“Dude,” he said admiringly. “That’s awesome.”
For once, I didn’t worry about the size of the bruise or the potential ramifications for my health. I just soaked up the compliment. My face relaxed into a grin. No matter what happened next, I had this to be proud of.
Michael pushed his way through the crowd toward us. “Casey? We need to talk,” he demanded, not even saying hello.
“Oh, hey.” I snagged his sleeve and pulled him closer. “This is my best friend, Kyle. Kyle, this is Michael.”
“Nice to meet you,” Michael said automatically. Then he leaned down to whisper into my ear. “Listen, I’ve thought of something important—”
“So you want to go out for pizza, Casey?” Kyle asked. “I want to grill you about this derby thing. I’ll need to get cracking on the rules.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but Michael cut me off. “We’ve got to watch the second bout and go to the after-party,” he said. “It’s mandatory.”
“Yes, thank you.” I folded my arms, pulling away from him. “I can carry on my own conversation all by myself, you know.”
The muscles in his jaw twitched. “Sorry.”
I turned back to Kyle. “I do have to stay, but what are you up to tomorrow? I could come over and hang out.”
Kyle perked right up. “That would be awesome. You might like this new game I got. Gangland? The minute I saw the flapper with a tommy gun, I knew she was meant for you.”
“It’s a deal,” I said. “Call me when you get up.”
“All right. I should run.” He eyed Michael cautiously. “Nice to meet you, man.”
“Likewise.”
As soon as we made it back into the convention center, I frowned at Michael. “Dude, you’ve got to chill. I’ve got guy friends. If you can’t deal with that, we’ve got a problem.”
He looked around at the hordes of people waiting in line for hot dogs and pizza and shirts with derby girls outlined in sparkles on the front.
“Come with me,” he said, taking my hand and pulling me toward the locker rooms.
In all the time I’d known him, I’d never processed how strong he really was. You’d think I would have realized, given all the times I’d swooned over his muscles, but I guess I’d been too busy appreciating them for their decorative value. Now I was pissed, and I didn’t want to hold his hand, but there was no getting free. His fingers closed over mine like they were made of stone, and I didn’t feel any give at all when I tugged.
“Let me go,” I said. “Now.”
He didn’t respond, just pulled me past the sign designating the area for derby staff only.
“You are impinging on my free will here,” I said, anger making my voice shake. “Let me go right now, damn it.”
He released me so fast that I nearly fell over. Then he opened the door next to me and pushed me inside. We were in a small, unused dressing room; the only furniture was one of those vanities with the big lights all around it and an old couch with a popped cushion.
I didn’t like being pushed, or herded, or ordered around. My hands shoved at his chest; its hardness bruised my knuckles, but I didn’t stop. He’d never manhandled me before, and I was decidedly not cool with it.
“What is wrong with you?” I shrieked.
“Nothing.” But the word came out all strangled, and my anger quickly dissolved into fear. If he really had turned while he’d been up on the roof, and he’d been acting normal while he waited to get me alone, I’d taken the bait.
“Michael, you’re freaking me out right now,” I said. “You’re acting like a jealous ass.”
He blinked then, and his pale eyes locked onto mine. I couldn’t help searching for a flicker of red in their depths. I didn’t see it, but I didn’t know whether that meant I could relax.
“This is not about being jealous,” he said. “Or about our relationship. This is about the fact that I think Ruthanasia might be demon-tainted, and every moment we waste gossiping is another moment she goes unchecked.”
I literally felt my stomach drop. “What?” I demanded.
“Quiet.” He pressed his body against mine, like he might be able to muffle the sound waves. “It’s the only explanation for that attack. They keep me busy on the roof while she wins your trust by standing with you against two low-level demons. Then when your back is turned, she takes you out.”
“Which is why she didn’t totally flip out?”
“Exactly.”
“But she doesn’t look like a demon. I mean, it’s usually pretty obvious that something’s going on.”
