Deep breath. Reassess. I put on my paratrooper pants with all the pockets and my Doc Marten boots over two layers of socks and three layers of underwear. I packed more underwear and socks, a couple of sweatshirts, my phone charger (stupid maybe but hopeful that Mom wouldn’t cut off my phone service), a non-electric toothbrush like they give you at the dentist’s office, some tampons oh god that’s next week, and sat down on the bed, my heart thundering, hearing the alarm go EeeeEeeeEeee downstairs.
Contingencies, Melitta. Think about them.
I pulled the notebook off the shelf where I keep Mom’s passwords and stuffed it in with my clean underwear. If the succubi weren’t all an illusion, I’d need their help dealing with Mr. Dorrington.
Because Mr. Dorrington was at the bottom of all this. I realized that now. Fear of him had driven Howard to force my mother to lock me out of the house. I couldn’t begin to figure out my problems with Howard, or Mom, until I’d dealt with my teacher.
I noticed I’d started thinking Howard’s name. I guessed I wasn’t as afraid of him as I used to be.
That calmed me right down.
I remembered my plan for finding out who Mr. Dorrington’s other victims might be. That meant packing for school tomorrow. I put all tomorrow’s textbooks into the Archimedes Owl backpack I’d used when I was ten. Then I put all my other textbooks in it, because who knew, maybe I’d get to finish high school after all, and also my tablet computer, and my savings account passbook. Then I moved the tablet and my passbook into the big pockets in my paratrooper pants. If I had to sleep on the street tonight, I wanted my valuables on my person. Phone, password notebook, wallet with my ID and money, all in the pockets.
Money. Would I find the succubi and get on hell’s payroll? Or would I be turning tricks or wearing a hairnet within a week?
Worry about that when it comes up.
My heart was really hammering now. Should I get a weapon? Howard had guns.
I heard car doors slam outside. Poop, Mom and Howard were home already. I bit my lip.
Then I heard the police radios.
Sigmund gave his one lonely haroo.
Quickly, I ran into Mom’s office. I logged onto her bank account and told it to pay my phone and internet for the next year, all in one lump. Since she keeps me on a monthly phone ration, as if I had two hundred friends and texted all day and all night, this was easy. I thought then of Pog’s suggestion about searching my stepfather’s accounts to find out if, what, and how he was paying Mr. Dorrington. Could I download statements?
Then I heard the cops coming in the back door downstairs.
I couldn’t be caught here in Mom’s office. I shut down her computer and went back to my bedroom. I sat on my bed with my giant heavy backpack over my shoulders and my Archimedes rolling backpack at my feet. As an afterthought, I picked up my stuffed Hedwig doll and held it tightly in my lap. Tears began rolling down my face again.
Here they came up the stairs.
When the cops found me in my room, I was bawling, clutching Hedwig to my chest.
It was a long, complicated afternoon.
First they searched me, but when they didn’t find any drugs or weapons, they left me in possession of my goodies—phone, notebook, bank book, wallet, tablet, and my now-useless house keys. Whew.
The problem was, I didn’t look like the pictures of me around the house any more.
Now I understood dimly what Delilah had warned me about.
“I’ve grown a lot lately,” I kept saying. “That’s why my stepfather is angry with me.” Then I would burst into tears again, because that was the opposite of true—and also, very true.
The cops sent for a truant officer, who turned out to be a lady cop in plain clothes.
“I believe her,” the truant officer said. “She fits the profile. She’s taking clothes and school books, for chrissake, Delaney.”
“She doesn’t look like this kid,” the uniformed cop said, holding out a four-year-old photo of me. “The homeowners won’t come back until she’s gone.”
“Fits the profile,” the truant officer repeated. “You must’ve really pissed off mommy and daddy, honey,” she said to me. “Let me call them.”
I held my breath.
That call took a long time. I cried louder and louder, while the truant officer argued with my mom or my stepfather, hard to know, because they refused to talk to me and they wouldn’t come home until I was gone.
