“We have to trust someone,” Josh finally said.
I raised my eyebrows, wishing again that I had Ally’s trick of lifting only the one. “Why? What if she’s in on it with Bartlef? Or Biet?” I shook my head and stood up. “I need to go home,” I said. “I need to think about all this.”
“Wait,” Mason said. “I brought Oma Raina over for another reason, too. If you are one of us, she’s the only one powerful enough to hide you from the others.”
The old woman nodded. “Come here, girl,” she said.
I looked at her suspiciously.
“I’m not going to bite you,” she said crossly.
“Are you going to put some sort of whammy on me? Like the one a minute ago?”
She cackled. “Very good. I wondered if you’d notice.”
Josh and his father glanced at each other with matching expressions of surprise. Huh. Guess they hadn’t noticed the glamour. I filed the information away in the you-might-be-a-demon-if category.
Oma Raina gestured toward me again. “Yes. A glamour to hide your true nature from the others.”
“What if I’m not one of you?”
“Then that shall be hidden as well.” She took my hand as I drew near and grasped it for just a moment. I felt a tingle run up my arm, and then it went numb for a second.
“There,” the old woman said. “You are hidden.”
I looked down at my skin. It wasn’t glowing anymore. “How long will this hold?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Until I remove it.” Her eyes narrowed. “Unless you remove it yourself. If you find need to do so—and are able.”
I swallowed, hoping that her words were not prophetic. I’d had about as much prophecy as I could take for one day.
Chapter Eighteen
Mom was at her computer when I walked into the house. “Hey, honey,” she said a bit distractedly. “You’re home early, aren’t you?”
“I didn’t feel well,” I said. “I got sick, so I came home.”
“Got sick how?” she asked, her attention now focused on me.
“Like a stomach bug or something,” I said. “I’m just going to go lie down, I think.”
She gestured to me to come toward her. “Lean over,” she said, and put her lips to my forehead. “You have a little bit of a fever. I’ll get you some Advil.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Unexpectedly, my eyes filled up with tears. I turned quickly so she wouldn’t see them. The last thing I needed was Mom figuring out that there was more wrong with me than a minor illness.
I spent the rest of the day huddled in my bed with the covers drawn up under my chin. It was the best day I’d had since moving to Fairy, I decided, even if I did have a fever that made my joints ache. Maybe I could figure out a way to just stay right where I was until graduation day.
I sighed. If the fever didn’t abate today, I might get one or two more days’ respite, but after that, I was going to have to go back to school and face what my life had become. What, quite possibly, I had become.
I buried my head under the comforter and tried to sleep.
Through my nap-induced haze, I heard Kayla come in from school and recognized the sound of raised voices—Kayla’s and John’s, then Mom’s. I ignored it and drifted off again.
Some time later I woke to find Mom sitting on the edge of my bed, smoothing my hair back from my forehead. “Hey, sweetie,” she said. “You feeling any better?”
“Mm-hmm,” I murmured.
“You’d tell me if something bad happened to you, wouldn’t you?” she asked.
I struggled to sit up. “What do you mean?”
She sighed and shook her head. “Nothing, honey. Go back to sleep.”
“Okay.” I rolled over so that my back was to her as she pulled the covers up around me, but I was wide awake now, remembering snatches of the fight I’d overheard earlier. I was almost certain Kayla had told them the rumors she’d heard.
I was glad Mom wasn’t pursuing it. I needed time to figure out how to deal with her in all this. I could always get Mr. Bevington to do his mind-trick on her, but it seemed wrong—much worse than screwing up John’s memory, I guess because I really believed that Mom had my best interests at heart. I didn’t trust John as much.
I debated the pros and cons for a long time without really deciding anything—which was a decision in its own right, I suppose.
By the next morning, I felt well enough to go to school. At least, I felt physically well enough. I didn’t relish the thought of dealing with the rumors again.
Kayla didn’t speak to me at all on the ride to school—not that I was exactly feeling conversational myself—and we went our separate ways as soon as we got to campus in what was beginning to feel like a routine.
To my surprise, the whispers that followed me as I walked down the hall were also beginning to feel routine. I just held my head up and ignored them. I would like to get Mr. Bevington to do a mind-wipe on the whole school, I thought. Of course, that would have defeated the whole purpose of our love-triangle charade; I knew a campus-wide memory reset had to remain an unrealized fantasy. But thinking about it in great detail—imagining how I might be able to start over, avoiding fairies and demons altogether—got me through geometry that morning.
When I walked out of the class, Mason was leaning against the wall and smiling at me.
“Ready to run the gauntlet?” he asked.
“Huh?” I said. It was perhaps not my wittiest retort ever, but I deserved some slack—after all, I’d been ill.
Mason just smiled. “I thought I’d walk you to class, maybe shield you from some of the fallout from the rumors.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I’m not sure being seen with you is going to help my reputation all that much.”
“Too late,” he said. “Your reputation’s trashed.”
I froze and stared at him, my eyes huge. “I can’t believe you just said that!”
