Paranormal Magic (Shades of Prey Book 1)

by Margo Bond Collins

  “Nothing in particular.” Just trying to ignore the fact that you want to make me the mother of your child.

  “I heard Kayla talking about giving her dad a reason to ground you,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “She said you spent last period yesterday with Bevington.”

  I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. “Yeah.”

  “So that’s why you blew me off?” I swear, he sounded hurt.

  Ack! What would I say to that under normal circumstances? “I didn’t blow you off, Mason. Josh and I just had some stuff to talk about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Nothing important.”

  “Important enough to skip out on me?”

  I turned my head and looked at him straight on. “It was nothing, okay? And honestly, it’s none of your business. I’ll make up the time selling ads, so you have nothing to worry about.” I put an edge of anger in my voice, and this time I didn’t have to try to do it.

  His voice dropped. “I worry about you,” he said softly.

  “You don’t have any reason to,” I said, staring out the window.

  “If you say so.” He swung the pickup into a parking lot.

  “Just drop it, Mason.”

  He shrugged. “Okay. For now.”

  We didn’t really speak for the next hour. Despite the awkwardness between us, we actually worked well together as a team. Almost everyone bought an ad from us. Even with the missing day, we were doing better than any of the others on the yearbook staff.

  So I had relaxed some by the time we pulled into the driveway at the ranch house. Mason put the truck into park and left the engine idling. When I reached out to open the door, he leaned over and grabbed my hand to stop me. Surprised, I looked up into his face.

  “I just want you to know that I’m worried about you, Laney,” he said seriously. I felt heat move from his hand into mine.

  Oh, no.

  I grew perfectly still and stared up at him. His blue eyes darkened an entire shade.

  This is just a glamour, I told myself. Just a glamour. Don’t respond.

  But it was almost impossible not to respond. Whereas Josh’s kiss had been all sunshine and light, Mason’s was dark, pulling me down to meet him. I felt like I was drowning, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to come up for air.

  “Stop,” I finally gasped, pushing him away.

  “Okay,” he said, pulling back and taking a deep breath of his own. “Okay.” He looked at me. “I’m sorry if that was out of line, Laney.” His voice was soft. “But it just . . . felt right.”

  “I’ve got to go,” I said desperately.

  He nodded. “See you tomorrow, Laney.”

  I scooted out of the truck.

  There were simply not enough curse words in the universe for this.

  As I walked into the house, I heard the door to Kayla’s room slam. I rolled my eyes and headed toward my own bedroom. But as I drew closer, I heard Kayla sobbing. Tentatively, I opened her door and poked my head in.

  “You okay?” I asked quietly.

  She looked up at me, her face tear-streaked. “Why?” she demanded. “Why do you have to have Mason, too? Why can’t you just take Josh Bevington and leave Mason alone?”

  I blinked, unsure what to say. I didn’t think she’d believe me if I said Okay—not after she’d just seen me making out with Mason in our front driveway.

  “I wish you would hurry up and give him what he wants so he would just dump you, too,” she said, and threw herself face down into her pillow.

  “Oh,” I said. “Oh, God. Kayla. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “Just go away!” Her voice was muffled by the pillow.

  I stood in the doorway, undecided.

  “I said, go away!” Kayla screamed, and threw a pillow at me.

  I ducked back out and shut the door behind me.

  So, Kayla had given Mason what he wanted and he’d dumped her? Ouch. No wonder she hated me.

  Of course, I’d feel more sorry for her if she hadn’t tried so hard to make my life miserable ever since I got to Fairy.

  I went into my own room and collapsed onto the bed.

  Chapter 10

  The next day, Josh didn’t even look at me when he slid into his seat in English.

  “Hey,” I whispered. He didn’t respond, but I saw the muscle in his jaw twitch.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Kayla’s talking.”

  “About what?” I was genuinely confused.

  “You and Mason.”

  Oh. That.

  “It wasn’t anything!” I said.

