by Rain Oxford
“Yes, sir,” I whispered.
“How long are we grounded?” Hail asked quietly from the doorway.
“Until I say so. I’m thinking mid-forties right now, so you really don’t want to push it.”
Mordon walked in and squeezed my dad’s shoulder. Instead of getting my dad a coffee, he pulled a soda out from a hiding spot in the fridge. “Something happened to the bread, so I’ll pick some up today.” He searched the cabinets until he found a bagel for Dad.
I remembered Mom once saying to Mordon that Mountain Dew and bread was the only thing that settled Dad’s stomach when he was upset.
I realized as my dad discreetly shuddered that he really was afraid. I had hurt my dad just because I wanted to have some fun. I wasn’t considering the people I cared about and I hurt them. Not just Dad, but Xul was punished because of me. Hail wouldn’t get to go swimming for a long time, and it wasn’t his fault.
“I’m sorry. I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you, too. Go to school.” Hail, Xul, and I took off for the door.
“He means for you to change first!” Mordon yelled after us.
The three of us walked to school in silence and when we arrived at the cafeteria, Hail ate without complaining. I started crying over my eggs and Hail just rubbed my back.
“What’s wrong? You won’t be grounded forever,” Xul said.
He didn’t understand. “They’re going to leave us,” I cried.
“Where the hell did you get that idea from?”
“Mom never wanted us. Dad loves us but I’m just going to get in trouble again. He’ll get tired of dealing with us.”
“Oh, God, I hope you grow out of this. Your parents love you both, even when you make them angry. Samhail, do you remember when you were two? Your father nearly lost his life in order to save you after knowing you for less than a week. Ron, your mother wouldn’t put her feet on the ground for the last month of her pregnancy for fear of losing you.”
The bell rang and it was time for gym. Xul made me participate in basketball, saying it would help me to get my mind off things. Other students never asked me what was wrong, they just patted me on the back because they could sense my grief. Xul waited outside my locker room and then walked me to my math class, where he was the substitute for Mr. Cardigan. I felt like I was a prisoner… but I was at fault.
I daydreamed for most of the class and then did my practice problems half-heartedly. This was too easy for me.
“How is math going?”
“Boring. How is science?”
“We’re in the gym again. A fight just broke out among the basketball players. It’s funny.” Everything was quiet for a few minutes until… “Oh, no.”
“What?” I sat up.
“My head hurts.”
My hand shot up. “Mr. Carter, I have to go to the bathroom!” I shouted, cutting him off mid-sentence.
“You can wait.”
“I can’t. I really, really can’t.” Sometimes I could distance myself from Hail’s visions, but when they were very strong, he needed me. Only he could tell how bad it would be beforehand.
Xul must have realized the seriousness of it. “Go,” he said.
I ran the entire way to the bathroom, locked myself in, and leaned against the wall. I barely had enough time to sit before my vision blurred.
When shapes sharpened into focus, I was in my English room. According to the sunlight streaming through the windows, it was sometime shortly after school. My English teacher and my History teacher were both there. Mrs. Sharp looked tired and her clothes were torn. Ms. Sterling looked a fair bit better, but she panted heavily.
They taunted and attacked each other with magic, but the sound was blurred and the vision rushed through the scene until Ms. Sterling lay bleeding out on the ground. When everything went black, I wanted to growl. I learned nothing of value, other than that way too many teachers here were demons.
I sat up, shivering from the cold floor, and took my time climbing to my feet. “Are you okay?” I asked my brother.
“Yeah. I made it to the locker room and locked the door. You?”
“I went to the bathroom. Xul is probably going to yell at me.”
“He won’t yell at you for something you couldn’t control. So what did you learn? What do we know and what do we do?”
“I don’t know. Give me a few minutes to do this one.” I unlocked the door and made my way back to class. Xul was helping a student when I sat in my seat, so I just did my math. I tried to remember the details I got from the scene, but it was almost like I wasn’t supposed to see any of it. Everything they said was blurred over.
