Demonosity (3 page)

“Yes, and the choices that you make today will affect your future,” her mom retorted.

Cassidy raised her eyebrow at her. “Really, Mom? You want to talk about choices with me?” She folded her arms in front of her, and her mom had the good manners to blush, since, while Cassidy might struggle with making the most basic decisions, her mom suffered from no such affliction. Hence, her ability to dump her family for
five
years and live in Boston. And then, just as casually, to change her mind and move back as if no time at all had passed. Oh, yeah, her mom knew all about making choices.

“Okay, honey. I’m not here to fight with you. Besides, I’m sure your father would be pleased if you did it. It’s his favorite Shakespeare play.”

Just like sushi is his favorite food.

Cassidy didn’t bother to answer. Especially since she’d watched Baz Luhrmann’s version at least a dozen times when she’d gone through her Leo phase and her dad had never even blinked an eye at it. However, her mom seemed to take her silence as some kind of tacit agreement, and she carefully put the book down on the corner of the messy bed.

“All I’m asking is for you to consider it. And now, if you’re ready, it’s time to go. We don’t want to be late.” Then without another word she left the room, and Cassidy reluctantly followed her. It was going to be a long night.

“Y
ou look like shit.” Nash glanced up from the book he had been studying, once again oblivious to the group of girls who were whispering and pointing at him.

“Gee, why don’t you tell me what you really think?” Cassidy dumped her purse on one of the many wooden tables dotted around the back lawn of Raiser Heights High and then joined him on the narrow bench seat. The school was a large redbrick box full of well-dressed, badly behaved, middle-class kids who looked pretty much like middle-class kids from every high school across the United States. Cassidy and Nash tried to avoid the school and the other students as much as they possibly could. Especially since it would be Halloween soon, and that just seemed to make everyone act more freakish than ever.

“You don’t pay me all that money to lie to you,” Nash protested before rubbing his chin.
“Oh, wait, you don’t pay me at all.”
Then he leaned forward and studied her face before pushing back a strand of her thick, dark red hair and shooting her a concerned look. “Tough night?”

“You could say that.” Cassidy sighed as she tried to remember a time when she had been just a normal person who hung out with her friend and talked about algebra tests—okay, so in Nash’s case, he preferred to talk about the Medicis and how they had proved that art and politics could exist side by side, but details schmetails. Her point was, since her mother had moved back in, she had not felt normal. “My mom dragged us all out for sushi.”

“Sushi? You and your dad—heathens that you are—hate sushi,” Nash reminded her in an unimpressed voice, since his own food tastes were slightly more highbrow than Cassidy’s.

“Thank you. Unfortunately, the sushi actually ended up being the high point in a truly craptacular night.”

“So I gather they didn’t change their mind about your tagging along today?”

She gave a frustrated shake of her head. It had been an ongoing argument for the last week, and despite her best efforts, neither of her parents would relent. She had tried again this morning, purposely waiting until her mom was in the shower before she made her dad a cup of tea—something that he claimed every Irishman needed before he could even consider opening his eyes. But if she had hoped that she might persuade him when her mom wasn’t around, she’d been wrong, and the party line was that it would be stupid for her to miss any school for a routine operation. Then he had pushed the tea aside and reminded her that he could only drink water before his operation.

“Oh, and if that’s not bad enough, she also wants me to audition for the school play.”

“She obviously doesn’t remember the dance recital disaster.” Nash widened his pale blue eyes in surprise.

“She thinks it will be good for my college applications,” Cassidy explained as she angrily traced her finger around some of the carved graffiti.

“Not if they see you act it won’t,” Nash retorted.

“Exactly,” Cassidy agreed in a dark voice. “Still, it was fun to see how pissed off she looked when dad put the tattoo on this morning.”

“I’ll bet.” Nash grinned in appreciation before he jumped up and shot her a dazzling smile. “Don’t move, I just need to see a man about a horse.”

“Not going anywhere,” Cassidy assured him as he sauntered over toward George Dennison, an eleventh-grade science geek with whom Nash liked to trade anecdotes from time to time. She watched Nash pause for a moment to dust off his black trousers, which were tucked into a pair of heavy boots, before adjusting his crumpled gray double-breasted shirt. She couldn’t help but admire how above high school Nash was.

