I dressed more sensibly today. My bra felt looser, halleluia. I picked out a plaid skirt that hadn’t fit for two years, and I was able to zip and button it. Wow. My skirt covered my butt better, too, but I seemed to have a lot more bare leg. Well, where else was Delilah going to fit in all those new inches? I put on my Doc Marten boots instead of the funeral fuck-me shoes. In the mirror, I looked more put together and less squeezed into my clothes. For once, my hair did what I told it to do—a French braid thing that it had never been long enough for before. Hm.
I hadn’t done a lick of homework last night. I stayed in my room and slashed through each assignment until I heard my stepfather leave the house. It sounded like he was driving my mom to work today. Marital solidarity? Whatever. At least she wouldn’t be down there clucking over me until I left the house this morning. Win column again.
I felt pretty good.
I went downstairs and let the dog out. Then I ate muesli, a whole grain bagel, four toaster pastries, and drank two glasses of milk. Still hungry. I scrambled a couple of eggs. Oh heck, throw in another egg.
As soon as I’d chowed all that down, my skirt waistband felt looser. All right!
There wasn’t time to make bacon or sausages. I checked my wallet—I had enough for McDonald’s on the way to school, plus the lunch Mom had left me, plus leftover kohlrabi salad from yesterday.
At this rate, even the poop sandwich my life had become could help me get thinner.
I let the dog in and took off for school.
Stopping at McDonald’s almost made me late for homeroom. As soon as I slid into my chair the bell rang, and the PA came on, and Ms. Caisson announced that all the seniors would come outside please and line up for your buses.
Oh, right. Field trip. How could I have forgotten?
Lordy, I hate field trips. An hour in a bus, minimum, with my fellow students screaming and goofing off and playing their little tricks on me. The monitors never came farther back than the first three rows of seats. Already I felt like a trapped rabbit. Sweating, I dumped all my books in my locker, which left my backpack nice and light.
On the up side, I had rushed through all that homework, and now it wouldn’t be due until Friday. And today would be the Field Museum, which I always liked.
I got out to the buses too late to get a seat in the first three rows, which turned out to be a blessing. The monitors on this bus were my mom, and I could do without her sitting next to me and fixing my hair and picking at me in front of my classmates, and Mr. Dorrington. My blood ran cold. They acted like they didn’t know each other. I pushed to the back of the bus with my head held high and my eyes downcast.
The murmurs started behind me.
Some people were noticing that I looked taller and thinner.
As I turned to sit in the second-to-last row, I felt fingers on the back of my bare thigh. I froze. The fingers lingered—then went away.
My heart was hammering like the ocean in my ears. Calm down, Melitta. Use a weapon they can’t use against you.
I looked to my left. There on the seat were Bill Kummel and his two lunchroom friends. Bill sat in the middle. So it must have been his friend on the aisle, what was his name, Jacob something, who felt me up.
I looked at each of them, Jacob, Bill, his nameless smirking friend in the hair gel by the window, and Bill again. In my head I was imagining that I was already tall and supermodel-gorgeous, and they wanted me and they couldn’t have me. I imagined that I had come up with an amazing sexy succubus put-down that would crush them forever.
My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Nice work, imagination.
Okay, we’ll try for a mysterious put-down. “Bill knows better. So it must have been you,” I purred at Jacob. “You’re a sophomore, right? What’s your name?”
Of course he wasn’t a sophomore. He was on this bus, ergo he was a senior. Plus Bill would never be friends with a sophomore. So that was a pretty good put-down.
Nevertheless Jacob was looking pretty pleased with himself.
Bill didn’t seem to enjoy my attention. He swallowed and drew away from his buddy, as if that would protect him when the lightning struck.
Too bad I didn’t have any lightning. Yet.
“I’m Jacob Welfman, sweet thing,” Jacob leered.
Bill was now tugging on Jacob’s sleeve and whispering to him, “Lay off, lay off.” This succubus super-hearing thing was the bomb.
I nodded in what I hoped was a queenly way. “I’ll deal with you later, Jacob. Just hold that thought.” And I looked into his lap.
