by Lori Devoti
It gave me a full hour to process what Nellie had said to me, and to feel comfortable talking to Brittany. I didn’t believe that Brittany would be willing to teach me…what Nellie had been insinuating she would, but I didn’t want to tell Brittany about it either. It would just make everything weird.
By the time we sat down to bologna and cheese (me) and diet pop and a Twinkie (Brittany) I had decided there was no reason to mention that part of my exchange with Nellie at all. Brittany and I ate alone in the English classroom. I was beginning to believe that she didn’t mind being seen with me, but we needed the privacy to talk.
“A succubus. Makes sense. She certainly has sexy under control.” Brittany pulled the tab on her soda. “You think Oscar’s one too?”
“Succubae are only female,” I replied. “He’d be an incubus.”
“So you think he is?”
I lifted the top slice of bread on my sandwich and stared at the square of orange cheese I’d placed there this morning. Oscar was attractive physically, and there was no denying I was drawn to him, but it wasn’t the same as with Nellie. The pull I felt when Nellie turned her attention on me was forced and dirty with Oscar it wasn’t. I wanted to be near him and not because he wanted me to. In fact, I was pretty sure he had no interest in me at all. I wasn’t sure if he had interest in anything.
“No. I don’t think he is. He doesn’t put off the same energy as Nellie.”
Brittany sipped her soda. Her eyes were visible over the can. I could see her thinking. “Yeah. I didn’t feel it, but I thought I might have just missed it. People seem to notice him, watch him in the halls and stuff.”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to let on how much I had noticed him. “He’s a demon. They’re all bound to stand out.”
She cocked a brow. “Not Theodore. I didn’t feel anything except annoyed when he was around.”
I’d actually kind of forgotten about Theodore. “Do you think he’s out too?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Nellie and Oscar are both here. If Theodore had escaped the circle, wouldn’t he be here too?”
“Do you think they are here to watch us?” I asked. It couldn’t be coincidence that they were hanging out at Caldera High.
Nellie sashayed past the open classroom door. Her gaze swept the room and settled on us. After a brief smile, she moved on.
“Sure looks that way,” Brittany concluded.
A chill sailed up my spine. Why would two demons be watching us? What did they want from us?
Chapter 9
By fourth period, I’d convinced myself the pair were here to watch us, or at least me. Either Oscar or Nellie or both were in every class I had. But it was seeing Oscar perched on a stool in my “Around the World” cooking classroom that nailed my conviction. Not bothering to retrieve my apron from the hook by the door, I walked up to him.
“What, succubae don’t cook?” I asked. It wasn’t necessarily my smartest move; I hadn’t let on to Nellie yet that I knew what she was.
One elbow on the counter, he leaned sideways. “Not Nellie.”
His candor put me off guard. I edged my butt onto the stool next to his and studied him. He returned my stare, looking not one bit flustered, or even interested that I was analyzing him so thoroughly.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
He’d been slumping. At my question, he sat up. His hair shifted as he moved. It was healthy and alive. He was healthy and alive, or appeared that way, but I knew he’d been dead over a hundred years.
“I have no auto to repair.” He gestured next door where the automotive repair class gathered.
“Not here, in class. Here—” Although honestly that had been part of my question. “Here, alive here.”
He picked up a wooden spoon and spun it like a bottle on the countertop. “I started here. It’s my home, as much as yours. Isn’t it where I should be?”
He should have been in hell, but he seemed so normal, so undemon-like, I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Instead, I watched the utensil spin, round and round, wondered if it would ever stop. When it did, he looked up. He seemed to expect another question.
“What about Nellie? Last I heard, her last stop was England.”
He lifted one shoulder. “Couldn’t tell you.”
From a human I’d have taken that to mean he didn’t know, but from a demon, it could easily have been exactly what he said—he couldn’t tell me, as in, something kept him from telling me.
I decided to try a different tack. “What do you want out of being here?” I knew what Nellie wanted, or at least what she acted like she wanted. But Oscar had done nothing to give me clue one about his payoff for being in the human plane.
