Authors: Michelle Knudsen
We all sit down again.
“Well,” De Luca says finally. “At least this means I’m probably not going crazy.”
“What do you think is going on?” I ask him.
He looks at me for a long moment, perhaps still wavering on the whole believing thing. Maybe he thinks there’s a hidden camera somewhere, and this is all some elaborate prank that we’re going to post on the Internet to try to humiliate him for being such a hard-ass all the time.
But in the end he simply starts talking. “Your friend took something from me. Something she shouldn’t have been able to take. I don’t know how, or why, but I know that’s what happened.”
I can’t help asking, “Does it come back? What she took? I saw you — that day, in the hall. Do you remember? I saw you go sort of vacant and distant, but then you recovered. You did, right? Recover?”
“I don’t know,” Signor De Luca says softly. “I recovered from the initial shock of what she did, and I think — I think I will recover completely in time. But how — how can she —?” He looks at me intently. “You believe it has something to do with the librarian?”
I nod. “He’s not human.”
Ryan leans forward. “He’s really not. I mean, I didn’t believe it either. But then I saw him. Yesterday. He was absolutely not a human being. He had wings and stuff. And we think he killed Principal Morse.”
De Luca stares at us. “The librarian killed Principal Morse?”
We tell him the story of yesterday and today. About all the blood and the very coincidental timing of Principal Morse’s “heart attack.” We tell him the whole story, including background, including side notes, including all of my suspicions about Annie and about Mr. Gabriel’s appearance at
Sweeney Todd
rehearsal, except not the part about not harming the cast and crew, because that part seems even more unbelievable than the rest of it. He listens silently until we finally run out of words.
“
Porca miseria.
I knew something was going on. I didn’t really believe it until Annie did — what she did. But I knew. And even then I did not want to believe it.”
“What did she do, exactly?” I ask him. “Did she — are they really taking pieces of people’s souls?”
De Luca turns his palms up in a gesture of uncertainty. “I don’t know if
soul
is the right word. I don’t know if there is a word for what they take. It is your . . . essence. The thing inside you that makes you
you.
Some believe that small losses of this essence can be recovered. That we are capable of regenerating, to a point. But only to a point.”
“Some believe?” Ryan asks. “This is, uh, a thing that comes up often enough that there’s documented opinion polls or something?”
De Luca smiles mirthlessly. “Not so often. And, no, no public surveys. But among certain circles . . .” He glances at the ceiling, or through it, then continues. “My great-grandmother was a — I guess you’d call her a fortune-teller, back in Italy. Not one of your Renaissance-fair charlatans. She was truly gifted. She knew about things under the surface of the world. She told me many stories when I was a small boy, most of which I dismissed as fiction, but they always had the ring of truth to them, no matter what I let myself believe. She had stories of demons, from time to time. Of what they could do and take and how they could make people suffer.”
“But
why
?” I cut in. “Why is he doing this? What does he get out of it?”
De Luca gives me a look of what feels uncomfortably like pity. “He likes it,” he says. “Maybe he’s got some additional motivation, maybe there’s a larger story, some ultimate overarching goal, but in the end, demons do what they do because they want to. I think our essences are like candy to them. Or like drugs. They cannot always come through to our world; that must be true, or else we would all have been wiped out long ago. But some of them come through, and some of them are able to get to us in various ways.”
“All right,” Ryan says. “So how do we stop him?”
LOVE. Seriously, the way he stays on topic is just incredibly hot.
I look at Signor De Luca. This is it; this is the moment when the official grown-up is going to tell us what needs to happen in order for the bad things to go away. This is where we get to hand over the mantle of responsibility to someone older and wiser and more equipped to deal with these things.
“I don’t know,” he says again. “I think to start, I will talk to him.”
“And say what?” Ryan asks. “Hey, I hear you might be an evil demon?”
De Luca gives him a withering glance. “No. I’m not going to confront him. I’m just going to talk to him. See if I can tell anything more about what he is. Now that I know what to look for . . .”
“But then what?” I ask impatiently. “What will we do? We have to
do
something. We have to stop him! We have to at least start telling people, warn them about what’s going on. . . .”
