Five: Out of the Dark (16 page)

“Ew, yuck. I hate math. Come on, we’d better get going, then. It’s clear across the school.”

On the way, I told Brendon about my encounter with Mr. Jorgenson. I didn’t tell him everything. I still wasn’t sure he wasn’t a plant, there to gather information from me. I was pretty sure he wasn’t, though, especially after the way he shuddered when I told him I’d been in Mr. Jorgenson’s office.

There was no more excitement for the day. I couldn’t wait until seventh hour, not because I loved Geography or anything, but because it was the class I had with Seth and I could find out how Metal Shop went.

I got to class before Seth did. He came through the door in an excited rush, stopping only long enough to find where I was sitting and lope over to me like an excited puppy. I was relieved to see the stupid grin on his face; I’d been worried his animated entrance was caused by anxiety.

“Sista! Guess what?” He plopped into the desk next to me and didn’t wait for me to answer before going on. “Brendon stopped me in the hallway just now—he talked to the football coach and he said I can play. He said he’ll just overlook the requirement for a physical and stuff. I can start practicing with them right after school today!”

I was happy for him. I hadn’t seen Seth this enthusiastic about anything since the day he figured out how to throw magical flames. But we were there for a very specific purpose, and I wasn’t sure football would fit into that. As much as I didn’t want to deflate his enthusiasm, I had to bring him back to reality.

“That’s great Seth. But, we really need to concentrate on why we’re here. I’m just not sure football will help us figure out what’s going on here.”

He refused to let me ruin his high. “I think it
will
help, Pai … Sasha.” He looked around quickly to make sure no one caught his slipup. “At least two of the suicides were on the football team, and Brendon said that over a third of the players have just stopped coming to practice. They are now
zombified
, as he put it. I think the team might be a target for whatever’s going on.”

“Okay … well, that’s awesome, then, Seth. You might be onto something … and, you get to play your favorite sport while you investigate. Win-win, the way I see it.” I couldn’t help but smile at him. He was seriously stoked about this.

“Brendon said he’s sure I’ll be on the varsity team, too—as a
sophomore.
This is just so awesome!”

Before I could redirect our conversation to Metal Shop shenanigans, the Geography teacher walked in and shushed the class with a deep throated “ah-hem!” He dragged a TV on a rolling stand to the front and center of the room.

The teacher, a short and chubby man with a severely receding hairline and Harry Potter-esque glasses, looked as if he may have been quite jovial in times past. But, something had taken its toll on him. His eyes were bloodshot and his mouth was turned down in a perpetual frown. He didn’t bother taking roll or even seem to notice his two new students. He just waited for the five or six of us who had been talking to quiet down and said, “We’re going to watch a movie today about the Western Hemisphere. Take notes and try not to fall asleep.” He turned out the lights and started the DVD player. It was a good thing Seth and I were sitting clear in the back. Even so, I was a little worried we would somehow negatively affect the electronics.

The teacher sat at his desk in the corner and just stared out the window. I leaned over to Seth and whispered, “So, how was Metal Shop? See anything suspicious?”

“Not really. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Johnathan’s in that class with me. He looked out the big door to the lot when we were supposed to be cleaning up the shop. He said the tank thing wasn’t where it’d been when you guys saw it.”

I felt a rush of relief that Johnathan was in there with Seth. I knew he would use caution; I wasn’t so sure Seth knew what caution was.

“What was the teacher like?”

“Grumpy, like all shop teachers, but he seemed okay. He didn’t set off any warning signals. He didn’t throw any wrenches at my head—I figure that’s a good sign.” He said that like it’d been a common occurrence in the past. I just shook my head; it really wasn’t surprising to me, although, I would’ve thought that Alec would have had more wrenches thrown at his head than Seth. It wasn’t a bad idea, really.
I wonder where I can get a wrench or two.