She thumbed her phone on hold. “They say you ran away two weeks ago.”
“Why would she say that?” I said, gulping. “I was on a field trip this afternoon, and my mom was one of the school employees supervising the field trip, and we were in the Egyptian hall at the Field Museum and she watched me go out with—with my friends. Fifty of my classmates were there. They saw me. Ask any of them.” I hiccupped. “How can she say I’ve been gone for two weeks?”
“That was your father who said that.”
“My stepfather,” I said grimly.
The truant officer gave me a look so full of understanding and sympathy that I burst out crying again. She just said, “Okay.”
The uniformed cop stood in the doorway of my bedroom. “Doesn’t look like she took anything from the rest of the house.”
“Because she’s a runaway,” the truant officer snarled. She rolled her eyes. “C’mon, kid. I guess you’re going downtown.”
I dragged myself up and hauled my two backpacks out to the cop car.
In the cop car the truant officer said, “I talked to your mom, too. She says you’ve become a prostitute. She’s very worried about you.”
“She changed the locks on me,” I said numbly. “I don’t even know how to use makeup. She won’t let me.” The tears wouldn’t stop coming. “I just wanted to finish high school!” And then I was bawling.
“Oh, hell,” the truant officer said. She patted my back.
The police station smelled of disinfectant and annoyance.
At the police station they talked to me for a long time, the truant officer and another guy who I immediately knew was some kind of police shrink. They told me about the dangers of living on the street. I totally believed them, and I was already so scared, thanks to the made-for-school videos from Sex Ed, that I didn’t argue.
But they couldn’t get around the basic facts: my family didn’t want me back, and I was nineteen.
The truant officer said finally, “Do you have somewhere to go?”
“I think so. My friends have a place. They said I could have their spare bedroom.”
She shook her head. “All right. I’ll drive you there.”
Somehow I didn’t think the succubi wanted to get on cop radar for housing runaway schoolgirls, however street-legal I might be. “I can find it,” I said, a little quavery.
She gave me a Sex-Ed-video cop look. Then she shrugged. “Here’s my phone number. For heaven’s sake, call me if you ever think you’ll have to spend the night on the street.”
I nodded. “I promise.”
And, by golly, they let me go.
By now it was nine-thirty at night. I towed my Archimedes rolling backpack out of the police station, bent almost double under my real backpack, and walked to the commuter line. Then it occurred to me that the cops might follow me or watch me.
I took the commuter train one stop, got off, and transferred to the El. I took the El all the way into the city, transferred to the Ravenswood elevated line, and rode it up to Addison. From there, I figured I could walk up Ravenswood Avenue until I found the Lair. I was almost positive the Lair was toward the north end of Ravenswood. I remembered that the railway embankment across the street from the Lair had had flowers planted on it.
I hoped the Lair hadn’t vanished or crumbled to ashes like Delilah’s card.
What scared me the most was the thought that Delilah had abandoned me.
Was it all illusion?
Then I remembered how much I’d changed. Two inches taller, twenty pounds light
er, perfect teeth, no zits. I didn’t match my childhood pictures. This rolling backpack was killing my arms, in fact, because I hadn’t used it since I was a foot shorter.
And in fact, the reason I was in all this trouble to begin with was because I’d been changing. Because I mouthed off to Mr. Dorrington and set off...what? Because real succubi had dragged me out of a field trip and promised me a new life.
It was real, all right. My feet were burning and blistered, my back ached from carrying my backpack and my arms ached from switching that short-handled backpack from hand to hand, and I was hungry and cried-out until the entire inside of my body felt hollow, and my skin felt crawly-dirty from the smells of the police station. I kept walking.
Ravenwood Avenue looked different at night.
Let’s see, the train tracks had been on my left. We’d been driving north, right? Or south? Because if south, then I was on the wrong side of the train tracks and the wrong side of Ravenswood, which was neatly split, northbound vs. southbound, by the tracks.
