I was ready to give up when I found him. Not the surfer boy, but the other. Shark eyes … feral, depthless, and inhumanly dark.
Sid noticed when I stopped scrolling. “You find something?”
He and Maya both came over to look. Maya gasped. It was as much emotion as she’d ever shown.
“It can’t be,” she said. “It’s not possible.”
“What isn’t?” I asked. I clicked on the photo and up popped a full dossier. I glanced at the name—Grigori Yefimovich Novykh—but it didn’t mean a thing to me. “It’s your database. I didn’t make him up.”
“The man has more lives than a cat.”
Bobby and Rick were now behind me as well, everyone looming over me to stare at the screen.
“No way,” Bobby said in hushed reverence. “The Mad Monk!”
I turned my head as far as I could to look at them. “What? Who is it? For God’s sake, someone spit it out.”
“You’d know him as Rasputin,” Maya answered, her eyes never leaving the screen.
“No freakin’ way!” I said. “You mean that accent was real?”
“Or it may just be someone who looks eerily similar,” Maya said, almost hopefully. “I mean, the last reported sighting of Rasputin was over a decade ago in Afghanistan. The field agent reported him dead.”
“But with his powers of hypnosis … ” Sid began.
Maya’s phone blipped an alert and Sid stopped. Maya tore her gaze away from the screen to check her phone. She paled and turned the volume up for us to hear. Her phone was tuned in to the news and had alerted to an item of interest.
They’d found the missing kids. Dead of exsanguination.
Suddenly it was far less exciting that history had come to life, that our very first mission pitted us up against the larger-than-life figure who’d advised doomed Romanov royalty until they were all put to death in the Russian Revolution.
A bloody end … just like Tyler and Teresa’s. Speaking of which, tonight was the third night since Red Rock. If Tyler and Teresa had been dead since their disappearance, and if blood was exchanged rather than merely taken … well, tonight was the night they would rise again.
11
I would never let on how freaked I was at the idea that I’d come face-to-face with the Mad Monk. I figured a trip to the mall might be just the thing to drive it out of my mind. Meanwhile, the boys had to stay behind to plan a raid on the morgue in case Tyler and Teresa had joined team vamp, even though I was the one with the absolute perfect wardrobe for B&E. Where else did you wear basic black if not breakins and funerals? The morgue was a two-fer.
But Maya and Sid couldn’t just spirit Tyler and Teresa’s bloodless bodies away like they’d swept the whole thing in Ohio under the rug. Everyone had been looking for the missing kids and, thanks to the news, everyone knew they’d been found. If they rose … well, we’d have to see what we could do to cover up the bodies’ vanishing act. But I couldn’t figure out why, if they had been turned, Raspy and his cabal had let the bodies be discovered. Sloppiness? Sheer insanity? Some kind of trap? Maybe they didn’t call Raspy “The Mad Monk” for nothing.
I asked these question, but Maya assured me they’d covered all their bases. Sid would play lookout during the raid and knock out any surveillance equipment, since although it wouldn’t record Bobby, it would catch Rick or mysteriously opening and closing doors. Maya was to be my back-up at the mall.
• • •
Bella made space on the bench seat next to her when the hearse eventually pulled up at my door and I slid into the back. Byron was driving, and, wonder of wonders, Ulric was sitting in the passenger seat rather than trying to play footsie with me. That left me facing Lily and Gavin, who still had bed wrinkles on his neck and cheek. There was a funny feel to the mood, like they’d all just stopped talking about me when I popped my head in.
“What’s up?” I asked, as the door closed behind me and Byron peeled away.
They all exchanged glances, as if deciding who was going to be the sacrifice. Lily finally threw her hands in the air like she was disgusted with the rest of them.
“Something you want to tell us?” Lily asked, looking me pointedly in the eye.
I was baffled. Had Lily known I wasn’t really at home when she’d called, that I’d been lying about just having woken up? Had someone seen Maya drop me off back at my apartment? She’d left me two blocks away and I’d walked, so no one should have spotted us together. But the more I learned about magic’s actual existence, the more I understood that “should” was more of a guideline than a rule, kinda like not wearing white after Labor Day. Anyway, something was up. You could cut the tension with a knife.
