Death, Doom, and Detention

STRAWBERRY SHAMPOO AND CINNAMON ROLLS

A nightmare. I’d had a nightmare, and it was enough to cause an asthma attack. Thankfully, someone thought to put battery acid in an inhaler for just such an occasion.

Standing barefoot in my bathroom, surrounded by a billowing cloud of steam, I wiped condensation off the mirror and leaned forward. Probing. Searching. I studied the pupils of my gray eyes and rapped on the silvery glass. “I know you’re in there,” I said to the demon lying dormant inside.

Talking to the demon was better than dwelling on the fact that Jared never came home. Even my grandparents started asking questions, to which I just shrugged. If they knew he was missing, they would send me packing for sure. For my own safety, of course.

Then again, maybe Jared wasn’t just missing. Maybe he’d been called back. He was the Angel of

Death, after all. He had a job to do. Would he leave without saying good-bye?

The thought made my chest ache with sadness.

Since it was Monday and I couldn’t sleep anyway, I’d dragged myself out of bed earlier than I thought humanly possible and forced my reluctant body into the shower. The warm water helped, but it didn’t dissipate the dream I’d had. The same dream I’d been having for weeks, reliving the possession as though it had happened yesterday. The residue lingered, dark and eerie, like a thick smoke suffocating any thoughts of a normal day.

I narrowed my eyes at my own reflection, hoping the demon inside was looking out, watching me watch him. I didn’t want to be rude, but it was my body he was trespassing against.

“If you don’t come out of there this instant, I will drag you out by your fingernails and serve you to the buzzards.”

“Really?” Brooklyn inched the shower curtain aside and peeked around it, shampoo bubbling down her long black hair. “I got five bucks says you can’t take me on your best day.”

“I was talking to Mal,” I said, staring him down in the mirror.

Mal was our little nickname for the monstrosity within me. Malak-Tuke was just so formal. I often wondered how Satan was getting along without his go-to guy, him setting up shop in my innards and all.

“Is Mal talking back to you?” Brooklyn asked me.

“Not that I know of.”

“Well, if he ever does, let me know,” she said, seconds before she sucked in a sharp breath, then followed it up with a whole lot of coughing and sputtering. Either she’d accidentally swallowed shampoo or she was coming down with something. Probably something serious like scarlet fever. Or Ebola.

I almost worried when she started making vomit sounds.

“Your shampoo tastes horrible.”

“Really?” I asked, feigning surprise. “It smells so fruity.”

I turned back to the mirror and saw Cameron standing at my window. He’d gone out early to do reconnaissance. I had no idea what that meant exactly, but it sounded important. I tightened my robe and strode to open the window. A bitingly harsh wind whipped inside as Cameron bent to talk to me through the opening.

“Pervy much?” I asked him before he could say anything.

“Why?” He looked past me into the bathroom. “Is Brooke in there?”

I maneuvered around to try to block his view, but since he was well over a foot taller, I doubted I was doing any good. “Did you find anything?” I asked, referring to our missing team member.

He shook his head. And he seemed worried, which was not like him.

I tried not to let that news push me further into a state of despair. Jared was a big boy. He was a millennia-old big boy. And me worrying about him was like a gnat worrying about the well-being of a guided missile.

“Hey,” Brooke yelled to me, “did you take my favorite towel?”

I bit down and tossed Cameron a conspiratorial gaze. “No,” I said, slowly pulling the towel off my head and stuffing it behind her bed. “I have no idea where it is.”

Cameron grinned. “Maybe I should take her one.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t.” He shrugged, then frowned at me when he realized I was shivering. “I’ll meet you downstairs,” he said, but I grabbed his jacket sleeve to stop him.

“Cameron, can you feel him? You know, like before? Is he in pain? Is he lost?” Then I voiced the bane of my worries. “Is he gone?”

He shook his head again, sympathy lining his ice blue eyes. “I just don’t know.”

“That means you can’t sense him, right?”

“It doesn’t mean anything.” He started to close the window, and just before it shut all the way, he said, “Dress warm.”

