But Nai wasn’t the only one down on this place. Desmond and Bogie both complained and even Seth said some unflattering stuff about how backwards it is here. I guess they could be right, but I didn’t see it. Perhaps I’m just an incurable optimist. I mean, yeah, I felt the weirdness just like everyone else, but the town itself wasn’t to blame for all the Discordant activity, was it? Maybe it was, but still, it wasn’t a bad place.
I didn’t really know what to make of our new house though. I’m glad we weren’t all going to stay in the tiny apartment above the bar, but the house Pete moved us into… well, let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if we weren’t the only technically dead inhabitants. I never believed in ghosts, but then again, I never thought I’d meet a demon either, so the possibility of a haunted house wasn’t that weird. I just hoped any ghosts I met were friendly. Seth said that pixies had been using the house to throw parties while it was empty, but that there weren’t any now.
Pixies. I really can’t wrap my head around that. Or angels. Man, when Seth told me what they really were, I kind of got creeped out. If I hadn’t seen that vampire at the mall, I don’t think I would have believed they were real either. And to think that the girls in my school thought vampires were sexy! I didn’t get a good look at him, but the smell alone turned my stomach. Seth and Desmond are so casual about it too. Like, there’s a part of me that wants to yell at everyone I see to be careful because monsters are everywhere, but that would be silly and I don’t think anyone would be happy with me if I got locked up in a mental hospital. Well Nai might be happy about that, but you know what I mean.
There was a sort of strangeness to the town that I had to admit was weird. I mean, everything seemed kind of normal on the surface and it wasn’t horrible, like everyone else said, it was just odd in sort of a Twilight Zone way. I wanted to believe that I only felt that way because I was in a new place, but to be honest, it was probably something bad. Pete had said that there was something about Blackbird that made it attractive to the Discordant and I was inclined to agree.
Even our house was kind of spooky. It sat right next to the river and was pretty old, so everything had this weird, musty smell. Seth assured me that once it was lived in, the smell would go away, but I don’t know. I mean, I already went through half a bottle of Febreze and I sure the heck wasn’t going to start jamming my nose into the carpet like the people in the commercials. It still smelled like a swamp monster was hiding under my bed. Swamp monsters are totally real, by the way. But Desmond assured me that the only place they hung out was Louisiana and didn’t hide under beds. Still the house was creepy. The floors were old and warped, and they creaked in some places. Even the windows had that weird funhouse mirror effect because they were so old that the glass was all melted. Nai loved it because it was creepy. I suppose it was good that she had one thing she didn’t complain about.
I worried about her. I know she told me not to, and even Seth and Desmond told me it was okay, but I still worried. I didn’t like to think about the fact that she almost went to Hell. She’s a pain in the butt and has never been nice to me, but she’s still my sister. In a way, it’s my fault. I got all of the good parts. I don’t get that either. I guess what I mean is that I get that we were once one person, but what I don’t get is why we had to be split into a good and bad half. Wasn’t there enough of both to give us each a little?
Pete said that over time we would both balance and be ‘normal’ people. When I asked him how long that took, he said usually a couple of cycles. Cycles are lifetimes. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that too. It’s like, reincarnation is real, only it’s not. I always thought that when you were born, you would either be a good person or bad person, and when you died, God would determine if you went to Heaven or Hell. This sort of happens, but then your soul starts over in a new body. It’s all a bit confusing. I’m just glad Nai didn’t go to Hell.
I thought maybe if I tried doing something bad, I’d start to balance and maybe Nai would too. I tried to remember pranks that the mean kids at school thought were funny. I was going to put a thumbtack on Seth’s chair, but then I thought about how that might really hurt and scrapped the idea. I went with a whoopee-cushion instead. Everyone laughed, well, everyone except Nai. She thought it was lame. She thinks a lot of things are lame. Desmond said it was a good start, but I think he was just trying to make me feel better. I’ll show him though. As soon as I work up the nerve, I’m going to pull a huge prank on him. Maybe. I mean, Desmond is pretty big and definitely stronger than me.
Those guys are pretty odd too. I can tell they are both powerful and I can see their souls. It’s hard to describe what I see. Pete told us that we’ll know right away if someone is balanced or not. Seth and Desmond are balanced, but they kind of have a connection, like me and Nai. Well, not exactly like us. They aren’t a split soul, but their souls are kind of connected. Nai said they knew each other in their past lives, but she wouldn’t say anything else and Desmond gave her a death glare just for saying that. That’s fine though. Their lives are none of our business.
* * *
“This is so stupid. We’re dead. Why do we even have to go to school?”
“Because we still need to act like we’re alive, Nai,” I said. She’d had this argument about twenty times with Desmond. “We’re going to have to get jobs and make money to survive, just like normal people.”
“We have jobs,” she grumbled and kicked an empty pop bottle for emphasis. “I don’t get why we’re supposed to pay our own way when we didn’t sign up for this in the first place.”
“Well, we have to fit in, right?”
“Desmond doesn’t.”
“Yeah he does. He owns the bar.”
