As soon as she was gone, I rushed to Zane’s side. “I got back as soon as I could, Agatha.”
“Well, he went a little nuts,” she said, coming up beside me.
“Clearly.” I ripped Zane’s hands from his face. A biting red flamed the skin around the portion of his eyes not hidden by glasses. I retrieved the holy wine from my pocket. “I need you to drink this, Zane.”
He tried to scowl, but because his face was screwed up in pain, the effect was lost. He reached up and grabbed my arm, spilling some of the wine onto his chest.
So completely done with this whole damned thing, I jerked back and repositioned myself so that my knees pinned his arms to his sides.
“Enough, Zane.” I drew the lip of the flask near his mouth.
He bucked me forward, and I poured much more of the wine into his mouth than I intended to.
He spat it back out. Right into my face.
Could this day get any worse? Hell to the no. I slapped him. Hard enough to make both the sunglasses and his regular glasses fly off his face.
He grunted. I forced his mouth open and poured, though most of it splashed all over the floor. Then I pinched his nose and forced his chin up so he would swallow.
His eyes flew open, and the lifeless black leaked out of them almost right away, leaving behind an angry red color from the pepper spray. I pushed to my feet and backed up until I was off of him. He pulled himself up into a sitting position and blinked, not from pain but apparent awe. A slow smile spread across his lips.
“Uh, what did you give him?” Agatha whispered.
“Holy wine.”
“Holy wine,” she breathed. “No soap dishes required.”
I retrieved his glasses and knelt to gently settle them back on his face, his steady breath heating my cheeks. I smoothed his hair down behind his ears on either side, the soft strands sparking a thrill through my fingertips, and I smiled, relieved to have him back.
He looked dazed, like someone who had woken up in another world. He stared at me as if he had never seen me—or anything else—before. His fingers trailed across the linoleum as if petting it while he shook his head. “This…this feels amazing.”
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He grinned, revealing a dimple in his left cheek. It was the sexiest dimple I’d ever seen. For a moment, we stared at each other, charging the air around us with a magnetic energy.
Agatha cleared her throat. “Right, this isn’t awkward.”
Finally, he said in a goofy kind of voice, “I like everything about everything. But I really like your hair like that.”
I chuckled. “Go home, Zane. You’re drunk.”
“Home. Home.” Zane raised to his feet in one fluid motion and twirled on his one working leg with his arms outstretched. Yeah, I’d say the euphoria was definitely setting in, but it didn’t seem dangerous. Not yet anyway.
Mrs. Crenshaw walked in and came to a confused stop when she saw Zane.
He hopped over to her, his eyes wide. “Mrs. Crenshaw!” He picked her up and swung her around in the air.
“Zane Wilmont, put me down!” She batted at his arms, but he continued circling.
I squawked out a laugh and slapped my hand over my mouth. Scratch that ‘didn’t seem dangerous’ part. Especially if Mrs. Crenshaw still had her pepper spray.
Finally, he set her on her feet. “I’ve always admired the good work you do here, Mrs. Crenshaw.”
She blinked up at him, then turned to stare at me and Agatha. “Did you see him take something?”
Zane threw his head back and laughed. It seemed the mix of possession and holy wine were a little too much for him. “No, Mrs. Crenshaw! I’m high on life! It’s just… Look around. We’re so lucky to have breathable air and…spines.” He snapped his fingers at me and pointed. “Do you like flowers?”
I frowned. “Uh…”
“I’m going to find you some!” With that, he turned on his heel and zipped out of the common room as fast as his one working leg would carry him.
The three of us stared after him.
“He’ll be gone by morning,” Mrs. Crenshaw said, clearly unimpressed.
“No.” I spun to face her, a sudden rush of panic tightening my throat. “Please don’t send him away. He…he wasn’t…”
How could I explain it to her without making the situation even worse?
“The boy tried to strike me, a faculty member.” She shook her head at the door Zane had gone through. “That won’t be happening on my watch.”