“Are you sure you haven’t seen my favorite towel?” Brooke asked, standing in another towel that was not her favorite.

I wrapped my arms around my waist and headed back to the bathroom. “I bet Glitch used it. He’s so inconsiderate that way.”

“Mmm-hmm.” She wasn’t buying it.

When we were finally fit to face the world, I braced myself for the confrontation to come. Breakfast with the grandparents. I took a deep breath and headed down.

“Hey,” I said to my grandmother as I stepped off the stairs. We always played nice in front of company, and since Brooke was right behind me …

Grandma offered a hesitant smile, then looked back at her new phone, a quizzical expression drawing her brows together. “Hey, pix. Did you sleep well?”

“Not really.”

“Hey, Grandma,” Brooke said, stepping off the stairs with a special kind of bounce.

“Good morning, hon,” Grandma said.

Brooke grabbed an apple, bit into it, then continued to talk despite her mouth being completely full.

“Neither of us slept well. I doubt we’ll make it through the day without lapsing into a coma.”

Grandma didn’t even spare her a glance that time. “I’m almost certain you’ll make it. If for some reason you lose consciousness, text me. I need the practice.”

Brooke giggled as she scooped peanut butter onto an apple slice, then cast me a sympathetic gaze.

“How did you ever survive childhood with such neglect? Such indifference?”

She was doing her darnedest to get Grandma and me to converse. It was not going to work.

The back door opened, allowing the crisp breeze to sweep into the room and up the back of my sweater. I shivered in response, offering my grandfather a sideways glance as he peeled off his jacket and hung it up by the door.

“Hey, pixie stick,” he said, his voice only slightly strained. “Brooklyn.”

“Hey, Pastor Bill,” Brooke said. “Do you like your new phone?”

He strolled over and bent to give me a hesitant peck on the cheek. “Not even a little,” he said, then offered Brooke a peck too.

“Well, I love mine,” Grandma said, her eyes glued to the screen, sparkling with an alarming degree of lust. I never figured Grandma for a techno geek, but she was really getting into that thing.

She pushed a button, and a microsecond later Granddad’s phone beeped. With a heavy sigh, he took it out of the case at his belt and worked a few moments to get the message to come up. Then his face morphed into one of his signature glares. The one that reminded me of a guy at a carnival one time when I tried to convince him I was old enough to go on the Terrifying Twister without my parents’ consent. I was four.

“You couldn’t have just said good morning?” Granddad asked. “I’m standing right here.”

“No.” She waved an impatient hand at him. “You have to text that to me. Pretend we’re on our honeymoon.”

Brooklyn choked on her milk and spent the next two minutes coughing. Then she made this gagging sound that was very much like her reaction to my shampoo.

Taking Brooke’s sudden fit into consideration, Granddad explained. “We had a huge fight on our honeymoon. We didn’t talk for days.”

“But if we’d had these phones,” Grandma said, shaking it at him for effect, “we wouldn’t have needed to talk. These things are great.”

His phone beeped again. “Really, Vera? I’m right here.”

“What? I can’t hear you.” Then she giggled like a mental patient, and I almost smiled. Maybe the phones weren’t such a good idea after all.

The back door opened again when Cameron strolled in, his blond hair a disheveled mess.

“You look like a tumbleweed,” Brooke said, her voice hoarse from her most recent efforts.

Never one to be accused of social graces, he shrugged at her before nodding to my grandparents. “Hey, Pastor, Mrs. James.”

“Hi, Cameron,” Granddad said, but Grandma was still busy with her phone.

He didn’t seem to mind. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and leaned against the wall, waiting for us. But when Brooklyn wasn’t looking, his eyes wandered toward her, a glint of interest in them despite the fact that she was in the middle of stuffing the last remnants of apple into her mouth. Then his phone beeped. He fished it out of his front pocket, frowned, then looked up at Grandma, who now wore a satisfied grin on her face. After clearing his throat in obvious discomfort, he mumbled, “It’s nice to see you too, Mrs. James.”

Grandma nodded. This was getting ridiculous.

