A sane one? A living, breathing uninjured one, perhaps? A coward . . . like. . .
I heard laughter in the back of my mind, just like back when. . .
No! I was not falling into my own personal black hole, not now.
“I’m going to get a closer look,” Phil said, starting for the hall. “You two sit tight until I assess the situation.” She gave us one of those patented adult looks that clearly said we were to remain hidden in the warded safety of the chem lab.
So, of course, I was on my feet the moment she slipped out the door. “We need to do something, Gary.”
“Are you kidding? That guy just ate the janitor.” But he was talking to my back, and I was already walking. “Jessie, what are you—?”
I whirled around to face him. “Look, if I really am the shiny one, then this is my duty. This is my destiny. Right?”
His lip quivered.
“Come on, Gary, help me out here. Tell me I’m right.
“J-Jess,” he stammered, looking away.
“Listen, either it’s destiny or it’s crap. No matter what, I need to know.” Wow, those words came out way calmer than the butterflies in my stomach would have predicted.
“But wouldn’t it be better to find the answer on something a little less murder-y?”
“It doesn’t work that way. I think this is my Uncle Ben moment. If I don’t make a stand now, I’ll always know deep down that I’m not worthy of being chosen.”
“But we’re not prepared. I mean, do you even know how to kill a vampire?”
“Stake through the heart?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Good to know the movies aren’t total bs.”
“There’s beheading, too. Oh, and silver works really well.”
“Did you bring any silver, Gary?”
“No.”
“Then who cares? You go find Phil. I’ll try to stall him or something.”
“But—”
“Or you can come with me and, I dunno, cast a fireball. Can you do that?”
He looked away. “Not really.”
“Then Plan A it is.” He tried to protest again. “Go find Phil! I mean it.”
I could see the nerve I struck all over his mottled face. Still, he didn’t argue anymore—only slunk into the corner and pulled something out of his pocket. With all the weirdness tonight, a phone wouldn’t have been my first guess, but whatever worked. “Just don’t do anything stupid,” he warned as I slipped outside.
“Who? Me?”
Talk about famous last words. Not quite the epitaph I wanted on my tombstone.
What the heck was I doing? I didn’t even have a weapon. Think, Jessie, think! That monster was still in the back main hall as far as I knew, but he’d come from the auditorium. That seemed as good a place as any to start.
I slinked along the lockers until I found the band room. Please be unlocked, because otherwise this was going to be embarrassing . . . Bingo!
I spied rows of heavy music stands, plenty of folding chairs, and even a tuba in the corner. Despite the appeal of bludgeoning a terror of the night to death with a tuba, I had to give it a hard pass. Save that sort of thing for the zombies . . . if they were real.
In the percussion section, I struck pay-dirt, sorta. I picked up a drumstick, snapped it over my leg—after a couple of tries—and voila, instant Buffy.
Wait, was I really contemplating stabbing a drumstick into some dude’s chest? It was amazing the things that stuck in your head right before facing off against ultimate evil.
It’s now or never, Jessie. Tonight, we find out exactly what you’re made of.
A memory from a few years earlier hit me, insisting I already knew what I was made of. Gah! Anxiety could be such an asshole some days.
I pushed it away. That was then. This was now, a whole different type of freak show. “Have some confidence in yourself, Jessie. Have some faith.”
My feet finally moved, and I crept towards the door. The chill in my guts transferred into all the hairs on my arm standing on end. Did I just get an honest to goodness bout of Spidey-Sense, or was this just how sane people reacted to near certain death? If I survived this, I’d have to remember. Regardless, my instincts were screaming that something was out there, something nasty. I guess there was only one thing left to do.
Here we go. I stepped into the corridor, facing the vampire still staring wistfully at the trophy case. “Excuse me, but I don’t think you have a hall pass.”
Chapter Fourteen: Chosen…Crap
Which brings us to the here and now . . . me, blessed with glowing hair and trying not to heave my guts out on a warehouse rooftop.
