Death, Doom, and Detention

THE CLEARING

I waited until after ten. My grandparents had gone to bed an hour earlier, but I had to make sure they were asleep before descending the stairs. I didn’t dare take the stairs outside my bedroom window. Since this whole building used to be a store and my grandparents transformed the back part into living quarters for us, there was a fire escape right outside my room. I took those stairs often, but the metal clanged with every step. No way would my grandparents not hear me.

Worse, I had two bodyguards by the names of Jared and Cameron just outside somewhere. Surely they didn’t actually stay up all night every night. They had to sleep sometime. But I couldn’t risk going out the back door. Jared’s house, a small apartment my grandparents had used as storage and remodeled for him to live in, sat right behind the store. If he didn’t see me, Cameron—who camped out behind the store in his truck while on sentry duty—surely would. So I decided to sneak out the front door.

I crept down the stairs, through the store, and out the front door. Thankfully, when the lights were turned off, so was the door chime, but I did have to turn off the alarm, which beeped every time I pushed a number. I cringed and waited to make sure no one heard, then headed out into the frigid night toward a waiting car.

“I’m glad you called,” Tabitha said when I shut the door to her Honda. Her car was warm and smelled like Tommy Girl.

“Thanks.” I strapped on my seat belt and settled in. I felt like I’d wandered into the cave of the enemy, but my curiosity had gotten the better of me. Why would Tabitha Sind invite little ol’ me to a party? And where was her entourage? She never went anywhere without Amber, her second-in-command. Maybe it was a trap. Maybe Amber was waiting for us in some remote part of the forest and they were going to beat me to death with rocks and sticks. That would suck.

Tabitha drove down the winding canyon and took the cutoff to the Clearing, which was pretty much party central for high school kids. I’d been there once, but only during the day, never at an actual party. I waited for Tabitha to make a point in her ramblings, hoping she’d fill me in on why she’d invited me, but she went on and on about her hair and her chem test and about who all was going to be at the party.

Riley’s Switch had taken state this year and we were apparently still celebrating three weeks later, no matter how cold it was.

“Help me with the bags?” she asked.

We got out and she handed me a paper bag with glass bottles in it.

“My dad will kill me if he finds out I raided his liquor cabinet,” she said, offering me a conspiratorial wink. But all I could think about was how she was going to navigate the uneven ground in those heels.

The party was everything I’d expected it to be: Couples sitting around a campfire, others standing, chatting and drinking. A few yelling powerful fight metaphors into the night, after which everyone had to raise whatever he or she was drinking into the air. Someone had a car stereo on in the background, the music fairly low. Lots of jocks. Lots of hair-sprayed girls. Lots of popular kids who actually got invited to parties fairly often. I straddled a weird kind of fence at school. I wasn’t popular by any stretch of the imagination, but I was friends with most of the kids. And almost everyone I wasn’t friends with was at this party. This was going to be loads of fun.

I strolled to a shadowy area and marveled at how it seemed warmer there, though I still shivered underneath my jacket. In what seemed like seconds later, Tabitha found me. She walked up with a cup in each hand and a clear bottle wedged under her arm.

“Here, try this.”

She handed me a yellow Solo cup, and I examined the colorless contents inside. “What is it?”

A pleased smirk lifted one corner of her mouth. “Strawberry vodka. You’ll love it.” She tipped it toward my mouth, and a warning signal went off in my head, much like the blaring alarm preceding an imminent nuclear disaster, but I did what any normal sixteen-year-old would do. I ignored it. And I drank.

The searing liquid trailed like molten lava down my throat. I gasped and struggled for air, and after a small fit of coughs and a sneeze, I said, “Now I know why they call it firewater.”

She laughed, pretending to be amused, and I gave her a second to come to her point. We weren’t friends. She didn’t invite me here to make small talk. And my curiosity was getting the better of me, no matter how hard I pretended otherwise. So I took another searing drink and held my cup out for more.