“How did you know it was Grandma?” I asked him. “She just got that phone.”

He leaned forward to confide in me. “She’s been texting me all night.”

“Grandma!” I scolded, breaking my vow of silence and giving her my best look of shocked dismay.

“You can’t go around texting high school kids in the middle of the night. You’ll get arrested.”

Cameron broke, chuckling before he headed toward the back door. “Are you kidding? I now have your grandma’s famous recipe for chile con queso. ”

“Sweet,” Brooke said, scooping up her jacket and backpack and following him out. “You can make some later.”

I took an apple to eat on the way to school and grabbed my jacket and backpack as well.

“Can we talk to you, pix?” Granddad asked.

I paused but didn’t look back at them. “I’ll be late for school.”

“We’ll talk later, then,” Grandma said, her voice soft and sad.

It made my throat constrict. I nodded and headed out of a perfectly warm house into a cold, frigid wind that whipped my hair about and took only seconds to convince me I’d underdressed for the occasion despite Cameron’s warning. Bummer that insulated work coveralls and ski masks weren’t in fashion.

We hurried into Cameron’s beat-up Chevy. He’d kept it running, and it rumbled and shimmied as we climbed in. Despite its haggard appearance on the outside, the inside boasted a toasty warmth that kept the chills at bay. That was all that mattered at the moment.

“I think you should look for Jared today while we’re in class,” I said to Cameron as we drove to school.

He shook his head, and disappointment rushed over me.

“But why? It’s not like you’ve never skipped.”

With a sigh, he leveled a hard stare on me. “He’s not my concern, Lorelei. You know that.”

Of course he wasn’t. I was. And because of that, Jared’s best hope was lost.

“But what if he’s hurt?”

“Not likely,” he said, pulling into the parking lot.

“But what if he is?”

He turned off his truck and said, “Then I’ll pay the guy who hurt him fifty bucks to tell me how he did it.”

I turned away from him. “That’s not nice.”

“The truth rarely is.”

The icy wind cut through our clothes and had my teeth chattering before we got to the door. Still, I loved the weather. Cold and promising as a thick wetness permeated the air. Maybe it would snow. Few things trumped snow days. Hot chocolate with marshmallows, maybe. And Jared’s eyes.

Glitch met us at the side door of the school with a box of his mother’s homemade cinnamon rolls, but not even the warm scent of cinnamon and melted butter could bring me out of my misery. Though they did their darnedest.

We dived in, and Brooke moaned when she took a bite. Glitch glared at Cameron when he took two.

“Who’s that?” I asked, licking my fingers, then pointing to the side.

“Oh, that must be the new kid,” Glitch said. “I heard we were getting someone new.”

We stopped to take a look. He dressed in retro attire with thespian undertones. Tweed gray coat, long and loose. Sandy brown hair under a black beret. And he was really, really tall.

At the exact same moment, Brooke and I turned to look at the other really, really tall guy in school. One of them, anyway. There was tall, then there was really, really tall—and the new guy, like Jared and

Cameron, was really, really tall.

“Not another one,” I said under my breath.

Brooke looked up at him. “Relative of yours?”

But Cameron was also staring at the new guy, his expression guarded. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was taken aback.

The new guy stood talking to Mr. Davis. As the principal pointed down the hall, apparently giving directions, the new guy turned and looked right at us. Right at me.

His face, while handsome, was somehow disproportioned. There was something strange about him.

Something out of place. His face was a little too long, perhaps, or the angles a little too sharp, the eyes a little too close set.

The polite thing to do would have been to look away, and yet there we stood. The lot of us. Staring as though we had never seen another human being in our lives. Surely we looked like something from one of those Twilight Zone reruns. The guy looked from me to Brooke to Glitch. Then slowly his attention meandered up the length of Cameron, and their gazes locked for a long, tense moment.

Cameron’s expression wasn’t derisive, exactly. More like wary or just plain surprised.

The kid nodded, an almost imperceptible grin lifting one cheek, then headed out in the direction Mr.

Davis had pointed.

Glitch turned toward Cameron. “Do you know him?” he asked.

