Demon High

by Lori Devoti

  I looked back at Kobal. “It’s polite to introduce people.”

  His wings moved forward a bit, framing him and his two companions. “Yes, it is. Something I’m sure you can rectify once these two are across.”

  He wasn’t going to tell me their names. That couldn’t be good.

  I chopped the end off of the candle. Chopped off his objection too. “Lucin—”

  My mark immediately resumed its throbbing.

  Brittany scrambled over the cemetery wall. I bent to gather my tools and tried to ignore the pulsing in the back of my neck.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  I slid the athame into my bag. “I think those two gave me the willies.”

  She ran her hands up her arms. “Me too.”

  With all of my tools gathered, I stood. “I can’t let them out.”

  “How’s the mark?”

  I touched it. The skin felt cool and normal to my hand, but pain continued to shoot through it down my spine. “Feels like someone’s holding a Bunsen burner to my neck.”

  She watched me, concern shining from her face. “How long can you live with it?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t know. I suspected the pain was only going to get worse. That each day it would build until I called Kobal, but never completely go away, not until I had fulfilled the second part of the agreement, released his demons.

  “Lucinda.” She glanced around the clearing as if someone might be there, listening. “Have you thought about how he worded the deal—no higher or more dangerous than Oscar?”

  I paused, my bag knocking against my leg.

  “Have you thought that maybe that’s a trick, that maybe Oscar is a lot higher and more dangerous than you think?”

  I moved the bag to my other hand, wiped that palm on my jeans. “Oscar isn’t dangerous.”

  “The holy water didn’t hurt him.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything, maybe it wasn’t properly blessed.”

  “It hurt Nellie. She told me about it, and Holmes. I saw you spray him with it. But it didn’t hurt Oscar.”

  Something moved in the woods, a squirrel probably. I switched the bag back to the first hand and started walking. “It’s getting late, and I told Nana I’d be home for supper.” I didn’t look back, and Brittany didn’t say anything else.

  However, as we drove back to town, her words played over and over in my head. I thought I’d been helping Oscar, but what if he didn’t need nor want my help? He hadn’t asked for it. What if I only thought he could be saved, but he wanted something completely different?

  o0o

  I skipped school the next day. I told Nana I was sick, which I was. The pain from my mark had kept me from sleeping. It wasn’t to the level it had been the day before when I called Kobal, but it was ten times worse than the slight burn it had been twenty-four hours earlier.

  After Nana left to run errands, I took a cocktail of pain medicine and stared at the ceiling. I was in what you called a no-win situation.

  I was in the process of deciding pain medication had zero effect on demon marks when the phone rang. It was Brittany.

  “Hell has broken loose at school. You better get in here.”

  I found a tube of topical pain medication Nana used for arthritis, slathered it on the back of my neck and called a cab. Cabs weren’t widely used in Caldera, but they existed. I didn’t really want to spend the money on one, but there was no way I’d survive the trip to school on my bike, and Nana had taken the car.

  When I pulled up to school in the taxi, no one commented. I knew then things really were out of whack.

  I went to the office first to check in. There was a police officer standing in front of Mr. Finnley’s door, and Mrs. Adler was the color of the piece of paper she was holding. When she saw me, she whooshed her hand for me to get to class. No signing anything or chatting about my grandmother’s health.

  I rounded the corner on the way to my locker and plowed into Nellie. “What—” I glanced to her side. A woman, dressed in a suit, was standing beside her. “Where are you going, Nellie?” I asked.

  The woman touched Nellie on the shoulder and gestured for her to keep walking. Nellie raised her eyebrows, but kept moving. I backtracked a bit to see where they were headed. They disappeared into the office.

  I almost made it to my locker before I was stopped again, this time by Brittany.

  “They took Nellie,” she said. She pulled her lower lip into her mouth.

  “I saw. What’s happening?” My mark, which I had somehow managed to forget for a few minutes, kicked back into gear. I leaned against the wall to keep my knees from buckling.