  “Miss Harris?” the teacher said, “Do you have something you’d like to share with the rest of the class?”

  For one hysterical moment, I considered saying Yes. Mason kissed me just like Josh knew he would and now Josh is mad at me for it even though he showed me his wings yesterday and knows I’m not interested in Mason. Yeah. That would go over real well. It was all I could do to keep from snickering.

  “No, ma’am,” I said aloud.

  At lunch, everyone at my table quizzed me about Mason’s kiss. Except Andrew, of course. He just scowled at everyone.

  “Rate it,” Scott said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “The kiss. On a scale of one to ten. Rate it.”

  “One being you’d rather chew on a dead rat,” Natalie said with a giggle, “and ten being ‘more, more, more!’”

  “I refuse to participate in this,” I said, in an attempt to maintain my dignity.

  “At least a seven, then,” Ally said. “If it was terrible you’d just come out and say so.”

  “I’m not listening to you,” I said.

  “Oh, and y’all should have seen Josh’s reaction,” Ally said. “He wouldn’t even talk to her.”

  I was going to kill Kayla.

  By the end of the day, I couldn’t walk down the hall without hearing whispers about me and Mason Collier.

  I couldn’t find Josh anywhere, either.

  Not that that meant anything, since Josh could just vanish into another world.

  I wished I could do that. By myself, I mean.

  I was silent on the walk from the yearbook room to Mason’s truck, but as soon as we both got in, I turned to him. “So,” I said. “I assume you’ve heard?”

  He had the good sense to blush. “Yeah. Apparently Kayla’s talking about us.”

  I nodded. “She had some pretty choice things to say to me about you, too.” No need to tell him that she’d merely implied those things—or that she’d been sobbing at the time. I might not like her much, but it didn’t cost me anything to let her keep a little of her dignity.

  Mason’s blush grew deeper. “She did?”

  “Yep. And I’ve got to say, it’s pretty tacky for you to start kissing me in her front yard.”

  He looked uncomfortable. “I know. It’s just that. . .” his voice trailed off.

  “Yes?”

  “I had to quit seeing her.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, my . . . my father told me I needed to break up with her.”

  “Any reason in particular for that?”

  “Not really.”

  “So did you like her?”

  He let out a little sigh. “Yeah. I did.”

  Huh. I’d be willing to bet a million dollars that Bartlef was the one who had told him to break it off with Kayla.

  Interesting.

  “Look, Mason,” I said, “I just don’t think this is a good time—or a good situation—for us to be getting together.”

  He frowned down at his hands, resting on the steering wheel.

  “So you’re choosing Josh?”

  I shook my head. “You two are such . . . such guys! You act like you’re my only two choices in the world. You both need to get over yourselves. I don’t belong to either one of you.”

  And I’m not about to let eithe
r of you convince me to have your love child, dude.

  I didn’t say that last part out loud. Just in case you were wondering.

  And Mason didn’t try to kiss me again, either.

  * * *

  The next morning the bell to end first period rang early. Don’t get me wrong; I was perfectly happy to get out of geometry class early. I was just confused. Everyone else seemed to understand what was going on, though, so I moved with the crowd to my next class.

  “What’s with the time shift?” I asked Ally as we walked into English.

  “Pep rally this afternoon,” she said.

  “So we’re getting out early?”

  She did that one-eyebrow thing. “Not really. We all go to the gym at the end of the day.”

  “For the pep rally?”

  “Yes.”

  I stopped walking toward my desk and stood in the middle of the aisle. “As in a mandatory pep rally?”

  “Yes.” She sat down.

  “You people have mandated pep.”

  “Yes, Laney. Pep rally. Mandatory. As in you have to go. You’d probably get grounded again if you didn’t. Now sit down.”

  I sank into my seat, shaking my head. “That’s just weird,” I said.

  “So you didn’t have pep rallies at your school in Atlanta?” she asked.

