by Dalya Moon
ZAN AND AUSTIN (SPIRITDELL BOOK 1)
© 2012 Dalya Moon
Genre: YA urban fantasy
“With a satisfying blend of humor and horror, Zan and Austin is a must-read for Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans.”
Zan West has a strange power that only works on girls. He doesn't know why he has this so-called “gift,” but it's killing his chances of ever getting a girlfriend.
Then he meets an older girl named Austin, and she's strangely immune to his power. Zan can't see her secrets, but he can't see her future, either. There's something she isn't telling him, and it's driving him mad.
Zan consults a powerful witch who offers him peace of mind in exchange for his power. What he doesn't know is this so-called peace of mind comes with a big, bad heaping of death. The permanent kind.
CHAPTER 1
My name is Zan West; I'm six feet tall, and I have dark skin and golden brown eyes, slightly puffy hair, and a magic power.
I feel myself changing lately. My jaw is wider, my voice deeper, and I'm starting to get attention from females other than the women who serve lunch at the cafeteria.
I'm also getting braver about using my power.
The only other people who know about this magic … gift I have are my best friend, James, and his twin sister, Julie. The three of us discovered it together, the same night I learned Julie's secret—not the secret of her crush on me (which isn't very secret), but something more unusual.
The three of us were out at James and Julie's cabin by the lake, and had already split up the scant alcohol we could find around the place. The weather was too cool for swimming in the lake, so we gathered around a bonfire playing truth or dare.
I dared Julie to stick her finger in my belly button—as a joke, not because I have some tummy fetish—and then it happened.
Julie closed her eyes and stuck her hand up under my shirt. Our skin connected, and everything changed.
I disappeared from this regular mortal plane on which we all exist, and had my very first trip to what I now call Secret Town.
While in this psychic vision, courtesy of this amazing but strange power I didn't know I had, I encountered Julie.
Julie, however, did not encounter me. To her, she just got a tiny electrical zap, and yanked her finger out immediately.
I, however, experienced about three minutes' worth of time in that same instant.
In this place, this Secret Town, I had a leisurely stroll with a dream-like version of Julie. She wore a prom dress, purple, and confessed she had a secret.
We were in a mist-filled place, a park, and she turned around to show me the back of her dress, which plunged down deeply at the back. I'd never seen so much of Julie's skin, and was entranced by how soft her light brown skin looked.
She tugged at the dress, pulling the back lower, to show me a scar on her skin. I reached out and touched the zig-zag line, which gave me a vision within the vision (like picture-in-picture on a TV) of a puppy, wagging its tail.
The dream-like Julie, who had really pretty hair in this place, turned and explained she'd been born with a tail.
A tail!
Vision-Julie held up her pinkie finger to illustrate how small the tail had been. The visual aid of a wiggling pinkie did not diminish the impact.
I came out of the vision and back into the real world by the bonfire, laughing my butt off at what I assumed was the product of two-thirds of a beer, one glass of bourbon mixed with pear cider, plus my own vivid imagination.
Busting a gut and bent over with laughter, I told the twins the crazy daydream I'd had.
James silently added another log to the bonfire.
Julie stared up at the starry night sky, blinking back tears, and said, “Who told you?”
James said, “Not me, Julie, I swear.”
Then I said, “Guys, stop messing with me. I just made that up, from my imagination. We shouldn't have drank that bourbon-cider.”
After a few minutes of twin-stares, Julie turned her back to me and lifted her sweatshirt while tugging down the waistband of her jeans.
The mark was low enough it had always been hidden, even swimming.
“Zan, you have a power,” Julie said. “Magic.”
James threw three more logs on the bonfire, until the flame was high and hot, crackling up into the black sky. Then he sat next to me and the three of us talked all through the night about what it all meant.
Since that first night, I haven't learned much more about the power, except that it only seems to work with girls.
While this secret-discovering power may sound great, and you'd think it would be exactly what any teenage boy wants, I'm not so chirpy about the whole thing. I've found that discovering all of a girl's secrets could be a real turn-off. You'll see for yourself how, in just a moment.
* * *
Speaking of secrets, Little Miss Puppytail herself, Julie, is trying to get my attention right now.
“Zan,” she says, bouncing from one foot to the other next to my locker.
“Yes, Julie darling?”
She blushes, which is endearing. She's got the same wild black hair, cocoa skin, and surprisingly blue eyes as her twin brother James.
“James wasn't too impressed with the snail stickers you put on his locker,” Julie says.
“Did he laugh?”
“Not until he saw the giant stuffed snail inside the locker. He had to admire your craft.”
“Thanks for helping me with that.” I give her a fist bump.
“So tonight, I want us to have a real party,” she says. “Not some lame high school thing, whatsoever. You know, with bowls of crumbled potato chips and people barfing in the fish tank.”
“You guys don't have a fish tank,” I say.
“Come early and help me put up decorations?”
