Darker Days

by Jus Accardo

  In short, he was the kind of guy that got his jollies from HBO late night and the Victoria’s Secret catalog—not real time action.

  Imagine his surprise when Hanna came over, hopped in his lap, and started sucking on his face like he was Ian Somerhalder.

  Several seconds of shocked silence ticked by before the entire cafeteria erupted in hoots and hollers. Someone from the jock table—I couldn’t see who—tossed a handful of french fries at them. Someone else let loose a sharp wolf whistle and started chanting, “Take it off, take it off!” I jumped from my seat to tear them apart, but Mr. Spoker got there first and dragged Hanna—kicking and screaming—from the room. I felt bad for David and his friends. They were probably going to have to walk around with their binders hanging low for hours after the show Hanna gave them.

  I whirled and stalked back to the table where Garrett was still staring at Vida like she’d invented Cheese Wiz. With a roll of my eyes, I said, “Lust, I take it?”

  Vida answered me with an over exaggerated yawn. “Not as smart as the last one, is she?”

  Lukas gripped the edge of the table tighter and leaned forward. “Vida, where are the others?”

  She blew him a kiss. “I know you’re not going to work with the little human here to put us back in that dreadful box. Not after what happened last time you betrayed us.”

  Lukas didn’t answer, but Garrett did. He chuckled, tilting his head and grinning from ear to ear. “Little human. She’s so damn adorable.” Elbowing Lukas, he added, “Isn’t she adorable?”

  Lukas rolled his eyes.

  Vida laughed and pinched his cheek. Turning to me, she said, “I’m only going to give you this warning once, Darker girl. Back off, or else.”

  “Like that’s the first time I’ve heard that before.” Well, it was actually. Today, at least.

  Vida smiled. She rose and turned to Garrett who was still staring at her chest. “This one will be fun.” She extended a scarlet-tipped finger and bopped him on the nose before turning and sashaying back into the crowd.

  Kendra shook her head. “No one’s ass should shake like that. It’s unnatural.” When she turned back to me, there was a mischievous smile on her lips. Leaning across the table, she whispered, “Little human? Last time? Someone has some sharing to do…”

  Craps. I glanced back at Garrett who was staring after Vida like a love-sick puppy. “Yeah…so about Lukas…”

  Chapter Six

  I got away with telling Kendra that Lukas was one of Mom’s clients and needed twenty-four-seven protection because of something he’d gotten mixed up in. It wasn’t technically a lie…She’d let it go—for the moment—but I knew she wouldn’t let it rest forever. She and her mother, Cassidy, were a few of the only non-client humans—witches were technically human, therefore not considered Otherworlders—who knew about the things that growled and grumbled in the night.

  And even though Kendra knew what the Darker Agency did, Mom forbade me to involve my friends in agency cases. I couldn’t blame her, really. I’d let Kendra help me hunt down a poltergeist a few years ago, and she’d broken her arm, inciting a ranting phone call and some serious threats from her mom. Cassidy Belfair was not the kind of woman you wanted to piss off.

  By the time the last bell rang, even though we hadn’t seen Vida again, my skin was still crawling. The girl had presence. A creepy one. Lukas was on edge, too. He kept looking over his shoulder and standing very still, as if listening for something. Twice, I caught him sniffing the air—once he even sniffed Matt Hawker. That had been hard to explain.

  In a badly timed attempt to multitask, I got caught passing a note to Sheri Reame in seventh period science and ended up with after-school detention. She’d slipped a paper into my locker earlier that morning offering to pay me two hundred bucks me to find out who her boyfriend was cheating with. Mom would freak on me if she found out, but it technically wasn’t a case. It was a simple exchange of information. I already knew who her boyfriend was playing the tonsil Olympics with—hell, half the school knew. So on the off-chance I was caught, I had a solid argument. At least I thought so.

  Sometimes, Mom didn’t quite get my logic.