He stared at me. The unusual color of his eyes, midnight blue, almost black, popped out at me. I felt myself floating, falling, not caring about anything but going further and further into his gaze, never wanting to come back.
He blinked and I jumped. I almost fell off my stool. I looked around to see if anyone had noticed. When I looked back, Oscar was staring at me again, his eyes just as dark, maybe darker, but this time he didn’t connect his gaze to mine. He kept his eyes shuttered somehow.
“Nothing,” he said. “I want absolutely nothing from being here.”
And, sadly, I believed him.
o0o
After school, I started to walk home. It was a long walk, but I needed time alone. I hadn’t been able to shake a feeling of melancholy since looking into Oscar’s eyes. He’d said he wanted nothing from being here, and I believed him.
He was so lost. Alone.
Wanted nothing. Got joy from nothing.
A person couldn’t exist like that.
But Oscar wasn’t a person, not anymore. Still…
My mind occupied with Oscar and the darkness inside him, I stepped off the curb.
A horn blared. I looked up and jumped back at the same time. A car, Shane Bollock’s black convertible, ripped past. Hip hop was blasting from his speakers. The beat of the bass reverberated through my body. My heart pounded in my chest. I sucked in a breath, shocked that Shane would be so callous. He’d always been one of the few jocks who acknowledged my presence, at least with anything kinder than the snickers I’d received from the two football players in history class.
Maybe the steroids were taking their toll.
A piece of paper, folded like a fan, flew out the back of the car. I bent down and picked it up. My name was written in decorative script on the half-inch strip. Slowly, I spread the paper open. On each fold there was a word. They were written so decoratively, like art really, if I hadn’t already realized the item was a note I would have thought the words were just part of an intricate design.
“Don’t worry, kitten. I still love you too.”
Nellie. I dropped the fan in the gutter. Then stared at it, almost afraid to pick it up.
Brittany tooling toward me in her sports car saved me from the decision. As her tire rolled over the unfolded fan, I let out a breath.
“Get in,” she said.
I jerked open the door and climbed in. As we pulled away, someone stepped away from the brick wall that separated the school grounds from the road. I glanced into the side mirror. Oscar Mullin stood in the street, Nellie’s tire-torn note hanging from his hand. My gut twisted. And not because Oscar was going to read the message from Nellie.
Brittany didn’t seem to have noticed Oscar stepping into the street behind us. She seemed completely focused on driving.
I touched her sleeve. “Turn down there.” I motioned to a side street.
She didn’t slow down. “I’m following Nellie. She got in Shane’s car.” Brittany loosened then tightened her grip on the steering wheel, then adjusted her fingers again. “She’s up to something. Don’t you think we should follow her? She must know something. She might be taking him where my cousin is.”
I glanced back at the review mirror. Oscar, of course, was no longer visible. “I just saw Oscar standing in the street. I
think he was following me.”
Brittany tilted her head in a half-shrug, but kept driving.
“We don’t know that Nellie is who took Joshua and his friends,” I continued. “Oscar’s a demon too, and he’s right here. We could follow him, see where he goes after school. Why focus on Nellie?”
“Because Nellie’s with Shane. Don’t you think that’s disturbing?”
“Everything about Nellie is disturbing,” I mumbled.
Brittany pulled her lips into her mouth, then blew out, making a little popping noise.
I waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. I squirmed in my seat. “So, Nellie or Oscar?” I asked.
Five cars ahead of us, a minivan pulled out in front of Shane’s convertible. He swerved, honked, and then jerked his vehicle to the right, zipping around the kid carrier.
“Nellie,” Brittany replied, whipping her car into the right-hand lane too. Behind us someone yelled. Brittany didn’t even glance in her rearview mirror. “She’s with a student. That has to take priority. Don’t you think?” Her index finger tapped against the wheel, and I could feel her car gaining speed. It wasn’t the best way to shadow another vehicle, but Shane’s car had already sped ahead. It was almost out of sight.