I agree, because arriving at James and Julie's house early will give me time to set up my camera equipment and my new photo booth, which promises to be the best one yet. I've acquired a navy blue velvet background that should read as black, and I'll tack up some crazy stars I covered in tin foil. No girl can resist having her photo taken, so I hope to use my nerdy photo-geek skills to have the girls come to me. Once I get a girl who seems intriguing in my photo booth, I might find the courage to ask her to poke me—in the belly button, with her finger.
Julie says goodbye and walks away, leaving me alone with my mess.
I scoop a pile of loose papers from my locker into my backpack as yet another paper airplane whizzes by my head. My locker looks so good, all tidied up like this.
A slender hand adorned with a charm bracelet reaches across my face and snags an unopened pack of gum from the second shelf. “Mind?”
Of course I don't mind. Raye-Anne Donovan could take every piece of food from me until I'm dying of hunger and I wouldn't mind.
“Fill your boots,” I say.
She grins as she folds the pink slice of gum between her teeth in a way that gives me a little shiver.
“You coming to the party tonight?” I ask.
Instead of answering, she helps herself to a second piece of gum, biting in ever so slowly.
To say I've harbored a bit of a crush on Raye-Anne would be an understatement. What could she have to hide behind that freckly nose and that tiny mouth that seems too narrow for her face? Seriously, how does she eat anything with that little mouth?
“Got any plans for summer vacation?” I ask.
“I hear you're a psychic or something,” Raye-Anne says, evading my question. The air crackles with cinnamon and I want to lean in closer, but not in a creepy way, so I will myself to hold steady and stay cool, even though I suspect I have a big, red zit on my cheek. Wait, have I checked on that zit at all today? What if the burgeo
ning pus-bump has turned white and transparent, like a jelly-filled volcano about to burst?
Raye-Anne squeezes her eyes, so they're not quite open, yet not quite closed, giving me a chill all the way through, and pushing thoughts about zits from my mind.
“So are you?” she asks. “Are you a psychic?”
“Psychic? Nah,” I say, forcing a laugh. “Some people say it's about reading a person's energy or body language. There's science in there.” As I'm making my power sound more about science than magic, I find myself believing the fib. “I'm really into science,” I say, which is not untrue.
Raye-Anne blows a miniature, cinnamon-scented bubble.
“What did you hear?”
“Someone said you read tarot cards,” she says.
The halls are clearing out, with just a few stragglers signing each other's annuals and laughing with relief about final exams being over. “Don't tell anyone, okay? I don't have any tarot cards, but what I do is similar to palm-reading. Are you coming to James and Julie's tonight?”
She gives me a tiny smirk with her tiny little glossy mouth. “You tell me, psychic.”
“Come by the party tonight,” I say. “I'll take your picture, and I'll give you a full reading with my ... magical powers. You won't be disappointed.”
“Neither will you.” She leans forward and slides the pack of gum into my jeans pocket. The front pocket. Slowly.
If this girl has a secret, something tells me it's going to be the type I'd like.
Raye-Anne turns her head to look at an old man in the hallway. He's wearing an ill-fitting pinstriped suit and is too old to be a parent, yet he's not a teacher or faculty member I've ever seen before. Odder still, he's staring intently at us.
“Can I help you, Sir?” I call out.
“No thank you, Zan,” he says. He tips his hat, turns, and walks away.
“Did he just say my name?” I ask Raye-Anne.
“I think he called you man.”
“Yeah, I guess. Still.” I make an exaggerated shudder.
“I like these jeans.” She runs her fingers along the waistband, up under my shirt, and I forget all about unsettling old dudes who may or may not know my name.
“You can borrow them any time.”
“You're weird but cute, Zan,” she says. “What's this about your belly button, anyways? You like it when a girl sticks her finger in there?”
“What did you hear?” I attempt to pull back, but she's got one arm tight around my waist, and the girl's stronger than she looks.
Breathing cinnamon near my face, she asks, “What'll happen if I stick this finger into your belly button?” Her finger traces circles on my stomach.
I gulp so hard I can hear it. “I get a vision of you. A totally accurate vision, usually from the future.”
“Tell me where I'll be in a year,” she says, and she pokes her finger into my belly button.
And … here I go.
CHAPTER 2
With Raye-Anne's finger in my belly button, everything around me slows, as the world submerges in a viscous fluid. My body slows too, my breathing nearly stopped. I'm dying. This is the scary part.
The school's hallway flattens and fades to abstraction, which means I'm through the barrier and into the other side.
Raye-Anne stands frozen before me in Slow World, in the middle of inflating a cinnamon-scented bubble. Her finger in my belly button is the conduit, connecting us on this plane.
I'm in Secret Town.
I don't move in here, but the vision moves around me, and I'm not limited to what's in front of me. I can see in every direction, as though I have eyes in the back of my head. Don't ask me how my brain makes sense of it all.
Here in Secret Town, Raye-Anne sits on one of those cruddy old chairs that screams motel room, and for good reason, because by the look of the matching wood furniture and lamps, this is a motel room. Raye-Anne's getting high, snorting something, and by the look of her—hair longer, but face relatively unchanged—we're a year or two in the future. She stands and zooms around on fast-forward, ending up on the tacky patterned bedspread, doing seedy-motel-room things with a scrawny guy sporting black, spiky tattoos.