  “This school is the perfect place for Vida to feed. She doesn’t need to work for it,” Lukas said, examining a red pen. He pulled off the cap and began shaking it—why, I had no idea.

  I snatched it from him and stuffed it into my bag. “Nothing really happened today. Other than that thing with Vida at lunch. If she was feeding, wouldn’t there have been more…I dunno, porn star moments?”

  He tilted his head. “Porn star moments?”

  “Ya know, like sucking face and having gropefests?”

  He scowled. “Why is it so hard for you to speak English?”

  “That is English. Not my fault you can’t understand it.”

  He took a deep breath and continued. “If I had to guess, they’re somewhere lying low and biding time. Attracting attention to themselves will only make their mission to find a witch and the one who opened the box harder.” Reaching across the desk, he picked up my cell phone and began pushing random buttons. “They know you’re going to try and recapture them in order to save the bodies they’ve taken. My best guess is they’re trying to figure out how to get rid of you.”

  “Get rid of me?” I snapped, rescuing my cell. Mom had just replaced it last month after I’d dropped it in a pile of Hell Hound drool. That stuff ate through plastic quicker than you could say oopsie.

  “They know you’re a Darker, and that equals trouble for them. They’ll need to get you out of their way if they hope to succeed.”

  “How is that, anyway? I don’t look anything like my mom. Am I wearing a sign on my back? Kick me, I’m a Darker?”

  “I imagine one of them followed me to your mother’s office.”

  “Maybe.” It was logical. Made perfect sense. And that’s probably why it irritated me. “So that thing about being born in Penance, was it true?”

  “It was true.”

  Aha! Now we were getting somewhere. “How old are you?”

  “You ask a lot of questions,” he said, sighing. “It’s impolite to pry into people’s personal lives, you know.”

  “This isn’t prying. It’s me trying to get the information I need to do my job.”

  “My age has no bearing on the case. And I didn’t hire you—I hired Klaire.”

  Ouch. That was a low blow. But I wasn’t deterred. Besides, pushing his buttons made him do this little scrunchie face. His lip curled up at the right hand corner, and his left eyebrow rose slightly. He probably meant to look annoyed, but it was totally hot. I didn’t date, but no one said I couldn’t enjoy the scenery once in a while. “What did Vida mean back in the caf—about the last time?”

  “Who is Damien?” he countered without missing a beat.

  I sighed. “You’re kind of annoying. Has anyone ever told you that?”

  “No,” he replied, scowling. “But I get the impression people tell you that all the time.”

  I bit down on the inside of my lip to keep from smiling. “Ouch. You’ve wounded me. Deeply.”

  Lukas didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled the notebook from in front of me and began flipping through it. Opening to a random page, he pointed to the intricate swirl of dark lines. “What’s this?”

  I twisted in my seat. “The Chinese symbol for fate.”

  Something sparked behind his eyes. “You sketch?”

  “Not really—unless stick figures count?”

  He flipped to the last page and read aloud. “I set my own course through the ocean of life.”

  “Jonathan Lockwood Huie said that. It’s one of my favorite quotes.”

  He traced the words with his index finger before flipping to the next page. “Why?”

  I shrugged. “It’s all about choice—at least that’s what I get from it. No one can tell you what to do or who to be—you have to make your own choices. Your own mistakes.”

  He seemed
to consider this, then nodded approvingly. “I like that.”

  I tried to keep a straight face but couldn’t help grinning. “So glad I have your approval.”

  From the front of the room, Mrs. Manning sighed. She was waiting for detention to finish so she could go down to the teacher’s lounge to make copies. At least, that’s what she’d told us. Really, she was waiting for detention to end so she could sneak a nip from her flask. After I’d ousted Mr. Glenn for taking bribes in exchange for grades, most teachers were leery about leaving me alone with their stuff. Manning was no exception.

  She was sitting behind the desk, drumming her fingers impatiently. I could almost swear she was counting. When the big hand on the clock hit twelve, she all but jumped to her feet and said, “All done. You’re free to go. Next time remember to save it ’til after my class.”