I flopped against the edge of the building, letting the cool breeze smack some sense into me. Bright red streaks fell in front of my face. I glared over at Phil. “Well, are you going to answer my question or not? Who chose me?”
“Would you believe me if I said the universe?” Phil puffed on her cigarette. “Don’t give me that look.”
I was about to tell her what I thought of that theory, but then the hair in front of my face raised a slightly more practical concern. “Phil! My wig is back there. The fire alarm! The cops will be swarming the place. What if . . . what if my dad finds it?” My heart raced. Go figure. Burning vampires with my hair, that I could handle, but Dad finding out—
Phil shook her head. “If your father is a first responder to a vamp on vamp attack in the Boston metro area, then we have bigger problems than we thought.”
“What do you mean, vamp on vamp?”
“That janitor,” she said. “There was no body left—just a pile of dust in his mop bucket.”
“That’s not normal,” Gary said, stating the obvious.
I raised a brow. “A vampire janitor? Really? That makes no sense!”
“Welcome to the supernatural, dearie,” Phil said. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“Maybe it was a question of bad timing,” Gary replied. “Coincidence, like we thought.”
I shook my head, remembering what the vamp had said to me. “No. Captain Featherhead back there told me he was looking for a ginger bitch.” I held up a lock of my hair. “Lindsey called me that the other day. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think she’s in league with that bloodsucker.”
“That seems . . . like a bit much over just Tony Castor—” Gary’s phone chimed, and I felt mine buzz in my back pocket at the same time. He pulled his out and looked down at it. “Looks like school is cancelled tomorrow while they investigate the break-in and fire alarm.”
I pulled mine out. Sure enough, the school alert system had sent me a message, too. It was followed, roughly three seconds later, by one from my dad letting me know the news and asking if I’d heard. Holy crap. This was supposed to be a training run, but now everything was getting out of hand. If they found my fingerprints at the scene of the . . . um, dusting, I guess. . .
Phil was apparently a step ahead of me there. “Time for a little magic, Gare-bear. You need to swap Jessies and then tell Julius to meet me at the school.”
“But—”
“Shove the death braid into a hat for now. We’ll fix the rest.” Phil walked over and put a hand on my shoulders. “You need to lie low until we have some answers. And hey, cheer up. You have tomorrow off. Think of it like a snow day.”
“A snow day?”
“With vampire ash instead of snow.” She threw me a wink, then disappeared in a flash of light. Poof!
“I am never going to get used to that.” My back seized as I tried to stand. Damn, that bloodsucker had hit like a truck. Why didn’t my superpower package come with regeneration or invulnerability? I limped despite my best efforts.
“Are you okay?”
“I think the adrenaline is finally wearing off. Oof!” I made it three steps before I had to stop to grab my spine. Pain surged in my body, but a moment later it seemed almost unimportant compared to what was happening on my head. My follicles were heating up. “Um
, Gary, my hair is acting up again.”
Pure energy flowed from my head into my shoulders and back. I fumbled to unzip my hoodie before it could burst aflame.
Gary stammered something—probably about the fact that I was yanking my T-shirt up on a rooftop in the middle of November. Whatever the case, I was too mesmerized by the glow pulsing under my skin to pay attention. Holy invasion of the body snatchers, Batman.
I plopped onto my butt as the heat combined with the pain. There’s no shame in crying when a thermonuclear reactor decides to go off next to your spine. Too bad I didn’t have the good graces to pass out.
“Jess!”
“Oww,” I said as the heat finally began to fade. “Note to self, don’t get injured . . . it really hurts.” Except it didn’t anymore, at least not like it had.
Gary pointed a trembling finger at me. At first, I thought it was because I was sitting there wearing only a sports bra, but then I saw it. Out of the corner of my eye, I spied my hair, but the fire had gone out. It was back to its natural chestnut brown. Slowly, surely, the last of the pain in my back subsided and understanding began to fill the hole it had left behind.