So, Raye-Anne's going to get into drugs and other bad choices, which is a shame, because she's not a bad girl. When I've shared classes with her, she's never been the top student, but she's always willing to lend a hand to anyone struggling with a math problem or vocabulary word. She's trusting—maybe too trusting.
The motel room brightens with a door opening, and now there's another guy, standing in the doorway. He's got a friendly face, with a good jawline and cheekbones that would photograph well, though his ears stick out a little.
My power must be getting stronger, because I swear I can hear this new guy's thoughts. He's thinking he should have known. He should have believed his vision, when Raye-Anne stuck her finger in his belly button, standing in the nearly-empty hallway on the last day of school, a year ago.
The boy in the doorway is me.
He, I mean I, look straight into my eyes, and a lightning bolt of feedback loops through me, like when a microphone passes in front of the speaker, blasting me with pain.
The vision doesn't stop, though, but charges on like a train off its tracks. The tattooed man gets up from the bed, and he's so much bigger than the boy in the doorway. He hits me, again and again, and the whole time, Raye-Anne is wailing and the boy in the vision is wishing he'd believed the warning.
I try to turn away, but with this all-seeing, eyeless vision, I can't.
The breathing, I tell myself, focus on the breathing. Catch the air moving and ride it out.
Barely perceptible in its slowness, I find my breath and follow it, willing myself back through Slow World and back to reality. After an eternity of pain, my lungs are moving slowly, then normally, and I'm out.
Reality. I'm in the hallway at school. The viscous substance around us returns to air, and my ears begin ringing in the relative silence.
“I wish I could see my future,” Raye-Anne says, pulling her hand away. “My parents want me to go to college, but I don't know.”
My throat is dry and tight.
“Let's try tonight,” she says, unaware the reading's already happened.
“Sure,” I choke out.
“Tonight? I'll touch your little belly button again if you want.” She drops her hands and brushes me in a way that feels anything but accidental, triggering another coughing fit.
“Try some gum,” she says, and she kisses me quickly, thrusting the chewed gum into my mouth with her tongue before she turns and walks away.
* * *
I help Julie with the streamers for a few minutes before she dismisses me to unpack my cameras and tripods. “I know your heart's not into decorating whatsoever,” she says, and she's right.
“This place is already plenty festive,” I say of the Moroccan-themed basement. James and Julie's mother decorated it a few years ago. The whole bottom floor originally had a nautical theme, with ship's wheels, compasses and maps on the walls, though now only the wood paneling and bar remain.
Leaving Julie to the paper streamers, I start unpacking my babies—my cameras.
What I love about cameras is they tell the truth. Light hits the film, or the photosensitive plate, and—according to the laws of physics, chemistry, and reality—an image is made. You don't argue with the image.
I'm cleaning my camera lenses when James comes over, grabs my cheapo little instant camera and takes a photo down the front of his pants.
“I'll be sure to get some eight by tens of that one,” I say.
“Good, I'll autograph them,” he says, grinning. “So what's going on with Raye-Anne? You going to ... you-know?” He does a little dance to illustrate.
I tell James exactly what happened earlier at school, when Raye-Anne put her finger in my belly button. He's enjoying the details, up until the part about Raye-Anne doing drugs and being with the sketchy, violent dude. James wrinkl
es his face in disgust, as though I tried to make him eat dairy.
James is a good-looking guy, with his dark hair and light eyes, but the look of disgust he gets is not the most appealing. Actually, the expression makes me want to punch him, especially if he's being a militant vegan and calling things like cheese sandwiches meat.
“Don't make the face,” I say. “I shouldn't have told you about Raye-Anne. That information is privileged.”
He quickly holds his hands up. “Your imaginary wizard powers are safe with me.”
“I've tried to not use it, but I have no self-control.”
“And you never, ever see anything good in the visions?” James asks.
“Imagine your tofu burgers,” I say. “How would you feel if you found out they came from some tofu-animal. With big, dewy eyes and a furry tail. That would turn you off soy, right?”
“You're sick,” he says as he punches me in the solar plexus.
I push aside a folding chair and wrestle him to the ground.
“Hey,” Julie yells. “Don't knock everything over with your display of affection.”
“She's just jealous,” James moans as I rub his face in the carpet.
Someone's legs whip up from out of nowhere and slam me backward into the ground. My head hits the carpet hard, and for an instant I see those honest-to-goodness stars that swirl around cartoon characters' heads. Maybe a good wallop could knock this curse right out of me, I think, which is odd, because I've never called it a curse before.
The lanterns and streamers swim above me as my eyes fill with water.
“You okay, man?” James asks. He's smiling and a bit of drool is coming out of his mouth, toward me. Intentional or not, the thread of spit gives me an intense wave of panic to get away, but I blink and hold steady, not flinching.
“You're surprisingly strong for a vegan,” I say to James. “Aw, gross, I can feel your body warmth seeping into me. Too intimate!”
“I got you good,” he says, still pinning me down, his heat still radiating into me through our clothes, which only makes me more sad that I'll probably never get this close to a girl.