But Cameron was stunned. I could tell. Brooke raised her hand and waved it in front of his eyes. He blinked back to us.

“Is everything okay, Cameron?” I asked.

“Let’s get to class.” The brusqueness in his tone should have convinced me to comply without any more questions, but I wasn’t feeling particularly compliant.

“Cameron, what is going on?” I asked him when he took off down the hall. It was hard to follow a super tall guy when you had only enough leg to accommodate a five-foot frame. “I get so tired of your cryptic personality.”

He regarded me, his expression worried. “There’s a disturbance in the air, and that guy is disturbing.”

“Really?” Brooke asked. “In what way?”

“In a disturbing way.”

She’d had enough as well. She grabbed hold of his jacket sleeve and pulled him to face us. “Who was he?”

Cameron studied her before saying, “I don’t know. He was just different.” When she scowled at him, he added, “He was fuzzy around the edges.”

Of all the teachers in all the schools in all the world, Ms. Mullins was my absolute favorite, and Brooke and I had her first hour. It made my mornings not quite so loathsome, knowing I’d get to see her. I wasn’t sure why, what it was about her that set her so far apart. She was a tiny woman with dark hair and sparkling eyes who looked at life like there was more to it than just memorizing the cell structure of an earthworm. We had to know that stuff too, of course, but she also taught us to see science in everyday things. Like survival of the fittest and natural selection. Which, sadly, made any attraction Jared might have for me even more questionable.

“Hey, Ms. Mullins,” I said to her when Cameron dropped us off. He’d seemed reluctant to leave us, but what could he do? Hovering in the hall was not an option. He’d simply have to go to class and learn stuff like the rest of us.

Ms. Mullins looked up from her desk and drew her brows together. “You’re on time.”

I grinned and headed to my seat.

“But it’s a Monday.”

I tried to feign offense. “I’ve been on time lots of Mondays.” When her mouth thinned in doubt, I added, “Well, I’ve thought about being on time lots of Mondays.”

Truth be told, I probably had fewer late passes than any other student in school. I was boring.

Predictable. And the new guy had fuzzy edges. What was going on?

The morning progressed with me trying not to touch other students—lest I be bombarded with unwanted visions—and Brooke coming up with a thousand different scenarios as to why the new guy had fuzzy edges. She conjured everything from a rare tropical disease to a zombie attack in the forest the night of the party, thus the horrid smell.

Unfortunately, in the classes we didn’t have together, I had to stew in my own musings about what was going on. They were worse than Brooke’s. I quickly realized, however, I had nowhere near her creative insight. The only thing I could come up with was that maybe the new kid had bronchitis, because a zombie attack seemed a tad unrealistic. Then again, so did the demon possession of yours truly.

By the time we got to PE, Brooke had decided the new guy was a warlock, a witch turned evil and cast out by his Wiccan clan, thus the fuzzy edges. She’d devised a plan to get him to do a spell on Tabitha.

Something bad, like have all her hair fall out or paint her fingernails black so she looked goth. I had managed to avoid Tabitha all morning, and oddly enough, she did the same to me. No prodding. No teasing. The reprieve was rather refreshing.

Brooke was busy detailing her vision while I brushed my teeth in the locker room after class. I’d had an unfortunate incident with black licorice. How could anything taste that bad? Thank goodness I’d stashed a toothbrush in my PE locker. While Brooke explained the ritual where Tab would likely endure any number of painful and degenerative effects, Ashlee and Sydnee Southern walked in.

Ever since we’d broken into their house a few months ago to evict an evil spirit who was haunting them—completely trashing their father’s gazillion-dollar mansion and reducing a stunning grand piano to kindling in the process—we tried to steer clear of the Southern Belles. So far, we’d been doing a bang-up job of it. We never really talked to them anyway. Why start now?

But they seemed more than determined to strike up a conversation. I caught on to that fact when they cornered us and said, “We want to talk to you.”

“O-okay,” I said, needing badly to rinse toothpaste out of my mouth. But I didn’t want to be rude. Or give them an excuse to slam my head into the sink like people did in the movies.