“We must have more information first,” De Luca says firmly. “You don’t just confront a demon and try to bash its head in with a dictionary, signorina. There are different ways to deal with different kinds of demons, different tactics that might work. . . .”
He is clearly slipping into teacher mode, wanting to do research and make little lists and graphs and things. I don’t want to wait for all of that. I want to stop him now.
Annie
. . .
“But —”
“That’s where we start,” he says, rising. “And now you should go. I need to do some thinking. Come see me at the end of the school day tomorrow, and we can talk some more.”
A tiny thread of hope stretches out inside of me. We have help now. Even if he’s moving way too slowly for my taste at the moment . . . we have help. And Signor De Luca seems to have been the right choice after all. He’s not a young man, but he’s not super old or anything, and he seems to be in reasonably good shape physically and has all of his marbles and stuff. But most important, he’s well-known as a take-no-shit kind of guy, someone all the students fear and respect, and I can’t imagine he doesn’t command respect from his colleagues, as well. He is someone that other people will listen to. That’s where it has to start. He’ll confirm his suspicions tomorrow, and then he’ll start to tell some trusted teacher friends, and that will be the beginning. We’ll gather more people, students and teachers and probably the APs and maybe even parents and cops and anyone else we can get to listen, and we’ll stop being individual little bothersome insects to Mr. Gabriel. Instead we’ll be a giant frickin’ swarm of army ants or killer bees or something, and we will take him down. And no one else will die, and no one else’s life force will get sucked out, and Annie will go back to being herself, and all will be well with the world again — hallelujah, amen.
We say good-bye and walk out to the car. I feel better than I have in what seems like a very long time. I can see that Ryan does, too. He opens the passenger door for me, and I climb in, letting myself relax into the faded fabric as I wait for him to get in on the other side. He smiles as he turns the key in the ignition, and I smile back.
Everything is going to be okay.
The next morning, Ryan and I can’t resist loitering near the parking lot entrance. Both of us want to confirm that we didn’t dream the whole De Luca thing, that he really listened and believed. We want to be sure that we’re not on our own in this thing anymore.
The blue Sentra pulls up, and Signor De Luca gets out, locks the doors, comes toward the school, briefcase in hand. He looks like he does all the time, like it’s just another day. He doesn’t wave or smile as he approaches. He doesn’t seem like he’s going to acknowledge us at all. My heart begins a slow downward slide toward my feet. It didn’t happen. Or it did but he doesn’t remember. Or won’t remember. Or changed his mind. He had an attack of good sense in the night. He’s not going to help us after all.
But at the last second, before he passes by us completely, De Luca turns his head the slightest bit and gives us a teeny-tiny nod. An almost invisible nod. But there.
“You saw that, right?” I breathe when De Luca has passed out of sight into the school.
“Yeah,” Ryan breathes back. “Thank God. I thought —”
“I know. Me too.” I turn to face him, a smile tugging at my lips. “But it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. We’ve got him on our team now.”
Ryan smiles back. “The first of many.”
“Yes.” My relief is so great it almost hurts.
No Italian today, which is probably for the best. I can’t imagine being able to sit there all period pretending yesterday’s conversation with De Luca didn’t happen. It seems ridiculous to go to classes at all, but skipping seems risky. It feels better to act like things are normal, like we’re not plotting anything, so Mr. Gabriel won’t have any reason to be suspicious. I can’t imagine he really thinks we’re just going to roll over and let him carry out his evil plans, but as long as he thinks we’re on our own, that we’re not really capable of stopping him, hopefully he’ll leave us alone. For now.
I catch no glimpses of Annie in the hallways. That’s also probably for the best. Anything I try to say to her will just make things worse. I should just stay away from her until we’re able to take care of the librarian.
At lunch, Diane and Leticia see me coming solo and exchange a silent glance.
“Yes, we’re still fighting,” I say as I slide onto the bench across from them. I squint at Leticia, searching for signs of lingering wrongness. “Are you okay?” I ask. She’d called my phone last night, but by the time I saw the message it was too late to call or text without violating her parents’ very strict no-phone-after-8:00-p.m. rule.