I could be cool. I could hang with kids who wouldn’t give me the time of day. Who quite possibly didn’t know my name. I could be normal.

Tabitha refilled my cup, pouring from a tall bottle before Joss Duffy grabbed it from her. She lunged to snatch it back, but he held it at arm’s length, just out of her reach.

“Didn’t you learn to share?” he asked, clearly having had too much already. He lost his footing, caught himself, then raised the bottle in salute.

“That’s from my dad’s liquor cabinet,” she said. “Don’t drink it all. I’ll have to dilute it enough as it is.”

Joss nodded, then winked at me. “Hey, McAlister. Long time no see.” His Riley High letter jacket looked freshly cleaned, the red and black combination striking.

I offered a quick smile. “Actually, we saw each other in sixth today.”

“Oh.” He snickered. “I don’t really pay attention in that class.”

He tried to step closer and stumbled into me instead. I braced myself for both a fall and a vision, but nothing happened besides almost getting knocked unconscious. I pushed him off me, spilling half my strawberry vodka in the process.

“My bad,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “You look nice tonight.”

“So,” Tabitha said, angling her shoulders to block Joss, completely dismissing him. He shrugged and staggered back to the fire, the bottle tipped at his mouth.

“So?” I asked, taking another drink. It seemed the more I drank, the easier it became to swallow the hot liquid.

“You and Jared?” she asked, and I realized she had been biding her time, waiting for the opportunity to ply me with alcohol—a learned behavior—before asking the personal questions. “Are you guys a thing?”

she continued. “I mean, it seemed like you might be a thing there for about five minutes, but now you hardly look at each other. And yet he’s always near you. So, what gives?” She took a drink from her own cup, eyeing me in question from over the rim.

The world slid to the left a bit as I watched her, the alcohol affecting my equilibrium already. That was really fast. But as much fun as I was having, I just didn’t think I could bring myself to have a heart-to-heart with Tabitha Sind.

“We’re not a thing,” I said, taking another drink so I could hide behind my cup.

She brightened. “Oh, I’m sorry. I mean, I thought maybe—”

“Nope,” I said, cutting her off. “We’re just friends.”

“Jared!” Her tone took on a sharp pitch that cut through the frigid air.

I frowned at her. “Right. Jared. We’re not—”

“You came.”

She stepped closer, and I realized Jared was behind me. I closed my eyes and let out a long, exaggerated huff of air. How on earth did he find me?

“I didn’t think you’d come.” She was lying. Was that why she’d invited me? As a way to get Jared to come to her stupid party? I felt so used. And nauseated. Though one had nothing to do with the other.

Before I could even look at him, the world tilted just a little too far to the left. I doubled over and heaved, an act that could not possibly be appealing.

“Uh-oh,” Tab said, smiling at Jared, utterly love struck. “Looks like someone isn’t feeling well.” She reached over and took the sleeve of Jared’s jacket. That much I could see through my hair, though the image was upside down. “Why don’t we leave her alone for a bit?”

When my gaze finally made its way up strong legs, fit hips, masculine hands, long arms … up, up, up to wide shoulders, a beautiful mouth, a perfect nose, and eyes so dark, they glittered—I realized he was looking not at Tabitha but at me. And his expression was not a happy one.

“Who gave her alcohol?” he asked.

“What?” Tabitha asked, placing a hand over her chest. “She’s been drinking?”

He shot her a glare so hard, dynamite couldn’t have penetrated it. Then he bent down, pulling out of her grip with the movement, and scooped me up. The world spun and my stomach heaved again—thankfully, to no avail—as he carried me a short distance from the fire.

He plopped me onto my feet, then steadied me when I almost crumpled. “What the hell are you doing?”

“What? I got invited to a party.”

He grabbed hold of my upper arm. “With everything that’s going on, you decide to go to a party?”

With feelings shredded, I jerked out of his grip. “Why are you even here? Why did you come?”