Brooklyn stepped beside me—strength in numbers—and crossed her arms over her chest. Sadly, the

Southern twins were about a foot taller than us. And they were very flexible. I appreciated Brooke’s bravado, but if push came to shove, we would not be the ones doing the shoving. We might get in a gentle nudge here and there.

“You left this at our house.” Ashlee, or quite possibly Sydnee, produced a gold pendant of a mother and father with a child in their arms.

I gasped and snatched it out of her hand, eyeing it lovingly. I turned it over and read the word Forever on the back. It was the necklace Glitch gave me on the tenth anniversary of my parents’ disappearance.

The one I hadn’t seen since … the night we broke into their house. Realization dawned. There was only one place they could have found it. In their own living room.

Playing it cool, I examined it, cleared my throat, then passed it back to them. It was evidence of our wrongdoing. “That’s not mine.”

Sydnee stepped closer. Or possibly Ashlee. They really needed name tags.

“We know what you did.”

I looked at the notebook in her hands, the one with the name Ashlee on it, and took it from there. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ashlee.”

“And even if she did,” Brooke said, planting her fists on her hips, “which she doesn’t, because why would she since there’s no way she possibly could, that’s no reason to get all up in her face.”

Not one of her better comebacks, but it worked. They both relaxed and Sydnee offered me the necklace again.

“We appreciate what you did for us.”

I took a mental step back. That wasn’t the reaction I was expecting. Taking the necklace warily, I cradled the cool metal in my hand, then glanced back with my brows furrowed in confusion.

“The ghost,” Ashlee clarified. “We know what you did for us, and we appreciate it.”

Brooke looked over at me. Discomfort prickled along my skin. I shifted, not sure what to say.

“We thought—” Ashlee started to say something, then stopped. She averted her gaze, seeming embarrassed.

“We thought it was our grandmother,” Sydnee finished.

“The ghost,” Ashlee said, taking her turn to clarify.

But I already knew that. Poltergeists were nasty, manipulative things. It had somehow convinced the girls it was their grandmother, which was disturbing on so many levels.

I decided to fess up. No sense in trying to deny it now. “Sorry about the piano.”

Ashlee grinned. “Are you kidding? That got us out of piano lessons for weeks.”

“Your house is really nice,” Brooklyn said, doing a 180. She dropped her hands to her side. “Most mansions are, I guess.”

“Yeah, it’s okay, if you like that sort of thing,” Sydnee said, lifting one shoulder. She had yet to crack a smile like her sister. “Our dad built it for our mom. Lot of good it did him.”

My mouth thinned in empathy. “I’m so sorry about that. It must have been really hard to go through.”

Sydnee examined her nails, but Ashlee, the more outgoing of the two, said, “Our mom’s crazy for leaving Dad. Seriously, who gives up everything to run off with an investment broker?”

“Dad’s not perfect,” Sydnee said, “but really? An investment broker? I don’t even know what that means.”

I never knew the guy, or their mom, frankly, but I had to admit, it surprised me. It shocked the whole town. Quite the scandal. “Well, thank you for this.” I clutched the necklace tighter and went back to the sink to spit before I started gagging.

They followed me. And Brooke followed them.

“There’s more,” Ash said, biting her lip as though uncertain.

Curious now, I rinsed, wiped my mouth, then looked at the clock on my phone. Even if we sprinted, we’d never make fifth hour before the tardy bell. It was too much to hope another fight would detain the teacher long enough for me to sneak in again. I gave the twins my full attention. “What’s up?”

“We also know what you are.”

Brooklyn stilled beside me.

“Really?” I asked, a lighthearted laugh escaping me. “Besides a girl?”

“Yes,” Syd said. “And what Ash should have said is, we know what you can do.”

“Okay.”

Ash stepped closer again. “There’s something weird going on.”

Syd looked around, then lowered her voice. “Something strange.”

I stared cautiously as they closed the distance between us. “I’m getting that.”

Inching back to my side, Brooke asked, “What do you mean by strange?”