  “Shane freaked.”

  “Shane? Was he who they had in Fennley’s office?”

  “No, that was Fennley. The police are here for him. Shane went to the school board and told them Fennley was having an affair with a student.”

  “Fennley?” I straightened. “Is he crazy?”

  Brittany licked her lips; she was staring down the hall. “It’s Nellie.”

  I looked thinking she meant Nellie was coming back from the office, then I realized what she was saying. “Nellie is having sex with Fennley?”

  Brittany nodded. “And Shane. He got jealous.”

  “And he ratted Fennley out to the school board.”

  She let out a breath. “That pretty much covers it.”

  “So what’s going to happen?”

  She tilted her head to the side. “They’ll question all of us, especially those of us who worked in the office, they’ll make Nellie go through counseling, and they’ll fry Fennley’s ass.”

  And fry they did.

  It was on the news that night. I watched it with Nana. Brittany and I had left school right after our conversation in the hall. She took me back to the pasture where I called Kobal, but cut him off before he could trot out more demons. The mark’s pain went down after that, but was building again.

  When the news came on, I was sitting at the dinner table moving peas around on my plate. I must have looked a little green because Nana made no comment when I got up and dumped them all in the trash.

  “I still can’t believe it.” Nana nodded to the TV. Fennley was being lead out of the school by two policemen. He had a suit coat over his head, but there was no mistaking the lanky form of our assistant principal. “Have you talked to anyone?”

  Not sure I could form a solid reply, I grunted in the negative.

  Her eyes narrowed. “He never approached you did he?”

  I set my plate next to the sink.

  “If he did, you can tell me.”

  Thinking this was how witch hunts started, I shook my head. Pain shot through my mark. I winced.

  Nana instantly changed to nurturing grandmother. “Are you sure you’re okay? We can take you to emergency.”

  And pay out the nose for it. Besides, I was pretty sure demon-mark therapy wasn’t on anyone’s list of specialties down at the local ER.

  I was half way out the door, on the way to my room, when Nana cried, “These reporters, they have no mercy.”

  I turned back. On the TV screen was Fennley’s wife and children. I’d seen them all at football games and occasionally at the school. She was a petite brunette with a nose a little too big for her face, but still cute. The kids were twin boys around seven. The media had caught her dropping them off at their school, or trying to. As the reporters swarmed toward her and started yelling out accusations, she grabbed the boys and shoved them back in the car. As she tried to make it back to the driver’s side one particularly aggressive female reporter stepped in her path. “Mrs. Fennley, do you have any comments on the alleged affair your husband has been having with one of his students?”

  All color drained from Mrs. Fennley’s face. She stuttered something and took a step. The reporter cut off her escape again. “Have you spoken with your husband since the police have become involved?”

  A microphone was shoved into her face. She slapped
it aside and then ran toward the other side of her car. Stepping off the curb, she tripped and fell into the street. No one reached down to help her. She sprang up, tears streaking her face and a smear of dirt across her coat. Then she jerked open the car door and jumped in.

  As the car pulled away, the camera zoomed in on the back seat and the two boys’ round-eyed faces.

  o0o

  At twenty till midnight Brittany called me. I’d been lying awake anyway. The image of Fennley’s sons was haunting me. They were completely innocent of everything. They hadn’t stumbled into my circle. They hadn’t given in to the siren call of a succubus. They hadn’t done anything, but because of Nellie, because of me, their world had been destroyed.

  “You need to go to the pasture?” she asked.

  I pressed my hand to my mark. It came back gooey with topical pain medication. “No, I’m going to try and wait. I think I’m getting used to it, desensitized.” It was a lie, but if I said it enough, maybe I’d convince my body it was true. Besides I deserved the pain.

  “Fennley’s in jail,” she said. “He called my dad to defend him.”

  “Is he going to?” I asked. Brittany’s dad was a bit of a legend. If anyone could save Fennley’s job and reputation, he could.

