Malia Read online

  Jessica simply nodded. That wasn’t as bad as what her mother had told her earlier, but in its own way was close. Even if the girl had wanted to get with other men, she could have simply done it and not sent pictures. Or, possibly she could have simply broken up with Nick and not been creepy about it. Sure, he wasn’t the best-looking guy in the world or even in the room, but he wasn’t hard to get along with or anything. At least their few muttered conversations had been friendly enough, back in the day.

  For half a moment she kind of wished she was a bit sluttier, or at least more experienced. Then she could have blown the guy there in the library and really set the witch’s nerves on end. Jess was prettier than she was, even with her facial scar.

  She’d never done that kind of thing before though, not even in private, so wasn’t going to be starting then and there. Not even to help out a friend. What she could do, she thought, was let go of his hand, then pretend to laugh, as if he’d said something funny. That needed to be set up first though, since laughing at him being disrespected like that would be rude.

  Instead, she looked at him and let her face go serious.

  “Damn, that’s cold. Well, I’ll be your date then. Study date and only until two, since I have math class then. Still, that counts, right? Now, what’s this about me being your secret fantasy girl? Because if that isn’t a line, you really should have asked me out in high school. It might not have paid off, but then at least someone would have. You know how it is, my rep kept most of the boys away.” Really, all of them except for Nick and he’d always been polite and friendly, not romantic seeming.

  Now he was different. More confident, even if his last girlfriend had betrayed him pretty harshly.

  Pushing his glasses up with a finger, moving the textbook in front of him forward a bit, he leaned in.

  “Oh, sure. I mean it was pretty much down to you and Felicia Green. At the time I didn’t have anywhere near the guts to ask one of you out. I do now.” He paused. Then shrugged. “So, this weekend? It’s Friday, so short notice. Then, yesterday I had a girlfriend, so couldn’t have made plans without being a jerk. This is nearly perfect, given that, don’t you think?”

  She nodded, then, surprising even herself, let her head move up and down.

  “Um… Well, you already know I have mental problems, so that’s out there. That’s mainly… I have episodes. If you don’t mind me freaking out and standing there not moving for twenty minutes on occasion, we can do that. You can drive? Or we can take the bus. For some reason they don’t let people with seizure disorders operate giant death machines.” There was a shrug then. It wasn’t that kind of thing, but the DMV didn’t care. She regularly blacked out, so that meant no personal transportation for her. Not that she would have risked it anyway.

  There was a look then, his face going bland as he looked away. Not toward his ex, even if she had to have been the most important thing to him at the moment.

  “Yeah. I saw that a few times, in school. You seemed fine though, other than just sitting there blankly for a while. Almost everyone else did that kind of thing too, so it didn’t show as being all that different. It will when we’re in bed, so good idea, bringing that up early. If you go still like that, I’ll need to know it isn’t just me.” He grinned then, but didn’t take back what he’d just said.

  Jess just snorted at him.

  “Right. Isn’t it, I don’t know, a bit early to bring sex into things?” She seemed serious, even though she didn’t really mind. Dating was, in part, about finding someone to fuck. If you weren’t doing that, for women anyway, then you were just scrounging for a meal ticket.

  Clearly, men were supposed to be both, or they weren’t worth your time in the first place.

  Nick shook his head.

  “Nope. All the books assure me that the worse thing to do is get to know a woman first. At least if you’re looking to be serious and adult about things later. You bring up that sex is on the table, right off the bat, so she knows not to friendzone you. I also have to work on being more assertive and not so kind and loving. That’s what happened with Sara, I think. I was too nice to her, when, clearly, women secretly want to be with assholes.” He glared a bit, but not at Jess.

  Then he pulled his attention around and smirked a bit. That seemed to be a practiced thing. At least he hadn’t done it back at Elroy High.

  “Then, the books also mentioned not going on about what a bitch your ex was, in front of the better option. So, tonight?”