Accepting she was right, I settled in. To keep my brain off Brittany’s driving and our sure-to-be impending crash, I let my mind drift back to the demons and what they could be up to.
I was pretty sure I knew exactly what Nellie had planned for Shane, and didn’t need to see it in person. But Brittany had made a good point. Nellie was driving off with a student alone. We had to keep an eye on them. Still, I glanced at the side mirror again, saw Oscar in my mind, his eyes dark and lost. Where did he go after school? Did he go anywhere or did demons just drift into nothing when they weren’t busy toying with us?
The sound of gravel crunching under Brittany’s tires pulled me back to reality. She’d slowed down a lot, almost to a driver’s-ed-approvable speed. Which I assumed meant Shane and Nellie had slowed their free-wheeling too. I couldn’t see them to say for sure, but a cloud of dust wasn’t too far ahead of us.
I still wasn’t sure what we were going to do when we all arrived at their planned destination. Scream “demon” and rush in with burning torches to keep Shane and Nellie from bumping in his backseat?
“Lucinda?”
I looked up, realized I’d drifted off again.
“Look out your window—the side window.”
I complied and saw dry fields dotted with random cattle. Not exactly a rare sight around Caldera, then it hit me. “We’re headed to the cemetery.”
Brittany nodded. “I think so. What are we going to do?” She sounded nervous. I understood; I felt that way too.
I gripped my backpack and ran through a mental catalogue of everything inside. Nothing even close to resembling an athame, that was for sure. The offs, as Brittany termed the principal and company, did not look kindly on deadly weapons being brought onto school property. The rule was so firmly ingrained in my being even knowing demons were roaming the halls, I hadn’t considered packing one. “The circle will be there,” I said, thinking out loud. “And the cemetery—hallowed ground. We can use both as defensive posts.”
“The circle?” Brittany asked.
I explained the different ways a circle could be used, that I had used it to call a demon, but that it could also serve as a fortress of sorts.
“What if Nellie is already using it?”
I frowned. “For what?”
“To call up that demon, the one with the wings. She would use a circle too, wouldn’t she? Could she be taking Shane there to…sacrifice him?”
Sacrifice Shane? I shook my head hard. “No. Why would she do that?”
“Isn’t that how demons get stronger? They collect souls or something? Why else would she be taking Shane to the circle?”
I didn’t have a reply. We were way out of my area of knowledge. But she was right. Demons did collect souls, and demon lords grew in strength the greater number of lesser demons they had under them. At least, that was how I thought it worked.
“Maybe she’s recruiting him,” I offered.
“Then why take him to the circle?”
Again I had no answer, but we were almost to the flat area we used for parking. Shane’s black convertible was visible now, parked a few feet from the cattle guard, the windows and top down. It was empty.
“Brittany, do you have anything sharp? A knife, anything?”
She flicked her eyes at me, then reached in her purse and pulled out a compact. “There isn’t much sharper than a broken mirror. Will that work?”
I slipped the plastic disc into my pocket and prayed I wouldn’t have to use it. Then we slid out of the car, and started the walk across the field.
My gaze locked on the area near the circle first. There was no one there. Beside me, Brittany murmured something I didn’t catch. Her hand moved to the tiny bulge under her shirt that I had noticed when we were at her house researching Oscar and Nellie.
“Did you hear that?” she asked.
I nodded. Laughter. “It’s coming from there.” I gestured to a place where the woods jutted out into the field. We veered left and entered the trees.
The woods are dense around Caldera. We instantly plunged into a jungle of brambles and vines.
More laughter, and the sound of leaves rustling.
“Doesn’t sound like she’s killing him,” Brittany muttered.
We picked our way along, following noises I didn’t want to analyze too carefully. Then the sounds stopped. We were hidden in a cluster of trees, a few feet further along they seemed to clear. The area was still wooded, but the underbrush wasn’t as thick and the trees were spaced a lot further apart. There also seemed to be some kind of a wall, an old foundation maybe. The noises had been coming from behind it.
