by Amy Meredith
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Also by Amy Meredith
Copyright
About the Book
Deepdene has been swept by a vicious tropical plague. Eve, Jess and Luke suspect their teacher, Mr Dokey, bought it back with him from his recent trip to Egypt. But something far more deadly has followed him home too …
As the plague tightens it’s grip and the town is shut off from the outside world, teenagers start to disappear. A demon is among them – and it can take the form of anyone it wants. It could be anybody. And now there’s no way out of Deepdene …
For Shirley Kwan, always an inspiration
Prologue
Cam Dokey sucked on a stick of hollow white candy that tasted of cinnamon as he wandered through the Souk Gomma – the Friday market in Cairo’s City of the Dead. This is what he’d dreamed of when he majored in history at Boston University – trips to exotic lands, learning about other cultures, seeing, smelling, tasting everything.
Instead he’d ended up a teacher at Deepdene High in the Hamptons. A good job, a job he enjoyed, but not exactly exotic. This was exotic. Every stall in the twisted maze of narrow streets had something different. Over there, mounds of richly coloured spices; and there a squirming mass of snakes being poked at by screaming, laughing children.
Cam tried to remember every detail to tell his students. He allowed himself a smile as he imagined how they’d feel if the boutiques of Main Street were situated in an ancient cemetery, and they occasionally had to skirt around a grave as they shopped. He’d have to tell the kids in his classes that by the end of a day of bargain-hunting in the souk, they’d be covered with fine, grey cemetery dust.
Thunk!
He turned towards the sound just in time to see a rabbit hurl itself off the killing table. A woman holding a cleaver yelled after it. She’d never catch it now, even though she’d managed to cut off one of its feet.
Cam tracked the rabbit for a moment as it streaked through the horde of people, trailing droplets of blood. It was heading towards an alley he hadn’t explored yet, one that was deep in the shadows of the freeway overpass. Intrigued, Cam headed over, elbows out to help him fight his way through the crowd.
It wasn’t just darker in the alley, it was colder too – cold enough to make Cam shiver. He passed by a couple of tables selling old electronic odds and ends that probably didn’t work, then reached a mound of clothes at least four metres high. He’d heard rumours that many items of clothing sold in the souk came directly from the bodies of the deceased. The odour – a mix of rot, sweat, urine, sickness and blood – made him believe that the rumours were true.
He started to turn round, but something on the edge of one table on the other side of the towering mountain of clothes caught his eye. As he moved towards it, gooseflesh broke out all over his body. Was he getting a bug? It couldn’t be cold enough to cause that reaction. Yes, he was in the shade, but in the shade on a scorching day in Egypt.
He approached the table cautiously. It was covered with odds and ends – old coins, dead cellphones, tattered American magazines from the year before, some empty travel-sized shampoo bottles. Nothing of interest. Cam went to turn away, and then noticed a battered cardboard box near the phones. Once you see a box, you have to open it, don’t you? he thought.
He opened the flaps, unsure of what he expected to find. Inside he saw a ceramic bowl, almost perfectly round, with a lid. The only decorative element was a row of geometric shapes around the top.
But something about it – something other than its rather plain appearance – seemed to call to him. He gently slid his hands around it. The sensation was like touching dry ice – a coldness so severe it almost burned. What could be producing that kind of chill? He lifted the bowl out of the box and moved one hand up to the lid. Before he could lift it off, an old man, bent double, with skin that looked like leather stretched over bone, scrambled out from behind the tower of clothing and tried to snatch the bowl away.
Instinctively, Cam pulled it tightly against his chest, the bowl’s coldness seeping deep into his body, slowing the beat of his heart. ‘How much?’ he asked the teenager behind the table.
‘Ten LE,’ the boy shouted. ‘Nothing more than ten LE.’ About a dollar seventy-five. Cam slapped down a twenty-pound note, twisting his body to keep the bowl away from the old man. He didn’t wait for the change.