“Like what?” I asked cautiously.
“Superpowers, kicking butt, what you’re really doing here.”
“What?” I was starting to sound like a broken record.
“Come on, Gen, Ulric saw you last night.”
I looked at him, but he was gazing stubbornly out the front window. I couldn’t tell if he was mad at me—though I couldn’t figure out why he would be so suddenly—or mad at them for pushing me.
“And lots of people saw you at Red Rock,” Lily continued. “We were all kind of blitzed, but it’s obvious something’s up and we want to know what.”
“There’s nothing going on,” I swore.
Bella gave me a look, her dark eyes full of disbelief.
“Hey, great performance last night, by the way,” I added.
The ghost of a smile twitched her lips, but she said, “Are you trying to distract us?”
“Yeah. See, I suck at that kind of thing. And in case you haven’t noticed, subtlety and secrets are kind of lost on me. If there was something going on, trust me, you’d know it.”
“Reeally?” Bella asked, drawing out every sound.
“Cross my heart and hope to die.” What the hell, I already had a head start.
Ulric turned finally. “I told you guys she’d tell us when she’s ready. You can’t expect her to give up her secret identity just like that.”
I growled. “What secret identity?”
“Come on,” Bella said. “Geneva Belfry? No one has a name like that.”
Ah ha, I had an answer for this one. “Oh, that’s right, Belladonna, Ulric, rag on my name. For your information, I changed it when I got emancipated from my parents, when I wanted to disappear. What’s your excuse?” I looked at each one in challenge, but it was totally lost on Byron and Ulric in the front seats. “Geez, I thought I’d left all this crap behind.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and looked away from them all. My gaze hardened with a hurt I hadn’t really expected to feel. It shouldn’t have mattered how they felt about me. I’d earned it, and anyway, this was a job. But somehow it did matter. If I let down my guard just a little, I might even squeak out a blood-red tear. Wouldn’t that give them something to talk about?
“I’m sorry,” Lily said quietly. “We didn’t know.”
I nodded shortly, still fighting the emotion, feeling just a little badly for using it against them, especially Lily, who seemed genuinely to care, but at least the pressure was off. How the whole emancipation thing explained my superpowers, I didn’t know, but I’d learned as an only child with no one else to blame that the best defense is a good offense.
Bella reached over and silently gave my hand a squeeze where it crossed my arm. “Parents suck.”
Ah, common ground.
• • •
By the time we reached the mall, everything seemed forgotten—or at least no one was willing to bring up the subject again. Lily was determined to make things up to me with a wheat-grass smoothie, which sounded about as appealing as ice-cold blood. I pled allergy, but I don’t think she was convinced.
Byron, Ulric, and Gavin carried their conversation into the mall, debating the merits of Zombie Death Squad over Bone Crusher IV (and whether IV was really an improvement over III), and I surprised myself with a huge sigh of relief.
I didn’t know why I’d gotten so choked up. Sure, they’d welcomed me as one of their own, no questions asked, like the family I’d had to leave behind in Ohio, but—I couldn’t afford to care again. This was an assignment. When I finished, I’d be gone. A new mission, a new identity, everyone left behind, just like my old life. My parents. My hometown. All my BFFs. Best if I hardened my heart now.
“Hey, you okay?” Bella asked, nudging me with her elbow. I’d barely even noticed that we’d wandered into a small store with the absurdly cutesy name of Salem Stitchcraft. I’d been so lost in my thoughts I’d forgotten to browse.
“Yeah, fine.” I forced a smile and tried to see her as a suspect. It would make everything so much easier.
She didn’t comment on the obvious lie, instead holding up a pair of stockings with a web-and-spider design all over them. “What do you think of these?”
“Hot,” I answered with a smile.