I settled in to take notes like the teacher had instructed—just not notes on the movie. I wrote notes on the things I’d seen and learned that day. I drew a picture of the monster Ashley had described to me. I was definitely no police sketch artist, so it wasn’t great, but it helped me to remember what she’d said about it. I figured the drawing could be passed off as just mindless doodling if the teacher happened to confiscate my notebook.

The DVD player and TV managed to evade our unintentional magical-force-of-destruction-of-all-things-technical until about ten minutes before the end of class. That was when the DVD player got stuck on a screen and then the TV sparked from behind and shut off. It took about thirty uncomfortable seconds for the teacher to even realize it. He stood and looked at his watch, then flipped the lights back on—the two banks of lights above Seth and I flickered. The teacher shrugged his shoulders.

“Class dismissed,” he said in a monotone voice. “Quiz tomorrow.”

The hallways were deserted except for us and our Geography classmates. Seth and I decided to wait by Johnathan and Alec’s lockers. The chance was slim that anyone in this School of Doom would notice anything weird about us hanging out with the other new kids.

Johnathan didn’t say anything about us waiting there for them. He must have gathered the same feelings as us about the abject indifference of most of the student body. As soon as Alec joined us, Seth excitedly explained about the football team and his hopeful place on it. I saw the excitement spread to the faces of the other two boys, too. I rolled my eyes.

“I’m going to practice, too,” Alec chimed in. “I’m an awesome running back; they’re gonna beg me to play after I show ’em my mad skills.”

“How about you, Johnathan? Didn’t you used to play on the line?” Seth asked.

“Yeah, I did,” he said. The sparkle left his eyes abruptly and a troubled expression crossed his beautiful face. “I think I’ll pass, though. You guys can get in with the jocks. I’ll work some other angle.”

I frowned. I knew he wanted to join them. What held him back? What was he worried about? I decided to call him on it. “John, I know you want to play. Why don’t you just join them? I can work the fan angle. It’ll be—”

“Paige! I don’t want to, okay? Just drop it!”

He slammed his locker shut and walked away. My mouth dropped open. He’d never talked to me like that before. Tears stung the backs of my eyelids, but I refused to let them fall. I stood, face hot, and watched his retreating figure. Seth and Alec were just as stunned.

Seth was the first to compose himself. “Come on, sis. You can come watch me and Alec tear it up on the field.” He couldn’t hide the fact he was worried about Johnathan, too.

I shook myself out of my shock and forced a smile. “You guys go ahead. Have fun. I’m going to go home and see how Halli’s day went.”

“Okay,” Seth said uncertainly. “See ya’ in a couple hours.”

“See ya’.” I headed for the exit.

The lone walk home was a dreary one. Johnathan was nowhere in sight. I figured he’d decided to pull another disappearing act like he had the night he’d faced the Devil-hound. I spent the entire lonely walk home trying to decide what had caused him to act like that. He’d been excited about the prospect of playing football. That had been evident in his sparkling eyes and dimpled smile. What made him change from that to the sad and angry boy that had forgotten to use my undercover name and had yelled at me so vehemently? His mood swings were giving me whiplash lately.
Ever since he went all wolf on us that night
. That had to be it. He’d been steady as a rock up until then. Now, he was all over the place.

I shuddered as I recalled his uncontained rage inside the circle. He would’ve killed us all if I hadn’t trapped him there. Maybe some of that rage still coursed through his body, even when the wolf was latent. Waiting for a full moon so it could make its next appearance.

I had to find a way to cure Johnathan before the next full moon. I had to.

Even though I knew the chances of him being home when I got there were slim, I was still disappointed when Halli confirmed that he wasn’t.

“Where are the boys?” she asked. “Did you walk home by yourself?”

“Well, Alec and Seth have decided to infiltrate the football team, so they’re at practice. I don’t know where Johnathan is. He took off before I did.”