He started back the way he came, the scent of rot from the tower of clothing suddenly overwhelming. But the old man managed to scuttle in front of him. He spat out a stream of words, his eyes bulging, a few flecks of foam on his lips. He grabbed at the bowl, his long fingernails scraping against the ceramic sides.
‘It’s mine!’ Cam yelled fiercely, a flood of protectiveness and anger surging through him. He pulled out another twenty-pound note and flung it to the ground. ‘There, buy yourself two bowls.’
The old man was knocked to the ground as four or five others lunged for the money. Cam used the moment to make his escape. When he had almost reached the mouth of the alleyway, someone grabbed his arm.
Cam, sure it was the old man again, jerked his arm free, then saw it was a little girl who had grabbed his sleeve. ‘He said: “Don’t open,”’ the girl told him. ‘He said it will get out. The evil will get out.’
This will be a great story to tell the kids when I bring the bowl to class, he thought. They’ll love it.
Chapter One
‘You’ll never believe this. Shanna’s got it now!’ Eve Evergold cried. She put her iPhone down on the patio table next to her sweating glass of mango iced tea. Eve couldn’t blame the glass for sweating – it was only the first week in March, but the extremely freaky heat wave made it feel like August.
‘Are you kidding?’ Jess Meredith, Eve’s BFSPF – Best Friend Since Practically Forever – sat up on her lounger and pushed her D&G sunglasses onto the top of her head. The tortoiseshell frames set off her sun-highlighted blonde hair perfectly. ‘How can that be? Shanna seemed completely OK at school today.’
‘I know. But it seems like that’s the way it happens. One second you’re fine, the next you feel like you’re about to die.’ A shiver ran through Eve despite the insane heat. Everyone seemed to be getting sick. Flu X, people were calling it. It wasn’t swine flu or bird flu, although some of the symptoms, like fever and chills and vomiting, were the same. It was a strain no one had ever seen before. Some of the talking heads on TV were saying it wasn’t the flu at all. All anybody knew for sure was that it was contagious. Extremely.
‘Evie …’ Jess hesitated. ‘I’m scared. I mean, I’m sitting here poolside on a freakishly beautiful day, drinking mangolicious iced tea. But I’m only pretending … I don’t know what I’m pretending.’
‘That life is still normal,’ Eve answered. ‘I’m pretending it too. Or trying. It’s like I have the outside down – bikini, lounger, stack of fresh magazines – but on the inside, all I can think about is everyone who’s sick.’
‘And who will be next,’ Jess added.
Eve nodded. ‘On the news last night, it said there were about seventy-five cases. But one of them was Charlie Zooper. Do you think he counts as two?’ Charlie Zooper was one of the sprinkling of celebs who lived in Deepdene, along with the insanely wealthy people and just your basic very-wealth
ies.
‘No … he’s not famous enough,’ Jess decided. ‘Directors are hardly ever famous enough to count as two. Only, like, James Cameron. Or Spielberg, but he lives three towns away, and there aren’t any cases of Flu X in East Hampton yet.’
So far the outbreak hadn’t moved beyond their little beachside town on Long Island – at least not yet. And, thankfully, not to New York City either, a hundred miles away. Eve didn’t even want to think about the disease running through a city that size. She did some calculations in her head. ‘If seventy-five people are sick, it means about two thousand people are still healthy,’ she said, trying to comfort her friend – and herself. ‘That’s a lot.’
Eve pressed her cold glass against her forehead, hoping it would cool her down and maybe also stop her brain from racing. She caught Jess staring at her. ‘What?’
‘Are you OK? Does your forehead feel hot?’ Jess asked, her voice tight with concern.
‘I don’t have a fever.’ At least Eve was almost positive she didn’t. Could it be the start of one? She shoved the thought away. ‘It’s just really hot out here.’
‘So hot. Like the hottest it’s ever been in March,’ Jess agreed.
Eve took the bottle of sunscreen off the little table, squirted some into her palm, and smoothed it over her hands and arms.