  That sounded right to her, if he were going to actually try to steamroll her into going out with him, then putting out. Awkwardly, of course, lacking all skills that way, but she wasn’t against the general idea. No one had really asked her out before. A few times it had seemed close to happening, but those hadn’t worked out, mainly due to her being both virginal and kind of a pain to be around. Dark and brooding. At least that was her old way. Now she simply smiled back.

  “I can’t tonight. Maybe tomorrow? My parents are having their weird coven over to do an exorcism on me, I think. On the good side, from the sound of it, they’re pretty freaky, so it should be entertaining. Goat sacrifices and things like that? A good time for all, no doubt.” She shrugged then.

  Nick scoffed a bit.

  “Not for the goat. Damn though… Even as a way out of a date that’s a strange thing to say. Still, we can do tomorrow night. I’ll come get you at six? Or, do you have a new place yet?”

  She just shook her head. Everyone in Elroy knew where everyone else lived. Jessica could even walk directly over to Nick’s house, without a map or an address. The place just wasn’t that big.

  “Still at home with the parents. They keep hinting that I should get out of the house though. Go to college or whatever. I was thinking of doing that next fall. Major in one of the sciences. Physics, maybe?”

  That got a nod, which seemed more serious. He didn’t leave the topic though.

  “I’m still in town, over at the Armsmen? That’s right, I don’t live in my mother’s basement at all. Revel in the sexy. So, you know, plan on coming back to my house after dinner. Even if we don’t do anything, being the first date, I need to show that I have resources, you know? I also have a car, so doesn’t that impress you with my ability to provide? Hmm?”

  He was laying it on a little thick, but Jessica had to admit it was kind of working for her. What with the ability to go places on his own and not needing parents to hold his hand constantly. Normally she would have been sarcastic about it, but let her head float side to side instead.

  “I’ll give you a seven on your delivery and… Call it an eight on the ability to provide? You’ll have to pay for everything, if you want that to stick. On the good side, I’m fine with King’s Burgers, so you won’t have to break the bank. Then, I don’t know, we can watch something at your place?” Unless they were driving to a different town. Elroy didn’t have a lot to offer. One movie theater, but she didn’t know what was playing and didn’t really want to go there, if at all possible.

  The woman who ran the concessions stand there was kind of unpleasant. Really, she was sort of famous for it. On the good side that didn’t seem aimed at Jessica in particular. Everyone who met her kind of felt like the woman was holding a personal grudge against them. Which didn’t make sense. She was Roxy and the theater had been named after her. The Roxy. Sure, some forty years back, but Jessica would have been happier about having a steady source of income than she seemed to. Especially if faking being happier meant more people would have come back.

  Nick nodded at her, his face seeming strange. Sexy, instead of pleasant or even cocky.

  It looked funny on him.

  “Nice. We can do something like that. I’ll meet you at six, then.”

  That was, most likely good enough. She nodded.

  “Unless I get sacrificed tonight. I don’t know what the deal is there. It’s probably supposed to be secret. I told my mom that I saw a floating, hairless, werewolf thing outside my window last ni
ght and she suggested that, you know, it might have actually been there. Probably not though.”

  There was a pause, and then a nod in her direction.

  “Seriously? Even if it was a dream, that’s kind of cool. That sounds dorky though. A hairless werewolf? Was it naked too?”

  Jess had to actually think about that for a second. She’d mainly stared at its eyes, which had been a softly glowing yellow color.

  “You know, it was actually really freaky. Scary, you know? It had thick, ropey veins on its skin, that kind of stuck out and these long teeth. No clothing that I saw, but… I think it might have just been the head and torso. I didn’t get close enough to see if it had arms and legs. It felt like there might have been a lot of them. Like an octopus or something? I stayed on the other side of the room. It was there for about a minute or two, so it didn’t just flicker out or anything. Finally, it faded.”

  She was willing to lie and claim that she’d just been dreaming, but Nick shrugged in her direction.