“But he doesn’t work there,” she argued. “Why can’t we just be heirs or something?”
The high school was only a few blocks from our house, which was good, because neither of us had a driver’s license, and also because the short walk meant that I only had to listen to Nai’s complaints for a few minutes. It was an older brick building and way smaller than our old school. When we went to register for classes, both Nai and I noticed something off, but we had no idea what it was. Desmond said we were sensing the residual energy of the students who had been there last. I guess it’s no secret to anyone that teenagers are a little more emotional than adults, but we both knew that what we felt was different. We didn’t find any lost souls, but there was definitely something weird that day. As we approached the school on the first day of classes, it was there again and we both stopped, as if we had reached a physical barrier.
“Do you feel that?” Nai asked with a weird look, like she was going to be sick.
“Yeah,” I said, probably with the same look. This wasn’t right. “Come on.” I picked up my feet and pushed onward, even though I really didn’t want to. When we reached the front doors, I nearly fell right back down the stairs. The wave of emotional turmoil was overpowering. Just like Seth and Pete told us, there was nothing really tangible about what we were experiencing, but just the fact that we felt anything at all was bad.
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Nai said with a wince. “This can’t be normal. I know angst. This is not angst.”
“It’s like… Nai, I think everyone here is lost,” I said. “Not just the students, but the teachers too. How the heck are we supposed to blend in and act like normal students if we need to save everyone?”
“Ugh! Forget them. Who’s gonna save us? Seriously, puking in the hall on the first day of school is not cool.”
“Well take a Tums or something because we have to do something!”
“Ugh! You’re the worst!”
“New students?”
All of the sudden, the feeling got a thousand times worse and it was all I could do not to join Nai in doubling over. I turned toward the sound of the voice and saw a girl around our age with a clipboard in her hand and an obviously fake smile on her face. She was definitely lost. Unfortunately, I w
as too overwhelmed to do anything more than nod.
“What the hell do you care if we are?” Nai snarked at the girl, standing up straight.
“I’m the student liaison,” the girl replied, wincing a little at Nai’s attitude. “I’m here to wel-”
“That doesn’t mean you care, just that you’re trying to win brownie points with the cool kids.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “My sister is just-”
“You heard me,” Nai cut me off. “You just want the popular kids to notice you, which is really pathetic, you know. News flash, honey: They don’t like you and neither do I. Go play with the nerds and accept who you are.”
“What? I… Go to hell!” she yelled and stormed off.
“Nai! What are you doing?”
“What?” she said with a shrug.
“That’s not how you make a good start at a new school! That poor girl was lost!”
“And now she isn’t!” Nai shot back with a smug smile.
“Huh? Whatever. Like yelling at someone is going to solve anything,” I said, shaking my head at how mean Nai could be.
“Jem, don’t be a complete idiot. Don’t you feel that?”
I was about to tell Nai to stop lying when I noticed that she was right. The girl was talking to a group of kids by a locker. She was still angry and gesturing rudely at Nai, but she wasn’t lost.
“Okay, but still, that was mean!”
“Was it? She was trying to be someone she wasn’t. She didn’t even like the same things as the girls she was trying to impress. She has friends and she just needed to be reminded that her priorities were whack.”
Okay, she kind of got me there. I never really understood why some kids wanted to hang out with people they had nothing in common with just because they were popular. But still, Nai’s way of handling it was just plain mean.
“Come on, now we have to find our lockers. On our own,” I added, rolling my eyes.
I’d expected senior year to be tough, but this wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. Every class was filled with the overpowering emotions of the lost. It was a good thing that most teachers just handed out lesson plans and did an overview because there was no way I was going to learn anything with my brain being bombarded. I was able to talk to, and actually save a few kids, but there was no way I was going to reach them all. I had hoped that Nai was having better luck than I was, but when I saw her in the cafeteria, she was staring at her phone and not even trying to help.
“Anyone in there?”
“Shut it,” she said, not even looking up.
“Nai, we have work to do.”
“Just give me a… dammit!” She looked up and glared at me. “I was this close to killing Desmond’s boss rush score.”
“Seriously, you’re playing Monster Curse?”
She gave me a ‘duh’ look. “It’s work related.”
“For a Warrior maybe, but we’re Guardians. We need to save people, not kill Discordant.”
“Jem, look around you. Every friggin’ idiot in this town is lost. We’re not going to save them all. Not unless we figure out what is causing them all to be like this.”
She had a point, but that was Desmond’s job. “Okay, fine,” I said, playing along for now. “What did you find out?”
“That there’s probably a portal to the Chaos realm somewhere in town, allowing the Discordant easy access.”
“Duh,” I said, exasperated for the eleventy-billionth time today. “Seth told us as much. No one has been able to find it.”
“Okay, but Seth also said that one Discordant can’t affect everyone and there are other factors. Some Discordants, like werewolves and pixies, don’t even create lost. They just create chaos. He also said that most people here are unbalanced enough that they are in danger of becoming lost. Not that everyone here was lost. For everyone in this school to be as lost as they are, we’re dealing with a shit ton of Discordant. Don’t you think that we’d notice if demons and vampires were running amok?”
