Renegade (24 page)

Everyone just stared at her.

She patted her hair. “Well, you would think when a teacher announces you can do nothing there would be some kind of celebration.”

Again, no one said anything. In fact, you could have heard a pin drop in that room.

She scowled. “Would you rather I assign a ten-page paper?”

Someone from the back row raised their hand.

She motioned for them to speak. “We don’t write papers in chemistry.”

A few people snickered.

Again, Alexis looked at me, but this time she mouthed, “O-M-G.”

Mrs. Engles didn’t seem too pleased to be laughed at and opened her mouth to no doubt unleash a wicked assignment on us, but then the bell rang signaling the end of class.

I breathed a sigh of relief and hurried to grab my stuff and go.

“Heven!” Mrs. Engles snapped just before I could clear the door.

I felt my shoulders slump when I turned back. “Yes?”

“I want to see you in this room after school.”

Crap.
She somehow knew I was late and tried to hide it from her. The office probably told her when she arrived. I ought to stop by the office and thank Mrs. Schuster for blabbing. “Yes, Mrs. Engles,” I said and escaped into the hallway.

The way this day was going, she was sure to assign me that ten-page paper and make it due tomorrow.

*     *     *

When the final bell of the day rang, I trudged toward the chemistry room, thinking of excuses the whole way to get me out of a ten-page paper. I even briefly considered telling her that the last time I was given a paper I had to stay up late for I got attacked, landed in the hospital, and ended up with scars and nerve damage on my face.

I wasn’t Kimber, though, and that just seemed really dramatic.

Mrs. Engles was at the back of the room when I came in. She was doing something in the storage closet, muttering under her breath. I cleared my throat and she spun around. More of her hair had fallen from her bun and she had a coffee stain on her white blouse.

“You wanted to see me?” I asked, the tardy excuse clutched in my fist.

She smiled. It wasn’t really that friendly. “I need a student to help me with an experiment we’re going to try in class tomorrow.”

So this wasn’t about me being late to class?

“Well, I actually have somewhere I’m supposed to be.” I lied.

She came forward, her heels pounding against the tile floor.
It’s like she doesn’t even know how to walk.
And she snatched the note out of my hand. “What’s this?”

She scanned the paper, looked up at me, and smiled. “You were late to my class this morning?”

So were you!
I wanted to argue, but I didn’t think it would get me anywhere.

“You have a choice. Help me now or write that paper tonight.”

Like that was even a choice. “What do you want me to do?” I said, dropping my bag onto the floor.

She smiled and gestured to the front lab table. Why anyone would be so excited about science is beyond me.

“I have laid out a variation of substances all containing different elements that will react with one another in different ways,” she began and a little piece of my brain died. Of boredom.

“Let’s start with this one.” She thrust a beaker filled with what looked like water into my hand. “Pour that into this one here.” She pushed another glass bottle toward me, this one with a whitish substance in it. I did what she asked and poured the liquids together.

They mixed and turned orange.

The teacher seemed pleased and wrote something on a pad of paper on her desk.

“Now these,” she said, pushing two more beakers at me.

I did and this time the liquids fizzed and turned green.

The teacher wrote something else in her notes.

“Next,” she said and gave me yet more things to combine. I was beginning to wonder if the paper would have been a better option.

I poured them together, waiting for the colors to change, but this time something else happened. When the liquids combined, they seemed to mix, expand, and turn to a cloudy fog. It began to move upward, filling up the entire beaker until it began spilling over the rim. Instead of sliding down and dripping on the table, the fog spread out into the air.

And then it began to glow.

The thick fog turned a neon green, forming a cloud that hung low over the entire table. I stepped back and looked at the teacher. She was watching the creation with a weird smile on her face.

“Was that supposed to happen?” I asked.

She looked at me and something dark slithered behind her eyes. “Of course.”

The green cloud began to move, creeping farther into the classroom and skulking toward me. Call me crazy, but I didn’t really think letting some glowing crap that erupted from a jar touch me was a good idea.

I stumbled backward, tripping over my bag and reaching out to catch myself on the corner of Mrs. Engles’s desk. Only I didn’t catch myself. I fell backward onto the floor with her notepad landing in my lap. I looked down and her notes jumped right off the page at me.

I’m out. I’m watching. Who will be next?

I gasped and leapt to my feet. But the green fog was above me, so I ended up crouching, trying to stay out of its path. I tossed the notepad aside and gripped my bag.

“Who are you?” I said to my teacher, thinking I already knew.

“Whatever do you mean, Heven? Is everything all right?” Her voice sounded completely normal, but the fog wrapped around her head until she was a faceless person standing there before me.

An electric green tendril of fog seemed to break away from the massive cloud and slither toward me. I scrambled for the door, crab-walking backward until I fell out into the hallway.

The tendril stopped in the doorway, almost like it was staring at me, waiting for the order to attack.

“Heven?” Mrs. Engles called from inside the classroom. “Come back, dear. We have experiments to finish.

What. Ever.

I jumped to my feet and ran down the hall, ignoring the calls of my teacher the entire way.

Heven

Sleep was elusive. The more tightly I closed my eyes and wished for it, the harder it was to attain. Finally my eyes flew open and I rolled onto my back to stare up at the ceiling. How was I supposed to sleep knowing Beelzebub was out there? And I just couldn’t shake the feeling he was closer than we knew. It was almost like I could feel him lurking.

He’s in hell,
I told myself. There was no reason to worry tonight. I didn’t even have to worry anymore about him prying his way into my dreams. He couldn’t. Right after Logan’s funeral when Sam came to stay here, he didn’t feel right about sneaking into my room every night, but before he could start sleeping on the couch he had to break those threads so I’d be able to sleep without him next to me, keeping the Dream Walker at bay. So he’d gone into my mind using our Mindbond and broke every last thread Beelzebub left behind.

It was a relief knowing I could sleep without fear, but it turned out actually falling asleep was a lot harder than it should be. I missed Sam. I missed the heat of his body, the feel of his skin. I even missed him hogging the covers.

And now it was even worse because I wondered if he was going to stay in the house all night or if he was going to shift and run off into the night with no memory of what he was doing.

The door to my room opened a bit and a figure slipped into the room. I watched as Sam crept closer to the bed, not making a sound as he moved.

Sam?

He paused in his path and looked at me.
You can’t sleep, either?

No.

I tried sleeping in Lo—my room tonight.
He said.

Didn’t go so well?

How am I supposed to sleep when you’re only one wall away?

I smiled and lifted up the covers, inviting him in.

He glanced at the door.
I really shouldn’t.

Just for a few minutes?
I asked.

He debated for another few seconds and then slid into the bed beside me. He was like the missing piece to my puzzle and I fit against him perfectly and sighed, laying my head against his shoulder.
I missed this.

Me too. So tell me what you’re still doing awake.

Just knowing he’s out, wondering what he’ll do next.

Sam tightened his arm around me.
Soon as those souls are free, he won’t be able to hurt us anymore.

Do you really think it will weaken him that much?

Maybe. Maybe not. But even if it doesn’t, I think he’ll be too busy trying to rebuild the graveyard to care about us.

I hoped he was right.
Was it hard being in Logan’s old room?

It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

Then why can’t you sleep?

Can’t help but wonder where I’ll be when I wake up.

I’ve been thinking about that. I think I might know how we can find out what you’ve been doing when you shift.

How?

I’ll mind-rob you.
He stilled and I knew he was considering it.

I don’t think it will work,
he said after a few moments.

Why not?

Because you can’t see something I don’t remember.