Agatha sighed and dropped her gaze to her socked feet. “He’s a good person. He won’t make it at Parker Hall.”
Mrs. Crenshaw heaved an exhausted sigh. “I do all I can for you kids, but he crossed a line.” She tipped her head at Agatha, concern sparking in her dark eyes. “The hospital let you out already?”
“Of course they did,” Agatha said without missing a beat. She waved a hand as if to dismiss that topic. “At least wait until Miss Molly is back. This is a decision you two should make together.”
I stared closely at Mrs. Crenshaw’s face, trying to see if she was considering it.
“He messed up once, but think of all the good he’s done here.” Agatha drew in a shaky breath. “Miss Molly wouldn’t have put him in charge of driving the van if she didn’t trust him. No, he shouldn’t have tried to hit you, but should one mistake undo everything else? You and Miss Molly are the only ones who can help him here since his dad doesn’t want much to do with him. Please. This is the best place for him.”
Mrs. Crenshaw closed her eyes and leaned her head back. “I don’t even know where Miss Molly is, Agatha. Or when she’ll be back.”
“I know.” Agatha glanced at me and smiled, a genuine one that warmed my insides. “But she will be. I just know it.”
“In the meantime, you can talk to him, Mrs. Crenshaw,” I said. “See what was going through his head during his one break with reality.”
Hopefully we could come up with something that sounded legitimate.
Mrs. Crenshaw peered at us both with the intensity of an attack dog. “Send him to Miss Molly’s office and we’ll talk.” She glared at both of us as if we were responsible for the insanity, which I supposed I was, and walked out of the room.
I crumpled into the nearest beanbag. “You are an absolute genius at making her listen to reason.”
She shrugged. “We’re in this together. Is holy wine supposed to make people this weird?”
“I think I gave him too much,” I said.
“When does it wear off?”
“Soon? Soon-ish?” I hoped.
“We should probably go find him so he can try to explain himself.” Agatha tugged at her real hair underneath her wig, gazing at where Zane had disappeared. “How’s he going to do that again?”
I rolled the tension out of my shoulders. “One problem at a time.”
18
Agatha and I finally found Zane in the field behind the school. He was laid out in the weeds, clutching a messy bouquet of dandelions to his chest, a goofy toothpaste commercial grin plastered to his face. He removed his arm from over his eyes and shoved to one foot as we approached. And the next thing I knew, he pulled me into his arms and crushed me to him in a bear hug, dangling my feet several inches above the ground.
“What are you doing?” I shrieked. “Put me down.”
“Hi.”
The sweetness in his voice and his arms wrapped tight around me stilled my next shout into a breathy chuckle. “Hi. Please, put me down?”
He stared at my face, the moonlight glittering in his eyes like so many stars. “Man, your eyes are green. Like…shiny grass.”
Behind us, Agatha burst into a fit of laughter.
I smiled up into his face, shaking my head. Look out, future poets. This one was going places.
He winked and lowered me to the ground, but he didn’t let me go. My breath got lost somewhere between my lungs and my throat as he placed his hands, one of them still gr
ipping the dandelions, on either side of my face.
“Hey, still here,” Agatha said, a smile in her voice.
I barely heard her.
He lowered those full lips closer to mine. Every centimeter he closed between us ratcheted a flurry of Devil wings up through my chest, if, you know, Devil wings existed. Or something. Who drank the holy wine again?
His top lip pressed against the seam between mine with a shock of sensations powerful enough to light up my whole body.
“Uh, whoa,” Agatha said behind me. “Have I gone invisible? Because I think I’m. Still. Here.”
My mouth parted open for another touch, another taste, but Zane pulled away with an almost wistful, drunk smile twitching his lips.
He held the dandelions out to me. “For you.”
I took them, their stems still heated with his grip. No one had ever given me flowers before. A burst of wind fluttered a smile across my face as I gazed down at them.
He yawned and swayed on his feet. His crutches were nowhere in sight. While hopped up on holy wine, I supposed he didn’t need them.