Xul set a notebook on my desk as he walked by. It was a beautiful, hardback journal with a deep, rich purple cover that felt like suede when I ran my fingers over it. It was about six by eight inches and half an inch thick. On the front cover was a pink sticky note with a small script.
Your dad always has a notebook with him to write his ideas down in.
I took off the sticky note to find an inscription on the cover: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. I couldn’t get the smile off my face as the bell rang.
Hail met me at the door. “What has you so happy?”
Before I could answer, Xul put his hand on my back and leaned down to whisper. “I’m going to walk you to English, but then I have to go back to the gym. Do not leave your classroom without Hail. If your teacher lets you out early, you call Hail to cut class.”
I knew that if I got hurt because Xul wasn’t watching me, my dad would do worse than kill him. I nodded, thinking about the demon kid who attacked me the day before. “I won’t go anywhere without you or Hail. That boy from yesterday… What did you do to him? He was demon, right? Wizards don’t have glowy eyes.”
Hail shot me a look, but I didn’t consider him a wizard; he was better than just a wizard. A wizard was the descendent of a Guardian, which he was. But while Hail technically Vivian and Nano’s son, he was also the son of Vretial. That made him a demigod, as well as a seer. In fact, Hail was more than that if my dad was right, as he usually was.
“He is half demon. His mother is human and his father was a one-night stand. His mother is also a strict woman who wouldn’t let her child get away with anything, so I took him to her and told her what he did. He was getting grilled when I left.” When we both stared at him, waiting for more, he shrugged. “I wasn’t about to hurt a child. I’m still paying for my crimes.”
I pulled a watermelon Jolly Crunch out of my pocket and held it out for him. “Good demon,” I said as he took it. “I saw Mrs. Sharp and Ms. Sterling fight in Hail’s vision. Are they demons?”
“Sharp is a demon and Sterling is a wizard. When did you see them fight?”
“So Mrs. Sharp is the enemy?”
He gave me a sour look. “Not every demon is the enemy. Now, when are they going to fight?” he asked again.
I opened my mouth to tell him. “Sometime before school,” I lied. I didn’t mean to, that was just what came out. Hail took my hand. “We couldn’t hear anything they said.”
“Let me know if you figure anything else out. Otherwise, don’t worry about it.”
We arrived at my English class and both Xul and Hail left me. My concentration was tainted by the knowledge that my English teacher was likely to die that afternoon. Ms. Sterling was a very happy, friendly woman who could explain concepts of grammar like my dad could math. With every word she said, I waited for the clue that would save her life.
I got nothing.
I was irritated as Hail walked me to FACS, for I didn’t like being bested. In FACS, the boy who attacked me was gone, but unfortunately, that irritated me even more because I wanted someone to spar with. I was annoyed that I didn’t have answers to Hail’s riddle, I was annoyed that I had to be babysat by a demon, and I was annoyed because there was a little girl missing and nobody would listen to me long enough to help her.
<
br /> I could still smell the sour, putrid scent of demon and the stack of missing child fliers was depressing. Even more so, I was annoyed because the balance wasn’t bothered at all.
“You smell weird,” one of the boys said.
This boy caught my eye from the first day because he had an odd wildness to him. He was obviously colorblind, for the bright yellow t-shirt and lime green shorts made me want to scrub the taste out of my eyes when I looked at him. The fact that he had his shoes off every time the teacher turned around made me shudder.
His blond hair was shaggy and unwashed. His brown eyes weren’t strange in their color, but there was something very subtly unusual about the shape of them. Un-human at least. Scrawny was never a word I would use, especially since he was bigger than me, but Hail could compare him to a shrimp.
“Taper, right?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m Taper. You’re Ron? Is it short for Ronald?”
“It’s short to Ronez.” Why the ‘oh’ in Ronez changed to an ‘ah’ sound in Ron, I didn’t know. “How do I smell weird?”
