by Cecily White
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, backing toward the hall. There wasn’t time to worry about it now. If I hadn’t figured it out by lunchtime, Henry could help me look it up.
…
By the time I got to class, my heart had quit doing the pile-driver thing, but my stomach still felt like a toilet stuck on perma-flush.
Lisa wasted no time in pointing out the encrusted cinnamon sugar on my chin and commenting that my hair resembled, and I quote, “a mouse habitat.” Alarming, since I’d made a special effort to blow it dry that morning. I wiped off my face and laced my tangled mouse-house into a quick French braid.
At the front of the class, Professor Meeks stood behind a long, black-topped table identical to the ones where we sat. Despite its weird Frankenstein vibe, I liked the Demonology lab. With all the jars of pickled bat wings and formaldehyde-soaked sheep’s brains, the place held a delightfully creepy feel that always gave me the urge to cackle.
“Hey,” Lisa whispered as I took my seat next to her. “Your test is this period, right?”
“That’s the rumor.”
“Skye said Smith-Hailey’s in a foul mood this morning. Whatever you do, don’t mention werewolves.”
“Werewolves?”
“Yeah. Or vampires.”
Unsure what to say to that, I shifted my attention to the front of the room. Meeks had started waving a dry erase marker and yammering incoherently. Something about time paradoxes, folds in the space continuum, and speculations as to why non-demonic beings had such trouble with inter-dimensional portal travel. According to his math, it required more than four hundred rohms of Crossworld power to successfully shield someone from demonic exposure through a jump—more power than most bonded pairs could manage. The few times it had been tried, most of the Channelers wound up dead, and the Watchers came back acting like grilled-cheese sandwiches. Not great for morale.
“Of course,” Meeks said, “there are exceptions to every rule. In a few cases, portal jumps have been made with stunning success, which is why every bonded Channeler must have a portal locus code to a safe exit point.” He lifted his marker to where I sat. “In fact, we have with us the daughter of one of the most successful portal jumpers in history. Did you know that, Miss Bennett?”
I hadn’t, but it figured.
“It was before your time, of course, before all that nasty business with…” His voice trailed off. “Never mind.”
I tried to listen as he progressed through a brief, yet thoroughly confusing lecture on the biomechanics of cross-dimensional energy transfer and the rohm conversion effect of greater demon blood. Snore. Within minutes, I found myself spacing out on a squirmy tank of demon-hybrid gerbils at the front of the room. The wards around the cage were similar to the ones I’d erected on my house last night, except these were designed to keep the monsters in.
While we’re on the topic, I still hadn’t figured out why Inferni were staking out my house. The vamp-mobile had vanished at some point during the wee hours, replaced by a huge pickup truck I could only assume belonged to a werewolf. Or a Republican from north Louisiana—hard to tell the difference. Their presence left me unsettled. Unfortunately, so long as they didn’t break the law, there wasn’t much I could do about it.
Halfway through his lecture, Meeks ambled to the locked cabinet and drew out a potted plant—the same houseplant he’d been carrying at assembly yesterday morning. He stroked it lovingly.
“I’d like you all to meet Balthazar. You may recognize him as the species begonia coccinae, or Angel-Wing Begonia, but I assure you Balthazar is no ordinary plant.” Meeks set the plastic pot down on the lab table. “Since the day he was seeded, Balfie has been watered with an increasing concentration of greater demon blood—enough to protect him from the usual degradation of Crossworld travel, but not so much that he’d revert to a demonic existence. Can anybody guess why we would do this?”
The scratch of Lisa’s pencil was the only sound over the air conditioner. Most of us were probably too busy wondering where Meeks got the blood of a demon lord to bother taking notes. It’s not exactly something you pick up at the local drugstore.
“Does it have to do with portal travel?” Matt asked finally.
“Very good, Mr. Marino. Balthazar is, indeed, the first mortal life form to travel, unshielded, through a Crossworld portal and emerge, still flowering.” Meeks went on to explain how, because of the natural shielding effect of greater demon blood, the total power draw of Balfie’s jump was low enough for any mortal life form to manage.