“That’s true of young low-level demons. They often have no control over their hunger. But something like that factory would require an older, more established demonic presence. The demons in charge of the warehouse wouldn’t be obvious, even to me.”
“So what do we do?” I started to shake. I knew Ruthanasia had been up to no good ever since day one, but I hadn’t imagined this. Her plan had almost worked too; I’d just told her about the demons like it was nothing. What had I been thinking?
“I don’t know.” His brows drew together in a worried furrow. “I need to report in. My brother might know what to do.”
“Call him, then.”
He shook his head. “I have to talk to him in person. We have pretty strict protocols about what we can say over the phone. It’s safer that way.”
“You’re leaving me alone?” My heart leapt into my throat. He couldn’t just leave me here alone with her. What if she tried something? Would my Relics work against a senior demon? I had the niggling feeling that I was missing some piece of information, something important, but it kept slipping out of my grasp. “So let me get this straight. First you manhandle me because I’m not acting fast enough, and then you expect me to sit around and wait? Are you nuts?”
“It’s …” He blinked. “I didn’t mean to manhandle you. But you weren’t listening.”
“From now on, if you tell me it’s important, I’ll listen.” I fixed him with a stern look. “But if you drag me around like that ever again, that’s it.”
“I’m sorry.” He folded me into his arms. “I may have gotten a little carried away. I’ve been waiting for this a long time.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just don’t do it again.”
He kissed the top of my head. “All right.”
“I don’t want you to go,” I said, relaxing into his arms. “I’m frightened, and no amount of meditation is going to change that.”
“Me too,” he said. “I won’t lose you, Casey.”
And then his hands tilted my head up to his. His lips met mine. I knew I should resist, but pulling away wasn’t going to change how we both felt. His body came up against me. I was pinned against the wall; my hands went into his hair. We fell onto the couch, and the damaged cushion spewed a cloud of fluff into the air. But at that point, I couldn’t have cared less.
We kissed like the world was ending. Maybe it was.
Michael seemed just fine after the make-out session. I worried he might start crying fire once the lip-lock was over, but he just told me to be careful. After he left, I went out to the stands. Attendance at the second bout was mandatory, and if I stuck with the team, I’d be able to keep an eye on Ruthanasia. She was sitting two rows behind the rest of the team. I doubted she’d be able to do anything to me with everyone watching, but she still gave me a creepy-crawly feeling between my shoulder blades.
“There you are!” Darcy waved me over, pointing to an empty seat. “I saved you a spot.”
I kept shooting glances at Ruthanasia as I edged past my teammates, and ended up stepping on Ragnarocker, who gave me a mock growl that made me laugh despite the huge ball of nerves in my stomach.
“It’s a good thing you’re such a kicking jammer,” she said, grinning, “or I’d have to beat the crap out of you for stomping on me.”
“You’d have to try,” I shot back, and then it was her turn to laugh.
“So how’s the bou
t going?” I asked, sitting down next to Darcy. She didn’t even seem to have heard me. “Hey, D!” I poked her. “How’s the bout?”
“Um …” She looked up at the scoreboard. “Well, the Hotsies are winning.”
“I can see that,” I replied. “How are the jammers?”
She looked blankly down at the floor, where they were setting up for a new jam.
“You know, I have no idea.” Then she laughed. “I expected to be tired, but this is ridiculous. It’s like I can’t even think.”
“There’s an empty room with a sofa one door past our locker room, if you want to take a nap. I’ll wake you up in a little while if you want.”
She considered. “You know, I might do that. Otherwise, I’m going to fall unconscious at the after-party, and who knows what pranks you lunatics would play on me.”
I held my hands up over my head in a mock halo, but she rolled her eyes. Evidently, she wasn’t buying it.
“It’s down the hallway to the right,” I said, pointing. “No one will bother you there.”
“Thanks,” she said, stifling a yawn. “I’ll see you in a little while.”
