“Ah, Mr. Hawthorne. Brand new and yet, I’ve heard so much about you already.”
“You have?”
Mr. Marsden, the guidance counselor, was a normal looking guy, with glasses and a short beard. He wore a button down shirt, but he had loosened his tie. If anything, he was the exact opposite of what you would expect someone sinister to look like, but there was no denying that something was way off.
“Of course. You and your oh so pleasant sister seem to be under the impression that you are better at my job than I am,” he sneered.
“Huh?”
“Don’t think that I don’t know what you are up to, young man,” he said, glaring at me. “You’ll not get far in life by sticking your nose into other people’s business.”
“I wasn’t… that is… I mean, I might have talked to a few kids who seemed down, but that’s not wrong, is it?”
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little scared. Mr. Marsden wasn’t lost, but his soul was definitely not balanced. But he wasn’t a Discordant either. He was just… evil.
“That’s the problem with kids today,” he said, giving me a pitying stare. “You think because you have the internet, you know everything. What do I know? I only went through years of college to learn how to counsel ungrateful teenagers. Clearly, you know how to fix the problems of your peers better than I, don’t you?”
“What? No! Mr. Marsden, I…” Now I was just confused. “What exactly are you accusing me of?”
“Hubris, son. It’s the bane of your generation,” he said, picking up a file off of his desk. “Now, are you ready to stop worrying about the lives of your classmates and take some responsibility for your own?”
“Um… sure?”
“Good, because it looks like you have a lot to be concerned about here. With a course load like this, you’ll be lucky if any college takes you.”
“Huh? I’m in AP classes,” I said, not sure where he was going with this.
“Mm-hm, you sure are, but you’ll need to bring your grades up if you want to succeed.”
“I’m an honors student!” It hit me. Mr. Marsden was the wraith. Or the host. But if he was trying to make me lost, he was doing a really bad job of it because nothing he said applied to me at all.
“Honestly, I’m not surprised,” he went on as if he hadn’t heard me. “It’s typical to expect low academic achievement from orphaned youth. I’m sorry, Jem, but you’re going to have to do better than this if you want a career that doesn’t involve asking people if they want fries with that.”
“Um… okay, sure. I’ll do better.”
“That’s the spirit. Now go on, think about your life, and mind your own business. If I hear about you or your sister bothering the other students again, I’ll have you both in detention.”
“Um, okay, thanks,” I said and left as fast as my legs would take me. As I left, I heard Mrs. Dover call Nai’s name over the loud speaker. But when I left the office, Nai was already in the hall, staring at the door that I had just come out of with a frown.
“Something is really messed up in there,” she muttered.
“Yeah, you’re not kidding,” I said. “Come on, we have to talk to Desmond.”
“Wait, are you telling me you want me to skip my appointment with guidance and cut school?” she asked with a look of shock.
“Uh, yeah. Trust me. It’s for the best if you don’t go in there.”
“My, my, brother dear,” she said with a wicked grin. “There’s hope for you yet.”
Chapter 5
Demons, Diners, & Detention
Whatever was in that office must have really spooked Jem because he didn’t cut class ever, which, I guess made sense, since he’s the opposite of me. He didn’t say anything else and as soon as we slipped out the side door, he took off running.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Wait up!”
“Run faster!” he yelled back. Easy for him to say, he was the jock. Exercise wasn’t really my thing and there wasn’t much I hated more than being sweaty. Still, I picked up my pace because I didn’t want to miss whatever was going on. I reached the house just as Desmond was coming down the stairs.
“Why are you yelling? And why aren’t you at school?” he asked, clearly pissed at being woken up by Jem’s unintelligible shouting.
“I found the wraith!” Jem panted.
“You what?” I shouted. I knew there was something off in the office, but I hadn’t sensed a Discordant.
“I doubt that, but tell me what you found,” said Desmond, who was suddenly way more awake, but still looked pissed as he rubbed his temples. “And please, use your inside voices.”
