Renegade (36 page)

The skillet on the stove, where eggs were scrambling, burst into flames and Kimber shouted, setting down her coffee and grabbing up a towel to beat at the flames.

It did nothing but catch the towel in her hand on fire.

“Are you kidding me?” she screeched, looking at the flaming towel, and Riley dropped his spoon, milk splattering everywhere, to go around the counter and grab the towel out of her hands and toss it in the sink. Then he reached over and grabbed the flaming pan to toss it in the sink too. He used the spray feature on the spigot to douse the flames until the only thing left was the very strong scent of burned eggs and metal.

Kimber turned to me with anger in her aura. “Seriously, Heven? I was hungry!”

“Sorry,” I muttered, wondering when I would get the ability to put out the fire once I started it.

Sam shut off the TV and went to get a mug from the counter. “How do you use this thing?” he said, staring at the built-in latte station.

“Don’t touch that,” Kimber cried and went over, flinging herself between him and the machine. “No one messes with my coffee.” Then she hit a few buttons and within minutes, Sam had a cup of coffee in his hands.

“Well, now we know who’s been leaving the bodies all over town,” I said as Riley took back the coffee he gave me and took a sip.

Kimber rolled her eyes and started making another cup.

“Like we didn’t know it wasn’t Beelzebub all along,” Riley said.

Sam and I glanced uneasily at each other and Riley set the coffee down. “You thought it was you?” He snorted. “You think waking up with some blood on you means you’re a murderer?” He shook his head. “
You
would think that. Pansy.”

I smacked Riley in the head and Kimber handed me a new coffee.

“We still don’t know for sure it was Beelzebub,” Sam said, his voice tight.

“So let me get this straight,” Kimber stated. “You think Beelzebub is body-hopping around town and when he’s done with the body, he just dumps it?”

I shook my head. “Pretty much.”

“That doesn’t explain how the bodies get into such bad shape. Beelzebub is immature and mean, but I can’t see him wasting his time defacing a body he already killed,” Sam said, drinking the coffee Kimber gave him. After he sipped it, he looked down in the cup and back at Kimber. “This is good.”

“Of course it is. I made it,” she said like it was obvious.

“He’s obviously the one that brought the werebats here. We saw what it did to the DJ last night. Who’s to say they haven’t done that to every body he’s dumped?” I pointed out.

“I agree with Heven,” Riley said, slurping the milk out of his bowl. “Besides, golden boy here”—he hitched his chin at Sam—“doesn’t have it in him to go on a murder frenzy.”

Sam didn’t seem completely convinced, but he didn’t argue, and Kimber was busy making herself a bagel.

Riley pushed away from the island. “I got somewhere to be.”

Where could he possibly need to be? “Don’t you think you should stick around?” I asked.

“For what? To help clean up that colossal mess from last night? No, thanks.”

“We need to make plans, Riley. We need to find those souls, set them free, and weaken Beelzebub, now more than ever, especially if he’s the one killing people here.”

Kimber returned to the island with a bagel slathered with cream cheese and Riley snatched half of it off her plate and took a huge bite.

“Hey!” Kimber yelled.

He ignored her and looked at me. “How about this? You meet me in hell when you’re ready to go soul hunting. Okay? Better make it sooner rather than later because he’s just going to keep killing people.” He snatched the remaining bagel half right out of Kimber’s hand and grinned. “Thanks for the food, Red.” He left, the back door shutting firmly behind him.

“He has got to be the most annoying person I’ve ever met!” Kimber wailed.

“I agree. But he’s right,” Sam said, gazing out the door Riley just left through. “We need to quit putting it off and make a trip to hell.”

Cole shuffled into the room, his hair all mussed from sleep. “We’re going to hell?”

Kimber’s aura brightened at the sight of my brother and I suppressed a groan. “Appears so,” I answered.

“Well, not today, we aren’t. Did you see the mess outside? It’s going to take all day to clean up.” Kimber sniffed. Her aura, which moments before was clear and bright, was suddenly cloudy with a burst of mustard color.

Was she nervous about going back to hell? I couldn’t really blame her after she was trapped there for so long. In fact, if I were truly honest, isn’t that the reason I’d been putting it off as well? I wasn’t exactly eager to get back to the place where so many bad things happened.

“We probably should clean all this up,” I agreed. Kimber seemed relieved when I agreed with her. “One more day won’t hurt anything.”

At least, I really hoped it wouldn’t.