After she left, I watched some of the bout. I liked the idea that we could scope out the competition. The best junior league team got to play a charity match against the senior league, and I was determined to skate in that bout. Although, if we lost Ruthanasia to the forces of darkness, I wasn’t so sure about the team’s chances of winning.
Then she sat down next to me, like my thinking about her had miraculously summoned her. I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“You okay?” she asked. She looked genuinely concerned, and I wondered if maybe she took acting lessons.
“Yeah,” I said shortly. “Just jumpy.”
I wanted to leap down her throat and ask her how she could work with the demons. I wondered what they’d promised her. Maybe it was Michael. She’d always seemed to have a crush on him, but there was no way I’d let her have him.
The Hotsies scored another grand slam.
“They’re pretty good,” she said.
I nodded.
“Last year, my sister Lauren and I got into Wicca,” she said. The statement seemed to come out of nowhere, and I was pretty startled and confused. Why would a demon confide in me? Was she trying to make me empathize with her so I’d be more vulnerable? I told myself not to fall for it but to listen carefully. Maybe she’d tell me something useful. “I thought it was harmless, but then Lauren’s boyfriend cheated on her over the summer, and she tried to call down this evil spirit to curse him and the other girl. It didn’t seem to do anything, so no big deal, right? But after that she was different. She started doing drugs, stealing, all kinds of stuff.
“One night she attacked me with a kitchen knife, and it was like something else was looking out of her eyes. She left home, and I was kind of relieved, because what was I supposed to do, press charges against my own sister? She’d hunt me down every once in a while, demanding money. The day you saw us in the parking lot, she was really bad. I tried to get her to come home, maybe go into treatment, and you saw how that idea went over. Two days later, they found her body on the street. Overdose.”
“Oh my God. I am so sorry.” The words felt inadequate. Even though I knew this all had to be a put-on, my heart still went out to her. I couldn’t help it.
She shrugged, a small, helpless movement. “Everybody blamed the drugs, but I just know that curse backfired. She let something out, and it got inside her and ate her up. When I saw those guys in the bathroom, that’s the first thing I thought of. I knew they weren’t right, just like her.” She looked at me then for the first time since she’d started speaking. “I sound like a total nutcase, don’t I?”
“No.” The crowd erupted into cheers around us as someone on the floor did something interesting. I didn’t even care. “I’ve seen some pretty weird stuff recently too.”
“So what were those things?” Her voice stayed level, but I felt her shudder.
“Demons. People make deals with them. Can you believe that?”
“You’d have to be a total idiot to do that,” she said, and her face was completely serious. “I wouldn’t want to turn out like Lauren.” She stuffed her hand into her pocket and pulled something out. “I almost forgot. Here’s your necklace.”
I didn’t want to touch it. Maybe she’d put some kind of hex on it or something, because why else would the Relic have stopped working? Unless Michael had been wrong about her? I didn’t know what to think. “You keep it. Just in case.”
She nodded, her eyes back on the floor as the skaters went in circles.
“I’m sorry about Lauren,” I blurted out, although I didn’t know if I believed her. I was second-guessing everything and everybody now. But it seemed like the right thing to say, if you were talking to someone who wasn’t a demon in disguise. And I had to keep up that façade, whether I liked it or not.
“Me too.”
The after-party was at Bobbles, one of the many hole-in-the-wall sports bars around town that I’d never set foot in. The place wasn’t very big, for starters. When you cram four teams’ worth of derby girls into a small, narrow bar along with twenty assorted support staff and a couple hundred fans, it gets crowded pretty quick. Darcy drove me, since Michael still hadn’t returned, and there was already a long line outside the door when we pulled into the parking lot.
At least the line moved fast, although I wasn’t sure where they were putting all the people. I followed Darcy through the door, only to be stopped by a pair of fans in Hotsie hoodies who’d clearly been waiting to pounce on me. Darcy continued on, pointing toward the bathrooms.