“It’s Mr. Marsden, the guidance counselor. He’s got this… I don’t know... this really weird aura. He’s the reason all the kids are lost.” Jem shuddered. “When I went in for my college advisory meeting, he told me that he knew what we were doing and that we need to stop trying to do his job.”
“Well, he’s the guidance counselor,” I reasoned. “If he found out we were talking to troubled kids, he probably thinks we’re a liability or something.”
“Yeah, I thought about that, but you weren’t there. He’s really imbalanced, but here’s the weird part. He kept trying to tell me things that made no sense. Like that my grades weren’t good enough for college even though I’m an honor student. I don’t think he even noticed that it wasn’t working.”
“It sounds more like he had been possessed by the wraith,” Desmond said. “The reason wraiths are so hard to find is that the host isn’t unbalanced. They aren’t lost and they certainly don’t carry an unusual aura.”
I mentally put that information aside and gloated inwardly. To be honest, I didn’t want Jem to be the one to find the wraith. I wanted to do it.
“But he wasn’t lost,” Jem argued. “That’s the part I can’t explain. He just had this really evil feeling about him and everyone we had saved was lost after they talked to him. Ask Nai,” he said, looking over at me. “She felt the weirdness too.”
“You met with the counselor too?” Desmond asked.
“No. Jem caught me before I went in,” I said. “But yeah, there’s a really bad vibe in that office. I noticed it when we registered as well. Mr. Marsden may not be the host, but he’s definitely fu… er… messed up.” I caught myself before the ‘f’ word came out. Desmond, like most hypocritical adults, took issue with my language.
“Marsden,” Desmond repeated and walked over to the desk where his laptop sat. “Marsden,” he muttered again. “Gary Marsden?”
“Not sure,” Jem said.
“Yeah, I think that’s it,” I said. “The nameplate on his door says G. Marsden.”
Desmond read something on his screen and looked up at Jem. “And you say he wasn’t lost?”
“Nope,” Jem shook his head.
“Hang on,” Desmond muttered as he typed. “Yep, that’s him,” he said, sitting back with a sigh. “Mr. Marsden went missing earlier this summer while hiking in Oklahoma. He showed up last week with no recollection of what had happened. Both Seth and Bogie saw him in the bar and they both claim he was lost, but he disappeared before they could do anything. This is extremely suspicious, but it doesn’t jive with anything you’ve described.”
“He was probably possessed when he was hiking,” I said. “That’s probably why he didn’t come back. He was probably on a killing spree or something.”
“I’m sure we’d have heard about a killing spree, but you are on the right track. I do not doubt that something possessed him,” Desmond said with a frown. “But it wasn’t the wraith, that’s for sure.”
“So what do we do now?” I asked, eager to work on something more interesting than fixing the problems of idiot teenagers.
“Now? You two need to get your butts back to school.”
“But…” I started, but Desmond cut me off.
“No buts. I have work to do and I don’t want to have to come down to the school for a disciplinary meeting.”
<
br /> “Hey wait!” Jem said suddenly. “That’s a good idea. If we get in trouble, you’ll probably have to talk to Mr. Marsden and then you can see if you can figure out what’s wrong with him.”
Desmond stopped to consider this for a moment.
“Okay, then get your butts down to Louie’s Diner. The truancy officer usually makes the rounds there.”
“But then we’ll just end up back at school,” I pointed out.
“Which means I can kill two birds with one stone,” Desmond informed me with a smug smile.
“Ugh!” I huffed and stormed out the front door. If we were lucky, we might be able to get some cheese fries before the school thugs showed up.
* * *
“What was I thinking?” Jem moaned for the fiftieth time in two minutes.
“Will you shut up?” I hissed. “God, it’s detention, not Guantanamo.”