  “We had metal detectors at my high school. We had drug dogs. But no pep rallies. Not mandatory, anyway,” I said. “I think there were some in the parking lot before football games, but I might be wrong. Those might have been keggers. In any case, I didn’t go to those, either. I’m not really a footbally kind of person.”

  “So you’ve never even been to a pep rally?”

  “No. Never even considered it.”

  Josh slid into his seat. I could tell he wanted to ask what we were talking about, but he wasn’t sure he was speaking to me yet.

  If he’d talked to me, I could have explained everything.

  Jerk.

  At lunch, I discovered Natalie dressed in a way short skirt and matching shirt in the school colors. Carrying pom-poms.

  “You’re a cheerleader?” I asked, stunned.

  She laughed. “No. Drill team.” She went on to tell me, in excruciating detail, about the routine they were doing that night at the game.

  “You’re going to love it!” she said. Then she stopped, took a breath, and said, “Oh! I forgot! You’re grounded. I’m so sorry. You really would love it if you saw it, though.”

  “We’ll all love it,” Scott promised her. She smiled beatifically at him.

  Sarah stared down at the table.

  “What’s up with her?” I asked Andrew quietly.

  “Her old boyfriend Quentin used to be on the football team,” he said quietly. “But he moved away last year. I don’t think he’s been in touch with her much. She’s pretty bummed about it, I think.”

  I wondered if having ethereal wings helped out on the football field.

  Mason would know.

  Not that I could ask him, of course.

  We didn’t go sell ads for yearbook that day, either. When we got to class to check in with Mr. Carlson, he was handing out pep rally assignments.

  “Gina, you interview the football players while they’re lining up outside the gym. See if you can get some good quotes about how they feel about their first game. Kayla, you take the cheerleaders and drill team. Cynthia, you and Greg get digital shots. Laney, use the thirty-five to practice your black-and-white photos. Try to get some action shots.”

  I nodded and headed to the darkroom to get film. When I came back out, Mason was sitting on top of a desk, waiting for me.

  “Hey, Laney,” he said quietly.

  “You people sure take your football seriously around here,” I said. “What’s it like around here during baseball season?”

  He looked confused. “Baseball season?”

  I groaned. “Figures. The one sport I’m interested in, and you act like you don’t even know what it is.”

  He laughed. “I know what it is, Harris. I just don’t think about it until practice starts.”

  “So you’re on the baseball team, too?”

  “The school’s not that big. We all pretty much do a little bit of everything.”

  Including fly around on your big wings when no one’s looking.

  Ah. More stuff I couldn’t say aloud.

  And the pep rally? Weird. I suppose for people who have been to those sorts of things, it was all perfectly normal. But here’s the deal: the entire school body got onto bleachers in the gym, and clapped and cheered while the football players strutted out onto the floor. Then they sat down on chairs while a bunch of girls danced in front of them—first the drill team, then the cheerleaders. Then the principal of the school gave a speech about what big things he expected from the team that year.

  Actually, I suspect it was just like every other football pep rally in every other small town in Texas—or any other part of the country.

  But as I moved around the edge of the gym floor, snapping pictures of the participants and the crowd, I kept finding myself wondering how many people in the room weren’t humans at all.

  I started taking pictures of everyone I even suspected might have wings.

  At one point, I took a shot of all the teachers lined up against one wall. When I looked through the viewfinder, Roger Bartlef was watching me speculatively. The tall, thin woman who had been in the rock house the other night stood next to him. When I took the picture, she leaned over and whispered in his ear, then stared at me. Her bulging eyes protruded from a long, horse-like face, and her stare made me shudder.

  I left the floor and made my way up to Sarah and Ally in the bleachers.

  “Who is that woman?” I asked, pointing.

  “Which one?” Ally almost had to yell to be heard over the music.

  “The one next to Bartlef.”

  “Oh! That’s Miss Biet. Senior English teacher.”

