CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
JANUARY
I blink and I’m back behind Happy Accidents where my murderers are sitting down again, nursing their bottle of booze.
“I’m back!” I proclaim. Loudly.
They look pretty startled to see me this time. I guess my disappearing and reappearing out of thin air must be pretty disturbing. Then again, these assholes are so drunk they just flinch a few times.
I produce little fire balls in the palms of my hands as they stand up. “Did you know you killed me?”
“You don’t look dead to me, dearie,” the woman says, sliding her right hand into a side pocket on her filthy pink sweater – the one she had on when they killed me.
“Yeah, that’s kind of a miracle. And, see, I was sent back with powers.” I open my hands and make the fireballs grow larger.
The woman just blinks twice, but the man stumbles back and only manages to remain standing by leaning against the building.
“What’s that? A magic trick?” the woman asks. She looks more confused than scared. In fact, she doesn’t get any closer to me, but she isn’t backing away from me either.
I force a smile. “It’s magick all right. Magick with a fucking k.”
She takes her hand out of her pocket, revealing a large survival knife. The type where one edge is razor sharp and the other edge is serrated, which means it does even more damage coming out than going in. “How about you put your magic trick away and fork over your wallet?”
I shake my head no. “Oh, I said it was magick. But I didn’t say it was a trick.”
She stretches her arm out, pointing the knife at me. “I’m not playing any tricks either.”
“I’d leave her be,” the guy says. Either he’s scared or he hasn’t had enough booze because he’s sweating and shaking, still bracing himself against the building. Hardly seems like the prick who stabbed me to death after the bitch robbed me.
The sorry ass bitch is the confident one today. “Oh no, she’s gonna pay up unless she wants to get stabbed sixty times.”
I almost smirk. “How about you give me a few pounds of flesh?”
She makes a growling sound. Yes, growling. She sounds like an angry dog.
I chuckle for two seconds. “No? Then how about you give me all your flesh?”
She doesn’t say anything, but she moves ever so slightly and her eyes look psychotic so I don’t wait a second longer. I hurl the fireball in my right hand at her. But she manages to dodge it! For a drunk, she suddenly has decent coordination.
I’m about to throw the fireball in my left hand at her when I blink and suddenly she’s in my face and the next thing I know she cuts my right hip. Slices it right open. I don’t know if I’d say she stabbed me exactly, but it’s a deep cut and it’s bleeding heavily. I bet it’ll need stitches. Well, that or it’ll take all my fairy juice to heal myself.
She pokes the knife in my direction again and I take a step back, but I trip on something and fall backwards... and hit the ground, landing on a broken bottle, pieces of which pierce my back. Needless to say, they don’t tickle. And before I can even concentrate to produce flames again, she’s on top of me, her knife pressed against my throat. One false move and she could cut my jugular. I don’t think I’d be able to heal myself quickly enough to survive that. Thank Goddess, I can teleport. So, I do exactly that, appearing in fairy mode a few feet behind her, hovering high enough in the air that she can’t reach me with that blade again. Not unless she throws it at me. Please, Hannashurie, don’t let her do that.
She gets up from the ground, wondering where the hell I went, when I whistle part of Guns ‘N’ Roses “Patience” at her. A song I only know because my father loves the band.
“I’m gonna kill you, whatever you are!” she screams and saliva bursts out of her mouth in several directions. Maybe she has rabies? Fortunately, none of it hits me.
I inhale and concentrate and when I exhale my hands are on fire. Enough with throwing fireballs, I shoot flames at her – flamethrower-style – from the palms of my hands. They’re tiny flames when they leave me, but the further they go, the larger they become, until they truly become weaponized flames. I feel a tinge of guilt as they reach her chest and quickly spread from there. And she screams at the top of her lungs. It actually startles me. But you might as well be covered in gasoline when fairy flames strike. She yells about how she’s going to kill me, but it’s difficult to hear with the sound of the flames and her sizzling flesh.
My eyes flick to the guy, who manages to stand on his own, though he’s still trembling. If he wasn’t the one who’d actually stabbed me I might have mercy on him, but there’s no way I’m letting a cold-blooded murderer go free. If I did, I would be partially to blame if he killed anyone else.
“Wha – wha – what are you?” he asks, blinking hard. I’m sure he’s hoping that I’m a hallucination.
“I’m a motherfucking fairy,” I say.
“Please,” he pleads and turns his back to me. He runs two steps before I torch him.
Now the two of them are screaming and stumbling about, covered in flames. It’s like a scene from a wild music video. I’m tempted to take out my phone and film it. But that’s like asking to get caught so I don’t.
“You fucking bitch!” the woman yells so loud I can hear her as she collapses and hits the ground.
I might have set them on fire, but I’m not going to stick around and listen to their screams. “Ciao assholes!”
I blink and I’m back in Lia and Juliana’s living room where Juliana is drinking one of the iced mochas and eating a marshmallow donut. “Welcome back,” she says, only seeing me out of the corner of her eye.