We didn’t even get a chance to walk into the diner, let alone order any food before we were grabbed by the truancy officer. Desmond swore he had nothing to do with that, but I didn’t believe him for a minute. Jem, of course, went straight into freak out mode. Seriously, he was the only person I’ve ever known who actually believed that things went on his ‘permanent record.’
Detention was no big deal. The only thing that sucked was that they confiscated our phones. Our old school didn’t do that. I made a mental note to check the thrift stores for a junky old phone that I could hand over in the future because I was pretty sure this wasn’t going to be my last time in detention and I still had work to do.
“But it didn’t even work,” Jem said with an annoying sigh. “All they did was call Desmond and tell him we had detention.”
“Jem, you’re a friggin’ idiot,” I reminded him. “If you knew anything at all about getting detention, you would know that they don’t have a meeting after your first offense. You’re going to have to do this at least four or five more times.”
“What? Oh, heck no I’m not! I do not need juvenile delinquent on my permanent record.”
“The only thing your permanent record says is that you’re a loser and an idiot. Now shut up! I’m thinking and I’d like to not be interrupted again.”
We didn’t meet with Mr. Marsden, but when we were brought into the office, I was nearly knocked over by whatever was in there. Jem was right, it was definitely an unbalanced force, but what I wasn’t expecting was its effect on me. As agents of Order, we were supposed to be immune to Discordant influence, but for some reason, the energy in Mr. Marsden’s office made me angry. Like, really angry. I had to use all of my resolve not to run in there and start punching things. This didn’t make any sense. None of the Discordant I had read about were known for making people angry. I mean, some could send people into a jealous rage or make them super paranoid, but that wasn’t what I felt. Now I was more than a little pissed that Jem made me miss my meeting. I needed to see this guy for myself, and more importantly, beat whatever it was that possessed him.
Since we had to stay a full hour after school, Seth was already home when we got there. He and Desmond had ordered a pizza in an attempt to apologize for making us have detention. It was a good thing because making us eat their cooking would have just been another round of unfair punishment. Our mom used to do all the cooking, so neither Jem nor I could do much more than heat up stuff in the microwave, but we were practically gourmet chefs compared to those guys.
“I talked to Harry today,” Seth told Desmond. “He’s free to meet us tomorrow morning.”
“Who’s Harry?” Jem asked.
“The caretaker at St. Anthony’s church,” Seth replied. “And a powerful mystic. I’m hoping he can give us some insight into how to catch the wraith.”
“I thought the church frowned on magic and stuff like that,” I said.
“Miracles are magic,” Jem countered.
“Miracles are faked to get money,” I shot back.
“Mysticism and miracles are not quite the same thing,” Seth intervened. “Catholicism is the mystic sect of Christianity, but you are correct, most modern clergy denounce the existence of magic and classify miracles as something entirely different. But there are some who follow the ancient practices and commune with spirits. For the record, we are the spirits.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “So mystics know what we are, yet they still believe in God or hippie spirits or whatever? Why?”
“Because the various interpretations of religion are what maintain balance in the realm of Order,” Seth explained. “Mystics have a higher understanding of this balance, but their personal convictions are instrumental in their rationalization of that which exists outside the realm of normal.”
“Huh?” Jem asked, echoing my exact thought.
“The knowledge of the Cycle, that is, the information imparted upon us by the Creator, is too much for the human mind to comprehend,” Desmond explained. “In addition to balance, religious conviction adds a layer of rationalization and obfuscates that which would bring about madness.”
“But unfortunately, there are occasionally those who discover the Ultimate Truth on their own,” Seth added. “Their minds cannot sustain so much knowledge and typically end their lives or wind up in psychiatric treatment centers.”
“So religion keeps people sane,” Jem said, flashing me a smug look.
“In a matter of speaking,” Seth conceded.
“Whatever,” I said rolling my eyes. All I had to do was look at the headlines in the news to prove that theory wrong.
* * *
When Seth said we were going to the church to meet Harry, I thought he was talking about the one at the end of our street, but no, he meant the big-ass church way on the other side of town that sat up on this huge mountain. We weren’t even halfway up and my legs were burning.
