Now I’m the one to roll my eyes. “No you can’t.”
“The time you told everyone in school that Revenna was a lesbian because she cut her hair short,” he starts, his gaze as cold as my body temperature. “Or the time you told everyone I worshipped the devil because of how I look.”
“Neither of those things were done by me,” I lamely attempt to defend myself. “Nina started the rumors.”
“I’m sure you were right there with her when she did.” He pauses with his lips pressed together, malicious intent written all over his face. “I mean, you are—were—her sidekick, right? So everything she did, you helped with.”
So many comebacks burn at the tip of my tongue, but I bite them back, knowing he’s right.
“Nina’s not a superhero, which means I couldn’t have been her sidekick,” I say instead. “But you’re probably right about the other stuff. I was a snobby, judgmental bitch back then.”
“You say that like you aren’t anymore.”
“I’m different now.”
“No, you dress differently now,” he corrects. “But giving yourself a rebellious makeover, to what I’m betting was to piss off Mommy and Daddy, doesn’t change you as a person. You’re still the same Remi who treats people like crap.”
Am I?
I mean, I am sort of a bitch to Nina, but I have my reasons for that. And besides, I stood up for Revenna in the bathroom … sort of. I could tell him that, but why do I even care? Why am I letting Thorn make me care? It’s annoying.
I’m about to throw back a witty and possibly slightly bitchy remark when the teacher interrupts me.
“Thorn and Remi, please stop talking, or I’m going to give you lunch detention,” he says, causing the entire class to turn and look at us.
Nina smirks at me when our eyes connect then reaches up and combs her fingers through Zane’s hair while giving him a kiss on the cheek. Zane gives her a strange, confused look then tracks her gaze to me. When our eyes lock, he frowns and swallows hard. In response, I pretend to be bored and yawn.
The truth is, though, that the idea of him possibly cheating on me with Nina is bugging the stupid souls out of me. It’s completely stupid that it is. Out of all the things that could bother me.
Zane looks away and focuses back on the teacher as he returns back to his lecture.
“And if you’re such a good person,” Thorn hisses underneath his breath, “then why can’t your ex-boyfriend and ex-best friend, the two most stuck-up people in this entire school, stand you?”
I want to tell him so many things, but what would be the point? Thorn hates me and has some fairly good reasons too. And I have bigger things to worry about, like getting through another day of high school hell and planning my next meal.
Peanut Butter Might Just Be My Nemesis
Our school has a closed campus lunch policy. Not that it really matters to me, since I can’t eat lunch. But I’m not a fan of sitting in the noisy cafeteria, surrounded by humans stuffing their mouths with food that smells like toilet water. Not that cafeteria food smelled that great when I was human, but the stench didn’t make me dry heave back then… Well, except for on meatloaf surprise days.
And being crammed into a room with that many souls makes me super hungry. The first few weeks I sat in there, I spent the entire half an hour lunch break daydreaming about going wild and feeding off everyone’s souls. Then I’d use my breath of forget so no one would remember.
Finally, after spending a handful of lunch periods drooling all over the table, I decided it might be better if I spent lunch outside near the trees. Only a few people go out there for lunch, and the space is big enough that I usually can’t smell anyone’s soul unless there’s a windstorm.
After fourth period ends and lunch break begins, I toss my bag and books into my locker and make my way out to my tree. It’s the farthest one out, right before the forest that lines the back of the school property.
It’s late fall, so most of the leaves have fallen from the trees and the grass is brown and crunchy, just how I like it. Once I reach my tree, I lie down beneath the branches and stare up at the clouds and the sunlight that slips through every so often. The air is a bit chilly and almost matches my body temperature. Between that and the gloomy sky, I feel very relaxed at the moment. Enough that I might just take a nap.
“Hey, Remi.” A heavy object falls beside my head as a shadow casts across my face.
I blink and find Revenna leaning over me with a warm smile on her face. Her backpack is beside my head, and she has a brown paper lunch bag in her hands.
“Um … Hey …” I watch in confusion as she plops down on the grass beside me. Then, as she starts taking food out of the bag, I sit up and stare at her. “What’re you doing?”
She sets a bagged sandwich onto her lap and a juice box onto the grass in front of her before setting the brown paper bag aside. “I thought, since you’re always out here alone, I’d eat lunch with you today.” She opens the bag and takes out the sandwich. “It’s not like I need to sit at a table anyway. It’s just a waste of space since no one ever wants to sit by me, and everyone usually moves when I sit down.” She picks the crust of her sandwich. “Well, except for Thorn.”
I almost feel bad for her, but I’m finding that sandwich she’s about to eat a bit offensive at the moment, with its breadcrumbs and peanut butter oozing out of the sides.
I eyeball her dubiously as she stuffs the picked-off crust into her mouth and try not to dry heave. “Revenna, as much as I—” I gag as a glob of peanut butter drops from the sandwich and lands on her lap. “Oh God, it’s so gooey and peanut-y.”
Revenna pauses mid-bite and glances from me to her sandwich. “Crap, do you have a peanut allergy?”
More like a food allergy.
Still, I slant back. “Yeah, it’s really bad, too. Just being near that thing could make me super sick.”