“What do you mean?”

I wondered what I meant as well. Was I talking about the party or just in general? “I can go to a stupid party if I want to, Jared. I can be just as normal as the next girl.”

“You’re not normal, and you know it.”

His words cut for some bizarre reason, no matter how accurate they were. When he tried to take hold of me again, I jerked away again.

His expression hardened. “We need to get you home.”

“Why? So I can be a prisoner for the rest of my life? Is this what it’s going to be like forever?”

“Until we figure out who wants to harm you, yes. You’ll just have to deal with that.”

“What are you talking about? You killed that reporter guy who tried to kidnap me.”

“And he was sent by someone else. Someone smart enough to make your death look like an accident.”

“What do you mean? What accident?”

“Think about it, Lorelei. You’re the prophet. The one who’s supposed to save the world, literally, yet you’re hit by a truck and suddenly slated to die? Does that sound wrong to you?”

I stepped back, growing wary. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that your near-death experience was planned. It had to be. Someone wanted to stop the prophecy from coming true. Why else would you have been scheduled to die before you could fulfill it? A centuries-old prophecy?”

I pulled my bottom lip through my teeth. “Someone tried to kill me? On purpose?”

“I believe so. And maybe that’s why I couldn’t take you when I was supposed to. Maybe I knew.

Somewhere deep inside, I knew it was wrong.”

“I thought— I thought you couldn’t take me, because—” I stopped before I embarrassed myself even further. Admitting that I thought he couldn’t take me because he had feelings for me, because he’d fallen madly in love with me. would probably have him in stitches.

I tried to walk past him, but he blocked me and stepped closer. He didn’t try to grab me again. With arms at his sides, he watched me through his glittering gaze. His dark irises didn’t reflect the light from the campfire so much as absorb it, turn it into something magical, something mesmerizing.

As though fighting with himself, he bit down, locked gazes with mine, then stepped even closer. He lifted a finger and ran it over my mouth, along my jaw. “Your grandparents were right, Lorelei.”

The word “grandparents” brought me skyrocketing back to reality. I nodded and swallowed down the bitter taste in my mouth, the same one I got every time he mentioned them. “Right. When they told you to stay away from me.”

“They didn’t say that. Not really. They just— They reminded me of the truth.”

“Of course. And what truth would that be?”

His gaze didn’t waver as he said, “That I am not worthy of you.”

If the world had fallen out from under me, I would have been less surprised.

“That I have no right to pursue you. I have nothing to offer,” he continued. “No future here on Earth.”

I was fairly certain my jaw was hanging open at that point.

“That you are destined to do great things. That you were prophesied about over four centuries ago.” He closed his eyes. “And I am nothing more than an errand boy.”

Maybe it was just the alcohol, but everything faded away except Jared. His startlingly beautiful face.

His wide, solid build.

Then his gaze narrowed and darted past me. He scanned the area, suspicion furrowing his brows.

“Who invited you to this party?”

I glanced down, embarrassed, and tried not to fall sideways with the movement. “Tabitha.”

He wrapped a hand around my upper arm, still examining the black beyond. “And where is Tabitha now?”

“Over there with the in crowd, I suppose.” I frowned at him. “Why?”

Jared eased me away from him. “Get her home.”

“What?” I asked, but my question was answered when Cameron stepped from the shadows, his footsteps as quiet as Jared’s. How was that even possible? I totally wanted that superpower.

“Really?” Cameron asked as he looked me up and down, his expression full of mirth. “You thought you could sneak away from us by using the front door?”

“Shut up.”

“Stealthy. You’re like a ninja.” He chuckled.

I crossed my arms over my chest, but before I could snip at him again, he stepped in front of me, blocking my view of Jared. When I tried to look around him into the forest, he blocked me again. So I tiptoed, trying to peek over his shoulder. Though I couldn’t quite manage it, I did get a good look at his shoulder blade. This was ridiculous.