  Okay. So that made two faculty members who were creepy demons in real life. If I hadn’t been so distracted by all the other weirdness in my life, I might have actually bothered to find out who she was earlier. Not that it made any difference, really—I was beginning to think of the entire Fairy High School faculty as demonic. Even more demonic than most high school teachers, which is really scary when you stop to think about it.

  When the pep rally was over, I tracked Kayla down to take me home.

  She was as gracious as ever.

  John ordered pizza that night and we ate it in strained silence. Kayla didn’t look at me even once. I didn’t look at John. Just a happy family dinner.

  After that ordeal was over, John moved into the living room to watch television and Kayla left for the football game. “Bye, Daddy!” she said as she danced out the door. “Bye, Laney!”

  I ignored her, went straight back to my room and pulled out my laptop. I had emails from several friends in Atlanta. I opened and read them—they all contained cheerful bits of news from my old life, and I didn’t know how to answer them. I mean, really, what could I say? Dear Leah, I am being alternately seduced and ignored by demons here in Fairy, Texas. Please send help. Love, Laney. Yeah, right.

  I started to close the browser down when a message popped up from an email address I didn’t recognize. I opened it and read the short message inside: “Rescue is on the way. Be ready to escape at midnight. –Ally.”

  I had to laugh even as I shook my head in wonder. Way too much went on at midnight around here. Plus, clearly someone was reading my mind. All I had to do was think about sending an email asking for help, and Ally answered my request. Maybe she had some creepy powers, too.

  I considered the email invitation.

  Mom had told me to follow John’s rules. John had told me I couldn’t do anything other than go to school and come home.

  John’s rules were totally unfair.

  And if she knew the whole truth, Mom would clearly agree with me.

  Okay, okay, so
I was stretching it a bit. If Mom knew the whole truth, she’d either drop-kick me into Counseling for Crazy Kids or, if she actually believed me, snatch me up and go running back to Atlanta with me.

  But she wasn’t here. And she didn’t have all the information.

  And I really, really didn’t believe I should have been grounded. And it was more important for me to save myself from becoming the demon version of the Virgin Mary—would that be “Virgin Laney”? I wondered with a giggle—than it was to stick to rules that John set up.

  Justifications firmly in place, I turned off my lamp, leaned back against my pillow, and waited for midnight.

  I was awakened hours later by a scratching at my window. I peered out and saw several vague shapes hunkered down by the wall of the house.

  This was a terrible idea.

  But right then, I didn’t care.

  I slipped the window open and pulled the screen off. Once outside, I pulled the window almost completely shut.

  Ally, Sarah, and Andrew were waiting for me outside. We moved quickly and quietly down the road away from the house. Once we were out of earshot, I said, “So? What are you all doing here?”

  “Game’s over,” Andrew whispered. “Time to party.”

  He had beer on his breath. Great.

  “Is there a designated driver here, or is that why y’all came to get me?” I asked.

  “I’m not drinking,” Sarah said. She looked at me significantly. Unfortunately, the significance was lost on me, so I just moved on.

  “Party where?” I asked.

  “Josh Bevington’s dad is out of town, so he’s having a party at his place.” Ally smirked at me.

  “Like, here on the ranch?”

  “Exactly,” said Andrew. “So you’re not really breaking the rules. It’s hardly like leaving home at all.”

  “Oh, I bet John would disagree,” I said. “And Kayla’s bound to tell him.”

  “The beauty of this party,” said Ally, “is that Kayla is not invited. She doesn’t even know about it.”

  I looked at her skeptically. “In this town? Please. Everyone knows everything.” Well, almost everything, anyway.

  Ally shrugged. “Your call, Laney. We’re going.” She headed down the road toward the ranch hands’ houses.

  This might be my best chance to actually talk to Josh again, I thought. I weighed out the pros and cons of that—or at least, tried to. If I were totally honest with myself, I’d have to admit that the best thing that could possibly happen would be if Mason and Josh both stopped speaking to me. Then I could go about my life as if I didn’t know the first thing about fairy-demons.