I expect her to get up and leave. Instead, she stuffs her sandwich into the bag and chucks it across the grass.
“I’m so sorry.” She wipes off her hands with a napkin. “I should’ve asked first before I took it out. Peanut allergies are so common these days.”
I glance at her discarded bag then at her. “You’re still going to sit here with me?”
She nods, popping the straw into the juice box. “I’ll eat my sandwich later.”
“So you’re just going to leave it over there for now?”
“Sure. No one really comes back here except for you, so I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
Great. Now what?
See? This is what happens when you do something nice, Remi. You get punished with potential friendship. And then what? You’re just going to sit out here with her every day and watch her eat her gooey, gross sandwiches and slurp on her juice boxes while you dream about drinking her soul. And all you’d have to do is drag her over to those trees. It’d be so easy to do it …
I’m so hungry …
“Look,” I start. “I think maybe you got the wrong idea—”
“You know, I really love fall,” she talks over me, as if she can sense I’m about to tell her to leave. “The trees look so pretty. I really need to do a painting of them one day.”
“You paint?” I ask, glancing down at her shoes.
When I saw her earlier today, I thought the black and grey spots on them were dirt, but up close, I realize it’s paint.
She nods, picking at a speck of paint on her shoe. “It’s one of my favorite things to do.” She glances at the trees with a faraway look in her eyes. “It’s the only time I feel happy.”
Well, damn. Now I kind of feel bad for just contemplating eating her soul.
I crinkle my nose at the nice thought. Man, this whole feeling-bad thing is starting to get on my nerves
Sighing, I ask, “Are you any good? I’m guessing so if you do it a lot.”
She returns her attention to me, a smile forming on her lips. “I can show you some of my stuff if you want?”
I shrug. “Sure. Why the hell not?” And at least it’ll keep me partially distracted from the scent of her soul and my overanalyzing thoughts of why I’m being … nice.
Truthfully, though, her soul doesn’t smell as lovely as the guys’ souls I ate last night. Hers is purer, although it has the slightest shadowed scent to it, probably because she’s either done something bad or had something bad done to her. My bet is the latter.
Hmmm … I wonder what’s up with her? Just who is Revenna?
Smiling, she unzips her bag and pulls out a large leather-bound notebook. “These aren’t paintings. I usually don’t carry those around with me, but I always have my sketchbook with me, so …” She nervously hands me the book.
I open it up and take in the dark lines and shadows of the first page, a bit of a shock nipping through me. The drawing is so dark, so haunted. It’s a portrait of a girl with shadowed eyes and shadows covering her body. The drawing strikes a nerve.
While the girl looks nothing like me, I feel as though I’m looking in a mirror.
“They’re scars,” she explains, pointing to the shadows. “Of her past.”
I run my fingers along the lines. “Who is she?”
“I’m not sure.” She gives a nervous shrug, biting on her thumbnail. “I just saw her in a dream once.”
“Oh.” I press my lips together as I flip to the next page, another portrait of the same girl, only this time she’s hiding behind a veil of smoke. “Do you sketch her a lot?”
“Yeah, sometimes … when I’m feeling really down.” She presses her lips together. “I’m not as good of a sketch artist as Thorn is, though.”
I shake my head, unable to take my eyes off the girl. “There’s no way that could be true. These are amazing.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” I offer her a compliment, aware I’m being nice again, but I can’t say anything bad about these drawings. They’re amazing, and I also feel connected to them, as if I’m somehow the girl. Or maybe it’s that the girl seems like she would understand me, the undead version.
I wonder if such a person exists …
Or creature …
My mind drifts back to the creatures I crossed paths with last night. They seemed to know what I am. But they also seemed like total douchebags.
As the bell rings and echoes across the yard, I reluctantly close the sketchbook and hand it back to Revenna. She stuffs it into her bag, rises to her feet, and her lips part.
“Maybe we could—”
“Rev, what’re you doing?” Thorn approaches us with his arms crossed, his face a mask of concern.
“Hey.” She smiles brightly at him. “Didn’t you get my text?”
He slowly nods, his gaze briefly flicking to me before landing back on her. “But I thought you were messing with me.”
Her brows crinkle. “Why would I joke about that?”
Again, his gaze strays to me. “Because it seemed like a joke.”
She gestures at me. “Well, it clearly wasn’t.”
“I have a feeling you two are talking about me. Not that I care, but I’m going to walk away now.” I start to swing around them, throwing a wink at Thorn just to screw with him. “Feel free to keep talking about me, though.” My lips twitch. “Bestie sidekick.”
Revenna giggles while Thorn glares at me. “I thought we already established that, in order for me to be your sidekick, you’d have to be a superhero, and you’re not.”
“I think I changed my mind,” I taunt. “I could totally be a superhero if I wanted to be.” Somehow, I manage not to laugh my ass off as I say the words. But come on. Me? A superhero? That is pretty damn hilarious.
“She kind of is,” Revenna chimes in before Thorn can get out a comeback. “She saved me from Nina today.”
Thorn’s brows immediately dip, his gaze darting to her. “What?”
Revenna nods. “Nina was saying these awful things to me in the bathroom, and Remi stepped in and got her to stop.”