“Seriously, why do we have to walk everywhere?”
“Because it’s better for the environment and there’s no point in driving if we’re only going a half mile,” Seth informed me.
“Half mile, my ass,” I muttered. We’d seriously been walking way longer than that.
“It’ll end up a half mile wide with that attitude,” Desmond quipped. “A little exercise never killed anyone, Nai.”
“Ugh! Rude! I don’t like to sweat.”
“Which is why you need to leave the monster hunting to me,” he said, taking on a serious tone. “Ninety percent of my job is physical.”
“Whatever,” I scoffed. I’m sure he probably had to walk around looking for Discordant, but I’ve seen some of the weapons Desmond used and I doubted very much that he spent all his time running for his life.
I never liked churches. Especially old cathedrals. This was one of the reasons I became an atheist. Or tried to anyway. I still think Pete was just trying to scare me. I mean, in a way, I was right. God wasn’t really real. The Creator wasn’t really God, so no one could really tell me I was wrong. But whatever, I still hated these musty old churches. Something about the way the smelly incense clung to the thick carpeting made me feel like I was suffocating. St. Anthony’s was no different.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. There was something strange about this church. The one we went to back home never seemed to pulse with magical energy and I don’t remember the holy water shimmering like a pool of gold either.
“Whoa!” Jem whispered as he looked around. “Do you feel that?”
“What you’re feeling is the mystical energy,” Seth explained. “As an agent of Order, you are able to sense places of magic here within the cycle. This church is imbued with that energy, even though the current clergy do not condone mysticism.”
I was still transfixed by the holy water. I always thought that was the biggest scam the church had going, but there was definitely a powerful current of energy coming from the basin.
“Careful, Nai,” Jem said in a teasing voice. “That’s holy water. You might burst into flames.”
I knew that it had properties that strengthened weapons against s
ome types of Discordant. I might have been the evil twin, but I wasn’t a Discordant, so I rolled my eyes at Jem and stuck my hand into the basin. Nothing happened, but it was fun watching him flinch.
“Hey! Get your hands out of there, kid! Holy water is for praying, not playing.”
I pulled my hand out of the basin and looked up at the old man who had joined us. His face was pulled downward in a frown that reminded me of that grumpy internet cat that everyone thinks is so funny. He probably thought his line about praying not playing was clever and had a whole bunch of other corny sayings as well. From the faint glow that I could feel more than see, I guessed that this was Harry, the guy we had come to see.
“Thank you for meeting us on such short notice,” Seth said, giving the guy a disarming smile that seemed to have no effect. He was still staring at me, though now he looked more fascinated. He turned to Jem, then back at me, and finally noticed Desmond, who got an even bigger reaction out of the guy before he turned his scowl to Seth.
“Seth, you here to warn me that the end of times is a comin’?” He turned to Desmond. “No offense, but I ain’t never seen a Warrior in Blackbird before. Hell, I thought you guys were an urban legend.”
“Quite frankly, I’m surprised I’m the first,” Desmond said and introduced himself. “Blackbird seems rather active for a place protected by just a handful of mystics.”
“We do what we can. At least, some of us do,” he muttered, adding under his breath about heathens and desecrating sacred property.
“Again, Harry, please don’t blame the coven. The damage was entirely my fault. I’m the one who invoked an angel.” By Seth’s exasperated tone, I could tell he’d had this conversation before. Not surprising, considering how close-minded the church was to the idea of alternative religions, especially pagans. Harry grumbled again, but let it go as his eyes fell on me and Jem again.
“These are the new Guardians I was telling you about,” Seth said by way of introduction. He began explaining about our split souls, but Harry interrupted him, waving his hand in front of his face like he was swatting invisible gnats.
“I know what they are. I just wanna know why. Seems somethin’ is off about these two.”
Rise of the Discordant: The Complete Five Book Series Page 24
