Soul Eater

by Lindsey Sparks

  Again, I shook my head.

  A tear snuck over the brim of her eyelid, and she wiped it away angrily. “This is such bullshit.” She speared me with a glare. “Is it you guys? Did you do something? Or call these ghosts or whatever they are into the world?”

  I raised my hands defensively. “Hey . . .”

  “Because we never had any issues like this before you Nejerets were around.”

  I returned her glare with one of my own. “That’s not fair. We’ve been around all along; you just didn’t know about us.”

  She sniffed, once again looking through the windshield.

  I took a deep breath, telling myself not to take her little accusation outburst personally. She’d just experienced something insane, and she was upset. As she had every right to be.

  “Listen,” I said, reaching out to touch Ms. Cramer’s arm. She flinched after barely the slightest contact, and I withdrew my hand. “I don’t know what’s going on at your school, but I’m going to figure it out, and I’m going to fix it—that’s why I came here tonight.” I paused, considering my next words. I didn’t see that I had much of a choice; I couldn’t waste this opportunity. “And I need your help to do it,” I finally said. “So why don’t you buck up, get out of the car, and grab a drink with me. You can tell me more about the crazy shit that’s been going on. The more I know, the faster I’ll be able to make sense of this insanity.”

  Ms. Cramer seemed to deflate as she exhaled, shoulders slumping and head hanging. “You’re really here to help us?”

  I shrugged. “Somebody’s got to.”

  She looked at me, considered my response, and sighed. “Alright.”

  I waited until she was out of the car before opening my own door. I couldn’t risk her driving off as soon as I was out of the car. She was afraid, which made her a flight risk, and she had information I needed.

  I followed her to a narrow storefront with flickering neon beer signs in the tinted windows. The sign over the place read Dog House.

  “It’s kind of a dive,” Ms. Cramer said, “but it’s probably the last place anybody’d expect you to be.”

  I smirked and pulled the hood of my sweatshirt up, angling my face downward. “Perfect,” I said as she held open the glass door.

  The place was half dive bar, half sports bar, with chintzy alcohol regalia crowding the walls and scattered shelves and flat-screen TVs hanging in each corner playing football games, basketball, or some sort of car racing.

  There were a couple of pool tables in the right half of the bar, a row of mismatching dartboards on the wall beyond them. The left half of the bar was all tables and chairs, most filled by groups of three or four college-aged guys, though a few lone middle-agers had staked out stools at the bar proper.

  We made our way to a table tucked away in the front right corner of the bar, giving me a good view of the whole place, plus a solid line of sight on what was going on outside through the glass storefront. Nothing at the moment, but I’d know the second anything changed, whether it be shadow beings or the media.

  I sat at the corner table, but Ms. Cramer hung her purse on the back of a chair, then turned away, heading straight for the booze. “Hey, Joe,” she said, leaning her forearms on the edge of the bar. “Bourbon, rye, rocks,” she said, then added, “double.” She glanced at me over her shoulder, and when I nodded, she said, “Make it two.”

  The bartender, an attractive guy in his late thirties from the looks of it, with olive skin, a dark five-o’clock shadow, and a perma-smirk, looked up from the drink he was mixing in a shaker. “For you, Alison, anything,” he said, winking.

  I looked at Ms. Cramer—Alison, apparently—taking in her flushed cheeks and faint smile, then back at Joe, the bartender, who now stood just a smidgen taller. No wonder she’d brought me here—and it wasn’t just to help me lay low. She had a thing for the bartender. And from the looks of it, he had a thing for her, too.

  Joe finished the cocktail he was making quickly, then poured our doubles. He set the two glasses on the bar.

  “It’s been a rough day,” Alison told him. “Keep ’em coming?”

  “You got it, sweetheart.”

  “Thanks,” Alison murmured, picking up the drinks.

  As she made her way back across the bar, weaving around tables, I scanned the faces of each and every patron to make sure I hadn’t been recognized. So far, so good.