  “Like I said, that is freaking neat. I haven’t really seen anything like that. Not if we aren’t counting my brother. That wasn’t him though, since he’s pretty hairy. Half-brother, in case you wonder later why I’m so smooth and clean that way. Plus, I shave it all off.” He raised his eyebrows then, showing that not all the hair was coming off at least.

  Jessica faked a grimace.

  “Oh? Too bad. Hairy guys are like, really attractive. I guess I’ll have to meet up with him, then. Well, you can introduce us, once you realize that I’m a horrible person to spend time with.” She pulled her math book out of her bag and started to do some practice problems from the back. Her homework was done after all.

  That got a laugh.

  “Right. You were always going on with the studying. Besides, I was kidding. I have no brother. It’s just my mom and me. It was. Until I recently managed to get out on my own.”

  She remembered to reach out and touch him on the arm a few times. Enough so that, hopefully, he wouldn’t forget to come pick her up the next day. Really, after about an hour she’d forgotten that his evil ex was sitting about twenty feet away, watching them.

  Standing, she spoke in a stage whisper, meaning it would carry a bit, without really getting them kicked out for shouting or being too loud.

  “Tomorrow at six? I’m looking forward to it.”

  He touched her back, on the shoulder. It was a little forward, but managed not to seem too creepy.

  “Me too. See you then.”

  He didn’t get up to follow her out. Then, she was the one with the class coming up. That, thankfully, went fine. It was a lecture day, since most were in that class. After that, at about three thirty, she caught the bus back home. Once again it was threatening to rain. For the second day in a row, she didn’t have a coat with her.

  It was tempting to find a way to stay gone until eight, but the truth was, unless she wanted to go and walk by the river, brooding and angsting about how difficult her messed up life was, she didn’t have anywhere else to go for the moment. Thankfully, even if the wind that was blowing was chilly, there was no rain coming down on her while she walked. Her nice black boots were still a bit damp from the day before, but that was the price of fashion, she knew.

  After that, she stayed in her room, not planning to eat with her parents or anything cozy and genial like that. Except that she kind of needed some information, so made herself go out to sit at the table around five-thirty. Even if the day was going to be strange, her mother brought out bowls of food. Spaghetti and meatballs, with garlic bread and a green salad.

  She nodded, not thinking she could actually get herself to eat at the moment. A thing that, she had to consider, was going to start showing up to everyone else as anorexia soon. After all, she hadn’t eaten anything in two days. Just had a cup of black coffee and some water. On the good side, she didn’t want to be any skinnier, so when the bowls came around, she took some from each, then looked up at her father.

  He smiled back at her, a bit uneasily. That was pretty telling, really.

  “So, dad… What’s up with the creepy cult stuff? Summoning demons and teen girl sacrifices? That isn’t exactly what I would have expected, to tell the truth.” The words came out sounding like a joke at least.

  Rather than run with that line, even if it had been tossed to him, he shrugged.

  “Well, we don’t really sacrifice people. It’s ceremonial magic, not some kind of satanic thing. Meg mentioned that she’d told you about that. You um, saw something last night?”

  Jessica took a bite of spaghetti, which was good, and finally nodded, after an uncomfortably long silence. Then she went over the description again.

  “The whole thing took about a minute, maybe two. I probably still hallucinated it, but you know how it is… When you stare at something long enough, it starts to seem real.” She’d always found that anyway. Then, she only stared at real things, so could be wrong when it came to visions and things like that. Dreams as well.

  Reid, her father, made a soft sound in the back of his throat.

  “No, that sounds right. They all look different from one another, but I’ve heard of some that kind of have that basic look to them. Strictly speaking, they aren’t demons, though. Entities. Demon sort of implies evil, then, they really tend to be more amoral. Some aren’t good, though. Most of them aren’t, if we’re going to be up front about it. That doesn’t mean that they do things that interact with the human world all that much, unless entreated to do so.”