Then she froze as she once again had the eeriest sensation that someone was watching her.

She quickly swiveled around. To the left of her was a group of juniors, but they were busy studying something on the iPad that one of them was holding up. She rubbed her eyes, reminding herself that staying up all night worrying about her dad obviously wasn’t good for curbing her paranoid tendencies.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a slight movement coming from the thick shrubbery that separated the parking lot from the front of the school yard. The hairs on the back of her arms prickled, and the tattoo on her arm felt warm against her skin. That was twice now. Did that mean it wasn’t merely a figment of her imagination? The leaves rustled again. She craned her neck, hoping to see something, anything to let her know that—

“Oh, please, I thought you were over that moron.” Nash reappeared, carrying an armful of books while wearing a look of disgust on his gorgeous face. “I mean, did he or did he not dump you faster than a bag of trash?”

“What?” Cassidy, who was still trying to figure out if there was someone hiding in the shrubbery, forced herself to turn back to where Nash was tapping the toe of his heavy black boot, looking anything but happy. “You do realize that I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” Cassidy said with a frown.

“Reuben, of course.” Nash nodded over to the group of juniors that Cassidy had been looking at moments earlier. Except this time she realized that it wasn’t just a group of preppy girls; there was actually one guy lounging in between them all, looking like the cat who’d just caught the biggest canary ever. Reuben. Why wasn’t she surprised?

His emo hair, which had once been surfer-dude blond, was now dyed pitch-black and was poking up in all directions, with what could only be described as glue.

“I promise that I didn’t even see him,” Cassidy said, while silently cursing herself for not realizing that her ex-boyfriend was in the vicinity. Shouldn’t she have some kind of radar for that? Like:
scumbag fifteen paces to the right
?

“Really? Because if I have to give you the talk again about what a morally bankrupt douche bag Reuben Salinger is, then I’ll do it.” Nash put down the books and folded his arms.

“You don’t.” Cassidy shook her head as the girls got to their feet and bounced toward the main entrance, with Reuben following at a more sedate saunter, too caught up in the moment even to notice that Cassidy was there. Which was fine by her. If she ever had to talk to her ex-boyfriend again, then it could only mean that every other male on the planet had been killed in some kind of freakish virus incident.

Not that she was really sure if she could even count him as an ex, since they had dated for only two weeks. Then she had been late to meet him at a party, which, for Reuben, was apparently code for “okay to shove your tongue down the nearest cheerleader’s throat.”

“Stop reliving it,” Nash commanded with uncanny insight, considering his complete lack of sexual desire. Then he mellowed. “So if you weren’t looking at Mr. Tosspot, then who
were
you looking at?”

Oh, just the imaginary, invisible thing that I thought was watching me,
Cassidy considered saying, before deciding that Nash had enough worries about her without adding “delusional” to the list. Instead, she merely shrugged. “Just thinking. Anyway,” she added as she suddenly caught sight of the book that he’d put down on the wooden table, “looks like you’ve been busy.”

“I’ll say. George’s dad has a first edition of Boethius’s
Consolation of Philosophy
. I mean, Cass, this is like crack to my people. Which is why,
mia bella
, I need to put this bambino in my locker.”

“Fine.” Cassidy was well used to Nash’s unnatural excitement about all things book-related. Then she remembered about one book in particular. “Oh, and that reminds me. Nice one dumping that enormous thing in my purse yesterday. It weighed a ton.”

“Your purse always weighs a ton. Not to mention the fact that it defies the laws of quantum physics,” Nash countered before frowning. “But what enormous thing are you talking about?”

“A book. You know—big and leathery. Looks like it’s about a million years old. You were reading it yesterday afternoon at the mall.”

“No.” Nash shook his head, causing his shiny brown locks to flop around his chiseled face before he dumped his leather satchel next to George’s book and searched around for something, eventually pulling out a tattered brown leather book and waving it in her face. “
This
is what I was reading yesterday at the mall.”

“What?” Cassidy widened her eyes as confusion danced across her brow. “It wasn’t your book in my purse?”

“Of course not.” Nash looked at her like she had just asked him to pull off his ear and pickle it. “Are you insane? This treasure cost fifty bucks on eBay, and I’ve seen what the inside of your purse looks like. Why would you even think that?”