  Alison set our drinks on the table, then sat in the chair across from me with a heavy sigh.

  I raised my glass and took a long draw, downing half of the bourbon in that single drink. “Alright, Alison,” I said, setting the glass on the table, “tell me everything.”

  Alison sipped from her glass, then took a gulp before setting it down. “Where do I start?” She tucked her hair behind her ear, that hysteria-tinged laugh making an encore appearance. “It’s all going to sound so crazy.” She took another sip, then met Joe’s eyes across the bar and raised a finger, signaling to him that we’d need another round soon.

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

  Chapter Nine

  According to Alison, the hauntings had been getting progressively worse over the past week or so. She wasn’t entirely certain when they started exactly. The first truly noticeable incidents had been a little over a week ago, but considering how quickly they’d been escalating, she figured there must’ve been tiny things that nobody really noticed two or even three weeks ago.

  Maybe the mug of coffee that had spilled all over her desk two Thursdays back hadn’t been knocked over by a student angrily throwing down his failing essay. Maybe it hadn’t been a student that shoved the guidance counselor when he’d been trying to break up a fight. Maybe the rash of “break-ins” in the school’s parking lots were little more than the spirits—or whatever the shadows were—getting riled up and causing chaos, like they had with the lockers just a little bit ago. There were so many strange things that had happened over the past few weeks that could’ve had mundane causes but, when all stacked up, had to have been caused by something else. Something other.

  And then there were the incidents that were very clearly super in the spectrum of what was natural. The sudden, unnatural drops in temperature when students became overly excited. Objects flying across rooms seemingly of their own accord. The student found unconscious in a bathroom in the main part of the school and the one found in the girls’ locker room.

  That last had been new this week, Alison told me, happening just the previous afternoon, and the school board was working hard to keep the incidents hush-hush. Buzz around the district email system was that there might be some sort of a gas leak—people were even speculating that such a thing could be the cause of mass hallucinations—but testing had come up negative. Apparently, parents were starting to pull their kids out of school; even if their kids’ reports of strange goings-on weren’t enough to tickle their parental spidey senses, the massive number of teacher call-ins sure as hell was. It was becoming nearly impossible for the administrators to allay parents’ fears when they could hardly control their own.

  That gas leak idea would’ve held a lot more weight in my mind had I not witnessed one of the haunting events myself. I’d only been on campus for a few minutes, and I’d had minimal exposure to any potential gases or chemicals tainting the air. Certainly not for long enough to make me hallucinate.

  Regardless of what people around the district believed, Alison was certain about one thing—these incidents occurred when student emotions surged.

  “What just happened back there,” Alison said, “that’s the worst I’ve seen it.” She gripped her glass. “It was so terrifying. Well, you know . . .” She waved a hand at me across the table, then raised her glass to sip the final dregs of her third bourbon. “You were there. It couldn’t have been clearer what was getting them so excited this time.”

  I ran a fingertip around the rim of my empty glass and said, “Melanie.” I didn’t think Alison was grasping at straws:
the link between Melanie’s heightened emotions and the shadows’ excitement had been pretty damn clear. I nodded to myself. “That’s why you were trying to get her and her boyfriend to calm down . . .”

  Alison laughed bitterly, then downed the rest of the liquid in her glass. “Fat lot of good that did. If you hadn’t been there . . .” She shook her head. “It terrifies me to think what might’ve happened. What if it wasn’t just an unconscious kid this time? What if Melanie had been killed?”

  I frowned, thinking her fear justified. When I’d touched that thing, it had felt like I’d been struck with a sudden bought of the flu. I’d shaken it off quickly enough, but who knew what prolonged contact would have done.

  “Ugh.” Alison slumped back in her chair. “I’m drunk.”

  I laughed for the first time in hours and pulled my phone out of my pocket. “I’ll call you a car.”

  Alison waved the offer away. “No, no . . . I’ll just catch a ride with Joe. He’s off soon, anyway.”

  “Ah . . .” When she looked at me, I winked.

  Alison blushed. “It’s not like that.”