“Have you tried it with anything sentient?” Alec followed my gaze to the gerbil tank. “Something simple-minded and morally vacuous? A hamster, perhaps? Maybe Veronica?”
“Excuse me!” Veronica griped from the back table.
“Those are gerbils, Mr. Charbonnet, not hamsters. And I’d thank you to minimize the insulting commentary.”
“My apologies, sir.” Alec nodded. “The gerbil is a noble beast. I shouldn’t have compared it to Veronica.”
The class erupted into sniggers as Veronica flushed an attractive shade of pink.
“It’s not a bad idea,” Katie said. “If greater demon blood works on begonias maybe it could work on something bigger.” She paused. “Like one of us.”
Immediately, the class exploded into discussion—the ethical implications of a demon-infected Guardian, speculations as to whether it would render them unbondable. I think even Lisa stopped taking notes after a while.
Meeks’s cheeks had turned an annoyed shade of red, verging perilously close to eggplant. He slapped his palm down on the table. “People, settle down. We are men and women of high morals. We do not demonize the innocent.”
“What if we’re not innocent?” Alec winked at Katie.
Lisa smacked him on the head with her notebook.
Katie giggled and Meeks gave a weary sigh. “Mr. Charbonnet, please report to Headmistress Smalley’s office.”
Laughter rippled through the classroom while Alec, still with his slightly bored smirk, stood and slung his messenger bag over one shoulder. As I watched him go, I couldn’t help thinking it had taken me a whole month at St. Michael’s before I got sent to Smalley’s office. Maybe I wasn’t the craziest one in our school after all. The thought was oddly comforting.
“Hey, Ami?” Amidst the chaos, Lyle scooted his stool across the aisle next to me. “Can I talk to you? It’s kind of important.”
“In a sec. I want to hear the gerbil thing.”
He frowned. “Who cares about that? Screw the gerbils.”
“Screw them?” I raised an eyebrow. “Lyle, this is not your personal recreation time.”
With a sigh, Meeks picked up Balthazar from the lab table, muttered something about scruples, and headed for the back door. He’d made it halfway there when I realized someone else had already come through it.
My heart gave a twitch.
Jack slouched against the doorframe, one hand tucked into his pocket, the other lightly balancing a clipboard. His face held a mixture of exasperation and dismay—not a happy combo, but one I was rapidly becoming familiar with.
Meeks said something to him that made, if possible, his frown deepen. Then Jack nodded at me.
“Amelie Bennett,” he said. “You’re up.”
I tried not to smile. Even after hearing him lecture me like a toddler yesterday, his voice still made me all melty inside. Whatever clichés exist about girls liking guys in power, I tell you, they exist for a reason.
“Jeez,” Lisa whispered. “I didn’t even hear him come in. Is he like a ninja, or something?”
“Or something,” I said. “See you in a few.”
“Good luck!”
I tucked my schoolbooks into my backpack and hoisted it onto one shoulder. As soon as the door clicked shut behind us, my body relaxed. I’d missed him.
“You’re almost late,” I noted.
“I’m on time.”
“Same thing.” I followed him down the hall,
doubling my pace to keep up. “So, my dad hates you, did you know that? He almost didn’t let me come to school today.”
“What a shame that would have been,” he muttered, loping off toward the faculty parking lot at a speed my legs had trouble matching.
Normally, students drove themselves to the test site, but since Katie didn’t have her license and Lisa wasn’t dumb enough to let me borrow the Prius, Jack would be my chauffeur for the day. Amped as I felt at being in a car with him, my excitement turned to horror when I saw the rust-covered scrap heap he approached. It looked like a lump of white Play-Doh that had been rolled in mud, then fashioned into a car by a three-year-old.
“What is this?” I asked.
“What does it look like?” Jack yanked at the passenger door but it didn’t budge. He pulled harder, and the handle came off in his palm.