I stopped in the middle of Irving Park Road, smelling bus exhaust, blinded by headlights as they flashed past me, and feeling the hot wind of the cars going by. Their drivers ignored the homeless runaway loitering in the middle of traffic.
But I’m not! I didn’t run away! I’ve been trying everything to stay in school and not abandon my family to their stupid problems!
For a spooky moment I felt myself lift out of my own body. I floated upward. Melitta huddled down there with all her possessions on her back, crying in the middle of the busy street. Heartache was bending her double. I felt a distant pity for her.
Out-of-body travel, succubus style.
I lifted higher. Higher. Soon I was up above the street, with car headlights flashing over Melitta down there. Now I was up above the orange streetlights. Up above the rooftops. I felt myself bobbing back and forth like an escaped balloon, buffeted by puffs of warm air from the street.
If I hit a plane, I might pop. No more problems.
Floating up here, I could see blocks and blocks of the train tracks and the buildings alongside them.
One of them had a round thing on top. Water tower? Air conditioner?
My succubus eyes narrowed and zoomed in. Hot tub.
There’s a hot tub on the roof, Amanda had said a lifetime ago.
I opened my eyes. I still stood in the middle of Irving Park Road. I straightened my back, which had stopped hurting. I grabbed the handle of my Archimedes backpack. I waited patiently for cars to go by, and then I walked north another block and a half. My feet didn’t hurt any more, either. At the door to a mangy-looking factory building, I pressed the bell.
“Oh, baby,” Beth said when she opened the door. “Let’s get you into a nice shower.”
“I want the hot tub,” I said.
I was incoherent for half an hour. They fed me again. They always seemed to be eating or about to eat.
Then we piled into the rooftop hot tub because, Pog said, I wasn’t sophisticated enough yet for the indoor spa. I didn’t mind even a little bit her saying that. I felt one big sigh and a sob away from four years old.
I told them what had happened. Then I told them my plan.
Beth clucked over me, horrified at my mom locking me out and sending me away without even talking to me. I tried to explain about my stepfather being a mindwhacky shrink and how he was probably behind Mom not wanting to talk to me, for fear she would weaken and take me back.
“Which kind of tells me that if it is blackmail, it’s all against my stepfather and not her. Because if she felt I was a danger to her personally, she would have no problem telling me to FOAD.” The hot tub was scalding, and the night air felt cold, even though it had been smog-smelly-summer-hot when I was walking up Ravenswood.
“Foad?” Amanda said.
“Fuck Off And Die,” Beth said.
“So,” Jee said briskly. “We get into Howard’s bank account. We scan his emails, his browser history. Where does he keep his personal computer? Not the one he uses for work.”
I writhed, although not as much as I had this afternoon.
Beth intervened. “You guys, this is Melitta’s family we’re talking about. It’s just another fun take-down for us. She’s freaking out.”
I sent her a grateful look. “Actually he uses my mom’s computer. Technically it isn’t Mom killing her computers. Howard is, uh, careless about internet hygiene.”
Jee laughed. “Internet hygiene? Like, he doesn’t use an electronic condom?”
“You don’t either,” Amanda said pointedly. “So you’re thinking, what, porn sites with trojans and malware?”
“I thought you said he didn’t use Trojans,” Jee said painstakingly, not a computer person apparently.
“Howard gets off on risk,” I said, swishing my hands in the cooling hot tub water. Maybe my demon body was getting used to it.
“As long as it’s someone else’s computer he’s crashing,” Amanda said drily.
Jee said, “We’ve got him there, even if we never do find out what Dorrington knows.”
“She hasn’t asked us to get her stepfather yet,” Beth said.
“Give her time,” Pog said.
“Can you get us into the house so I can look at the computer?” Amanda said. It occurred to me that she was putting all this laser-like effort into helping me, with my complicated problems, and I began to feel less creeped out.
I just wasn’t used to people helping me.
“I don’t have to,” I said. “I have Mom’s passwords, remember? I can log into the house network from a car down the block.”
