by Stacey Jay
“Ethan’s seen me without makeup before and he doesn’t care.” The thought made me feel mushy and sad all at the same time.
My boyfriend thought I was beautiful even when I was pale and bag-ridden, and I hadn’t even thought to call him last night. Not to mention the whole Cliff thing. In the cold light of day, I couldn’t believe I’d had a single more-than-friends thought about a dead guy, but I had. Which probably meant I was the lousiest girlfriend in the entire world. Ethan deserved so much better.
“I’ll just grab some lipstick and mascara from my backpack on the way to-”
“Um, no. You need more help than that. Go. Apply.” Monica snatched my coffee from my hands and steered me toward the bathroom. “I recommend base and extra bag and black-eye concealer.”
“Really, it’s no big deal, I-”
“Have you forgotten what today is?” My blank look must have assured her I had. “The sweetheart skate is tonight and you, my friend, have not sold a single ticket. That means you’ve got to hustle today, and no boy is going to buy a couples skate with a girl who looks like she dug her way out of a grave.”
“But… after all that’s happened, are we still-”
“The competition is still on. Dana called me last night to assure me the cheerleaders were still ‘in it to win it.’ She said Tabitha was going to be fine, and that they were going to dedicate their first halftime performance to her recovery or something like that. So go, hurry, or you won’t have time to-”
“Okay, okay.” I hurried into the bathroom and set to fixing my face, even though the last thing I cared about right now was beating the cheerleaders at fund-raising. A girl was dead, I was in the midst of World War III with my mom, and someone was trying to kill me. Even if our DNA breakthrough was going to clear my name, there was still a lot of bad crap going down. The fact that Monica was still interested in pom squad stuff was just… weird.
But then again, that was probably why she’d live a long and well-balanced life, easily juggling her paranormal and everyday activities and I’d be a complete basket case by the time I was twenty. After all, wasn’t that why I tried so hard to be normal? Because I could feel the Settler stuff slowly taking over, consuming me until there was nothing left of the girl I’d wanted to be before my power came back last fall?
I shivered and did my best to apply a thin line of eyeliner without looking myself in the eye. My face was freaking me out as much as my thoughts. I just looked so… hollow-empty in a way I’d never seen before.
The phone rang outside and I heard Monica talking softly. She stuck her head in the bathroom a second later. “Come on, time’s up. Ethan’s outside.”
“Just one second, I’m almost-”
“Nope, we’ve got to go. Both of us, and we’re not going straight to school.” Her grim tone indicated this side trip wasn’t going to be to the donut shop or Sonic for a sunrise smoothie. “The Elders have called an emergency meeting and our attendance is mandatory.”
“But Kitty and Barker took our statements last night.”
“Apparently there was a loose end or three we forgot to mention,” she said, the dread clear on her face as she grabbed her backpack from the floor. “And one of those loose ends told her mom quite a story last night.”
“Oh God, the kids.” Settlers were never supposed to let themselves or the OOGPs they dealt with be observed. It was the number one rule, the one we all learned from the first second we started drawing zombies when we were kids. Heck, it was why a lot of little Settlers were homeschooled. If you couldn’t get your power to summon Unsettled under control, you didn’t leave the house. SA was that serious about making sure our world and our job remained top secret.
“Elder Thomas’s nephew is in the same practice with Dr. Sampson and got an earful over the phone this morning. Apparently the doctor is thinking about taking her daughter to a psychiatrist and was looking for some good names.”
“Crap.” I followed Monica out the door and down the steps, shivering as the cold air cut through my borrowed sweater. It was freezing. Of course it would be freezing on the one day I forgot my coat. That was just my luck lately. “I didn’t even think. But surely they didn’t see much-we would have noticed if they’d been there the whole time. Wouldn’t we?”
“I don’t know. Guess we’re about to find out.” Monica gave Ethan a limp wave as he emerged from the driver’s side of his Mini Cooper, then she climbed into the backseat.
I, however, didn’t play it nearly as cool. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d hurled myself at him. I buried my face in his chest and sucked his familiar smell deep into my lungs, wishing I never had to move. As soon as I touched Ethan, any doubt that this was the only boy for me vanished. He was home in a way even Mom and Dad weren’t, especially right now, and I couldn’t believe I’d let myself even think about anyone else.
“Hey, it’s going to be okay,” he whispered, his breath warming my hair. “You and Monica aren’t in trouble. I think they just want to talk to you, let you know what they’re doing about the kids.”