“You smell like cookies.”
I looked at the chocolate cake I was making. “I bake a lot.”
“You also smell like blood,” he added easily.
“Um… I have blood inside me. You do, too… right?” I asked, wondering if I was dealing with another supernatural being. He laughed as he walked away. I frowned at my cake and stuck it in the oven. “Have fun, cake. Good luck.”
“You say bye to your cake.”
It wasn’t a question or accusation, merely a quiet statement. I turned to see a girl with long blond hair and brown eyes that matched Taper’s. Luckily, she had better style than him; her hair was clean and combed and she wore a simple blue dress with silver sandals.
“My brother says I’m a great chef, so I can talk to my cake if I want,” I defended myself.
She shrugged. “I wasn’t making fun of you. I think it’s weird. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m Tatum.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being weird? The history of the human population says otherwise.”
“Do you want a cupcake?” she asked, holding out a tray of pink cupcakes. “They’re raspberry flavor. I think. Or maybe they’re pink flavor.”
“Maybe raspberry tastes like pink. Then how could you tell?”
She frowned for a second and then smiled. “I don’t know. That’s a good question. I ate a pink crayon before. It tasted bad.”
“Not as bad as brown would, probably,” I added. Her smile was cute. I took one of the cupcakes and ate half of it before getting a plastic ziplock bag out of the drawer. I put the remaining treat in it.
“You don’t like it?” Tatum asked.
“I do, but I want to share with my brother.”
“Oh. I don’t share anything with my brother. I mean, I share my mom. And Mom said we shared a womb. Most of the time, my brother is mean to me.”
“Taper is your brother?” I asked. She nodded. “Make chocolate cake for him. Cake always makes Hail happy. Actually, most sweets make him happy.”
“You smell like cookies,” she said. I nodded, because I probably did. “And blood,” she added before walking off. The bell rang and Tatum was there before I could make it out the door. “I’m going to follow you.”
“Why?” I asked.
“So that you don’t get attacked again like yesterday.”
“My brother is with me today.”
“Then we can help, too,” Taper said, taking a position on my other side.
I just shook my head and found Hail waiting for me outside. He gave Tatum and Taper a look, but otherwise ignored them. In the cafeteria, Tatum and Taper took a seat across from Hail and I.
“Hail, this is Tatum and Taper.”
Tatum pulled a small box out of her bag and held it open for Hail. “Cupcake? They’re pink flavor.”
“I love pink flavor! Thank you.” He took the largest cupcake and pushed aside his tray.
I took the cupcake from his hand before he could eat it. “Eat your vegetables and milk first,” I growled, trying to sound like Dad. His bottom lip stuck out and he gazed at the cupcake longingly. “Eat!”
He put one piece of broccoli in his mouth, grimaced, and reached for the cupcake.
“Eat your veggies or I’m telling Dad.”
He looked behind me. “Zeb, what are you doing?” my brother said suddenly. I turned to look, but the demon was nowhere in sight. When I turned back to Hail for an explanation, his tray was empty and the siblings suddenly had more food on theirs.
I glared at him as he took the cupcake from my unresisting hands.
* * *
I was both relieved and disappointed that Drake was missing during English again. I was relieved because I didn’t want him near the demon teachers, and I was disappointed because that meant he was still feeling bad. “Dad won’t let us leave the house, but maybe he’ll let us call Drake,” I suggested.
“Maybe he’ll let Drake come over.”
“So, Ron, what mistake did the Japanese make in the war?”
“Their first mistake was to side with Germany. But the textbook, egocentric answer is that they attacked Pearl Harbor.”
“Do you know what egocentric means?” she asked with irritation.
“Of course, ma’am. I’m nine; I’m very egocentric, but to be perfectly honest, I get most of it from my mother, so my uncle says I’m not going to grow out of it. In fact, I will probably get worse.” She didn’t seem to know what to say to that.