It was hard to believe, but somehow I’d drained my own batteries to heal myself. “Least I don’t have to worry about a wig,” I quipped, pulling myself back to my feet. I still felt a bit of warmth radiating from my spine, but the worst seemed to be over.
“Your hair! It’s—”
“I noticed. Look, Gary, it’s been a heck of a night. Enough Super-Jess for now. I need to lie down for a few.”
Gary’s sedan made for a perfect twenty-minute nap spot and I only came to as Other Me climbed into the back seat. I waved weakly to my Uncle Jimmy who thankfully didn’t seem to notice that I was suddenly sitting up front.
“Tonight was. . .” Gary started.
“I believe the colloquialism is shit-show?” Other Me offered. Wow, I sounded strange when I was all British and vulgar. “Philomena has been messaging me for a while. What took you so. . . Jess, your hair!”
“I get that a lot.”
Gary filled Julius in on everything we knew, which really ended up being a long summary of mostly what we didn’t know. A quick detour to Southborough later and Other Me tore off in a Jeep. Hopefully he wouldn’t get a ticket while wearing my face.
Meanwhile, I had the common decency to text my dad and ask if Gary could hang out. There was no way I was getting back to sleep, no matter how beat my body felt. My jaw dropped as I got a quick, “Sure that’s fine. Just stay downstairs,” in response rather than a load of questions. Dad must’ve been busy, but I wasn’t about to look that gift horse in the mouth.
“Do you feel any different?” Gary asked, eyes still locked on the road.
“Other than sore, exhausted, confused, and generally drained . . . nah. I don’t have some progress bar in the corner of my vision telling me my glowing hair charge, if that’s what you mean. Maybe I’m a one-trick pony after all.”
“Are you sure you want me to come in?”
“There’s no school tomorrow and I could use some company while I wallow in superhero movies and microwave popcorn.”
“Okay. I just thought you might want to be alone . . . or something.”
“You’re right, and I choose ‘or something.’ Come on in.”
♦ ♦ ♦
I put on my best derpy smile as the movie ended. “So, do you want to talk about what happened tonight, or would you prefer we watch the 1979 version of Captain America again?”
“Please, God, no.”
“I’ll admit, I had a crush on Reb Brown when I was a kid . . . for maybe five minutes.”
He looked at me strangely, then changed the subject. “I’m still processing it all. I’m a mage in training and this was pretty weird, even by my standards.”
“Do you think Phil will find anything?”
“With Julius’s help? If anyone can find out anything, it’ll be them. I just hope my aunt doesn’t leave any cigarette butts behind.”
We both laughed, but then I turned serious as the reality check totally got cashed in my brain. We had been in danger, real danger. “Listen, before I chicken out and force you to watch another seventies Marvel movie, I just wanted to say thank you . . . for not abandoning me back there.”
“What?” Gary replied all wide-eyed. “Why would you even think we’d do that?”
I considered my next words carefully. After all, what was a superhero story without a deep dark secret? Problem was, I’d always hated those. If the hero had only confided in those closest to them, it would have usually saved them a lot of grief down the line. That settled it. Not every aspect of my life had to be a trope. “It’s . . . a long story, and kinda awkward, okay?”
There came an uncomfortable silence, which I took to be my cue to drop it. I got up and reached for the 1978 Dr. Strange—it was a good night for awful movies—when Gary cleared his throat.
“What happened to you? I want to know why you’d think we’d just abandon you . . . to fight a vampire. I mean, yeah, some mages can be elitist assholes, but we’re a team.”
I meant to sigh, but it came out more like a horsey noise. Whatever genius claimed that talking about problems somehow made them better clearly never suffered from word vomit like I did. What could I say? What should I say?
Dude, fuck-face here is making a move on Backdoor Jess. He must’ve heard—
“I’m used to my friends letting me down.” Oh boy, the words were starting to flow. There was no stopping them now. “I had friends before, but it didn’t work out.”