“It’s not that, it’s just… everything.” I squeezed him tighter. “But I think Monica and I figured out something important.” I briefly filled him in on my and Monica’s powwow, but wasn’t surprised to see he didn’t look totally relieved.
“That’s great, but there’s still somebody out there-”
“Raising crazy zombies and trying to kill me. Yeah.”
“Hey, don’t worry. We’re going to figure this out.”
“Right. And once the DNA test comes back, and SA realizes they’ve been after the wrong person, it’s bound to get easier.”
“Exactly. Positive thinking.” He kissed the top of my head, and my heart did a tragic modern ballet in my chest. Why did it feel like this was the last time I’d ever be with Ethan like this? That after today, everything was going to change? “Listen, I was going to head to the hospital to check out the ICU, but I can-”
“No, you should go.” I reluctantly pulled my cheek from Ethan’s sweater. “The less time the Enforcers have to cover up whatever happened, the better. Until I’m cleared for sure, we can’t stop trying to figure out what’s going on.”
“That’s what I thought.” He cocked his head to the side, contemplating me with that same looking-through-you kind of look Cliff had given me last night. “Is there something else?”
“Um… no,” I said, squashing the urge to confess where I’d been last night, even though he hadn’t asked.
He would eventually, however, and I’d have to be ready with a feasible lie, or the truth, or some sort of hybrid that would keep my conscience quiet while concealing the fact that I kept summoning the same Unsettled dude over and over again. If I hadn’t had the sneaking suspicion my growing feelings for Cliff were in some way responsible for keeping him from his eternal rest, I would have just told Ethan the truth. After all, Cl
iff’s appearance might still have something to do with the weird RCs, and Ethan, as one of the only people trying to help me, should know that.
Then why didn’t I spill my guts? It wasn’t like I owed Cliff anything, and nothing had really happened. Nothing that I felt forced to tell Ethan in order to cleanse my sinful soul or anything like that. And wouldn’t it feel good to tell someone?
“About last night, I-”
“Tell me in the car. We’ve got to run. I stopped by your house and grabbed your backpack and coat so that will save a little time. I also stuck a new pay-as-you-go cell in the pocket of your coat. That way I can call you on a secure line.” God, he really was the best boyfriend ever. “But we have to hustle to make it to headquarters by six thirty.”
“Okay, we’ll just talk later then,” I said, secretly relieved. My intentions were good, but my resolve was weak. “I don’t want to share everything with the Monicster.”
“Though she’s been pretty helpful so far, hasn’t she?” he asked, looking very satisfied with himself.
I smiled and fought the urge to squeeze him again. He’s unbearably cute, especially when he gets that cocky little smirk on his face. It makes him look younger for some reason, like the boy I’d first met when I was five and he was eight. Truth be told, I think I’d started crushing on him right then, in a kindergarten, “I want to share my cookies with you” sort of way.
“I’d still share my cookies with you.” On impulse I stood on tiptoe, capturing his lips for a real kiss, not some early-morning peck. Immediately, my body felt shot through with electricity and my weary synapses fired to life. Kisses. So much better than coffee.
By the time we pulled apart we were both breathing faster. “Weren’t they animal crackers? That you’d already eaten the heads off of?”
“I think they were.”
He smiled, a mushy smile that took what was left of my breath away. “I’d still eat them, even all wet and spitty at the ends. I love your cookies and I-”
“God, get a room or give me a barf bag,” Monica shouted from inside.
Ethan and I smiled, but neither of us was embarrassed. There were just some things people like Monica would never understand, and mushy, cookie-sharing love like ours was one of them. I’d been an idiot to stress out about me and Ethan. Nothing-not my second-base anxiety and certainly not some dead guy-was going to get between us.
Yeah, but being dead or in prison for the rest of your life would probably-
“Let’s go.” I refused to acknowledge the inner voice of doom. Things were looking up. Monica and I had pretty much locked down a way to prove my innocence, Ethan had a lead, and by this afternoon we’d be that much closer to shutting the real zombie-raiser down and clearing my name. I was going to stay positive, no matter what.
CHAPTER 14
Beige was the color of despair. After twenty minutes sitting in a beige chair, staring at a beige table full of Settler Elders-most of them also dressed in beige-I was certain the awful color even had a smell. It was a sad, musty smell, like that of the ancient swimming pool locker room down at the Y, shot through with the sharper, metallic scent of fear.