Science was boring, but soon enough, it was time for archery. I watched my brother’s natural ability with the bow and wondered what good I was to him. Hail could master any weapon. He was the son of the most powerful god and was born a Guardian. All I did was get him in trouble. Oh, I could usually think my way out of whatever trouble we were in, but that was only after I got him into it.
Vretial wanted both of us as his Guardians, whereas Avoli only wanted Hail. Honestly, I could understand Avoli’s standpoint; I was the wildcard. Avoli feared my father turning on the gods more than any other Iadnah did, so of course I would be held to the same suspicion.
I couldn’t feel jealous of my brother. While he looked more than two years older than me and things came naturally to him that I struggled with, I wasn’t stupid. I understood that he was mine in a way nobody but my dad and Mordon could understand. My weaknesses were his strengths and vice versa. Hail reacted with his heart and could see the truth through any illusion, where I could use my head even if my heart was breaking. Hail was strong, where I was clever. Although my brother wasn’t a fool, he could enjoy life without cracking puzzles and solving mysteries every minute of every day. I couldn’t be jealous of him because I was proud of him.
I was so deep in thought about Hail’s vision and the missing girl that I shrieked and jumped a foot in the air when a hand came down on my shoulder. Tatum and Taper were both standing behind me on the bleachers.
“You didn’t know we were in the same class with you, did you?” Taper asked.
I put my hand over my racing heart. “I really didn’t know anything about either of you until today. I’m not here to make friends. I really only ever pay attention to people when they can help me or my brother.”
“Ron, wait,” Hail said. I turned to see him walking towards us. “Dad says to treat everyone as your friend until they prove otherwise. Dad has friends all over the universe he can go to for help or information. We need that.”
“Do we want these two as friends?”
“Yes. Tatum gave us cupcakes.”
I rolled my eyes and turned back to the siblings. “Where are your shoes?” I asked, realizing for some reason that they were both barefoot.
Tatum looked down at her bare feet. “Oh, hey! You’re right; they’re missing. I wonder how that happened. So, we’re all meeting up after school today.”
“Who is ‘we’?” Hail asked.
“A bunch of us realized that
Alyssa Cofer went missing a few nights ago. Maddie Glave and Ben Butler are missing, too. We’re going to find them,” Taper said.
“Shouldn’t that be the police’s job?”
“The police are slow.”
“How many is ‘a bunch’?” Hail asked.
“Four,” Tatum said confidently.
“So, you two, and four others? Six is a little small for a rescue mission,” I said, thinking. Six human fifth graders against a demon… I didn’t like the sound of that.
“No. Me, Taper, Luca, and Logan. Plus you,” Tatum added.
“We’re---” Hail started, but I slapped him in the chest and he shut up.
“We’ll be there. We’ll meet in the archery field at four-thirty.”
“Oh, god, we’re going to be so dead. Dad said to be home right after school.”
“And we will be. We’ll just have to sneak out afterwards.”
“Oh, god, we’re going to be so dead.”
* * *
Xul walked us home, but he slowed when we passed the house with six police cars parked in the yard. The police tape was gone, but it was pretty obvious something had happened. “That’s the place I tried to tell you about this morning,” I said. “A little girl is missing and a demon was there.”
He paused, obviously concerned, but then pushed us both forward. “It doesn’t concern us. In fact, the only thing that concerns me is keeping my skin attached to my body, and that means getting you two home before your dad has to check his watch.”
“Is Dad at home?”
“No, he’s at work. Mordon is at home, and if he doesn’t tell Dylan you’re there by three-thirty, I am under orders to destroy all the food in the house except for vegetables.”
Hail took off running.
We made it home with two minutes to spare and Mordon told Dylan we were in the clear. Then Mordon left, saying he had to meet with some people and wouldn’t be back until very late. Dad was supposed to get off work at seven, which meant we had to make it back by then.