Jacob’s knees came together. He inched his hand across his crotch.
I rolled my eyes and inhaled, like, Oh, well, too bad. I sat down, pulled out my Tanya Huff, and lost myself in a better world.
An hour later, Sanjay Halong poked my backpack with a careful finger. “We’re here.”
I looked up. The bus was almost empty. I’d sat down next to Sanjay and not even noticed. He was trapped in his window seat because I was still between him and the aisle.
I shoved my book in my backpack and we left the bus.
My mom stood at the foot of the stairs and smiled at Sanjay. She thinks it’s really neato-keen that I’m so friendly with students of a diverse background. Like I’m doing them a favor by being white-ish in their vicinity.
I didn’t talk to Sanjay, but I didn’t totally ignore him, either. I sort of walked as if we were together without making it look like we were, you know, together.
Our busload trooped up the big staircase and in through the big brass doors and filed through the turnstyle held open especially for our school group and down the stairs to look at the Egyptian exhibit.
I loved that exhibit.
The docent giving us the tour was Delilah.
Delilah wore a khaki shirt and trouser set, like a uniform or an explorer’s outfit. On her they looked tight in a voluptuous way. Her dark hair was longer, down to her shoulders, and waved in a bouncy, semi-ethnic way, like, I’m a scientist so I don’t go in for fancy grooming. But her eyes still flashed superbly. She had on espadrilles the same color as the khaki set that jacked her up a couple of inches, so not scientific, but they added a sway to her walk—or maybe she did that on purpose. I studied her as she led us from sarcophagus to stele. She gave off sex appeal and authority at the same time. Hm. Worth learning, that.
While we were sketching copies of a few lines of hieroglyphs on the frieze in front of us, she came around and looked over my shoulder. “How’s it going?” Today, I was an inch taller than she was. Cool.
“It’s hitting the fan,” I said. “See that guy? My Soc teacher. He’s doing something to upset my parents.”
Delilah blinked. “How did you find out? Just think about it.”
I let yesterday’s drama pass through my mind again, the Mr. Borington moment and the aftermath in my mom’s office and the scenes at the dinner table and in my room.
Delilah’s nametag was indecipherable, I noticed. The letters kind of squirmed when I looked at them. I looked at her face instead.
She pursed her lips and whistled. “Okay, I can see this might be getting a little past you. Maybe it’s time you met the team.” She snapped her fingers. “Oh, and don’t mention my name to them, okay?”
I started to tell her that I couldn’t tell anybody anything.
A burst of feminine shrieks and laughter interrupted, echoing into our hushed corner of the Egyptology exhibit. Four girls about college age or a little older came clattering through the exhibit. They were in a great mood, falling into each other in hilarity, having a Proactiv-commercial good time. I could feel the scorn I normally use to hide my bitter envy rising up, making me squint.
“Look closer, chickadee,” Delilah murmured. “That’ll be you in a week or so. Now. Which guy is it again?”
Suddenly I could barely breathe.
That would be me?
My mouth fell open.
I heard Delilah say, “Listen, I
hate to abandon you at this stage, but I’m not supposed to intervene when a trainee inducts into her squad.” I looked at her, uncomprehending, then back at the spectacle of the invading beauties.
The girls cooed and exclaimed over the mummies, shouting to each other as they read labels aloud, having a swell time, totally ignoring us fifty high school students standing right there with our notebooks and pens and our dropping jaws. Individually, each was amazingly lovely. As a group, they were stunning. Tall, slender, dressed for a night club but not exactly slutty, with fancy tall shoes, their hair glorious in an array of tousled hot-babe styles, their makeup just right, their jewelry flashing. It was like seeing four movie stars in one place, within touching distance, and yet so far above me that I didn’t for a moment imagine that they could see me.
Delilah faded away from my side.
One of the girls whooped, “There you are!” She came teetering straight over to me on her stilty tall heels. Her wavy blonde hair swung like a shampoo commercial. She threw her arms out wide. Her arms were really long, like the rest of her. “Melitta, right?”