  I hopped up, as eager to get out of there as she seemed to be, and dashed into the hall to check my cell. One text from Mom.

  Better B behaving. Will B home by 5. Straight 2 the office aftr school.

  Straight to the office? Please. We both knew that wasn’t going to happen. Sometimes, I wondered if she said this stuff because it was a preprogrammed Mom thing. I crammed the phone back in my pocket and turned to Lukas. “Okay, so any suggestions?”

  “Suggestions?”

  “On where to start.”

  “It shouldn’t be hard to track them. They’ll need to feed often.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because Wrath does.”

  “Oh…” I’d kind of walked right into that one.

  “Any ideas about what to do when we find them? One better, what to do with them when we find them? We can’t put them back in the box one by one, right? It has to be a package deal? Not that we even have the box…”

  “We can, actually.”

  “Can?”

  “They can be put individually back into the box. It won’t lock without all seven, but we can store them inside.”

  “Well, score! Now we just need to find the box.”

  “That will prove harder than tracking the Sins.”

  “What’s it look like?”

  “How should I know?” he said with a bit of a bite.

  “Um, because you were inside it?”

  “Please explain to me how being inside the box would tell me what the outside looked like.”

  “You’re on the snarky side, you know that?”

  “I don’t know what that means, but I get the feeling it’s an insult,” he said. I could tell he was trying hard not to smile, which made him look even more amazing.

  I shrugged. “Actually, it depends. Me? I’d take it as a compliment.”

  “Definitely an insult, then,” he muttered, turning away.

  I could’ve kept it going. Pushing his buttons could easily become my new favorite pastime, but I had bigger fish to flay. Sinful, demon fish. “What about starting with the witch? I’m better at digging this stuff up than Mom. I usually take the missing person cases. Got a natural knack for it, I guess. Maybe we should start our own search. Are you sure it has to be someone from the same bloodline? I know a few pretty badass witches. I bet I could find—”

  He shook his head, jaw tight. “It has to be the same bloodline.”

  “What happens if the family died off and there’s no one left?”

  “The family didn’t die off.”

  “How do you know?”

  His tone got sharper and he took an almost menacing step forward. “I just know.”

  “You can’t possibly—”

  With a growl, his fist shot out, crashing into the locker behind me. I froze. The sound echoed through the empty hall and bounced off the walls like a rogue ping-pong ball. For a second, I didn’t dare breathe. Lukas’ face contorted in anger, his hand splayed over the shiny new dent. His breathing was shallow.

  Neither of us said a word. The only sound I heard was the subtle whoosh the air made as it passed in and out of his nose. His jaw was tense and shoulders taut, and in that moment, he looked truly frightening. More like a demon than an actual boy. And deep down, a sick part of me liked it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally, hand slipping from the door. He took several steps back and closed his eyes. “The witch is a sore spot. Talking about her makes me angry.”

  Angry.

  OhMyGod.

  Idiot. It hadn’t occurred to me until now. What the heck was wrong with me? How had I not seen it? “It wasn’t random,” I said, horrified.

  He didn’t respond. Only turned and started down the hall.

  “The witch who fused you with Wrath—that Meredith Wells chick… You knew her.”

  Chapter Seven

  I caught up to him as he reached the main door. “Wait!”

  He stopped but didn’t turn around. “I don’t want to discuss it.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, reaching for his hand. “We don’t have to—”

  He jerked away and whirled to face me, eyes radiating a mixture of anger and surprise. “What are you doing?”

  I stared down at my hand, horrified. What was I doing? “I—”

  “I’m dangerous, Jessie. Don’t ever forget that.” Without waiting for me to respond, he crashed through the doors and stalked down the front steps in a blur.

  I hurried after him.