  Which had Jess finishing a bite of the buttery bread, then nodding.

  “So, there’s no real reason for it to have been at my window, unless it was sent to do that? Which one of you sent it then? Because I literally know like… Seven people. One of them I just met again today. Um, Nick, from high school?” That shouldn’t have meant anything to her parents, but her mother looked curious. A bit shocked, too.

  “Nick Walsh? I ran into his mother at the store in Folly, the other day. I haven’t seen her in… Well, a few months. What a small world.”

  Her father ate for a bit, doing it more slowly than normal, as if he expected his daughter to blow up at them, over their weird magical goings on. Which probably meant he understood things that she didn’t about the situation. After a bit, he spoke.

  “I don’t know who would have sent it, to be honest. It was clearly watching you. Normally things stay invisible for that kind of thing, but you’re clearly going to be a special case. Having been possessed once, like you were. That will almost certainly leave you more sensitive to that sort of being than most people are.”

  She blinked, but understood the idea.

  “Possessed, by Malia?”

  The thin man, fork in hand, looking a bit like a grown-up Harry Potter, lacking only the cool forehead scar, gestured at her then.

  “Yes. A complete possession, then the entity let you go. That was… Well, unexpected. Once they have a host body, they tend to come and go, mainly living inside the person. Eventually that tends to kill people. It takes a very strong person to carry that kind of thing. Plus, when you do, you tend not to really be you, any longer. That the being was willing to leave you… Well, clearly, it was very powerful. We couldn’t have saved you, if it hadn’t left on its own.”

  That was all news and sounded like they might actually know a bit more than they’d been letting on. She still had questions, though.

  “So, you get that this story doesn’t really add up, right? Even if it’s about these entities and your coven or whatever you call it, there are major missing pieces. Especially if you’re not evil Satanists. I mean, you both left a five-year-old with a sixteen-year-old girl in a house with a potential serial killer. One that you, what, thought might be possessed, too? So, what were we? The bait to try and get him there, I understand that. Only, why not just claim we were there and then jump him? Or have Joe and his Deputies set up outside and take him there? Before he had a chance to get at Debbie.”

 
; She waited, but not long, since her father answered really smoothly.

  “We had orders. Everyone thought it was a bad idea, but our oracle had told us that if we did it that way, taking… The man, before he went in that it wouldn’t work. There was probably truth to that. I doubt we would have survived if we’d done it that way. So, we left our little girl with a monster, because the magical doohickey told us to. Now, aren’t you glad you asked?” He seemed nearly playful at the end, as if she really might not be.

  Instead of being upset, she thought for a bit, playing with the bread in her hand. The crust of it. She didn’t like that part as much, but ate it. Being a picky eater wasn’t going to play, if she was going to forget to do it for days on end.

  “Well, it isn’t perfect still, but at least that’s an answer. How do we handle that thing watching me, or… Um, do we handle it at all?” She meant that it might not be possible, and that she was simply marked for death or something like that.

  Her mother actually smiled then.

  “I spoke to Carlos earlier and he thinks that it was probably just sent to watch you. That could mean a lot, but probably means that someone just wants to find out more about you.” She looked at her husband and grinned. “Probably Nick Walsh, if he made a point of meeting with you today. Did he seem different to you at all? Cuter or more interesting?”

  She blinked a few times and then thought back.

  “You know, he really did. I’d figured he’d just read a book or two about picking up women, to be honest. There was some talk about that and what he was saying sounded close to right. I guess his girlfriend just broke up with him the other day.” She nearly didn’t mention how, but it could, potentially, have been important. “By, uh, sending him a picture of her doing adult things with another guy. Then texting that it was over.”

  Reid actually winced.

  “Ouch. Well, that could be it. Or not. There aren’t a lot of other reasons to have an entity watch a young woman, unless she’s up to something important. That or someone is collecting data for dating purposes.”