I picked an off-black pair of stockings with a classy backseam from a wall hanger, and grabbed a tiny black-and-purple pleated skirt that ought to make my legs look a mile high.
“What about this?” I asked the girls.
“Ulric’s eyes will fall right out of his head,” Lily commented.
“Oh good. I can add them to my collection.”
They both laughed. It felt good—or bittersweet, anyway. I’d missed this. It had never occurred to me that goths might be people too … in the shopping, mall-crawl, gal-pal kind of way. Dammit.
Lily picked out a bustier-style top that fastened around the back of the neck. The fabric was, I had to admit, pretty cool—a red skull-and-crown pattern with some metallic thread running through for sheen.
“Come on, let’s go try things on.”
We headed for the fitting rooms.
Lily came out of her stall holding the halter up behind her neck and spotted me avoiding the store’s full-length mirror. I couldn’t see what I looked like, which nearly killed me, but given the widening of her eyes, Bobby would plotz when he saw me. To complete my look, I’d have to replace those platform Mary Janes I left behind at Red Rock.
“Can you help me with this?” she asked.
I scooted quickly past the mirror and pushed her hair aside to get at the clasp, but there wasn’t nearly as much of it as there should have been. She’d brushed it over carefully, but now that I was close, I could see how uneven it was in one section, like a hank of hair had been ripped out. I touched Lily’s head, forgetting about the halter and almost letting the straps slide, exposing her to the world.
“Gen!” she called out.
I regained control of the straps just in time.
“What happened here?” I asked.
She hissed out a breath. “Hailee.” The name sounded like a curse the way she said it.
Bella came out of her dressing room, sporting the webbed stockings beneath a pair of black shorts with a black top with slashes running through it, exposing a cool blue cami.
“If you haven’t had a run-in with her yet, you will soon,” Bella said, picking up on the conversation as she stepped between us to peer into the mirror. “She thinks she’s all that and a bag of chips. Wants to give the world a bimbo Barbie makeover.”
“And she started with Lily’s hair?” I asked, wide-eyed.
“We kind of got into it,” Lily said briefly. “A little help here?”
I dropped her hair and moved on to fastening the neck clasps for her.
“Did you report her?” I asked.
Lily and Bella exchanged a knowing look. “What’s the point? Her mom’s pals with the vice principal. Hailee can do no wrong. Anyway, I gave as good as I got.”
“When was this?” I asked.
“I don’t know, a week or two ago. Before you got here. Why?”
I had to think fast. “I’m thinking about revenge … you know, best served cold and all that.”
But really, it was because I wanted to see whether Hailee had been a witch—spelled b-i-t-c-h—before the weirdness started or only after, which would tell me if she was more likely to be a participant in the problem or a victim of the general insanity. With someone like Hailee, it was often just too tough to tell. And now that I knew Lily had been attacked, like Bella, only different, I had to add her to the list of suspects. After all, she’d been there the night I overheard someone conspiring with Grunge Vamp, and she hadn’t been with me at the time. On the other hand, neither had Bella or Hailee or Marissa. I couldn’t rule any of them out.
“Speak of the devil,” Lily said, looking straight past us to the store entrance, where the very blond bimbette we’d been discussing stood with her posse. Her throat, where Raspy had bitten her, was hidden beneath a Coach scarf. Beige … how appropriate. She’d rifled through one of the racks posted outside the store to draw in customers and had come up with the most hideous dress she could find—a pumpkin-orange monstrosity with black tulle underneath. She held it up against herself and made some kind of comment that sent her flock into a fit of laughter, like she’d actually made a decent joke. Wait, was three a flock, a posse, or a pride? Certainly it wasn’t enough for an entourage.
I wanted to yell something about orange really being her color, picking up the carroty tones in her hair, but for once I used a little restraint. I wasn’t there to right the social wrongs of the world, and anyway, I might have to pump her for information at some point, as unappealing as that sounded. Furthermore, Maya was supposed to be my back-up. I hadn’t seen her, but I knew she was around somewhere. She was probably just being subtle and sneaky and all those other S words (like spy and surveillance and spook). I wanted to show her that I could behave. Didn’t mean I had to like it.