“What?” I grabbed his arms and finally peered around him. “What are you guys looking at?”

Cameron reached back and took hold of my wrist, then stepped closer to Jared. “This isn’t my fight, Reaper. She’s my only concern.”

He turned back to him. “And why do you think they’re here?”

“Who?” I asked, but was ignored again.

They did things like that. Spoke. Argued. Ignored.

And enough was enough. I wrenched my wrist from Cameron’s grasp and stepped around him. “No more cryptic crap. I mean it. What is going on? What’s out there?”

“A presence,” Cameron said, clenching his hands, on full alert.

“I thought you said there wasn’t a presence. That the rats left the sinking ship.”

Jared spoke then. “The normal spiritual elements are gone. This is something else. Something that shouldn’t be here.”

Well, that couldn’t be good. But if I were as honest with myself as Brooke was, I would admit that I’d felt it too. Something skewed. Something not quite right. Then again, I did just drink strawberry vodka.

“There’s a balance,” Jared said, turning back to us, “between the physical world and the spiritual one.

The light and the darkness. And when that balance is thrown off, when the scales have been tipped to one side or the other, there is chaos. Emotions bubble. Tempers flare. Decades’ worth of animosity and resentment surface, and there is a rise in violent crimes. Those who lean toward violence anyway are naturally affected more. And those who don’t are seen as weak.”

“Humans are swayed by more than just stress and reality TV,” Cameron said. “The spiritual world is very much a part of their makeup, whether they acknowledge it or not.”

I thought about how my grandparents were suddenly fighting with members of the Order. Were they being affected as well?

“And until we can figure out what is throwing the world off balance,” Cameron continued, taking hold of my arm as though afraid I would rabbit, “we need to keep you safe.”

“Get her home,” Jared said again. “There aren’t many entities that can throw the world into turmoil.”

He turned back to us, his mouth slanting into a menacing grin. “This shouldn’t take long.”

In an instant, the space he’d occupied was empty. I barely heard him running through the trees as

Cameron helped—aka dragged—me back to his truck.

I looked up at him, trying not to trip. “What did you mean, it’s not your fight? Why is it Jared’s?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Sounded good at the time.” He stuffed me into his truck none too gently, then went around to his door.

“How did you guys find me?”

“Your aura isn’t exactly subtle,” he said as his truck roared to life.

“My aura?”

He cracked a grin. “It’s like a freaking bonfire, way brighter than that paltry excuse for a campfire you guys started.”

“I had nothing to do with that,” I said, defensive, “you know, if the forest burns down because of it.”

I so very much wished I could know more. Could see more. In desperation, I steeled myself for anything, then reached over and grabbed his wrist.

He frowned at me. “I’m nephilim, shortstop. You can’t get anything off me unless I want you to. Or I’m so stunned, I can’t think straight. Sorry, but you just don’t do that to me.”

I thought about being offended but couldn’t quite manage it.

He pulled around to the back of the house, and I cringed. His truck wasn’t exactly quiet. I jumped down after he turned it off and headed inside, only to be brought up short.

“In the bizarre instance that my grandparents didn’t hear that beast of yours, we can’t go up the fire escape. They’ll hear.”

“Maybe they should,” he said, walking up behind me. He eyed me as though I were a naughty schoolgirl who deserved to be punished.

“Oh, please.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Like you’ve never drunk a beer.”

With a shrug, he hauled me over his shoulder. I squeaked in protest.

“I’ve had a few beers. They don’t do anything for me.”

“This is so uncomfortable,” I said as he climbed the fire escape as quiet as a church mouse. “I have got to learn how you guys do that.”

“Do what?”

“And what do you mean, they don’t do anything for you? You don’t like the way they make you feel?” I wasn’t going to admit it, but I was right there with him. Tipsy, buzzed, drunk—whatever the colloquialism, it sucked. If the world would quit spinning, I would get off and wait for the next one to come by.