I shut my mouth and nodded.
She squealed. “Eeee!” She threw her arms around me and hugged me, pulling me up off my feet and swinging me from side to side. Boy, she was strong. “Dibs, you guys! I saw her first!” She set me on my feet and squealed some more. Her hands went to my hair. She took my pencil-holding hand and stretched my arm out so she could look me up and down. She cooed and squealed and fussed.
The other three came over to me, too.
I flamed hot all over with embarrassment.
All fifty of my classmates seemed to form a giant open space around us, me and the four babes. Over their heads, I could just see my mom and Mr. Dorrington in the back, shoved up against a sarcophagus by the crowd. I looked away. Holy poop.
The one who had dibs on me clapped her hands, and all other sound in the exhibit hall stopped. “C’mon, you guys. Let’s do this.”
Holy, holy poop. I was going to be kidnapped right here, right out of a field trip, under my mom’s nose.
Each beautiful girl gave me a hug.
“Welcome, Melitta!” each one whispered to me.
“Um,” I said into the sweet-smelling hair in my face. “I’ll have to be back on the bus by three.” When the fourth girl let go of me, I glanced across the exhibit hall to where my mom and Mr. Dorrington stood frozen like the statues around them.
The one with dibs flapped a hand. “We’ll explain to them.” She looked around at her friends.
“Oo, let me!” said the darkest-skinned one. She turned and scampered through my packed classmates. They parted like the Red Sea before Moses to let her through.
“Come on, Melitta. It’s time!” The one with dibs led me away.
I caught another glimpse of the dark one standing in front of the monitors, one hand on Mom’s shoulder and the other hand on Mr. Dorrington’s, explaining with so much body language that I could see Mr. Dorrington glazing over from twenty feet away.
My mom caught my eye over the other students’ heads. She looked furious.
Then we were through the exhibit hall door and clattering up the marble stairs together.
Well, I didn’t clatter. I had my Docs on. I was glad I hadn’t opted for the funeral fuck-me shoes today. Running that fast, I’d have broken my ankle.
They led me clear out of the museum, down the massive front stairway, and hustled me into a waiting stretch limousine. All four of them jumped in after me and flopped onto the limo seats. The limo door shut. We rolled off.
I was shaking.
“So who was the putz with your mom at the museum?” said one of the blondes. She was opening a bottle of champagne, while two of her friends plundered the drinks cabinet, their long legs tangling and the long, sharp spikes of their heels threatening to poke holes in everyone else’s legs.
The fourth was looking straight at me.
She was the one who looked brown. Not African. Maybe South Asian. I wondered at her staying brown, when she could have been white. Of course I was planning to keep my color. But that was more because I felt like a total Oreo, white clear through except for one half of my father’s complexion. Just brown enough to be an outsider.
“Where are you from?” I blurted. So the stupid thing to say.
She reached across the woman with the champagne bottle and offered her hand. “I’m Jee. Do you want us to call you Melitta?”
I blinked. Her hand was thin and warm and very well manicured. She had diamonds on two fingers—no wedding ring or engagement ring. “Uh, sure.” I hadn’t thought about changing my name. I hadn’t thought about changing anything. Besides everything.
“I’m from Indonesia. I was recruited two years ago.”
That shocked me. Two years ago she couldn’t have been a day over sixteen. “You must have signed up really young.”
She dimpled. “I haven’t aged a day since then.” She looked me up and down. “Transitioning gradually?”
“Trying to,” I said, relieved suddenly to have someone to talk to about it. “But I get so impatient. People don’t seem to notice I’m changing. So then I ask for another inch and another ten pounds off.”
Jee nodded. “Where’d you get the brown sugar? Your color,” she added more directly than I had asked, when I stared stupidly.
“My birth father is half black, half Polynesian. He’s in prison,” I added, Not that that made any difference to me. He had walked away from my mom without a word when I was two weeks old.
Jee just nodded. “Pog tells me you have a stepfather problem. Was that him in the museum?”