“A lot of the kids are behaving oddly,” Ash said. “Including Syd’s boyfriend, Isaac. That’s why we’re here. We thought you could maybe touch him.”

Isaac had been at the party that night. I remembered seeing him with a group of friends along the tree line, barely visible in the low light. One of the few people there I could’ve called friend, he’d smiled at me and waved.

“You’re dating Isaac Johnson?” Brooke asked, beaming with enthusiasm and suddenly tight with the

Southern Belles. “That is so sweet. I bet you guys make the cutest cou—”

“Really, Brooke?” I stopped her midstream. She could go on for days.

“I’m just saying.” She frowned at me, then did the phone sign to Syd and mouthed the words call me.

Syd grinned at last, a shy smile that crept sweetly across her face.

I smiled too, then asked, “How do you know what I can do?”

They exchanged furtive glances; then Ash said, “It told us. The thing in our house. It told us what you are, what Cameron is, and what Jared is.” Her eyes rounded a little. “Please don’t tell him we know. We won’t tell anyone.”

“We swear.” Syd nodded, her eyes pleading.

“I promise I won’t tell him. But he’s a good guy. He won’t hurt you just for knowing what he is.” Their expressions were less than convinced, so I asked, “What is it exactly you’re worried about?”

“Isaac is acting strange. He’s been acting strange for a couple of days. I think,” Syd said, her voice lowering to a whisper, “I think something happened at the Clearing Friday night. I think he’s being bullied.”

Brooke and I both blinked and waited for the punch line. It never came.

“Wait,” Brooke said at last, “you can’t be serious.”

“Isaac Johnson?” I raised my brows, hoping to give them a clue. “The biggest defensive lineman ever to grace the halls of Riley High? That Isaac Johnson?”

“And he’s being bullied?”

They nodded in unison.

“We know how it sounds,” Syd said. “But he’s not the only one. There are more. Almost every member of the football team in OA is acting strange. Like they’re scared of someone.”

“Or something,” Ash added. “Ever since that night.”

To be in OA, or organized athletics, a student had to play at least one sport. Since football was over, the team still got together every day and worked out. And that wasn’t all they did. They still partied together. Half the team had to have been at that party. All I remembered was letter jacket after letter jacket.

“Has he said anything? Mentioned any names?” Brooke asked. “Talked about the party?”

“No. That’s the other strange part. He just said he doesn’t really remember the party. And now he won’t talk about it at all.”

Brooke and I eyed each other.

Syd wrapped her arms around her waist. “That’s why we thought you could touch him. You could do your thing.”

“Um, I don’t really have a thing.”

“That’s not what that ghost told us,” Ashlee said. “Not in words so much, but in images while we slept.”

Sydnee nodded. “It showed us things. About you. About Jared. We never dreamed it was possible until we saw the camera footage.”

That brought all thoughts to a screeching halt. “Camera footage?” I asked. As realization dawned on what she had to be referring to, my pulse quickened with a mixture of fear and denial.

“Don’t worry,” Syd said. “We told Dad the recorder malfunctioned.”

“But it didn’t.” A grin slid across Ashlee’s pretty face. “We saw everything. We saw what you did.”

“It was amazing.”

“Thanks.” I glanced at Brooke. She was still at the wide-eyed-denial stage. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? That you knew? That was two months ago.”

Ash smirked. “We were waiting for the right moment.” She got an evil twinkle in her eyes. “Like now.”

My jaw fell open before I caught it. “So, this is blackmail.”

“Absolutely,” Syd said. “Or, well, technically it’s extortion. Same difference.”

Ash blinked her long lashes and gazed at me from behind a pout. “You did ruin my very favorite piano.”

“You just said…” When Ash’s face morphed into that same kind of evil, I gave in. “Fine, I’ll give it a shot, but my visions aren’t really that reliable. I may or may not get something.”

“That’s okay,” Syd said, taking what she could get. “We just want you to try.”

I set my jaw. “And I swear, if I come out of this suicidal, I’m coming back to haunt you.”

“Deal,” Ash said.