by Stacey Jay
"But I just said I was taking you like an hour ago," he said, still looking incredulous but at least not flat-out denying my argument.
"Right in front of Monica and London, the biggest gossips in school. I'm sure they were on their cells sharing the news with half the senior class before we even got to Sonic." I bit my lip and turned to pace around the lawn, not quite ready to share my sneaking suspicion that Monica might have something to do with the RCs. I'd need concrete proof before I went there with Ethan since he and the Monicster had been friends forever. "Speaking of, anyone who saw us together at Sonic could be a suspect, assuming they can make a totem doll fairly quickly. Or if they had a picture of you or a possession of yours to use. Probably the doll since you don't know that many-"
"Megan, I can appreciate your logic, but isn't raising flesh-eating corpses to keep you from going to homecoming a little extreme?"
"It's not extreme. It's flat-out crazy, but that doesn't mean it isn't true," I said, watching his expression waver between patronizing and contemplative before whipping out my ace. "Especially considering the RCs last night were after Josh."
"How did you know that?" he asked, looking really angry. "Did your mom-"
"Mom didn't tell me anything-you just did," I said, doing my best to keep my satisfied smile from my face. "Half the school knew that Josh and I were going out last night and that he didn't have a date for the dance. Someone wanted to make sure he didn't get one, at least not if that date was going to be me."
Ethan chewed his bottom lip for a second, then slowly snapped the phone shut.
"What? Aren't you going to tell SA about-"
"I'm going to tell them, but I'd better do it in person. They're never going to believe this could all be about some high school dance." He sighed and ran a frustrated hand through his hair. "I'm still not sure I believe it, but I have to admit it makes sense. They found pieces of a football jersey on the two graves last night. When they searched the boys' locker room this morning, the number fifteen jersey was missing."
"That's Josh's jersey!" My stomach started churning big-time. Hearing the hard evidence that Josh had been the target made it all so much more real.
"But there are other things going on. Things I can't tell you about that make this more complicated. If it were just these two attacks, I would say you were completely right, but-"
"There have been more attacks? Is that what happened at the football field? Was someone attacked by-"
"Uh-uh, no way. You've already tricked me into saying more than I wanted to." He took me by the shoulders and turned me toward my front door. "Go inside and get something to clean up these ashes. I'll take them with me to headquarters."
"Okay" I sighed, knowing I'd won as much information from Ethan as I was going to get. For now. Might as well satisfy my non-homecoming-plot-related curiosity. "I didn't know RCs could be destroyed by fire. I thought you had to send them back to their Maker. That only the blood of the one who raised them could make them go back to their grave."
"It's not destroyed," Ethan said, turning to point to the ground, where the ashes were starting to look more solid. "In an hour or two, it will regenerate enough to start attacking things again."
"No way." Whoa, that was twisted. Black magic was some seriously warped stuff.
"Yes way. I'll work the reverto spell on it when it reconstitutes. I just couldn't send it back to its grave on fire. People usually won't notice a zombie running back to its Maker, but they will notice a streaking fireball."
"Makes sense," I said, turning back to the house before spinning around again. "So, would you want to use the fire spell if there were a whole bunch of RCs raised at once? I know the reverto spell won't work if there are too many of them."
"I guess that could work in theory, but it would depend on how many you were talking about. The flame spell takes a lot of energy and usually a lot more time. I wouldn't have been able to take care of this one so quickly if it weren't already burning. So… I'd say you could burn maybe two or three RCs at a time, max, and that's if the Settler was pretty powerful."
"And by that time, the rest of them would be on you," I said, feeling my stomach sink.
"You don't have to worry," Ethan said, his voice softer. "You're not going to be attacked by a bunch of RCs, I promise you. Nothing like that has happened in the states since the thing up in Michigan in the early '80s."
A part of me wanted to believe Ethan, but my gut was telling me I should be ready for anything. Whoever didn't want me at the homecoming dance might decide to screw trying to get rid of my dates and go straight for the source. They'd been willing to kill Ethan and Josh, so why not me?