“It looks like my grandma’s old VW Rabbit after the Berlin Wall fell on it. Twice.”
I watched him reach through the open window to pop it from the inside. The door gave a screeching howl of pain as it fell open, revealing ripped upholstery and—no kidding—rust holes in the floor so big you could see the pavement below.
“Is it roadworthy?”
“Yes, it’s roadworthy.”
I eyed the thing with uncertainty. “Are you sure?”
“Get in the car, Miss Bennett.”
I squinted up at Jack. “So, where are your glasses today? Can you even see enough to drive? How many fingers am I holding up?”
Jack heaved an exasperated sigh. “Just get in the car.”
The morning clouds had cleared by the time we pulled up to a pale blue, Empire-style house. Yellow sunbeams stretched lazily above the line of trees, promising a scorcher of a day. My palms still felt sweaty, but I knew it wasn’t from the heat. Much as I liked to cop an attitude about school, the truth was some things actually were important to me. This test was one of them.
Goosebumps rose along my arms as I studied the place.
It definitely looked like a house that could be haunted, even by the most conservative New Orleans standards. Cobwebs draped in languid strands across the corners of the window frames, and the front staircase shed paint chips like a dog with dandruff. Palm fronds and fleur-de-lis were etched with handmade precision into the ironwork, details rivaling any of the old mansions on St. Charles. Still, something about the sag of the gallery left me with a tight seed of nervousness in my belly. The whole thing looked like it might tumble down at the slightest sneeze. Wrought iron lanterns hung on either side of the front door, one with its bulb blown out and the other dangling at an odd angle. Vines had grown up along the lower half of the hardwood siding, and some of the planks had started to rot under the growth. Whoever was in charge of maintenance and repair had some serious explaining to do.
“Charming,” I commented as Jack’s engine sputtered to halt. “Is this where you take all your dates?”
He ignored me. Understandably.
“Your task is to locate the demonic manifestation inside the house, open a portal, send the creature back to the Crossworld, and close the portal without incurring any damage to the house. You’re permitted to use me as an energy repository, though you will lose points if that energy output exceeds fifty rohms. You have thirty minutes,” he said with a glance at his watch. “Starting now.”
I took a deep breath as Jack trailed me to the front door, clipboard in hand. “It’s locked,” I observed, my thumb thwapping the handle. “What am I supposed to do?”
He jotted down some notes on his clipboard. “Maybe you should give up and go home. One little homicidal demon wandering the human world won’t make a difference.”
I glared at him. “Matt said he got a pep talk at his test. I don’t rate a pep talk?”
“You want a pep talk?” He made a fist with one hand, then punched it through the air in a victorious motion. “Go get ‘em. You’ve got twenty-eight minutes.”
“Dude, do not join the pep squad.” I crouched by the door and peered at the lock. It looked like a basic security set-up, no visible demonic booby-traps…not that I’d know what those looked like.
It took me a few seconds to blow the dust away and draw an opening glyph on the lock. My finger-strokes hissed as the shape flared and sank into the metal surface. I placed one hand over the symbol and spoke, “Abertura.”
With a click, the door fell open.
Cool air seeped out from the foyer, carrying with it the inevitable musty odor of last night’s rainstorm. Jack must have administered at least ten tests so far, though I was betting none of them had been here. The dank taste of mold collected at the back of my throat as I watched cockroaches scurry for cover.
“Home, disgusting home,” I mumbled.
My Guardian spidey-sense tingled as it led me up the stairs toward what looked like a teenager’s messy bedroom. It would probably be a Chelax demon. FYI, teenagers and Chelax demons go together like bread and butter, sugar and spice, movies and popcorn, pizza and… What goes with pizza?
Eh, never mind.
I touched the door lightly, the creaky hinge inching open. For all the atmospheric build up of the house, I had to admit I was disappointed. There were no pentagrams, no animal sacrifices, no voodoo talismans. It just looked like a boring, old room. We’d been told to expect the unexpected for our tests, but this wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind.