“I’m sleepy,” he announced.
“How about we sit?” I glanced around for options then remembered the bench by the basketball court. “We need to talk about how to get you out of this mess.”
His tired eyes took me in. “Good idea. Is this grass the bench you were talking about?” He tipped and started to fall over.
I tossed the flowers and caught him under the armpit. His weight put me off the balance, and Agatha had to pull my arm in the other direction to keep me from falling on top of him. His head slumped to the side, and a light snore came from his mouth.
“Romeo’s out,” Agatha said.
I nodded. “Thank Maria.”
“Who’s Maria?” she asked. “Never mind. I’ll help you get him situated, then I’m going to go find his crutches while you two make out—I mean, figure out all our demon-related problems.” She wiggled her eyebrows, which made them look like worms dancing across her forehead.
I should probably keep that observation to myself. We dragged him to the bench and plopped him down on it. His head lolled to the side, and he blinked hard to keep his eyes open.
“Thanks for having my back today, Agatha,” I said.
“Aggie,” she corrected.
A feeling almost like weightlessness settled over me. It felt good to have a friend. “Okay, Aggie. We’ll have everything sorted by the time you get back.”
“Uh-huh.” She sauntered back inside.
I sat next to Zane on the squeaky, lumpy bench. Crickets chirped into the wind, which blew my hair across my face. For a while, we just sat there, listening to the call of night.
“I’m awake now,” Zane finally said, but his eyes had closed again. “That stuff at the hospital. That really happened?”
I clasped my fingers together, suddenly not knowing what to do with my hands. “How much do you remember?”
He took a deep breath. “Everything. I remember…the black smoke. And the same thing in the bathroom right before you showed up.”
The demon must’ve followed us home from the hospital since I hadn’t worn anything but cat clothes and rhinestones since then. My oversimplified cat drawing I’d done on duct tape, which I’d slapped on Blade’s vest, hadn’t counted. At least, I guessed so.
Rhinestones and cats had to be what was shielding my real identity. When I’d gone to the hospital in my red look-at-me dress, it had been like wearing a homing beacon for demons.
I shuddered. “Yeah, that all happened.”
“A demon.”
“Yes.” I picked at the wood on the bench, wishing for the hundredth time that he hadn’t had to go through all that. Twice.
“It was like I inhaled something that beat the real me down.” His hand flew to his chest as if testing to make sure he was still there. “Like it wanted me to take up as little space as possible.” His eyes widened behind his glasses, the silver light of the moon dancing in their depths. “Until the guy with red eyes showed up at the hospital, then you here at the school with whatever you made me drink.” He opened his mouth as if he had something more to add, but he clamped his lips tightly together.
“Holy wine,” I filled in for him. “That’s what I made you drink.”
He swiped a hand down his face, leaned back, and spread his arms along the back of the bench. The heat of his arm pressed right behind my neck, not touching me, but he might as well have been. The air seemed to change, and the fine hairs on my skin stood on end.
“Jesus, Kasey. How can any of this be real? And you… Not you, but the girl who offered to come with me to meet my dad… She doesn’t exist? She was…what? Some trick of the mind?” He threw his hands into the air. “How am I supposed to believe any of this is real when it’s so impossible?”
I took in a deep breath. “Your eyes.”
He leaned closer. “What?”
I shook the cobwebs off my vocal chords and tried again. “You saw things. You felt them. Isn’t that a thing with people? Seeing is believing?”
He rested a hand at his temple and absently scratched the hair there. “Kasey.” His voice sounded low, deep, and it rolled right through me. “Are you really some kind of princess from Hell? Like, actual Hell?”
“Yeah.” I sighed down into my lap. What was left of Hell anyway. “I really am.”
“Before you didn’t show that night when I was supposed to meet my dad… I’ve never opened up like that to anyone.” His chuckle scraped at the night air. “And it wasn’t even real.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered even though I’d had nothing to do with it. After a moment of silence, I allowed myself a brief glance at him.