‘Do some hair milk too,’ Jess advised.
Eve nodded. She loved her long, dark ringlets, but in weather like this, her hair would never cooperate. It frizzed – with a capital F. It got almost as bad as when she used the powers she’d inherited as a descendant of the Deepdene Witch. She zapped lightning out of her fingers, and – poof! – frizz. Eve estimated that she’d doubled her consumption of leave-in conditioner since her powers had started expressing themselves at the beginning of the school year. But some hair issues weren’t such a huge price to pay for the ability to destroy demons, especially since Deepdene had turned out to have a door to hell right at its centre.
‘I can’t believe we’re starting to get tan already,’ Jess commented. The heatwave had been going on almost as long as the Flu X outbreak, and Eve and Jess had been taking full advantage of the sunshine. Every day, as soon as school finished, they rushed to Eve’s, got into their bikinis, and then into the pool in her back yard.
‘I know. We’ve almost reached the point of golden-brown perfection.’ Of course, part of it was bronzer. Eve and Jess didn’t want to end up with leather skin when they were old. When they were old. That would happen, right? Unless …
Don’t go there, Eve ordered herself. Focus on the gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous weather. It wasn’t as if she could do anything about the disease. She’d saved her town from a demon invasion twice now. That was what the Deepdene Witch’s powers were for – demon fighting. But they wouldn’t work on an illness. At least, she was almost positive they wouldn’t. She still hadn’t figured out everything she could do with them.
Another thought she didn’t really want to have slithered and wriggled its way into her brain. What if the flu epidemic – a few people had even called it a plague, whispering the word – what if it was actually a demon invasion? During the first invasion, several demon victims had been admitted to a mental hospital. If a demon presence in town could cause mental illness, was it possible a different demon could cause physical illness?
But every day there was a new doctor on the news, and most of them believed that the epidemic was a mutant strain of the flu. A couple of politicos were going with terrorism, but the majority of experts were behind the flu theory. A demon isn’t behind everything bad that happens in Deepdene, Eve reminded herself.
Jess pulled her sunglasses back on. The frames were movie-star-in-hiding huge, hiding not just Jess’s bright blue eyes, but her perfectly groomed eyebrows as well. She adjusted her lounger so that it lay flat, then stretched out on her stomach, her head angled towards Eve. ‘I can wear a sundress for my date with Seth tonight, right?’ she asked. She paused and smiled. ‘My date. With Seth. Did you ever believe I’d be saying those words?’
Seth was a senior, and it seemed like he saw Jess as a kindergartener instead of a freshman, at least until a few months ago. Then, lightbulb moment – or maybe it should be called hormone moment – he realized she was all grown up.
‘For probably the infinity-plus-one time, yes, I can believe you and Seth are going out,’ Eve said, happy to have a more cheerful topic of conversation. ‘I think pretty much everyone at Deepdene High has you two down as the new hot couple.’
Jess’s smile widened into a grin. ‘So, sundress? I know it’s March, but with this weather …’
‘You’d be crazy to wear anything else,’ Eve replied. ‘The white one with the little blue flowers. With your tan? Perfection.’ She kissed her fingertips, getting a little taste of her coconut-scented sunscreen.
‘Unless I get the … you know … between now and then,’ Jess said. ‘If I have to cancel and Seth breaks up with me, I’m going to kill Mr Dokey. Why did his lifelong dream have to be going to Egypt, land of unexplained diseases? Why couldn’t he have wanted to go to Paris, like a normal person?’
Eve laughed. ‘Like us, you mean,’ she said. Jess’s parents had taken them to Paris two years ago and neither of them could wait to go back. ‘I actually have trouble picturing Mr Dokey there.’
‘True. He’s not nearly chic enough,’ Jess joked. ‘But still. He could have gone to England at least. He wouldn’t have brought anything nasty home from there.’