Lily didn’t have any such concerns. “Hail, that dress is so you!” she called across the store. “Right down to the extra padding.”
Hailee’s face turned redder than the dress in hand. Her narrowed eyes searched Lily out like a sniper scope. Her glare was almost enough to cut us down where we stood. “Are you suggesting I stuff?” she snarled.
“You saying you don’t?” Lily asked, pouring on the disbelief and cocking a hand on one hip.
Hailee hissed and launched herself into the store. The sales girl who’d been restocking shoes and watching us out of the corner of her eye flew to intercept, but she didn’t have to worry. Hailee’s buds, who had more sense than she did, grabbed her, clucking like a bunch of hens in a way that was probably meant to sooth.
“Watch your back,” Hailee spat out as her friends led her away. “Some day I’ll catch you alone.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Lily called. “You’d just better hope I never catch you without your posse to back you up.”
That settled it—posse, then.
Hailee tried to launch herself toward us again, but she was held fast and dragged away.
“That was fun,” Lily said, looking positively perky. “What do you say we celebrate with a smoothie?”
“What is it with you and smoothies?” Bella asked. “Do you have any idea how much sugar they have?”
“Enough to ride a natural high,” Lily answered back. “Then we can tear the guys away from killing zombies and make them take us to a movie. The Taxidermist XII started on Friday.”
“Oh, please, number eleven was so lame,” Bella complained.
“Yeah, but this one’s got Milan Jokavic in it.”
“That hot guy from Wicked Dead III ?”
I smiled, letting it all wash over me, feeling for the first time in far too long like a normal teen. Friends, enemies, shopping …
Suddenly the sales girl was standing in front of us. “You want me to ring those up?” she asked, clearly anxious to be rid of us. We all exchanged looks.
“What the hell,” Bella said. “I’ll wear mine out.”
Still, she disappeared into the dressing room to gather her stuff, as did we all, though I took an extra few seconds to change because I didn’t have the right footwear for my outfit … yet. I met up with them at
the counter.
When it was my turn, I passed over my governmentally supplied credit card. I hadn’t thought to ask how it worked. Did they cover my expenses or would the bill be taken out of my paycheck? Whatever. Backseamed stockings were classics, and the sight of Bobby’s tongue dragging on the floor would be more than enough to justify the skirt.
“Shoes before smoothies?” I asked, as the sales girl handed me my bag.
“Sure,” Bella said, surprising me because it always seemed that Lily was the decision-maker of the group. “I know just the place.”
• • •
We didn’t actually get back to the guys for another hour, and it was another after that before the next showing of The Taxidermist XII, which is how I learned that even goths liked Dance, Dance Revolution. Unfortunately for Lily and Bella, I was at minimum semi-pro. We’d even started to gather a crowd by the time we had to leave for the film.
We girls sat on one end of the row with the guys toward the center, arguing all through the opening credits about how Gavin’s target gun on the last game had been—or not been—misaligned, cheating him of the high score he deserved. When the hushing started he subsided into a pout.
A third of the way through the movie, the Mission Impossible theme started playing in my head like a ring tone. Bobby and Rick must have begun their infiltration of the morgue and somehow, Bobby’s mental mood music was bleeding through to me …
And then suddenly it cut off. There was complete and absolute silence except for the screaming onscreen. The hero and the too-stupid-to-live heroine were still alive for the moment. I was struggling to care, struggling not to panic over what might be happening to Bobby, when something very pointy poked the back of my neck and my skin tried to crawl away from it.
Wood, I knew instantly. A stake. Whoever was behind me knew exactly what I was and didn’t seem any too happy about it. I could imagine that I’d made some enemies—the jocks, the pretty-girl posse, Rasputin and his minions, though I still couldn’t believe it was him. I mean, even I’d paid attention to that part of history class. But only a few people knew we were going to see this particular movie at this particular time and I was sitting with them. Someone had sold me out.
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