“Didn’t work out? I’m getting an understatement of the year vibe, Jess.”
“There was a guy I liked, Milo from the Debate Club. I said a few gushy things to some mutual friends and they thought it would be funny to post them online. If it had just been that, I would’ve felt hurt, but it wouldn’t have been a big deal . . . but it snowballed. Other students found out and kept piling on.”
“What did they say?”
“Things . . . about stuff I didn’t do, but nobody seemed to care. They just kept escalating it.”
“How?”
“Let’s just say, you’ve heard already heard my nickname.”
“Nickname . . . what. . .” He trailed off as realization hit. “Oh.”
“Oh is right. I used to be Jess the Mess back in grade school, but that was stupid, just teasing because my hair tended to have a mind all its own. But from then on I was Backdoor Jess, and suddenly I missed being a mess.”
“You’re not a mess.”
“You haven’t heard the rest. I told my cousin Dylan about it, back then we were both in the same school. He confronted Milo and his friends.”
“How did that end?”
“A bunch of black eyes, and a broken nose for Milo.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, and I ended up convincing Milo to tell everyone that I was the one who hit him.”
“But why would you—?”
“For Dylan. If a girl like me hits a guy, it’s a lucky shot—probation. Dylan was twice his size. That’s instant expulsion. I took one for the team and made it clear to Milo that if he told anyone otherwise, Dylan would do worse next time. Anyway, after it happened, I had to go to counseling. They thought I had anger issues because my mom abandoned me as a baby, blah blah blah. I quit taking martial arts as a sign of good faith, to make it look like I was turning over a new leaf and channeling my energy into more positive things. But even after all of that, I never stopped being Backdoor Jess. After that, I just found it easier to stick to myself and my family. No one can hurt you, if you don’t let them in.”
Gary flopped against the cushion, rubbing his temples. “People are assholes. But what about your Dad? Surely he must’ve—”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure he knows what really happened, but I think he also knows why I did it, and he can’t get involved anyway. It would look like he was abusing his power, and we can’t afford for him to
be suspended . . . or worse. It is what it is.” I trailed off, but then smiled. It had been the first time I’d talked about it with anyone, even Dylan. Go figure. Maybe confession really was good for the soul. Either way, this evening was taking a darker turn than I’d meant it. It was time to lighten the mood a bit. “I look at it this way. If I can endure Counselor Flake’s sensitivity training, the vampire apocalypse oughta be a piece of cake.”
“You’re not the only one,” Gary said after a few minutes, just as the opening scene of the original Dr. Strange was starting to play.
I turned down the volume. “What was that, Gare-bear?”
“You know I hate that nickname, right?”
I smiled and he rolled his eyes.
“I meant you’re not the only one with trust issues.”
“Oh?”
Gary slumped deep into the couch. “I’m not supposed to talk about it. No one outside of our circles is supposed to know, but there’s a reason so many Magi are in covens. We’re more powerful when we team up. Some of us are like gasoline, and others are more like the spark plugs. Only the most powerful mages can do both. Aunt Phil, for example. She’s beastly, and I’m not just talking about her hair. If she had better people skills she could probably take over Salem Coven one day, but. . .”
“There’s always a but, isn’t there?”
“That’s her, not me. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to travel—meet magical creatures, see lost civilizations, that sort of thing. I want to be someone like Harry Decker.”
“You mean Harry Potter?”
“Decker,” he corrected, a whimsical look in his eye. “He’s only the most awesome wizard on the East coast. He’s a coven master in New York City, a real big deal. He was a guest speaker at Amherst, talking about the future of magic. His coven is full of the best and the brightest, and he’s egalitarian, too. Most of the mages he recruited during his visit were young women.”
That sounded more like a harem than a coven to me, but Gary wasn’t finished yet.
“I had a chance to speak to him and he told me I could do anything I set my mind to. He’s so inspiring—to me, anyway. Aunt Phil thinks he’s a crackpot, but she kinda has issues with everyone.”
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