  “I don’t know. My parents won’t talk about it when I’m in the room. But I know Nellie hasn’t told them anything. So my dad thinks Fennley might have a chance.”

  “Have you talked to her about it? Is she going to talk?” I asked. If I hadn’t been consumed with my own suffering, I would have thought to hunt Nellie down before this. Maybe Fennley and his family could be saved by having her deny whatever happened. It wasn’t like it was Fennley’s fault he fallen under Nellie’s spell. I’d experienced her pull myself.

  “She’s avoiding me.” Brittany sounded worried.

  “Why—” My window rattled. I jerked. Standing on the garage roof looking into my room was Oscar. My mark throbbed, but not with pain, with recognition. I pressed my hand against it again. The feeling didn’t go away. “I have to go. Nana is up.” Without waiting for Brittany’s goodbye, I clicked down the receiver and went to open the window.

  Oscar didn’t wait for an invitation, or maybe he thought me opening the window was an invitation. Anyway, in seconds he was inside, standing on my hand-hooked rug and looking all dark and deadly.

  “You still haven’t done what Kobal asked.”

  I turned my back on him, thinking I’d play it cool, like guys crept through my window at midnight all the time. He stepped up behind me and brushed the tendrils of hair that partially covered my mark out of the way. Then he breathed on it.

  I sucked in a breath of my own. When he’d exhaled, I’d felt it, like an electrical charge shooting from the mark through my body all the way down to my toes. I tried to turn, to look at him, but he held onto my arms, wiped the goo I’d applied off and pressed his lips against the back of my neck.

  Excitement washed over me. My insides tensed, my shoulders pulled back and my head fell to the side. His lips moved, his tongue darting out to moisten the skin that hid my mark, then he blew again, and this time, I couldn’t stop the cry that exploded from my lips.

  He pulled me back against his body, wrapped his arms around me and whispered, “Shhh. You’ll wake your grandmother. Does it feel better?”

  My body was tingling and I could feel every inch of him behind me, hard and enticing. He smelled of the woods…grass, damp earth and decaying leaves. A primal scent that filled my lungs, brought out desires I’d never felt before, not this completely.

  I’d been the recipient of groping hands and tongues jabbing down my throat before, in a broom closet, as part of a dare, but I’d never felt like this, never wanted to turn to the boy and run my hands and tongue all over his body, memorize every bit of him…taste every bit of him.

  “Lucinda? Does it feel better?”

  I shivered, his words shaking me from the fog that had settled around me. “Better?” I croaked.

  “Your mark, does it hurt less?” He turned me around and stared into my eyes.

  His were dark and probing not a hint of the lost boy I’d come to expect. His fingers tightened on my shoulders.

  “Uh…yes.” I stretched my neck and realized the pain had stopped, not completely but it was back to a throb. Manageable. “What…how did you do that?”

  He let go of my shoulders and stepped back. The emptiness returned to his eyes. “It’s just something I can do. I don’t know how long it will last. I’ve never done it before.”

  I pressed my palm over the back of my neck and immediately realized I was wearing only a tee shirt and pajama bottoms, no bra. I pulled an afghan from my bed and wrapped it around my body.

  My breath seemed to be coming unusually fast, and I couldn’t seem to look right at Oscar. I studied the fringe on the afghan instead.

  “Lucinda?”

  I looked up. I had to; it was as if there was a string attached to my forehead and his voice had pulled it taut. “Are you cold?”

  It wasn’t the romantic declaration I’d expected. I laughed, at myself, and turned to walk away. He grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me back around.

  His eyes were dilated and his nostrils flared. I could feel his fingers digging into my shoulders through the loose weave of the afghan. It should have hurt, but instead it just felt right. I let out a breath and tilted my face to his. He stared at my lips for what felt like a century; then he lowered his head.

  My heart was beating like a trapped rabbit’s, but as his lips brushed over mine, I stepped closer, dropped the afghan and wrapped my arms around his waist.