He turned his blinding grin on me. “Really?” he asked. “Oh, well. I can’t take the word of a slut like you seriously.”
I hit him on the shoulder with my geometry book. “You bastard,” I said loudly enough for people to turn and look at us.
Mason just grinned wider. “Tramp.”
I hit him again. Harder. “Fairy,” I hissed.
“Trollop.” He leaned in close and waggled his finger at me. “Next, you should try calling me homo. But not ‘sapiens’. Homo demonicus,” he whispered. His smile danced brightly in his eyes.
And suddenly I was laughing harder than I’d laughed in days. I leaned my back against the wall and gasped for breath, sliding down to a squatting position on the floor.
“You’re kidding, right?” I finally managed. “That’s not a real classification, is it?”
“Hell if I know,” he said, tugging at my arm to pull me upright. “So to speak. Get it? Hell?”
I groaned. “That’s just awful, Mase.”
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you to class.”
I was still smiling when we got to the classroom. Mason reached out and squeezed my hand before heading off to his own class. Josh was staring at me from his seat, but his gaze was neutral and flat.
“Hey, Laney,” he said. His tone matched his stare.
“Hey, Josh.” I tried to match his nonchalance.
Ally looked back and forth between the two of us, avidly soaking up every nuance she thought she saw. I decided right then that I really did not like her very much.
Lunch was an ordeal. Ally and Natalie sat together and whispered through the entire hour. Scott sat next to Natalie, as always. Sarah sat next to me, but we didn’t talk much. Andrew huddled between the two groups, looking miserable. As far as I could tell, Sarah was the only one who might be trying to think the best of me.
At least, that’s what I thought until we got to history class. Then she leaned over and whispered, “So what’s really going on?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“What
are you doing with Josh and Mason?”
I felt my cheeks flame. “That’s none of your business.”
“I’m the one who showed you what they were doing in the first place. You have to tell me what’s going on.”
I shook my head. “Sarah, really, it’s nothing. I’m just . . .” I paused for a long moment. “Just dating them.”
“Really?” She sounded skeptical.
“Really.”
She threw herself back into her seat with a thump and crossed her arms. She spent the rest of the class period glaring at me.
And that pretty much set the tone for the rest of the week. Josh and Mason took turns walking me places. Everyone else avoided me. I stopped eating lunch with Andrew and his friends. Instead, I sat on the bench outside the gym every day and ate my brown-bag lunch as quickly as possible, wishing that either Josh or Mason shared a lunch period with me. In the afternoons, Mason and I sold ads. And every day when he dropped me off, he gave me a long, slow kiss that made my toes curl and left me breathless.
But he never kissed me unless we were somewhere Kayla would see us.
Mom left to go on her next trip—this one would take almost two weeks—but before she left, she sat down with me and John and gave us each a typed sheet. It had a list of rules on it: when I should be home, what I was allowed to do, and what chores I was expected to do around the house. And at the bottom of it was a statement that any punishment John might want to hand out (like, say, grounding) would go through Mom first. Then she made us sign it. John actually grumbled about it more than I did. I hadn’t been thrilled with the idea originally, but I liked that she had taken my complaints about John’s heavy-handedness seriously.
Like I said, Mom might be an airhead sometimes, but there are some things she’s really good about.
So at least my home life seemed less likely to blow up. Kayla and John did have a fight because her curfew was earlier than mine. I retreated to my room for that one. Not surprisingly, Kayla got her way in the end.
And I managed to go all week without seeing either Bartlef or Biet.
On Thursday, Sarah tracked me down at lunch and sat on the bench next to me. She pulled out her own sack lunch and starting eating it.
“Listen,” she finally said. “I’m really sorry about bugging you so much about Josh and Mason.”
I murmured noncommittally.
“It’s just that I really, really wanted to find out what happened to Quentin.”
“I can understand that,” I said.
“Can we start over?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She held out her hand to me. “Hi,” she said. “My name’s Sarah. I know you don’t know many people other than Josh and Mason yet, so I thought I’d introduce myself.”
I smiled and held out my hand to clasp hers. “Hi, Sarah. I’m Laney.”
We ate the rest of our lunch in companionable silence. After that, she joined me every day. We didn’t venture back into the cafeteria that week.
In yearbook that same Thursday afternoon, Mr. Carlson assigned me to take pictures of the football game Friday night.
“What about the pep rally?” I asked.
Everyone in the room turned puzzled stares toward me.
“You know,” I said, waving invisible pom-poms. “Pep Rally? Everyone in the gym? Sis, boom, bah? Go team?”
Kayla flipped her hair behind her head and said “It’s an away game,” as if that explained everything.
“And?” I asked, drawing the word out.
“We don’t have pep rallies before away games.” Her tone was that of someone patiently explaining the obvious to an irritating and rather slow child.
“Mmm,” I said in my most sarcastic, pretentious voice. “Thank you, for I am a stranger in your land and know not your ways.”