Someone had really tried to kill Ethan and Josh. It was like the truth was finally soaking in through my thick skull. My hands were shaking and my chicken sandwich threatening to crawl back up my throat by the time I darted in the house and came back with a garbage bag and dustpan. Thankfully, my parents had the news turned up so loud in the den they didn't hear me come in. I didn't want them to see how freaked I was.
"Ethan," I said, once I was back outside holding the bag as he scooped increasingly solid zombie remains into it with the pan. "Do you think maybe I could learn the flame spell anyway? Just in case?"
"The flame spell is third-stage Settler stuff."
"But what if someone tries to kill you again?" Or me, I thought, but didn't add out loud. Ethan was already way overprotective: no need to fuel that fire. "I want to be able to help. I should be-"
"Third-stage spells are for third-stagers, Megan. End of discussion. I'll teach you another second-stage method for taking care of RCs later," he said, turning back to his car. "Right now I need to get this cleaned up and get to SA headquarters. Are your parents going to be home soon or-"
"They're home already. They're watching the news. I swear Dad's going deaf, he always has the television turned up so loud. I guess that's why they didn't hear me screaming." I tried to laugh at the last part but couldn't. There was nothing funny about what was going on-not the part of it I knew about or the parts that Ethan and the Elders were keeping from me.
"Listen, don't worry. I'll be back later to check on you. Everything's going to be fine." Then he bent down and kissed me, really softly on the forehead, like a big brother would kiss a little sister who was scared of the dark.
I smiled and tried to look like I felt comforted as he drove away, even though I was feeling anything but. Ethan was wrong. I wasn't a kid who needed to be kept safe from whatever was going down in Carol. Whatever was happening, I was obviously a big part of it. I needed to know all the facts so I could help SA find the person responsible before this went any further. The homecoming dance was in danger, and people might end up getting hurt or worse. Suddenly, getting a date had become a secondary concern. What had seemed like the most important thing in the world was now a much smaller blip on my radar. If someone was willing to kill people to keep me away from the dance, there had to be some reason for it. A reason that was probably as flat-out evil as whoever was raising these Reanimated Corpses.
No matter how freaked I was, I had to keep my eyes and ears open and do my best to find the person behind the attacks before it was too late.
***
I was having a horrible dream, a mix of the night of my attack and the events of the past few days. This time the zombies who jumped on me were on fire, and when a corpse leaned over to bite me, the flames spread to my hair, my clothes. Soon I was engulfed, screaming in agony as my skin melted away from my bones. Yet somehow, I continued to live on. I was conscious as I burned, able to hear the laughter of the person who wanted me dead echoing in my-
"Megan Berry! For the last time, get your head off your desk."
"Wha?" I snapped into an upright position, swiping at a bit of drool on my cheek. The laughter in the room got a little louder.
Crap. Why did I have to fall asleep in English of all places? Mrs. Pierce was already riding my butt about letting my GPA fall to a me
re 3.6 instead of a 3.8. Apparently, she held the secretary of the Honor Society to a higher standard than the average student. If I had known that going in, I so wouldn't have run for the position.
"Bring that diary to me," Mrs. Pierce said.
She couldn't take my journal! Not when I'd just been listing suspects before I'd evidently succumbed to exhaustion and fallen asleep. "Um, it's not a diary, Mrs. Pierce, it's just, um… some notes… and stuff."
"English is not the place for notes and stuff. Bring it up here. Immediately."
Laughter tittered through the room again, and I blushed a shade of red I knew wasn't cute. This was all Mom's fault for depriving me of caffeine. If she'd let me have a cup of coffee before school, this never would have happened!
