my head. “There are demons in there.”

  She looped her thumb under her bag strap and moved it higher onto her shoulder. “Yeah, I know and you stood me up at lunch.”

  When I didn’t reply, she continued, “You think I just wanted an excuse to get pedis? Not…” She glanced down at my worn tennies. “That I don’t think you could use one.”

  I scowled. She rolled her eyes, grabbed me by the arm and started marching me toward the parking lot. “We can’t talk here. The offs—” She jerked her head toward the office we’d just left. “—will get suspicious.”

  Realizing there was truth to that, I let her lead. However, halfway to her snazzy import, I jerked away. “We’re clear now. Talk. And first up better be how this—” I waved my hands above my head. “—is going to get us back inside where we can watch those demons.” I moved from one foot to the other, suddenly unable to stand still.

  She leaned against a beat-up 4x4 and pulled a palette of lip gloss from her bag. At first her taking time to fix her makeup annoyed me, then I realized Brittany’s lip gloss was my humming. After smoothing the shimmery pink stain over her already perfect mouth, she snapped the lid closed. “We don’t need to get back inside, not immediately anyway. We need time to research, think.”

  “There are demons in there.” I said the words slowly because obviously she was missing this very large, very important point.

  “Yeah, and if they were going to possess everybody or whatever it is demons do, they wouldn’t have bothered going through enrollment. I mean, who does that? They’re demons. You think Mrs. Adler’s going to take them down if they try to bowl past her?”

  In some strange way Brittany’s line of thinking made sense, or maybe I was just so mentally exhausted I wanted it to make sense. Still, I couldn’t quite get my body to settle down. I twisted back and forth a few times, facing her then the building, then back again. Finally, seeing she wasn’t going to make any move to return to the building, I gave up.

  My gaze still locked on the building, I let my body slide down the side of the 4x4 until I was squatted next to one over-sized tire. “So, what all do you know?”

  She hadn’t s
aid she had an inside scoop, but I knew she did. She was Brittany after all.

  She dropped onto the ground beside me. With both of us sitting, we were completely hidden from anyone walking in or out of the school.

  “Nellie Gwyn is the girl. She’s definitely the demon we saw Friday night. You should have seen her when Shane Bollock and company went strutting by. Her tongue practically darted out of her mouth, like a snake.” Brittany muttered the last, made me wonder if Brittany didn’t appreciate the competition. I’d never seen her flirt with Shane or any guy, but she was used to being the axis of attention at school, everywhere I guessed.

  “Her clothes are different. I think I saw that outfit in Elle.” She frowned. “In the pile of stuff we gave Theodore.”

  That made sense.

  “Oh, and she lost the accent, did you notice?”

  I hadn’t, but again, made sense. “She’s a demon,” I said. It was beginning to sound redundant, but it said it all—why we should be inside doing something, why Nellie was suddenly a fashion plate who talked like a local, everything except….

  “Why are they here?” I asked.

  Brittany held her lip gloss palette out to me. I just stared at her.

  She shoved the overpriced bit of plastic and shine back into her bag. “That’s more your area, isn’t it? I don’t know anything about demons. I know gossip.”

  I sighed. “Okay, what else did you learn?”

  Her eyes brightened. “This is the best part. The guy, his name is Oscar. Oscar Mullin.”

  “The dead guy?”

  “What do you think?” Her expression said she wanted it to be true.

  I rubbed my hand over my forehead. “Could be, I guess. Humans can become demons.”

  “Did he sell his soul? Like Theodore?” she asked.

  I filled her in on what I’d learned from Mum’s book.

  “So, you think he’s the last one? He seems kind of….”

  “Hollow?” I finished.

  “Yeah, that.” She tugged her bag closer to her chest and hugged it against her. “They’re real, aren’t they? This isn’t a game.”

  I smashed down the top of my battered backpack for no reason except it gave me something to do. “Yeah, they’re real.”