Okay, she did have a point. “So what do you think this means?”
“I think there’s something bigger here.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a frustrated sigh. “The higher echelon are all super destructive, like Angels and Dragons, but they’re all soul reapers. If it was one of them, then we’d have a school full of dead people, not lost.”
I shuddered. Soul reapers were the worst. I already knew about angels because of what happened with Seth, but I’d only gotten through half the entry on dragons before I had to stop and think about something happy. They are not like the fire-breathing dinosaurs in legends.
“Well, we should definitely see what Seth and Desmond think of your theory,” I said. “In the meantime, we need to at least try to save people.
“Yeah, whatever. What’s your next class, nerd boy?” Nai asked. Not because she cared. She just wanted to gloat over the fact that she had a free period after lunch. I glanced down at my schedule.
“Art.”
“Art? That’s kind of out of your limited jock brain scope, isn’t it?”
“Well, yeah,” I said, squirming a little because I really had no artistic talent. “I was hoping that you would take it, but when you didn’t, I did because the artsy kids seemed like good candidates for being lost.”
Nai snorted. “You can probably go drop it since, you know, the whole damned school is lost.”
“I can’t drop a class!” I gasped.
“That’s what I thought,” she said with another snort. “Well, have fun showing off your stick figures.”
As it turned out, Nai was kind of right about dropping the class. There were way less lost kids in art than there had been in my morning classes. Theater was the same. But I decided to stick with them anyway. Both were things I’d never been interested in, but I was happy to try something new. Especially when I found out it was too late to try out for the football team. That kind of hurt, but at least I still had a chance to try out for basketball in the winter.
When we got home, Desmond was in the living room, but he wasn’t alone. A really gorgeous redheaded woman sat on the floor with her eyes closed and hands up like she was meditating. I knew I was staring because it took Nai’s gasp for me to realize that not only was the redhead sitting in the middle of a drawing of a pentagram, but her hands were glowing. Glowing!
“What the heck?” I scrambled backwards and jammed my shin on the coffee table.
“Aw crap, she’s gone,” the redhead muttered, giving me a dark look. “Try to be a little more careful next time you interrupt a séance, ‘kay?”
“Séance? I thought ghosts weren’t real?” Nai asked skeptically. “And what the hell are you?”
“You weren’t kidding,” the redhead said to Desmond with a wink. “She’s as charming as you described.” She turned back to us and smiled. “Hi, I’m Donna and we might as well get the full introductions out of the way before you jump to conclusions. I’m a witch.”
“Does that mean you fly on a broom or are you one of those dances around naked in the woods, hippie pagan types?” Nai asked.
“Hey, don’t knock naked dancing until you try it,” Donna replied with a wink. “I’m an Earth witch, so yes, I’m a pagan, but there’s a little more to it than tarot cards and crystals.”
“Um, hi Donna. I’m Jem.” I tried to act casual, since neither Desmond, nor Seth, who had just come in from the kitchen, seemed at all fazed by a witch in the living room. “So, uh… Does that mean you’re like, you know…”
“No, I don’t know. Spit it out, kiddo,” Donna said with a bemused smile that just made me more embarrassed than I already was.
“Donna is a mystic,” Seth said, taking pity on me. “Mystics are people gifted with a higher understanding of the cycle and can manipulate the magical energies herein. Not all mystics are witches and not all witches are mystics.”
“I see,” I said
, but I was still somewhat confused. “So you’re not… you’re not a… you’re human?”
“Well, that’s complicated,” Donna said. “I’m a Nyx, which means I have one Discordant parent, but I’m also an exception.”
“Huh?”
“You were right,” Desmond said to Seth. “We should have started with the caretaker.”
“There are all kinds of mystics,” Seth explained. “Most are completely human, but they can use magic and are aware of what we are. They can be very useful in helping to identify and banish Discordant. Before Desmond showed up, I relied heavily on the Rosewood coven.”
“Speaking of,” said Donna, pulling out a phone. “You might as well meet Betty and Louise, because I was right. This place needs a cleansing.”
“A what?” I asked.
“A spiritual cleansing,” she said with a bright smile. “This house is over one hundred years old and has a lot of residual memories. Some of them good, but some, not so much.”
“I thought ghosts weren’t real?” I said.
“They’re not ghosts. Technically, they’re just energy that has manifested into patterns that mimic what happened when the person the energy came from was alive. I was trying to take a peek at them when you interrupted me.”
“Sorry.”
“No worries. I got the gist of what I was looking for.”
The cleansing was way less interesting than I thought it would be. I was half expecting the witches to pull out some crazy Ghostbusters equipment, but all they did was walk around waving sage smoke in all the corners, chanting something about clear skies. Nai kept muttering about hippies and new age crap, but Desmond shot her a dirty look and she shut up.
“That should do it,” Donna said as she snuffed out the sage in a small brass pot. “Any negativity you feel from now on can’t be blamed on ghosts.”
Splitsville (Rise of the Discordant Book 2) Page 6