I told her about his outburst. She wasn’t as shocked as the rest of us had been. I thought maybe it was because she hadn’t been there to see it. I tried to emphasize how un-Johnathan-like he’d acted.

“Halli, he
yelled
at me.
Yelled
. At
me
. Over nothing. It was … not right, definitely not right.”

She shook her head. “That doesn’t sound like our Johnathan at all. But, I found out some things today at the library that might explain it. One book said the blood of the wolf mixes with the human blood and is always circulating, even in between changings. Granted, it was just an educated guess on the author’s part, but it makes sense. It said the wolf blood has high levels of pheromones and hormones and stuff and causes the human host to be quick to anger and more aggressive. It also said it gets worse with every changing and eventually, he guessed, would drive the person mad—especially someone who had been a ‘kind and gentle spirit’ before being changed.”

I was speechless. This was not good news. “What was this book? What makes this guy such an expert about lycanthropes?” I spat out.

My anger didn’t faze Halli—not a lot did faze her.

“It was an excerpt from a book written in the 1700s in England,” she explained. “The author claims he was a werewolf—he was bitten when he was a young teen. He became a scientist and spent his life studying himself and others. He said he was afraid of his own aggression, afraid he would hurt the people he loved even when he was in human form. Because of the wolf blood and anger issues. I bet Johnathan feels the same thing. I think he’s probably afraid of the way he’s been reacting lately and he knows football would be a
very
bad idea for him. The wolf blood increases the human’s strength and senses, too. If this guy was right, that means Johnathan could hurt someone very easily without even realizing what he was doing. That would devastate him with someone he doesn’t know, and kill him with someone he loves.”

I wanted the answer to be something else. I did not want to buy into what this supposed were-scientist thought. I felt Johnathan pulling away from me, and I was terrified to think it was going to get worse. The words of Madame LaForte kept invading my thoughts.
Death will bring peace to his tormented soul.
I picked up a chair and threw it with a grunt of rage. I slammed my fist into the table hard enough to bruise it.
I will not let this destroy him!

Halli sat, quiet, while I calmed myself down. After a few minutes I sat, utterly defeated for the moment. I lowered my head into my non-injured hand. For a fleeting second an optimistic thought popped into my head.

“Hey, Hal,” I said. “Did this science-werewolf say anything about a possible cure?”

She frowned and shook her head. “The book said he searched his whole life and couldn’t figure one out. But, I don’t think that should discourage you. He was looking only for a scientific or medical answer. He didn’t venture into anything magical or even seem to know about the Fae … or Demons,” she added quietly.

Had I mentioned to her my ideas about summoning a Faerie or Demon to help figure this out? I didn’t think I had. I didn’t want her, or anyone, to know about that possible plan. Because I knew it was foolish and dangerous. And I didn’t want anyone to try to stop me from doing it anyway.

I chose to leave it alone. No talk about summoning. “You have a point there, Hal. This transformation can’t be explained in human terms. Its basis is evil.”
And evil is where I will have to go to rid Johnathan of it.

“I’ll continue my search tomorrow, but I’m afraid the answer isn’t going to be in the public library. I’ve been thinking about going to that bookstore on Pike Street. Circle of Books, or something like that. We’ve walked past it a hundred times; it’s the one with the pentagrams in the window. What do you think?”

“It can’t hurt to try,” I answered.

I was exhausted and my hand hurt. I went to my corner to lie down. I couldn’t wait much longer to find an answer. If Halli struck out tomorrow at the bookstore, I had to start preparations to summon some help, soon, before the next full moon. I was having a hard time with the idea. What I was considering was something we’d spent months fighting against.

It scared me to realize I was leaning very heavily towards summoning a Demon instead of a Faerie, too. They were both very dangerous beings, but Demons were pure evil whereas Faeries had more of a mischievous evil. I wasn’t sure exactly what dangers lurked with the plan I was hatching.

But I was sure I’d do whatever it took to save Johnathan. No matter what the cost to my soul.