I closed the journal and hurried to the front of the room, feeling like I was back in the third grade getting in trouble for reading Princess Diaries novels instead of my stupid assigned reading. Pierce glared at me the entire way, her tiny brown eyes narrowed in her pudgy face. She looked like an evil mole, and not even the cutesy sweatshirts she wore could lessen the resemblance. The pink English Teachers Are Always Write shirt she had on today only brought out the sallow color of her skin, intensifying the "I spend most of my time underground" vibe.
"You may retrieve this after school." She pressed her lips together as she snatched the book. "No more journaling or sleeping on my time, or you'll be on your way to the office."
"Sorry," I said, then turned and fled back to my desk, doing my best not to look at anyone but Jess, who I could tell was totally commiserating with me.
Too bad I couldn't say the same for the rest of my peers. Almost every girl in school had been a total witch to me today. They'd been jealous when I'd started getting attention from a hot senior, and jealousy had all too easily turned to loathing when I'd proved myself unworthy of that attention. It was shocking how fast the news of my new college "boyfriend" had spread, even to someone well aware of the workings of the CHS gossip machine.
Maybe once I told Ethan about my shunning today, he would be more willing to believe that the person raising the zombies had to be someone from my school.
Don't even go there. You know it's pointless.
I sighed and tried to look like I was riveted by Colin Danforth's reading of Macbeth while letting my mind wander back to the problem at hand. My inner voice was right. Ethan would never believe me. He hadn't even wanted to hear my list of possible suspects when he'd dropped by last night after his trip to SA headquarters. He hadn't told me much, but from his bad attitude I guessed the Elders had laughed in his face when he suggested someone was raising the dead to keep me from going to homecoming.
Which meant there was a lot more I didn't know. Otherwise, even the Elders would see the logic of my argument. I was sure of it. They were old and out of touch, but most of them weren't stupid. So that meant I was missing something. Something big.
But since I had no way of discovering what that something was, I'd decided to concentrate on what I did know. And I knew someone was trying to keep me from homecoming. If I could just figure out who that someone was, then I'd be closer to figuring out the bigger mystery.
Now, maybe if I'd spent more time reading Nancy Drew as a kid instead of all the Princess Diaries books, I'd be prepared to get sleuthing.
As it was, I hadn't gotten much further than a list of possible suspects. Monica was the biggie and would have been the only if there had ever been a documented case of a Settler raising the dead with the black arts. Apparently we were all such goody-goodies, we didn't go there. I'd looked through every history book Mom had in the Closet and had found nothing, which was enough to make me branch out and look for other suspects.
London was on my list simply because she'd been at both the corn maze and the dance studio when Ethan dropped the homecoming bomb. I couldn't really think of any motive she would have for wanting me stuck at home, but there was a chance I wasn't seeing the big picture.
Beth, Josh's ex, was also on the list, despite the fact that she resembled a Barbie doll more than a voodoo practitioner and seemed to have the intelligence of a gnat. Black magic wasn't easy stuff, and I doubted someone in remedial math would have the discipline to focus her mind and energy in the way you'd have to in order to work a summoning spell. Still, at least she had a motive-to punish me for going out with her man. A little thin, but a motive nonetheless.
I'd also added Beth's little sister Annabelle to the list. She was in my grade and as different from Beth as Jack Skellington was from Island Princess Barbie. Annabelle was a super goth who had been arrested over the summer for putting sugar in the gas tanks of an entire lot of SUVs. She was a budding radical environmentalist and just all around… scary.
Of course, scary did not necessarily equal evil, and I couldn't think of any motive for her, except maybe wanting revenge for Josh dumping her sister.
If only I had something else to go on!
The bell rang, signaling the end of fourth period. Thank. God. At least now I could get to the cafeteria and try to scrounge for some caffeine. I stuffed my copy of Macbeth in my bag and hurried to where Jess sat three rows back. Evil Pierce made us sit in alphabetical order. If she hadn't, Jess would surely have found a way to prod me into wakefulness before I embarrassed myself.
"Hey, you need to stop by your locker before lunch?" I asked.