“Yeah. I mean, still really sad about poor Principal Morse, but yeah.”
Diane reaches over and pats her head. “No more weirdo fainting spells, okay? Your little brain needs to stay with us.”
Leticia rolls her eyes. “I told you, I’m fine. I was just dehydrated or something.”
“Okay, well, drink more water, then. You scared us, you jerk.” She pushes her unopened bottle of water over toward Leticia’s tray. L rolls her eyes again but obediently takes a giant gulp. We laugh, but Diane’s eyes catch mine across the table. She’s worried, too. And she doesn’t even know what really happened.
“Are
you
okay?” I ask her. “It seems like something’s going around, you know? Like a virus or something.”
“So far. But, um, you can keep the water, L. Just in case. Keep your fainty cooties to yourself.”
Leticia is unoffended. “Score! Free water for me and my cooties. Hey, does that mean if I touch your brownie I can have that, too?”
Diane snatches her brownie out of harm’s way.
“Anyway,” Leticia says, “I believe we have more important things to talk about.”
“We do?” I ask, startled. They can’t know. Could they have suspicions? Have they seen something, too?
“Yes, Little Miss Innocent. We do. Spill.” She leans forward. “What’s going on with you and Ryan? You have been spotted in his company several times over the last couple of days. Talking in the hallways, leaving rehearsal together, getting into his
car
. . . My little spies have seen you.”
Diane crosses her arms and leans back. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell us.”
I scramble hastily to switch gears. “There’s nothing to tell! I mean, we’re not, like,
together.
We’re just — talking and stuff.”
“
Just
talking and stuff? Hello? I believe there was a time when the idea of talking to Ryan Halsey was enough to send you swooning to the floor, my lovesick friend.”
Leticia jumps in with her best Cynthia impression. “Oh, you guys, I can’t
stand
it, he’s so
amazing,
he’s so
beautiful,
I love him
so much.
He is a god who walks among men. I want to kiss him and marry him and have his sexy little babies.” She falls backward into Diane’s arms. Diane fans her with her math notebook.
I feel my face go red. It’s an exaggeration,
obviously,
but it’s pretty spot-on all the same.
“Well, yes, okay. I will not pretend that the talking has not been kind of awesome.” My mouth stretches up into a grin before I can help it. “It was the hallway tackle that did it, I think. He couldn’t ignore me so much after that.”
“So?” Leticia sits up. “Has there been kissing? Has there been more than kissing?”
“No,” I sigh. They raise their eyebrows at me in unison. “No! Not yet, anyway.”
“But there might be kissing?”
“God, I hope so.” Once we get past the whole demon-killing thing. “I did — I did get to see his bedroom.”
“What?!” they exclaim in unison.
“Nothing
happened.
It was just to talk about stuff for the show.” I’m still grinning, though, and they are not satisfied. I look back and forth between them, meeting their eyes in turn. “But. I think maybe he kind of likes me a little.”
Diane punches her fists up into the air in victory and Leticia raises the water bottle in a toasting gesture. For a second, I let myself forget everything else and just enjoy the moment. It’s so nice to just be here with my friends, talking about boys. Especially, of course, this boy. My grin stretches wider, thinking about him. He does still make me all swoony. I
do
want to have his sexy little babies. And he does kind of like me a little. He must. It’s not just the demon thing making him hang around. He started talking to me before that, after all. Right?
I wait for my brain to respond with a resounding, assured
Right!
but it is strangely silent on the matter.
He did start talking to me,
I remind my brain.
Remember? He ran after me because he didn’t want me to be mad.
Of course, there is liking, and there is
liking.
Maybe he was just being friendly. Maybe he just wants to be friends.
“He probably just wants to be friends,” I say out loud. I’m not grinning anymore.
“None of that,” Leticia says. “I am pretty sure boys do not bring girls up to their bedrooms when they just want to be friends. Confidence, please, dearest!”
“But —”
Diane cuts me off. “L is right. Even if Mr. Halsey has not yet attempted to get smoochy, I guarantee he has thought about it. You’ll see. You just keep being your adorable, charming self, and he will soon be unable to help himself.”