  “I don’t think so,” I called, almost tripping on my open shoelace. He could be dangerous, I didn’t doubt that, but I also believed he had a genuinely good soul despite the thing living inside him. It wasn’t fair to pass judgment based on something that had been done to him. He was right. Wrath lived inside him, but Lukas had free will. Each moment he chose to fight it. I would bet my iPod and a year’s supply of chocolate that he would never intentionally harm someone.

  “You’d be wrong,” he snapped.

  “Nope,” I said, resolved. “I’m wrong about a lot of things, but I’m an awesome people reader. And you, pal, are good people.”

  For a second, I thought he might hit me. His eyes locked on mine, and I could have sworn there was a spark of red in them—but it was over as fast as it started, and I couldn’t be sure.

  He took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders. Like magic, the tension seemed to drain away, leaving him a bit pale and tired looking. “It’s a struggle to control it. Again, I apologize for the outburst.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for. I’m the annoying one, remember?”

  He gave me a small smile. It was fast. Over too soon—which was a shame because it was a nice smile. One I could definitely get used to seeing on a daily basis. “Yes. You are.”

  I swung the book bag over my shoulder and nearly fell backward. Stopping to unload all the books would’ve been a smart move. Now I’d have to lug them all the way home. “So you never answered me. Where do we start?”

  “Klaire is looking for a Wells descendant. We should wait and see what she comes up with.”

  “Um, hello? Why is everyone but me not seeing this? We have four days! I don’t think my math is off when I say that’s less than one day per Sin. We can’t exactly stand around cooling our heels. Besides, I’m not really the wait around type.” I started walking.

  We moved past the edge of the school’s property and crossed over to the main drag. Penance had three distinct areas all divided by Purgatory Lane—someone’s idea of a bad joke. The Ledges—the good part of town. The Flats—the not so good part of town. And East Side. The bad side. Also known as The Pit.

  There were two ways I could get from school to home. The long way—basically a huge circle around The Pit—or the short way through The Pit. Mom didn’t know it, hell she’d probably kill me herself if she found out, but I went through The Pit a lot. I’d made a fair amount of cash there, too. Just last week, I’d helped out an elderly couple by banishing a particularly violent ghost from their spare bedroom. Sure, I’d gotten paid—enough to pay for the damages I’d done to a client’s dining room set the week before, with some left
over to buy a kick ass silver and bone butterfly knife—but I’d also helped out people in need. Win-win.

  My reasons for steering us through The Pit today were less monetary. If the Sins were looking for a place to chow down after school let out, my guess was that The Pit would be ground zero.

  About a mile in, Lukas must have figured out what was going on. “Jessie,” he warned. “This is not a good idea.”

  “What?” I tried to look innocent. Probably failed, too. Mom always said I was as readable as the Sunday comics. And just as predictable. She told me I took after Dad in that respect. He never could pull one over on her. It was one of the reasons he chose to leave. “We’re going back to the office. Like Mom asked. We’re just taking a little detour.”

  A noticeable shiver went through him as he stopped walking to scan the area. Face pale, he said, “This place—we shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here.” Doubling over, he braced both hands against his knees, knotting fingers in the fabric. “I told you, it’s hard to control. I can’t—”

  When he straightened, it was all I could do not to gasp. His eyes, previously brown, now blazed a furious blood red. “Are you okay?” Dumb question. Anyone with red eyes could probably not be classified as okay.

  He gave a sharp shake of his head, gritting his teeth. Pain. He was in pain.

  And it was my fault.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin when, across the street, a black Ford Explorer blew through a red light and crashed into the back end of a Honda Civic. The crunching metal and shattering glass made me twitch in surprise even though I’d watched it all go down. The driver jumped from the SUV and started pounding on the Honda’s window. “I’m in a Goddamned rush. Get this piece of shit out of my way.”

  On the sidewalk a few feet from us, a couple began screaming at each other. I watched, horrified, as the woman pushed the guy, and he, in turn, pushed her back. Within moments, they were punching and kicking each other like a schoolyard death match.