“Thanks,” is all I can mutter. As she turns on the stool and actually looks at me, her jaw drops. I’m bleeding heavily from that gash on my hip. I try to make it stop by pressing my hands against it, but instead it spurts all over the white wall a few feet away from me.
“January!” she says, getting up.
“It’s OK,” I say, barely louder than a whisper. “I think my batteries are full.” I place both of my hands over the wound and pray, please Hannashurie, let this work. Don’t let those fuckers kill me again.
It takes a good thirty seconds, but then my hands feel warm and glow like when I’m healing someone else. It’s not the first time I’ve healed myself, but this wound went much deeper than I thought and I’d probably need surgery right now if I wasn’t healing myself.
Juliana still looks panicked. “I should call 911.”
“No, no – just give me a minute.” It takes more like three minutes, which feel like an eternity, the cut burning something fierce, but I continue healing myself until I don’t feel the pain anymore. Well, not much. When I finally remove my hands, the wound isn’t as long and the bleeding has slowed, but it’s certainly not healed all the way. Now I’m kind of dizzy. And I drop...
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
SHAR
I just went through the lunch line and bought Peanut Butter Cups and a salad with Thousand Island dressing. It’s just going to be me, Jim and Pete at the table today. That shouldn’t be too awkward. Well, except for the fact that I’ve never spoken to either of them without any of the other girls present before.
As I’m walking over to our usual table, I pass the goths’ table and they all look at me and laugh. One of the girls says to another, “With January? The short one?”
“We’re telling you the truth,” Sati says. “They were either fooling around or doing coke.”
“Probably both,” Muse says and smirks at me.
I hurry in the direction of our table as the goths laugh at me. They sound like a bunch of hyenas and I wish someone would come along and break their noses right now, if only so they’d quit their snorting as they giggle.
Seriously, though, what the hell? I thought January and I hypnotized them. I certainly tried hard enough. And I felt like I was pushing my thoughts into their heads successfully because
it happened the way it usually does. At first the thoughts I’m pushing are loud, like listening to cranked up headphones, but as I continue pushing them, they fade until I can barely hear them, like I’ve transferred them from my mind into that of whoever I’m hypnotizing.
Maybe the problem was that we were trying to hypnotize the three of them at once and there were only two of us? I suppose it could also be because we forgot to say what we were pushing on them out loud at the end; maybe that seals the deal? Then there’s the other possibility: that they’re witches and/or psychics and were able to shield themselves from us. But maybe I’m just considering that because they all wear black every day and that’s the case with many witches?
Regardless of how they weren’t hypnotized, now I’ll have to tell Li the whole school is going to think I’m cheating on her. And that I do coke. This is bad. Even though Li will believe me when I say it’s not even remotely true, it’s still going to bother her when she hears people gossiping about me and Jan. To think I actually believed we’d be safe in this school.
I don’t even know why I should bother trying out for the swim team. Seems like you can’t trust anyone around here. Granted, I haven’t tried talking to that many new people, but they all seem like bitches and assholes from what I’ve observed. Even the girls, who are supposed to mature faster than guys, are generally superficial and catty. Maybe it’s because of everything we’ve been through during the last few months, but I feel like my friends and I are at least a good five years more mature than the average student here.
“We need to take the GED and get the hell out of here,” I say as I take a seat across from Jim and Pete.
Jim looks baffled. “Why? What’s up?”
“OK, so, this morning I was wicked sore from swimming last night and January healed me in the bathroom because she needed to put her hands on my head.”
“She told me about that,” Pete says.
“Well, did she tell you Sati Jensen and the Donatello twins were using the mirrors when we came out of the stall together?”
Pete nods. “Yeah.”
“What happened there?” Jim asks.
I bite my top lip. “January and I hypnotized them. At least we thought we did. But it didn’t work and they’re over there talking about us. Saying I’m cheating on Li with January.”
Jim looks surprised by how upset I am. “You know Li won’t believe that, don’t you?”
“I do. But it’s bound to get on her nerves. She doesn’t like being part of the rumor mill. And neither do I.” I have to resist the temptation to pull my own hair out. I used to do that when I was a kid. I guess it was my reaction to my parents pressuring me to get straight As. I only quit because Li and Em would grab me by the wrist and stop me from doing it.
Pete’s forehead creases. “When were you ever not part of the rumor mill?”
I have to think for a moment, but then it hits me. “Before we started dabbling with candy.”
I tell Jim and Pete my theories about why Sati and the twins weren’t hypnotized.
Pete sounds very sure of himself. “I bet they’re witches.”
Jim sounds certain, too. “No, I think it was because there were three of them and only two of you.”
I start cracking my knuckles. A nervous habit I’ve never been able to break. “I wish the two of you would’ve agreed.”
“Well, what do you think is most likely?” Jim asks.
That’s the problem: all three of my theories seem sound. “Maybe it’s a combination of two of them?”
Pete makes a fist and taps his thumb against his chin. “What’s to say it’s not all three?”