Or maybe it was the Elders’ fear I could smell, and it had nothing to do with beige. Because they were all afraid. I could see it in the tight set of their jaws, in the hands that twisted into fists on top of the table. Just looking at them was enough to terrify me, even if they hadn’t just finished telling me and Monica the scariest story I’d ever heard.
“I assume you understand the seriousness of this matter?” Elder Crane asked, his nasal tone grating on my already raw nerves. But then, it was easy to get twitchy when you had just learned one or two screwups on your part could lead to the end of life on earth as we knew it.
Yep. The. End. Like, the BIG end. We’d just been informed that if the Settler world became common knowledge among the human population, Rogue zombies could eventually take over the world. That was what had caused the Settler-Resistant Undead in Europe all those hundreds of years ago and why Settlers had stopped working with human governments and gone underground. Whenever too many humans found out about zombies and the people who attended to them, Settlers started to lose their power over the dead. Before the development of hypnotism and, later, mind-wiping spells fueled by modern technology, there was no way to control the spread of information. Which meant there was no way to stop a zombie plague from destroying a village or, at times, whole cities.
In today’s information age, if a YouTube video got into the wrong hands, we could have a global epidemic on our hands in no time. It wouldn’t matter if not everyone who saw the thing believed in zombies or Settlers. Even a few hundred believers would be enough to put a serious dent in our magic.
We were like the opposite of Tinkerbell. We needed people not to believe in order to maintain our power and keep Rogue zombies from infesting the world like packs of rabid, rotting dogs.
Yet Monica and I had allowed at least three people to see us in action, little people with big mouths who had told the tale of what they’d seen to every grown-up who would listen before SA had finally gotten wind of what had happened and sent out Enforcers to contain the situation. Now they were just praying they’d gotten to everyone and cleared the memory of last night from their minds before the Settlers of the greater Little Rock area began to lose their power and Arkansas was sucked into the grips of a zombie plague.
And it was all our fault.
So much for staying positive.
“Yes, I understand,” Monica said. “And I swear I’ll do my best to make sure this never happens again.”
“Absolutely. I mean, I’ve always taken the rule seriously, but now… yeah,” I added, wincing at my stunning lack of coherency. Not that it mattered. None of the ten Elders sitting around the meeting table spared me a glance.
They’d steered clear of any discussion about my possible involvement in the zombie raisings, but their unspoken belief in my guilt hung in the air. It made me wonder why they’d even bothered telling me what they’d told Monica. I guess they thought the news would convince me to change my evil ways and quit raising super zombies with black magic and risking the exposure of the Settler world. After all, not even super-big bad guys want to live in a world populated by violent Rogues.
Rogues weren’t the same as black-magically raised corpses, but they were still very bad news. Any Unsettled who was out of their grave long enough could go Rogue. After an hour or two, if they didn’t make contact with a Settler, the typical Unsettled lost their power of speech and reason and began venting their frustration with whatever was still bothering them from their human lives by wrecking everything in their path.
Rogues could kill people, destroy the peace, and basically make the world a te
rrifying, unlivable place if there were no Settlers around to take care of them. Considering nothing could kill RCs, the only way to get rid of them would be some sort of explosive, and as soon as the police or army or whoever took care of one batch, there would be another to take its place. After all, people would keep dying, and those dead people would keep having issues and rising from their graves. Without Settlers, Rogue numbers would get out of control and the world would be plunged into the midst of a zombie epidemic.
I, for one, thought this would be something good for Settlers to know from the get-go. With so much at risk, why did SA feel the consequences of exposure were something to be concealed until there was no choice but to drag people like Monica and me into their secret beige meeting room and scare us half to death after we’d screwed up? It made about as much sense as extremely conservative parents not telling their daughters about the consequences of sex until after they were already pregnant. Shutting the barn door after the horse was loose, much?
But then, I was beginning to think SA wasn’t nearly as smart as they believed themselves to be. Our remaining undiscovered for so long seemed due more to humanity’s tendency not to see things they didn’t want to see, rather than cleverness on the part of Settlers’ Affairs.
“I want to be certain you both understand the facts as they have been presented.” Elder Crane stared at us, his watery blue eyes drilling a hole in the air above our heads. He didn’t do eye contact, but Elder Thomas did.
Her eyes met mine and I wished I could sink through the floor. If I never saw another accusing glare in my life, I would die a happy girl. I couldn’t wait for the chance to talk to Kitty about the DNA test and be on my way to being Miss Goody Two-Shoes again. “If our world and our work were to become matters of common knowledge, our power to Settle the dead would fade and eventually disappear completely.”