‘Hmm, no. England isn’t exotic enough for a geography teacher,’ Eve commented. Most of the experts who’d weighed in thought that Mr Dokey had probably become infected with a rare disease while he was on vacation in Egypt. In February, he’d gotten permission to take a week off to go visit an archaeological dig, as long as he did a presentation about it for the school. A week or so after he returned, he’d become the first victim of the pla— of Flu X.
‘What shoes are you going to wear?’ Eve asked, getting back to the more pleasant subject of Jess’s date attire. ‘The strappy ones with—’ The sound of the French doors opening interrupted her. She looked over and saw her mom stepping out onto the paving stones that snaked through the grass over to the pool area. She was carrying two smallish cardboard boxes.
‘Hi, Mrs Evergold,’ Jess called.
‘Are you girls doing all right?’ Eve’s mother walked over and sat down on the edge of Eve’s lounger, putting her hand against her daughter’s forehead. ‘You feel hot,’ she announced.
‘Um, there’s a freak heatwave going on,’ Eve reminded her, making her voice light and teasing, not wanting her mother to get even more worried about the flu than she already was. ‘Everyone feels hot.’
Her mother laughed, but it came out sounding a little strained. ‘It is hot. I should have factored that in,’ she admitted. ‘But I want you to take your temperature later. You should do it at least once a day. You too, Jess.’
Eve nodded. She couldn’t help wondering what her mother would do if she did get a fever. It would probably mean that Eve had gotten Flu X. But then what? There was no cure, nothing that made it better, that anyone knew about. And that was terrifying. But at least no one had died from the disease yet.
‘One of my colleagues told me that the doctors analysing the blood of the infected people have become ill themselves,’ Eve’s mother said. ‘This disease is virulent. The speed at which it spreads … it’s, well, it’s frightening.’
Eve tried to remember the last time her mother had called anything frightening. Her dad was creeped out by any movie that had a shark – or mutant crocodile or anything else aquatic and deadly – in it. Plus, he was afraid of hairy spiders, and he totally admitted it. But nothing ever seemed to get to her mother.
‘I also heard on the radio on my way home that the mayor is considering closing all the schools in town. I hope he does,’ Mrs Evergold continued. ‘With something so infectious, it’s reckless to allow large groups of people to congregate.’
‘I don’t know. The town doesn’t have any protocol in place for a situation like this.’ Eve’s mother stood up. ‘But I want you both to start taking more precautions.’ She handed Eve and Jess the small boxes.
Eve opened hers and pulled out a disposable mask that hooked over the ears and covered the nose and mouth, like a surgeon’s mask. ‘Wear these whenever you’re out of the house – school, Ola’s, wherever. I’m going to go see if there’s anything more on the news,’ Eve’s mother said, then returned inside.
‘School had better close,’ Jess muttered. ‘Because I would not want to go walking in there wearing one of these.’ She reached over and flicked the mask Eve had taken out of the box.
‘You’ll wear it when you’re out though, right?’ Eve asked. ‘I don’t want you getting sick.’
‘Everywhere but on my date with Seth,’ Jess promised. ‘It would be impossible to kiss. And it doesn’t match the clutch I’m planning to carry.’ She set the box of masks down beside her. ‘Let’s just try to enjoy this amazing sun. There’s no demon crisis, at least, so there’s no reason we can’t just stay here by the pool for now. Without our masks.’
Eve didn’t mention that she’d considered the possibility that the plague was a demon crisis. All those doctors had to be right.
And if they turned out to be wrong, which Eve was sure they weren’t, Jess would be there for her. Jess didn’t have any supernatural demon-fighting powers, but that hadn’t stopped her from being right at Eve’s side the other two times demons had shown up in Deepdene. She’d been with Eve the day they learned that there was a portal between hell and earth right in their town. And she’d been there when Eve had managed to use her power to weave something like a psychic force field over the portal to keep all the nasties in hell where they belonged. If there was demon trouble, Jess always made it clear that it was her problem just as much as it was Eve’s. One of the dozens of reasons Eve loved her friend.