He slid open the window and sat me on the sill. “No, I mean they do nothing for me. I don’t feel any different. I don’t think I can get inebriated like you.”

Brooke’s voice burst into the quiet like a freight train barreling through town at midnight. “You’re inebriated?” she screeched.

I scrambled inside, stumbling over a chair leg, and slammed my hand over her mouth. A single lamp lit the room, casting more shadows than light, but I could see the shock in her huge eyes.

She mumbled through my hand. “You’ve been drinking?”

“Sh-h-h.”

“Alcohol?”

Shushing her with an index finger across my lips, I said, “Only a little.”

She broke free of my grip. “Lorelei Elizabeth McAlister.”

Great. Time to be judged again. “What are you doing here anyway?” I peeled off my jacket as Cameron climbed in and closed the window against the crisp night air.

“Cameron called me.”

I glared at the traitor before sinking onto my bed. Completely unaffected, he turned to stare into the darkness.

Brooke sat beside me. “Why would you go to that party, Lor? What could you possibly have had to gain?”

“I don’t know.” Leaning against the headboard, I clutched a pillow to my chest. How could I tell her that I just wanted to know what it felt like to be normal? That I just wanted to belong? And that I was super curious why Tabitha had invited me in the first place.

I couldn’t miss the hurt that flashed across her face before she reined it in. “Did you think that going to a party without me would earn you brownie points with the cool kids?”

“What? No. Why would you even say that?”

“Why would you even go to that moronic party? Especially with everything that’s going on?”

“No,” I said, suddenly annoyed. “In lieu of everything that’s going on. Don’t you just want to forget it?

To pretend that there’s nothing wrong with us?”

She leaned back, clearly offended. “Wrong with us?”

“Oh, my god, Brooke, look at us. The only normal one in our bunch is Glitch, and that’s debatable on his best day. We have an angelic being, a nephilim, a girl who was possessed and has a cracked aura to prove it—”

“Don’t dis my crack.”

“And then there’s me. Whoopty-freaking-do. Oh, yes, the world will surely be saved now. And by whom? By us. The misfits of Torrance County. We are supposed to stop a war between good and evil?

When we can barely make it to school on time, we are destined to safeguard humanity?”

She put a hand on my knee, her face knowing. Sympathetic. “You mean you.”

I stilled. Questioned her with my eyes.

“You mean you are supposed to stop a war.”

I swallowed hard with the reminder. “I just don’t want it anymore. I don’t want the prophecy, the visions, any of it.”

“But why?” She grew animated, her movements exaggerated. “Your visions were so cool. You could’ve changed people’s lives with them, Lor. You could’ve helped people.”

I wanted to scoff at her. To rant and rave about how wrong she was.

She bit her bottom lip in thought, and I could see the wheels spinning. “We just need to practice more.

That’s it. I’m sure you’ll get them back.”

My next statement was little more than a whisper, but I couldn’t keep going on like this. It wasn’t fair to her. To either of us. Gathering my courage, I said, “I never lost them.”

“What?” she said, sobering.

I shifted away from her. Plucked at the pillow. “The visions. I never lost them.” I looked up to gauge her reaction. “In fact, they’re so strong, so fierce, I can’t control them. They come at me like missiles.

They punch me in the gut. They tear through my heart. They make me sick. Every single one.”

She scooted closer. “You’re still having them?”

“Yes.”

The surprise on her face confirmed she really had no idea. “Lor, why didn’t you tell me? Why would you lie about that?”

“Because I don’t want them.”

“Why? Why would you not want something so miraculous?”

“Miraculous?” That time I did scoff. “You call what happens to me miraculous?” I drew in a ragged breath and readied myself to give her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Curling my fingers into the pillow, I asked, “Did you know there is a student at Riley High who was raped last year?”

Her eyes widened, but I barreled forward, afraid if I stopped, I wouldn’t be able to start again.