“If you want to narrow it down, you could always go ask them if they’re witches.” That’s not the worst idea Jim has ever had, but...
“What’s the point? They could easily lie.” Again, I feel like I can’t trust anyone at this school. Outside of our little gang.
There’s a moment of silence before Pete changes the subject. “Are you guys nervous about the memorial tonight?”
I shrug. “I think I’m less worried about the memorial itself and more worried about how Li is going to get through it.” Part of me is so worried about how she’ll react that I think she should stay home. Otherwise, she might give a speech about how it’s her fault Kat died and make a scene.
Jim nods. “Yeah, I’m more concerned about Emma getting through it than I am about myself.”
My eyes flicker to Pete. “What about you?”
Before he can answer, one of the guys from the group Em is calling “club hacker” stops and leans in close to him and says something in his ear. I concentrate on hearing it and thanks to magick, I’m able to. “We need you after school. And don’t say you’re not helping us. You know you want to. And you wouldn’t like you and your friends to get expelled ‘cause you hacked the school.” That said, the hacker heads back to his table.
Pete sighs heavily. “You guys heard that, right?”
Jim puts his hand on Pete’s shoulder and nudges him a little. “I think it’s time you let me deal with them. Unless you’ve come up with a better idea.”
Pete shakes his head. “I haven’t thought of a solution yet. But, trust me, they’d get the last word.”
Jim raises his voice. “Well, you can’t help them. You winding up in prison would be worse than us getting kicked out of here.”
“He has a point,” I say.
“I realize that,” Pete says. “But I doubt I’d get caught. Especially since I’d be using their computers and they’d be running a double VPN.”
“So, it wouldn’t trace back to their IP address?” That’s about the only question I could ask pertaining to hacking and I only know that much from watching Mr. Robot.
“Exactly. The only way I’d be implicated would be if they somehow got caught and ratted me out, but hackers don’t do that to each other.”
Jim shakes his head. “Hey, they’re already threatening to rat you out to the school. So, if you’re all busted for hacking that credit union and they could take years off their sentences, I’m sure they’d blame you for everything. Besides, you do one thing for them then they’ll use that against you. To twist you into doing more and more.”
Pete puts his hands over his ears and winces. Either he has a headache or he’s incredibly frustrated. Probably both. Can’t say that I blame him. He’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. That being the case, I think it would be better to be damned for not doing anything illegal. After taking a couple of deep breaths, he lowers his hands and nobody says anything for a beat so I speak up. “Pete, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think you should let Jim deal with them.”
“Why?” Pete asks, disbelief registering on his face.
“Yeah,” Jim says. “You hated me for how I dealt with those assholes at Noah’s.”
He’s not wrong. I still don’t fully trust him after that. “I’m not saying you should use black magick on them. Just, you know, scare them enough that they’ll back off.”
“What if they rat on me?” Pete asks. “We’ll all be screwed.”
I shrug. “Again, it’s better to deal with the school now than the feds later.”
Pete swallows hard, his Adam’s apple protruding, but he doesn’t say anything.
A slight grin appears on Jim’s face as he says, “We’ll talk to them after school then.”
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
LIA
I’m at Emma’s. We’re in the kitchen. Her mother is on the phone with 911. Her father is on the floor. We were all eating double chocolate cake, celebrating her mother’s birthday, when her father stood up, put his hand on his chest, said “heart attack” and collapsed; he’d seemed perfectly fine before that. Needless to say, my nerves are on high alert right now.
Emma immediately took action and is performing CPR on him, doing chest compressions at the moment. Shar and I are standing beside them. We have an arm around each other’s back, not that it’s stopping
us from worrying like crazy.
A loud, cracking sound rings through the room as Emma breaks one of his ribs and I wince. “Damn it,” she says. “Please wake up, Dad!”
“I wish there was something we could do,” Shar says to me. Tears are pouring down her cheeks and her make up is running.
I swallow hard. “Me, too.”
Emma checks her father’s pulse. She looks at us and shakes her head no. Then she starts doing chest compressions again. She had amazing smokey eyes today, but her make up is a mess now, too. She looks like she has a pair of black eyes.
Emma’s mom is still on the phone. They must be having her stay on the line until help gets here.
My right eye itches so I quit biting my nails and rub it. That’s when I realize there aren’t any tears on my face. None. I’m not crying. Why is everyone crying but me? Emma’s father is technically dead right now and I’m not shedding a tear? What the fuck is wrong with me? I’ve known him since I was seven!
I close my eyes and will myself to start crying. Nothing happens. Then I remember the surefire way to make myself cry and I think about my late pets. The first one that comes to mind is my yellow parakeet Starbright. They say parakeets don’t talk, but Starbright did. I taught her to say “I want apple” and she only said it when she actually wanted apple. What a smart one she was. We’d let her fly around the apartment and she’d often linger on my shoulder for half an hour at a time. The morning I got up and found her dead in the bottom of her cage was one of the worst days of my life. I was so upset my mother didn’t even send me to school. For the next three days.
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