“Er, because of the large leather-bound book that I found in there last night,” Cassidy said as Nash put his book back into his leather satchel and held out his hand. Next thing she knew, she was being hauled to her feet as Nash nodded toward the school entrance.

“Okay, I’m intrigued,” he said as he glided down the corridor. Cassidy never got sick of watching how people just seemed to melt out of his way. “How did it get there?”

“I’ve got no idea,” Cassidy said as someone’s backpack hit her arm. She paused for a moment and rubbed it before they finally reached his locker. “I mean, up until a second ago, I thought it was yours.”

“So what’s it like? And when you say old, how old, exactly?” Nash’s clever eyes shone with excitement as he deposited the Boethius in his locker before carefully selecting a book to get him through “the monotony that is Mrs. Miller’s Health class.” He tucked his selection into his satchel and raised his eyebrows as the second bell rang out. “Well, I’m waiting. Details, please?”

“I don’t have details. It just looked like a book. A big old leather book. Oh, and there were loads of diagrams in it. None of which made sense.”

“That settles it,” Nash said in a firm voice. “I’m coming over to your house this afternoon to see this mysterious book.
Oh, crap. We’ve got to go.
”

“What?” Cassidy found herself being tugged in the opposite direction from their class. She ground in her heels and folded her arms, but before she could say anything else, she caught sight of Celeste Gilbert and three of her friends all marching directly toward them. Cassidy turned to him in surprise. “Um, since when do you know Celeste and her crew?”

“Since never,” Nash retorted in a low voice, his head cocked as if trying to calculate the statistical probability of being able to run away before they reached them.

“So why are they heading in our direction?” Cassidy asked with interest.

Nash let out a sigh. “For some reason she’s got it into her head that I would make the perfect Mercutio. She seems to think that my natural good looks will help bring in a bigger audience, and she keeps nagging me to come to auditions next week.”

For a moment Cassidy just stared at him, and then she burst out laughing. “That might just be the funniest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said, trying and failing to imagine Nash taking part in a group activity. It was just too ridiculous for words, since “playing well with others” wasn’t exactly one of Nash’s strengths.

“I’m pleased that you find it so amusing,” Nash retorted. “But right now that’s not really helping me.”

“Sorry,” Cassidy mumbled as Celeste finally reached them and stood so that her pert cleavage was aimed directly at Nash. Cassidy had to fight to stop herself from laughing. The truth was that, while just about every other sophomore guy would die to have Celeste Gilbert give them the time of day, she had managed to pick the one guy who was immune to that sort of thing. Cassidy was sure that there was a life lesson in there somewhere.

“Nash, anyone would think you were trying to hide from me.” Celeste pushed past Cassidy as if she wasn’t even there so that she could lay a hand on Nash’s arm. Nash flinched.

“Nash, is that true? Have you been hiding from Celeste?” Cassidy grinned, earning her a nudge in the ribs from her friend. However, Celeste still didn’t even acknowledge Cassidy’s presence. Instead, she took out a flyer (from where Cassidy didn’t know) and pressed it into Nash’s hand.

“Of course I haven’t, Cassidy.” He gave her a dark look. “I’ve just been busy. Very, very busy.”

“Well, you’re going to need to make some time because the auditions are on Monday after school, and I won’t take no for answer. You would be so perfect for the role,” Celeste said with the authority of one who was used to getting her own way. Then she gave him one last searing look with her wide blue eyes and nodded to her friends that it was time to go.

Cassidy watched them all leave before she turned to him and grinned.
“Oh, Nash, you just have to do it. You do, you do,”
she mimicked, earning herself a withering glare just as the final bell rang.

“Do I look like I’m laughing? If you tell anyone about this, I will make you catch the bus for a week,” he informed her.

“Okay, I’ve had my moment.” Cassidy held up her hands in surrender before wrinkling her nose. “How does she even know you?”

“I’ve got no idea.” He shuddered. “Ever since last week she’s been trying to corner me. She’s very persistent.”

“Probably because she’s not used to guys ignoring her. I bet she sees you as a challenge.”

“Yes, well, not as challenging as I find her.” He shuddered again. “And now we’d better get a move on before we get a tardy slip.”