Thorn’s gaze shifts back to me, his blue eyes burrowing into mine in s way that makes me uncomfortable, as if he’s trying to see past my lovely, little undead appearance and find out what’s hidden inside. Sucks for him, since all that’s underneath is some scarred flesh and a damaged heart and soul.
“That’s not what happened,” I insist. “I was already planning on having a bitch-fest with Nina about something else. Revenna just happened to be there.”
“That’s not true,” Revenna says, tugging at the sleeves of her shirt. “You were going to leave when you first saw me and Nina, but then you turned around and came back.”
Crap. She saw that?
“Only because I had to pee,” I lie. “Really, really bad.”
She shakes her head. “I know you’re lying, Remi. But that’s okay. If you want to keep on pretending you’re not as nice as you are, then I’ll let you.”
Let me?
Let me?
“I’m not nice.” I nearly choke on the word.
She only smiles and pats my damn shoulder again. That’s three times today that she’s done that. “Okay.”
The corner of my upper lip twitches as she walks off and picks up her brown bag from off the grass.
Thorn stares at me with a puzzled look etched across his face.
“I wasn’t nice to her,” I find the need to say. “She misinterpreted the situation, so stop staring at me with that confused look on your face, like I’m a complicated puzzle you can’t figure out how to solve. Well, either that or that’s your super constipated face.”
A trace of a smile starts to form on his lips, but he quickly stifles it. Then he thrums his fingers against the sides of his legs and takes a step back. “If I find out you’re screwing with her, you’ll pay for it. I won’t let you hurt her.”
I bite back a smile. His defending of her is super cute and amusing. Normally, if someone threatened me like that, I’d kick their ass. And if they qualified for my number one rule, I’d drink their soul. But Thorn’s soul doesn’t qualify. In fact, his soul smells similar to Revenna’s—mostly pure with a tiny hint of darkness that smells different than any other darkness I’ve smelled before, as if it’s extremely old or something.
“Threat noted,” I manage to say with a straight face.
“Good.” He stares at me for a drop longer before he spins around and hurries after Revenna.
When he reaches her, Revenna loops her arm through his and holds on to him tightly. They almost look like a couple, but as far as I know, they’re just friends. Then again, sometimes I get so self-involved and consumed by my hunger that I become oblivious to what’s going on around me.
Like right now.
I sigh as the bell rings again, announcing I’m tardy.
I start to head inside, taking my time, figuring I’m already late, so I might as well make it worth it. But halfway there, the strangest scent touches my nostrils, like smoke and shadows and dark, tainted souls.
“What in the underworlds?” I slow to a stop and peer around while sniffing the air.
I can’t spot anyone around, but my instincts send me gliding toward the forest. The closer I get to the trees, the stronger the scent becomes. By the time I step into the shadows and underneath the branches, I’m damn near high off the smell.
“Oh, little undead girl,” a voice whispers. “Come closer.”
I tense as the wind picks up and sweeps around me, leaves dancing in the air. I know that voice. It’s the same voice that taunted me last night.
I hesitate, debating my next move. I could back up out of the trees and head back to the school. After all, I don’t know what this dude is or why he’s here. But that move feels awfully cowardly and being a coward isn’t my thing. Well, not anymore.
/> “Oh, little weirdo who’s hiding behind the wind,” I quip. “Come out, come out, wherever you are and stop being a pathetic wimp.”
A snide chuckle mixes with the wind. Then a shadow of a figure forms in front of me, completely out of nowhere. I try to keep my composure and pretend not to be startled by the fact that he appeared out of thin air, but I’m a tiny—and let me stress the tiny part—unnerved.
“Well, I guess I lost the bet,” he sneers.
He’s dressed head to toe in black, his pants tucked into his thick boots, and the sleeves of his shirt are rolled up, revealing intricate tattoos and a couple of gnarly scars paving his flesh. The hood of his jacket is also pulled over his head and shadowing his face, so again, I can’t get a good look at his features, if they’re human-like or not.
“What bet?” I question curiously.
“The bet we had going about you,” a male voice calls from behind me.
I twist around just in time to see another figure materialize amongst the trees. He’s dressed similarly to the guy in front of me, with his hood shadowing his face, but he’s taller and leaner than the other one; that much I can tell.
What I can’t tell, though, is what they are. Not that I’m an expert on creatures, but I’ve looked around online enough that I know a bit. Maybe if I see their faces, I can figure it out.
“Half of us bet you were going to run.” Another figure emerges to my right, also wearing black clothes, with a hood pulled over his head, and chains dangling from his beltloop.
“And the other half bet you were going to scream like a little banshee.” A fourth hooded creature appears, this one just to my left, their face concealed by shadows, too, but the voice is feminine.
I take the four of them in, hyperaware they’ve strategically positioned themselves around me.
Bad move on my part. I never should’ve given them a chance to do it. Not that I’m going to panic.
“Well, I hate to break this to you, but you all lost the bet.” I plaster on my best sassy smile. “Because I’m not going to run or scream. I’m going to kick your asses.”
A whisper of silence passes, and then they bust up laughing.
Grim Page 6