  I glanced over at Joe, catching him staring at us. Or, rather, at Alison.

  He averted his gaze to the shaker in his hands.

  “Maybe not,” I said, reaching across the table to pat the back of her hand. “But it could be . . .”

  Alison’s blush deepened.

  I gave her my number and told her to call me if she needed anything, then sauntered out of the bar, mood better than it had been in at least a week. And it wasn’t just the pleasant buzz of alcohol flowing through my veins, dulling that damn headache. I’d just proven that I didn’t have to be a shut-in. I could go out; I could do things. Maybe I had to dress a little different—go off-brand—but whatever. It was better than spending the rest of the foreseeable future behind the walls of the Heru compound. Don’t get me wrong—I love my clan, my family, but more often than not, a little distance is a damn good thing.

  The stroll back to the corner of the shopping mall’s parking lot where I’d left my bike was chilly, frigid wind freezing my ears even beneath the sweatshirt’s hood and the fleece headband. I didn’t really mind, though. Some cool air was exactly what I needed to enliven my senses after all the bourbon. Like Alison, I’d been in no state to drive—or ride—when I left the bar. Unlike Alison, my Nejeret metabolism meant I burned through alcohol at least four times as fast as the average human, and a fifteen-minute walk was plenty to get my head street ready.

  It was just past nine, late enough that I’d have expected the mall’s parking lot to have cleared for the most part as shops and restaurants closed down. Not so much. The place was jam-packed with cars. And as I rounded the corner of the block and neared the place where I’d parked my bike, I understood why.

  I stopped dead, immobilized by the sight ahead. “No fucking way . . .”

  The Ducati was surrounded by a sea of folding chairs and tents, like you’d see on Black Friday with shoppers camping out in front of a big-box store to be the first in the door to get all the best deals. Except these people weren’t looking to shop. They were looking for me.

  Vans with Public News System painted across the side in stylized lettering were scattered here and there among the tents, and an excited buzz drifted on the wind. I absolutely was not up to wading through that clusterfuck right now.

  With a soft growl, I turned around to head back the way I’d come.

  And spotted a guy standing a dozen paces down the sidewalk, phone raised toward me like he was going to take a photo.

  I stiffened. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” I breathed, then turned on my heel and ran into the four-lane road. I had to pause in the median to let a couple cars pass.

  “Hey!” the would-be paparazzo called after me. “I’m sorry, I just—”

  “Leave me alone!” I held up my hand, middle finger raised. Maybe not the most diplomatic gesture, considering the times, but I was having a shitty day.

  I’d just stepped foot on the sidewalk on the far side of the street when a car that I recognized pulled over a few yards ahead of me. It was a Tesla, one of the many luxury vehicles owned by Clan Heru.

  I took several steps closer to the car.

  The passenger side window rolled down, and I crouched to see which of my Nejeret friends had such impeccable timing. When I saw who was driving, my stomach did a flip-flop caused by an unsettling combination of dread and excitement. For a moment, I could see a crisp, clear image of The World tarot card in my mind: my naked form curled around one edge of the universe, Nik’s around the other.

  “Hey, Kitty Kat,” Nik said, the corner of his mouth lifted into a faint smirk. “Need a ride?”

  Chapter Ten

  “Listen, Kat,” Nik started, “when you died—”

  “Don’t,” I said, holding up a hand to stop him. “Just don’t.”

  And here I’d made it a whole three minutes sitting in a car with him without thinking about that day. Instead, I’d been focused on my memory of the image on The World, my thoughts veering into the naughtier implications. I was panic-attack-free in Nik’s presence, for once. Come to think of it, I hadn’t actually had a panic attack at lunch, either. Interesting. I chalked it up to time healing all wounds and all that. It was nice.

  But then he just had to go and bring up the dying thing.

  I shifted in my seat, angling my knees toward the passenger door and letting my head fall back against the headrest. “I’m not talking about that, Nik. I died. You brought me back. Period, end of story. There’s nothing more to say, so I wish everyone would just stop bringing it up.”