“Oh, you’re that new Apocalypsie jammer, aren’t you?” shrieked one of the girls at the top of her lungs, despite the fact that I was standing only about a foot and a half away.
“Yep. That’s me.” I craned my neck, looking around for Ruthanasia, but she was nowhere to be seen.
“Can we get a picture with you?” asked the second. She had orange hair that clashed with her hoodie.
“Sure.” I posed for the pic and turned to leave, but the orange-haired girl grabbed my arm.
“We want to be derby girls so bad,” she said, tugging me off into a corner. I could have resisted, but it seemed kind of rude. They were fans, after all. The fact that I had fans was pretty flattering when I stopped to think about it. “I want my name to be Orange Crush.”
“And I’m going to be Anita Mann,” added the other girl proudly.
“That’s great,” I said, putting my back to the wall and attempting to relax. “So how long have you been skating?”
“Oh, I haven’t gotten my skates yet,” said Anita. “But I’ll do that soon.”
“Me either. But I got some of the best tights ever from Too Fast. They’ve got daggers and roses printed on them, and …”
Orange Crush proceeded to give me a complete rundown of every kind of derby-appropriate clothing she’d ever purchased, and clearly she’d been at it for a while. I couldn’t help but tune her out, although I kept nodding and making encouraging noises every time she paused for breath, which admittedly wasn’t very often.
I scanned the crowd but couldn’t see anyone I knew who might come to my rescue. I assumed Darcy was still in the bathroom, and I couldn’t see any of the other Apocalypsies from where I was standing.
“I like fishnets.” Orange Crush kept prattling. “But it’s so hard to find them in colors other than black, don’t you agree?”
I nodded again, looking past her flushed and smiling face to the shelves behind her. That’s when I finally realized why they’d called the place Bobbles—the walls were lined with glassed-in shelves full of bobbleheads. It was still hard for me to think of these silly little figures as instruments of torture. I wanted a closer look. The shelf nearest to our table held three random basketball players, a Carolina Bulldog, and Yoda.
My eyes were automatically drawn to the Yoda. He had a huge green head, ear
s longer than his legs, and a light saber that clashed with his complexion. It was strange, because his little bobbly head was rocking slowly back and forth, despite the fact that he was encased in glass.
Yoda blinked.
I jumped a little.
“Are you okay?” Anita asked me.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Fine. Just got a chill.”
That was enough for Orange Crush. She had to know that I wasn’t listening, but she didn’t seem to care. She kept talking.
That left me free to look at the Yoda a little more closely. Its beady little eyes darted from side to side. The movement was barely discernible, but I knew I wasn’t imagining it.
I took a few calming breaths, the way I’d practiced so many times, and looked at it again. My eyes blurred as I tried to see past the physical and into the spiritual realm. I wasn’t so surprised to see the cloud of black that hung around it. The whole place was choking with the stuff; I suddenly found it very difficult to breathe, even though I knew the pollution wasn’t physical. And inside the Yoda’s bouncing, cartoonish head, I could see the faint flicker of white light, bound in ropes of thick black fire.
That was somebody’s soul. And it was watching me.
Once I realized that, I got mega-creeped-out. I needed to leave that building right away. I interrupted Orange Crush in the middle of an in-depth description of a do-it-yourself tattoo kit she’d gotten for her birthday.
“Hey,” I interjected, “it’s been great talking to you, but I’m late meeting up with my boyfriend. Maybe I’ll see you later?”
“Oh!” She blinked. “Um … sure. See ya.”
I smiled and ran for it. Once I was out in the comparatively quiet parking lot, I dialed Michael. It went straight to voice mail.
“Damn it!” I swore, nearly throwing the phone on the ground in frustration.
“What’s wrong?”
Ruthanasia stood behind me with a bobblehead in her hand. I couldn’t decide which one to stare down, so I settled for looking back and forth between them in complete paranoia. I didn’t even realize I was backing up until my butt hit a car bumper.
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