The four of them stared at me.
“Won’t your mom change her passwords?” Jee said.
“I doubt it.” I snorted. “She tells the computer to remember them all for her. I keep the password book in my room. Howard’s idea of security is using someone else’s computer to troll risky sites.”
Jee leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees. “Will you trust me with the passwords?”
She was everything I hoped to become, brown and proud, beautiful and in control, rich and apparently utterly sure of herself. I didn’t know her at all.
“I guess,” I said helplessly.I reached over the edge of the hot tub and pulled the password notebook out of my pants pocket. “Don’t get it wet. It should be mostly permanent ink, but.”
“Don’t give it to me now. Amanda and I will work on it later.”
I put the password book back into my pocket. I really wasn’t comfortable with any of this. My plan was getting complicated.
Pog said, “I know this feels sudden, Melitta, but we’re on a tight timetable here.”
“I just wanted to finish high school,” I repeated. “Just two more weeks. I feel so dumb. Why didn’t I see this coming?” I added, hearing a wail in my voice. Overhead, a jet whined on its way to O’Hare Airport. My insides were making that noise.
“Who else can you call on here?” Jee said briskly. “We’ll need someone on the inside. School,” she clarified.
“I don’t have any friends,” I whispered.
“What about that that tall, fat Indian boy who was watching you in the museum?” Jee said.
I blinked. “Sanjay? Really?”
“He looked like he’d been kicked in the heart.” Beth. Mom for sure. “What did you do to him?”
“He threw a spitball at my face in Lit, and I poked a hole in his Big Gulp so it spilled all over his desk, and then I told him in lunch that he had to earn my friendship.”
Pog pushed her lips out. “Sounds like everything’s on schedule.”
“The reason I ask is,” Jee said patiently, “you may need a trusted go-between to relay messages for you. Because as soon as you do this, you will become the least popular person in school.”
“I already am—”
“Bullshit. You think you’re a target now? What about when Dorrington puts out the word that he wants you...punished?” Jee said, and my blood ran cold.<
br />
“I have to find more of his victims,” I said uncertainly.
“Why not just let us kill him with sex?” Jee said.
“Because,” I said slowly, hearing truth surprise me on my own lips, “I’m practicing for when I nail my stepfather.”
Nobody said anything.
“I’m not sure I want to, see? And if I get Dorrington, who everybody hates, and he’s making my mom miserable too, I can see how I feel about it. Because I don’t know my stepfather is messing around other girls.”
Jee looked at Beth and Pog.
“I think you can assume it,” Pog said.
They assumed way too much, seemed to me: Dorrington was a blackmailer, Howard messed over other girls. My experiment tomorrow might prove something.
“Go a little slower for her,” Beth scolded. “Are you saying,” she said to me, “that you wouldn’t go after your stepfather if you were his only victim, but you would if he’s doing it to others?”
I twisted my hands together. “Maybe.”
“Or,” she added sternly, “are you saying you’d rather not know if he’s doing it to others, because only then would you feel responsible for their safety?”
That hit me so deep, I couldn’t speak.
“Or maybe if you can harden your heart on Dorrington, maybe then it won’t feel so bad when you put your mother’s husband in jail,” Pog said.
“Or kill him. I like kill,” Jee said. “They sure as hell never do it again when they’re dead.”
Now I was positive that Jee and I shared a stepfather thing. Miserably, my eyes lifted to hers.
“They’re not fucking with your head,” Jee said kindly. “They want to spare you the moral pain of murder.” She took my hot-water-wrinkly hand. “I’ve killed my perps and I’m past it now.”
Pog said, “If you think being molested sucks, well, killing someone is next-level shit.”
“I thought you guys just had a lot of sex.” I swallowed something jagged.
“Sex is more complicated than that,” Amanda said unexpectedly. I’d forgotten she was there.
The other three looked at her like she had a squid coming out of her mouth.
Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5 Page 44