Brittany placed a hand on my arm. “You think she’s…?”
I glanced back over my shoulder. We were a decent run from the cemetery or the circle and I was armed with nothing except an unbroken mirror. But it was my fault Nellie was here. If she was sacrificing Shane, I had to try and stop her.
I grabbed Brittany’s hand and squeezed. “You wait here,” I murmured. She’d saved me once. I owed her. Besides I was the demon wrangler. Nellie was my responsibility. Then, after a quick glance at Brittany to make sure she was going to do as told, I rushed out of hiding and charged toward the source of the noise. I had no real plan. My main goal was to startle Nellie, stop her from doing anything that would harm Shane permanently.
“Stop,” I yelled, unable to think of anything more dramatic. The woods around me were a blur, the entire experience surreal. I wasn’t even sure what I was charging toward; I just let adrenaline push me along.
About twenty feet into my dash, I stumbled, caught my foot on the remains of the low wall I’d noticed from the trees and fell. I landed face down on a half-naked Shane Bollock.
Panic washed over me. I wasn’t sure if he was alive or dead. He wasn’t moving and his skin was pale, what I could see of it, which was quite a bit. His shirt was off and his pants were unzipped. Parts of him were jutting out the opening that I had no desire to see. Swollen, excited parts.
Shocked and embarrassed, I scrambled backward. I immediately feeling guilty for letting my surprise and desire to get away overtake my initial plan to help. On hands and knees, I started back toward him.
“Kitten, you came. Poor Shane, he hasn’t yet.” Nellie crawled, like a cat, toward me. I realized she’d been sitting a few feet away, waiting.
I darted a glance at the unconscious wrestler. “What did you do to him?”
She laughed. “Nothing. Yet. I do have plans for him, but I have other commitments to fulfill first.” She had continued her crawl and sat next to Shane now. She traced a finger down his chest. Sighed. Then she looked up, and I could feel the full force of her attention on me, pulling at me.
I swallowed and tried to force
my feet to shove my body backwards. She reached up and pulled a pin from her hair. It tumbled down around her shoulders. Golden and glistening. She shook her head. “Shane wanted help with his research paper. Wouldn’t you like some help? Aren’t you curious about the king’s whore?” She laughed again. Little tinkles that flowed over my body, made me tingle and flush.
My mind whirled. My body’s reaction…it didn’t make sense. She was a girl. I’d never, would never, but—.
“Leave her alone, Nellie.” Oscar Mullin stepped over the low wall, glanced down at Shane, then walked on past—past all of us. He stopped a few feet away with his back to us, his hands clasped behind him.
The pull, the attraction that had been so real, so confusing, vanished. The suddenness was shocking. It jolted me, as if I’d been hit by a bucket of icy water. Feeling naked and exposed, I wrapped my arms around my body and dropped my gaze to the ground.
“What are you doing here, Oscar? Worried that I’ll beat you to the payment? Or is being back home getting to you? Softening you? Don’t tell me you care.” Nellie tapped a finger against her lower lip, then pulled down, creating a perfect forties pinup pout. “Oh, that’s right. You can’t care, can you?”
Shane stirred, his eyelids quivering. Nellie stroked his chest, his belly, lower….
I jerked my gaze back to Oscar and felt heat warming my cheeks.
Beside me Nellie laughed.
I hated that laugh.
I forced myself to look at her, to ignore the up and down movement of her hand. “Let him go, Nellie.”
Her hand stilled, but she didn’t pull back. “Or what, kitten? Are you jealous? How does it feel to discover a whole new side of yourself? Don’t you want to investigate?” Her free hand moved to her blouse; three buttons popped open. “I’d be happy to teach you anything you want to learn, and then maybe you’d do a teeny little favor for me.”
I jerked my gaze away again; I hated myself for letting her get to me.
“She isn’t interested in you.” Oscar had turned and was facing us. His gaze was steady but detached. He shifted his eyes to Nellie, then back to me. “She’s a succubus. You know that. Did you research them anymore? They hunt men, not women.”