Mr. Carlson laughed. So did Mason. Everyone else looked at me like I’d just announced that I would be growing an extra head soon. Texans take their football way too seriously, I thought.
“Since it is an out-of-town game,” Mr. Carlson said, “do you need me to see if you can ride on the bus with the cheerleaders or the drill team?” The thought of Natalie in her short skirt snarling at me for two hours straight sent a shudder down my back.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I’ll find another ride.”
“Are you sure it’s a good idea for you to go to the game by yourself?” Mason asked after we were in his truck. “I’ll be on the bus with the rest of the team and won’t be able to help you if something happens.”
“And you think I’d be safer on the bus with the cheerleaders and drill team?”
He leered and opened his mouth to say something, but I held my hands over my ears. “No! I don’t want to know what you’re about to say!”
He just laughed, so I lowered my hands. “I’m going to see if Josh will take me,” I said.
Mason nodded. “You two be careful, okay?”
“We will.”
I actually said that we would be careful.
I clearly didn’t understand the whole concept of jinxing something.
* * * *
Josh picked me up at my house late Friday afternoon. We headed out to the highway, but not, of course, without stopping by Sonic to get food and drinks first. “It’s officially now our tradition,” Josh said.
“What is?” I asked.
“Sonic for our dates.”
“Is this a date?” I asked.
“Well,” he said with a shrug and a smile, “we’ve been to Sonic. I guess it has to be.”
I smiled back at him and contentedly sipped my limeade.
We’d finished eating before he spoke again.
“There’s something you need to know,” he said. His tone warned me that I wasn’t going to like it.
“What?” I asked warily.
“The team that we’re playing tonight?”
“Yeah?”
“The guys who kidnapped you for Biet are probably from their school.”
My eyes grew wide. “What? Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”
“We weren’t sure until today. Mason got hold of the other team’s roster for us, and found out that a couple of guys named Eddie Cahill and Pete Ramsey have been removed from the team. And a third guy, Cory Sims, is on the team. We think those are the three we fought with.”
“And Sims is still alive,” I said.
Josh nodded. “He may be out for revenge tonight, so I’ll be watching your back.”
“Why bring me at all?” I demanded. “Am I bait again?”
“No,” he said. “At this point we’re just trying to keep Bartlef happy until we figure out what’s next.”
I shuddered at the thought of Bartlef. “Have you seen him lately?” I asked.
“Only at school. I’ve kind of been avoiding him, to tell the truth.”
“The next meeting is Sunday, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Think we’ll get all this figured out by then?”
“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I sure hope so.”
We didn’t talk much for the rest of the drive.
Once we’d gotten to the game, I spent the first quarter wandering around taking crowd shots. The teams were playing in the stadium that belonged to a small local college; the seats were filled for the high school game. I was about halfway down the aisle of bleacher steps, and had pointed my camera back up at a group of students above me, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I snapped the picture and turned around.
It was Kayla.
Great.
I just stared at her.
“You’re not going to get away with this, you know,” she said.
“Get away with what?”
“Ruining my life. Being such a slutbag.”
I sighed, turned away from her, and started back up the stairs. The camera bag tugged at my shoulder; carrying an iron spike around all the time gets tiresome. But I was seriously beginning to consider using it on Ka
yla. She might not have a problem with iron, but I was guessing the pointy end could do some damage, anyway.
“I told your mother, you know,” she called out. “About you and Josh and Mason.”
I ignored her and kept moving.
Bitch.
The next time I saw her, she was in the stands with the drill team, whispering with Natalie. They were looking at me and pointing.
God, my life reeked.
I looked around for Josh and found him staring out over the back side of the stadium, away from the game. He smiled when I came up beside him. We looked down at the townspeople spread out around us.
“How do I get down to the field?” I asked.
“I’ll show you.” He took my hand and led me down the steps and around to the sidelines, so I could take better pictures. Then he faded back and leaned against the wall of the stadium seats. I slung my camera bag to the ground beside him.
Some guy from Fairy made a touchdown and the stadium crowd went ballistic, screaming and yelling.
Way too serious about their football, I thought again.
By half-time, I was totally into the game.
I know, I know. That’s what I get for making fun of it. Karma’s a bitch.
Don’t get me wrong—football has nothing in it like the poetry and grace of baseball. And I still didn’t understand all the rules of the game, besides the obvious “get the ball to your end of the field and put it down” part. But there’s something to be said for guys in tight pants crashing into each other at full speed.
Football is much more exciting at camera eye level.
At half-time, the Fairy Hawks were up 15 to 7. I’d figured out that every touchdown was worth six points, so I wasn’t entirely sure how we’d gotten those extra three points—though I suspected it had something to do with one of our guys kicking the ball through the big Y-shaped bars at the end of the field at one point. I’d gotten a good shot of that moment, too, and I’d gotten some good pictures of the cheerleaders bouncing around on the sidelines. I was positioning myself to take shots of the halftime show when the drill team marched out past me. Natalie tossed a snarl in my direction as she pranced by, but by the time she got onto the field she had an enormous smile for her audience.
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