"Um, no… but I don't think I'm going to lunch," she said with a sigh. "I've got this killer test in biology, and I should probably hit the library."
"I could help you. I took that test last year," I said, not wanting to brave the cafeteria alone. So far I hadn't seen Claire or Del, our usual lunch pals, but I was afraid they might be giving me the cold shoulder too.
"No, it's okay. A few people are going to be there for a study group, so they'll help." Jess smiled and reached over to squeeze my hand as we followed everyone else out of the class. "Hey, don't worry. I saw Claire, and she couldn't believe everyone's being so mean to you. She'll help protect you during lunch."
"Am I that obvious? God, I'm such a coward." And I was. I'd only spent five minutes on the phone with Jess the night before because I couldn't handle the amount of lying involved with explaining the whole Ethan situation. I'd given her the bare bones and that was it.
"No, not at all. I just know you."
"What about Del, do you think she'll be cool?" I asked, walking with Jess toward the library.
"You know, I don't think she's at school today. She called me last night, all freaked out about something, but she wouldn't tell me what it was." Jess lowered her voice as we blended in with the crowd in the halls.
"Really?"
"Yeah, she's been acting weird lately. I hope she and her dad aren't fighting again." Jess's usually cheery face drooped.
Acting weird lately, huh? And maybe she was upset last night because her second attempt to kill my homecoming date had failed? I hated to suspect Del since she was basically a friend, but…
"I just wish she could see what a great person she is," Jess said, making me feel even worse for adding Del to my list of suspects, "and not let it get to her so much when her dad freaks out."
"Me too." I put one arm around Jess's shoulder and gave her a squeeze, feeling older for a second. Jess has always been shorter, but after my final growth spurt over the summer I had at least four inches on her. Jess had topped out at barely five feet and was super-tiny but was cool with being short. We'd always joked it would mean she'd be in the front of all the dance formations once we made the pom squad.
Man, I wished that was all I had to worry about. Just making the squad and homecoming and nothing else.
"See you in gym," Jess said, heading down the steps to the library while I continued on to the cafeteria, trying to ignore the nasty looks I received from several girls I passed.
"What a difference a day makes," I whispered, pasting a smile on my face.
I wasn't going to let this get me down. I'd find out who was after me
, dump my fake boyfriend, and everything could go back to normal. No matter how much a part of me would be thrilled to go to the dance with Ethan, I needed to live in reality. Ethan wasn't real boyfriend material. Josh was. And since he wasn't back at school yet, maybe I could convince him that the rumors about me and Ethan were all a big misunderstanding.
Positive thinking, that was what I needed. Too bad positive thinking was so very hard to pull off when you were fairly certain there was a killer on the loose-a killer who could be watching your every move, determined not to fail again.
CHAPTER 8
"Time for a review." These were the first words out of Ethan's mouth Sunday afternoon, making me fairly certain this Settler lesson would be as boring as Thursday, Friday, and Saturday's sessions. "Let's begin. To return."
"Ethan, I know all the basic commands. Trust me, I actually have a very good memory when I put my-"
"To return," he repeated, turning to walk deeper into the cemetery before I'd finished locking my bike to the metal gate.
Shepherd's Hill was only a five-minute ride from my house, so I'd said I wouldn't need Ethan to pick me up. I'd been allowed the brief respite from babysitting detail because the sun wouldn't set until five thirty, long after our lesson would hopefully be over. Please. God. Then there might actually be time to enjoy a tiny portion of my weekend.
Hanging with Ethan the past three days had been an exercise in boredom and frustration. He rarely spoke, except to grill me about second-stage material, and refused to teach me anything that might actually prove useful in defending myself or anyone else from Reanimated Corpses. Not that I was quite as worried about another attack since I'd made it known around school Friday afternoon I wasn't going to homecoming because the cleaner had ruined my dress.
This was a lie, of course, but I figured it was an excellent way to test my theory, which had been proven completely right so far!