  His kiss was gentle, almost reluctant. His restraint made my own surging desire seem all the more rampant. I was breathing hard, trying to keep myself from clawing at him, pulling him closer. His hands softened on my shoulders until his touch was no more than a whisper, his lips pressing against mine the only sign that I wasn’t the only willing participant in our embrace. I tried to loosen my hold around his waist, tried to tell myself that I looked desperate clinging to him like I did, but my brain had left the cranium. I was operating on pure instinct. And instinct was telling me to grab what I wanted, what I suddenly needed more than anything in my sixteen years of existence.

  “Don’t trust it,” he murmured. “It isn’t real.”

  “What?” I asked, playing along, keeping him engaged, keeping him from pulling back.

  “What you’re feeling. It isn’t real. It’s the mark. I played on it. You’re reacting to that, not me.”

  Even as he said the words, I arched closer to him and he didn’t pull back. He brushed hair from my face instead and ran his lips down my cheek to my ear. He whispered something against my neck. A shiver rippled through my body.

  “What?” I asked again, this time wanting to hear him, needing to know what he said, thought, even though I didn’t believe what he’d said before. I knew I’d been fighting an attraction to him since the beginning.

  He looked up. His fingers were still on my shoulders, but barely. His gaze found mine, and he was in there, behind it. No blank, lost look, just Oscar looking back at me.

  “I care,” he said. “When I’m with you, touching you, I care.”

  Excitement whirled through me. I rose onto my toes and grabbed him tighter.

  To my shock, he stepped back and pulled my arms free. The darkness returned.

  “And when I’m not, I don’t. In fact, I think it may be worse.”

  “Worse? Why do you say that?” I stepped forward. My hand rose. I wanted to touch him again, see the expression I’d seen in his eyes before, but he held up a hand.

  “I’m noticing things. Other people. I think I’m affecting them.”

  I frowned. “Don’t be silly. How could you be affecting them?”

  “I think….” He paused, seemed to search for a word. “I think I’m draining them, taking their caring. Have you noticed it?”

  I shook my head, but my mind was
whirling. Had I noticed it? His normally up-a-teacher’s-butt lab partner staring aimlessly at a Bunsen burner, the senior comatose on the picnic table, me even…not caring enough to go to the drugstore when I knew I should. Little things.

  I shook my head. But those things had all happened earlier. If he was feeling anything, even if only when he was around me, it had to be better. He had to be better. It was proof he could be saved, that I was right when I hadn’t asked Kobal to take him back with Holmes and Nellie.

  I smiled. “You’re wrong. This is good. You feel something. You care.”

  “But only when I’m with you, only about you.”

  My ego swelled, blocked out everything except that he cared about me.

  He held out his hand, and I slipped my fingers into his. I was happy. Everything was going to work out.

  But he didn’t seem to share my joy. He stared at my fingers. I stared there too, confused, not getting why we couldn’t be happy, at least for a little.

  “I have to go back,” he said. “I can’t stay here.”

  Chapter 20

  My heart stuttered. My words stuttered with it. “You…what?”

  “To home, hell. I don’t belong here, not anymore. If I stay I’ll do what Nellie has done, destroy lives.”

  “But you’re making progress. You can’t give up now. Besides there’s no way to send you, not unless Kobal takes you.” I turned my back. I couldn’t believe he was giving up. Then something occurred to me. I spun around. “Why’d you come to my house tonight?” I asked.

  Busy staring at his closed fists, he jerked. “I knew you were in pain, and that I could help.”

  I smiled. “But you weren’t with me. You weren’t anywhere around me when you thought of that.” I grabbed him by the wrists. “And you still cared.”

  He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t return my smile either. “It doesn’t matter. Maybe I do have feelings for you, even when we’re not together, but I think I’m pulling that caring from other people.” He closed his eyes for a second and then opened them. “I think the more I care about you, the more caring I suck from those around me. I don’t think I can create the feeling myself, not anymore.” He ran a hand through his hair.