Semi-rumpled piles of dark laundry were folded at the foot of the bed, a couple of teenage romance novels scattered around. Other than that, it was completely empty. No orb, no vortex, no giant mess at the hand of the angry demon. The only disruption I could make out was a quivery black mass in the corner about the size of an overweight Labrador.
I regarded the demon, only vaguely aware of Jack’s silent presence behind me. “Why is it acting like a spanked puppy?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps you should ask it?”
I frowned at him. “Isn’t sarcasm the opiate of the masses?”
“You’re thinking of religion,” he replied. “Sarcasm is the Xanax of the morally bereft.”
With my index finger, I sketched the requisite four binding wards (North, South, East, and West) to make sure nothing snuck through from the other side.
“I have a theory on why you never got bonded,” I said. “I think you ridiculed all your potential bondmates until their self-esteem imploded. Then, when it came time to list prefs, no girl could write your name without bursting into tears. Am I close?”
He tucked the clipboard against his chest. “What makes you think I’m not bonded?”
“Are you?” I asked, looking around innocently. “Where was she yesterday? Why isn’t she helping you with this Graymason thing? Enforcement never breaks up bonded pairs,” I pointed out ultra-reasonably. “That would be suicide.”
“Maybe she’s dead,” he said, his face perfectly blank.
I shot him a skeptical look as the glow of the wards intensified. “Nice try, but I don’t think so. You’ve seen those guys. They’re like shells, or something. You don’t feel like that to me.”
Electricity crackled up my arms, and the skin between my fingers began to pink as I called open the Crossworld channel. I had no idea why everything was going so seamlessly. Maybe it was the mold count in the house or the last gasp of summer ragweed. With school starting and the whole business with the incident report last night, this was the second day in a row Bud had forgotten my allergy meds.
I began the portal incantation, “Caret initio et—”
“Include translation, please.”
“Seriously? Am I five years old?”
He made a few notes but said nothing. Smug bastard.
“Fine.” I cracked my knuckles and wiggled my fingers theatrically. “Caret initio et fine. There is no beginning and no end. Ab initio, ad patres. From birth unto death. Deficit omne quod nasciture. Everything that is born returns.”
In an icy hot rush, energy shot out of my fingers into a wide arc in front of m
e. The air between the wards began to ripple as if someone had painted the scene on a bed sheet and given it a rough shake. A sound like ripping silk echoed through the room and, when I glanced up, the portal had opened. Disaster free.
Hah! I felt a nugget of pride bloom in my chest. Take that, Jackson Smith-Hailey!
The pride might have lasted more than a nanosecond if I hadn’t caught Jack jotting what looked like a frowny-face at the top of his clipboard. Annoyed once more, I turned my attention to the center of the room.
Looking into a Crossworld portal is a little like looking in a mirror, only it’s made of thickened energy instead of silvered glass. I managed to hold it open with one hand while the other scrawled an immobilization glyph over the Chelax demon. Not that the poor thing needed it. His eyes were so wide with fear he looked like a harsh word might convince him to hurl himself into the portal.
Tendrils of oily dust whipped about the room, then curled back in wild, chaotic arcs. “Something’s wrong,” I noted. “This doesn’t feel right.”
Jack gave me a dismissive touch on the shoulder, drawing the last shreds of darkness out of my head. At the same time, little spurts of golden light flashed over my skin. “Try not to think about it,” he said. “A job well begun is half done.”
“Thank you, Mary Poppins.”
I tried to focus on my breath and not on the deafening sirens in my head as the demon tumbled into the portal. I was about to turn toward Jack for approval when the world…shut off.
Seriously.
Whatever platitudes he was about to spout were lost under a curtain of thick, black silence. And when I say “black” and “silent,” I don’t mean “kind of dim” and “naptime quiet.” It was as if someone had dropped one of those heavy, fireproof blankets the EMTs use in emergencies over the entire building. It shut out everything. Light, street noise, air, even the sounds of birds and crickets vanished. The result was something so oppressively empty it felt deafening.