He was staring off into the distance, a thoughtful expression on his face.
“You can open up any time,” I said. “And I’m going to try my hardest not to let you get all possessed again, because I’ve heard the third time is when the demons break out the neon paints and decorate your insides.”
“Really?”
“No.”
He smiled at the cracks on the basketball field as his hand sought mine in my lap. His warm fingers wrapped around mine and he squeezed. I squeezed right back, his touch bursting electrical explosions throughout my body.
“So about Mrs. Crenshaw…” he said with a sigh. “I guess I should plead insanity or something, beg her not to send me to Parker Hall, see what happens.”
“She can’t send you away.” I shook my head. “It would be my fault if she did, and… I’m so sorry I got you into this mess.”
His gaze pinned to my face as if struck by a sudden thought. “Kasey makes my Hell happier.”
My eyes widened. “You saw what I wrote on the stall?”
“Uh…from a distance, I guess you could say.” He shrugged. “I was in the middle of being possessed, but I saw it. I was the one who erased what had been there before.”
“What did it say?”
He clicked his tongue. “Let’s go back inside. Face Mrs. Crenshaw.”
Oh, something scandalous, then.
Agatha hadn’t come back out with Zane’s crutches, so together, we followed the high moon back inside. Our feet sounded like miniature trees falling with our heavy, dragging steps.
Outside Miss Molly’s office, I unclasped the miracle necklace Maria had given me and pressed it into Zane’s palm. Right now, he needed it more than I did. “For luck. You got this.”
“Kasey,” he said when I started to turn. “I meant everything I said when I was drunk on holy wine.” He pushed up his glasses. “About you, I mean. And I meant everything I did, too. With you. Even if you are a demon.”
“I’m not...”
Wait, what had he said while drunk? Oh, yeah. That he liked my hair like this, even though it was piled into a messy bun. His comparison of my eyes to green grass. And the near kiss… A rush of happiness zipped through my veins. Wow. He’d meant to do that? I backed away with what was probably a s
tupid grin plastered to my face.
“I suppose Heaven really does exist, then.” He winced as he pressed the miracle necklace to his chest, surely feeling its wintery chill through his inside-out T-shirt. “I suspected as much, but it all seemed…impossible.”
I tilted my head. Was this the part of holy wine recovery that included some sort of existential crisis? Was he questioning his role in this new reality like I was?
“You okay, Zane?”
He glanced at me again, his gaze clouded, troubled. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck. You got this.” With a little help from Saint Maria just in case.
He opened the door to the office and went inside.
I thought about waiting for him to offer my moral support while cooling my flushed cheeks on the cinder block walls, but I needed to find Agatha. I’d expected her to come right back outside with Zane’s crutches, so something, or someone, must’ve held her up.
Inside the dorm, a group of three girls huddled on one narrow bed, their heads leaned toward each other while they whispered. I drew their gazes as I passed, but I ignored them. Agatha wasn’t here.
I hurried toward Elia at the far end of the room, who was swinging her feet under her purple Disney princess blanket. “Have you seen Agatha?”
She adjusted her wool cap down over her ears as a ghost of a smile touched her mouth. “She’s been gone for a while. Something about meeting someone.”
Panic mounted in my chest, squeaking my voice. “Mikey?”
She raised the covers to her chin. “Why do you care about Agatha?” Her accusatory tone dropped onto my ears like stones.
“Thanks for nothing, Elia.” I turned on my heels and marched out.
I looked everywhere, including outside the library, but every place I searched distorted together into hard clumps of worry and exhaustion that dragged at my eyelids. The beanbag chairs in the common room blurred into neon pink toilet stalls. I didn’t trust Mikey, and I sure as Hell didn’t trust Mikey alone with Agatha. So I kept searching.
As I turned a corner into another hallway, something large and hairy darted out in front me. I leaped back with a yelp, smashing my hands over my mouth to keep my dislodged heart from tipping out my throat.
Daring the Devil (Reigning Hell Book 1) Page 14