I flushed. I was beginning to realize what I’d bitten off when I signed with Delilah. These were my future roommates. They knew more about me than I knew about them. They were grown-ups—bound to be a lot older than I was, probably a lot older than they looked. What did I have in common with them?
Looking at Jee, I suddenly guessed that we had, at the very least, a stepfather problem in common. Or something like it.
“No,” I said finally. “That’s Mr. Dorrington, one of my teachers. He’s also a problem.”
The woman with the champagne turned to me and put a filled glass in my hand, then passed another to Jee. “Oh, right. That’s why we moved the extraction up a month. What do you suspect? Is he a blackmailer?”
I was shocked all over again at how much they knew of secrets that I myself had only known for one day. “That’s assuming a lot. My mom’s afraid of him. She’s the guidance counselor at the same school. My stepfather’s afraid of Mr. Dorrington, too, which is impressive actually. My stepfather is the psychiatrist for the whole school district. He’s pretty good at mindwhacking and breaking the rules himself.”
Wow, did I say that? Confused and embarrassed, I sipped the champagne. It was totally not sweet, but light and faintly spicy. The fizz seemed to fill my head.
“I’m Pog,” the champagne woman said. She handed glasses to the other three, who had found some chocolate truffles in the limo fridge and were chewing big, unladylike mouthfuls. Their red-painted lips were smeared with chocolate. “This is Amanda and this is Beth.”
Amanda was the husky one. She looked more like an Olympic runner, all big shoulders and strongly defined calf muscles. She just nodded.
Beth, the one who had called dibs on me, looked younger and sweeter, but when she spoke, I could hear authority in her voice, like Pog’s voice. That told me she was really much older than she looked. “You poor baby. You say the word, we’ll work this bastard over until he can’t see straight. He’ll never touch anyone again,” she promised. She sounded like an overprotective mom.
“I think I’ve got him handled,” I said hastily. “It’s Mr. Dorrington I don’t know about. I mean, he’s doing something to my stepfather and maybe my mom too. Although that may just be vicarious guilt on her part. She always identifies more with her husband than with herself. Whoever her husband is,” I added bitterly.
&nbs
p; Amanda raised her eyebrows at Jee. “Check out the vocabulary.”
Beth said, “Her mother’s a shrink.”
Jee just nodded.
“Understood,” Pog said crisply. “Always tricky, taking out blackmailers. They tend to have their asses covered.”
“Covered?” I made a face. Sitting in a car full of sex demonesses had my mind working on nakedness, and the thought of Mr. Dorrington’s ass, covered or uncovered, was too icky to dwell on. “I don’t know he’s a blackmailer. I just…wonder.”
“Usually they write down the particulars of whatever they’ve got on you—the thing you want kept secret—along with a note saying ‘Open only upon my death’ and leave it with someone they can trust to do just that. Someone their victims can’t identify or get at. That way, you don’t dare retaliate when they blackmail you. If we just take the fucker out, it could blow up in everybody’s face,” Pog translated. “Your mother and stepfather might be exposed.”
“Complicated,” Amanda agreed.
“More fun this way,” Jee said, showing her teeth. She was really beautiful. I hoped I’d be that beautiful when I finished becoming a succubus.
“Do you have any idea who he might be blackmailing—?“
“Upsetting anyway. Tormenting. I don’t know about blackmail.”
“—Besides your parents?” Pog said.
“No,” I said, “but I can find out.” An idea was forming in my head. “I’m already grounded. But I’m nineteen. I have no idea what I can get away with any more.”
Beth leaned forward and put her hand on my knee. Boy, she looked young. Barely legal. They all did. “I’ll tell you something, honey, that I learned when I joined the team. The things you can get away with? There are lots of them. And here’s the secret. You could always get away with them. Even before we gave you permission. You’ll be surprised how few rules there really are.”
“Make your quota,” I said, remembering Delilah’s list.
Beth’s look flew to Pog’s face.
“Speaking of which,” Amanda said, taking out her phone. “Anybody want to log stats from the museum visit?”
Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5 Page 42