“She never told anyone, because she thinks it was her fault. She keeps it bottled up inside.” I leaned into her. “Do you know what it’s like to be raped, Brooke? Because I do. Now I know exactly what it feels like. It is a complete and savage violation of body and soul.”

Stammering, Brooke said, “I-I didn’t know.”

“Then did you know that another student is planning to kill himself?”

Her expression morphed into a mixture of shock and sympathy. “No.”

“Not just thinking about it. Planning every moment. He’s going to do it with his father’s gun. Do you know what it feels like to be that desperate? That lost?” Before she could answer, I asked, “And do you know what it feels like when a bullet enters the roof of your mouth and blows the top of your head off?” I was shaking with the memory of something that had yet to come to pass. My stomach lurched as I heard the gun go off. As I felt, for just a split second, a bullet enter my brain before everything went black.

“Lorelei,” she said, her voice faltering, “I’m so sorry.”

“And did you know that there is another student who will die in a motorcycle accident this summer? Or another who is almost going to die of exposure and dehydration when he goes rock climbing with a friend in Utah and gets lost in the desert? Do you know what it feels like when your kidneys shut down? When your tongue swells to three times its normal size until you can barely talk? Barely swallow?”

She put a hand on mine. “I’m so sorry, Lor.”

“You don’t understand. I don’t just see what happens to them. I feel it. Every ounce of horror. Every wave of nausea. Every pang of heartache. I’m right there with them. And I get everything—every emotion, every jolt of pain—in a blinding flash that leaves me in a stupor. The aftermath lingers for days on end. I can’t eat. I can’t concentrate.”

Her hand pressed against her mouth as tears spilled over her lashes and onto her cheeks.

I gazed into her huge brown eyes, not wanting to offend her, but hoping—no, praying—that she would understand. I was not prying when I saw what had happened to her. I would never do such a thing. It came to me when I least expected it. When we were working on a science project in lab. It was just there.

“And did you know that another student at Riley High was almost abducted when she was seven? That a man reached out of his car and grabbed her as she was on her way home from the store? That terror filled her so completely, she wet her pants?”

Brooke stilled in disbelief for a second, then she fell into the memory like a skydiver during free fall, her expression blank, void of anything but that moment in time.

“And when she wrenched free of him, ripping her shirt and staining it with the orange Popsicle she dropped, she ran all the way home, too scared to scream, too in shock to cry. But she never told her mother. She wasn’t supposed to go to the store by herself. Ever. And she was more worried about getting in trouble for that than turning the man in. So she never told anyone.”

After taking a moment to let the memory resurface, Brooke stood and stepped back, struggled to absorb the fact that I knew.

“How would you suggest that I tell her that?” I asked, my voice soft, empathetic. “The student who wet her pants and told her mom she’d fallen in a puddle of water? How should I approach her and tell her that

I know one of her most guarded secrets? Do you think she would believe me?”

I hadn’t missed the clenching of Cameron’s fists when I talked about Brooke’s memory. The tensing of his jaw. He cared for her deeply. That much was obvious. And I was glad because of it. To have a nephilim on your side could only be a good thing. He was super strong and super fast and could protect her from so many of life’s dangers. Like pedophiles.

“I don’t want this anymore, Brooke. Any of it.”

She blinked back to me, but before she could respond, Glitch lifted the window. “What’d I miss?” he asked, his gaze bouncing between the two of us. Alarm flitted across his face when he saw Brooke. Then again when he saw me, and I realized I was crying.

I wiped furiously at my wet cheeks and strode to the bathroom. Apparently, Cameron had called the whole gang.

“What happened?” Glitch asked Brooke as I closed the door and swiped at the tears, angry at what I’d seen, angrier that I’d shocked Brooke, that I’d hurt her with a memory she’d tucked into the farthest reaches of her consciousness, trying desperately to forget.

Oh, yeah. These visions were great.