  The lie came easily, but it tasted bitter on my tongue. Now, more than ever, I wanted to avoid thinking about my second trip into Duat. Mostly because I was desperate to tell somebody, and frustrated beyond hell that I couldn’t.

  Nik inhaled, then held his breath for several seconds. I thought he might say more, but thankfully, he didn’t. Instead, he gave me some serious side-eye, then touched the screen on the dash, turning on the car’s stereo system. It was in old-school FM radio mode, tuned in to the local PNS news station.

  . . . while another Bellevue resident reports seeing her on Factoria Boulevard, getting into a Tesla, and claims he even has photographs to prove it. We’ve yet to see the pictures, but we’ll be sure to share them as soon as we do.

  I reached out, touching the screen with a fingertip to turn off the radio. I’d been deluding myself earlier, thinking I could ever again have anything resembling a normal life. I’d sacrificed myself to save humanity, and even though Nik had brought me back from the dead, my life was over. It sucked. I was grumpy and bitter and in no mood to chat, which Nik must’ve sensed, because we spent the rest of the trip back to Bainbridge in relative silence.

  To make matters worse, the emotional numbness brought on by the bourbon had almost completely faded away. On the upside, my headache seemed to be abating. Sometimes, it’s the little things that matter.

  “Upstairs,” Heru said as soon as I opened the front door. “Now.” He stood at the base of the grand staircase, arms crossed over his chest.

  I paused in the doorway, hand on the doorknob, eyeing him warily. Heru was one of those people I usually tried not to piss off—I wasn’t always successful, but I still tried. Most of the time.

  “I had to go out, Heru,” I said, taking a few cautious steps into the house. I felt Nik slip in behind me and heard him shut the door. “It was important.”

  “Well,” Heru said, voice cold and hard, “perhaps next time you find the need for an outing, you’ll remember that you now represent all of us, and that eyes are always on you.” He let his arms fall to his sides, and I instinctively backed up a step. His hands were weapons, and though the movement may have meant nothing, it felt threatening.

  “Caution, little sister . . .” Apparently Dom sensed the same thing.

  Caution, my ass. My blood turned molten. “Great,” I said, placing
one hand on my hip. “Thanks for reminding me I’m living in my own personal hell.” And it was Heru’s damn fault—he was the one who’d been so gung ho on Nejerets revealing ourselves to the world in the first place.

  Heru’s hawkish features softened, just a little. “It is the price you pay for being a god.”

  I threw my hands up and stomped toward the staircase. “Well, I don’t want to be a god.” I passed Heru and started up the stairs, hands balled into fists. In my mind, I could see that disturbing scene from The Judgment card—me, floating over everyone I cared about, the world in tatters. I didn’t want this responsibility.

  Heru didn’t say anything for a few seconds. When I reached the top of the stairs, he gave a quiet command. “Meeting chamber,” he said. “We’ve been waiting for you to return. We have damage control to do.”

  “Fine,” I huffed. “But I need a minute.” I stomped to my room and slammed the door, then leaned back against it and crossed my arms.

  “Kat—”

  “Oh my God, not you, too,” I groaned, letting my head fall back against the door.

  Thankfully, Dom fell silent. Through the door, I could hear the murmur of the conversations taking place up the hall in the conference room. And I could just pick up on the hushed exchange Nik and Heru were having downstairs.

  “Cut her some slack,” I heard Nik whisper. Damn my sensitive ears—I did not want to hear him defending me. “She’s been through a lot lately.”

  “As have you,” Heru said.

  I held my breath, listening harder. I couldn’t help it. I had a feeling that Heru was referring to whatever Nik had been talking to Mei about back on the trail to the beach, and my desire to know was ravenous.

  “Did you speak with Mei?” Heru asked.

  “I did.” Nik was quiet for a moment. “She confirmed it.”

  “I thought as much,” Heru said. “Lex figured it out, too—with Reni’s help, apparently. Turns out she can see things like that.”