Chapter Eighteen

Heven

The school parking lot was half empty when Sam pulled my car into the lot.

“Are we early?” I wondered as he put the car in park and gazed out the windshield.

Kimber snorted. “Us? Early? Uh, no. But we aren’t late.”

“Well, it looks like most of the school will be getting late slips today.”

“Not me,” Kimber said, opening up the back door to get out. “After spending half the weekend lying to the police, convincing them we weren’t involved with the crap that went down at the party, and then spending the other half cleaning it up, I don’t have the energy to put on a performance for Mrs. Schuster.”

She closed the back door and I leaned back in my seat, not feeling too eager to go inside. This weekend left me feeling drained as well. “Ready?” Sam asked, pulling on one of my pigtail braids falling over my shoulder from beneath a knit purple hat with a yellow butterfly on the side.

“Not really,” I said and gave him a small smile. “How about we ditch Kimber and school and go wherever the road takes us?”

“We’d have to come back eventually.”

I sighed heavily, releasing all the air from my lungs, making me hunch forward slightly. “I know.”

“We can’t put this off forever, Hev.” Sam reminded me gently.

“Well, not with graduation this spring.”

“I’m not talking about school and you know it.” He smirked.

“I just… Is it awful I felt relieved when Beelzebub ran off before we could catch him?”

The smirk he wore faded away and he turned in the seat so he faced me more fully. “No, Hev. It’s not awful. A lot has happened in the past year—longer if you count the night China attacked you and left you for dead.”

“The night you saved me and took me to the hospital,” I said, remembering the night my mind had refused to share with me for so long.

“Yeah, that night,” he murmured and ran his fingers down my cheek. “No one blames you for needing a break. We all needed one.”

“But now break’s over.”

He nodded, looking solemn. But even his solemn expression couldn’t quell the warm honey color of his eyes. “It’s time to finish this. We need to move on.”

I knew he was right. I knew I couldn’t put off what I was coming to think of as my final facedown with Beelzebub. My mother deserved peace in death and we deserved peace in life. If only we knew what he was up to, because I knew he was up to something.

It won’t matter what he’s up to when you release the souls and take away his power,
I told myself.

I just prayed no one else died along the way.

Sam and I climbed out of the car and started through the parking lot, the whole place seeming eerie and silent. I was just about to ask Sam if he was thinking the same thing when Kimber came running down the sidewalk toward us.

Sam and I jogged to meet her halfway and when she stopped, her eyes were wide and her aura was all over the place.

“What is it?” I demanded.

“Inside. Now. You have to see this.”

The three of us rushed inside, the door banging behind us and echoing in the hall. “Where is everyone?” I asked, my voice hushed.

“Come on,” Kimber said, grabbing my arm and pulling me around the corner and into another where students were loitering in the halls and digging through their lockers before the bell rang.

“What are we looking for?” Sam asked.

Just then a locker door slammed shut and the person behind it shuffled their way down the hall toward us.

A sound hissed between my lips.

The guy, his name was Jeremy, looked completely out of it. Not only that, his skin had this green cast to it and his eyes were surprisingly vacant. He walked stiffly, like his legs forgot how to bend, and his shoulders were hunched like his bones forgot how to support his frame.

“He looks like a zombie,” I murmured. Then I glanced at Kimber. “Is he a zombie?”

“He isn’t trying to eat our brains so I would think not.”

As if to prove her statement, he continued by like we weren’t even there. When he bumped into Sam with his shoulder, he stopped, turned, and raised his empty, red-rimmed eyes to Sam’s face.

“Jeremy, man… you okay?” Sam asked him cautiously.

He made a sound between a grunt and a groan and then shuffled off down the hallway.

“Okay, so maybe we should tell the nurse he isn’t looking so hot,” I said.

“It isn’t just him, Heven. It’s everyone,” Kimber said, gesturing to the rest of the people in the hallway.

She was right.

They all had that green cast to their skin, they all moved like stiff zombies, and barely anyone said two words. The girl on the far end of the hall kept coughing, deep whooping coughs she didn’t cover with her hand.

My chemistry lab partner walked by and I hesitantly tapped her on the shoulder, calling out her name. “Alexis?” The girl swung around. Her usually glossy brown locks were tangled and dull. “What happened to you?”

Her eyes didn’t seem as vacant, but she stared at me for long minutes like she didn’t understand what she said. Finally, she spoke. “Not feeling… too… hot.” Then she glanced at Kimber. “Great party.”