The Death Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy Box Set: (Books 1-3) (37 page)

“Tiff and I
can't
leave it alone, Mom. You know that. Besides, this is a chance for me to do something with the AFTD.” Affinity for the Dead was worthless unless I could help people. It was cool as hell that I could jerk zombies out of the ground but I wanted to do
more.
Running into the ghosts of those dead kids filled me with purpose. I could help and I wanted to help.

“Dad's cool with it.”

“Your mom has a small point,” Sophie said.

I turned around in my seat and gave her a glare that said clearly,
don't help me, thanks.

Sorry,
she looked back, but undaunted, she finished her thought, “What if that loser is alive, still killing kids and he catches on to the fact that you're the AFTD brains behind the tail on him. Yeah, he's going to really want you guys to keep breathing.”

Again,
thanks so much for that,
I thought sullenly.

Jade came to my defense, “Sophie, you remember how awful it was at the cemetery shack. Remember how sad it was? How many there were?” She shook her head, giving a small shudder at the memory. “He has to try. That's all he's saying. He and Tiff want to give something back.”

“Yeah. I mean, we survived last year with the Graysheets and all the other zombie crap and the drunken adults.”

Thanks Jonesy, another big help.

Jade looked down at her lap, her hands tightly clenched, knowing that one of the drunken adults had been her dad. I covered her hands with mine, splitting up their nervous embrace and holding them in one of mine. She looked up at me with a grateful smile, Mom ignoring the small intimacy.

Silence rolled out for a time, the highway stretched before us and we entered the valley area of Kent, cruising past Kent Station. I noted the Seattle Post-Intelligencer satellite office where I'd spilled my guts to Tim Anderson about the Graysheets; the loser, super-secret government group.

Professional creepers.

Jonesy stared at the Station as we roared by, Mom pausing at the railroad tracks then moving forward.

“Let's check out that new horror movie, what's it called?” he asked.

“Nightmare on Elm Street XX,” John said in a droll voice.

Sophie and Jade laughed. “Are you serious? Twenty?”

“I remember Pop seeing that in the theaters when the first one came out,” Mom said.

“Really?” That struck Jonesy dumb, almost.

Mom laughed. “Really.”

Jonesy plowed ahead, “Well, what do ya say? Let's do it.”

Sounded good but I looked at Jade. I knew Tiff'd be down with it but Sophie and Jade, they liked those movies where some guy saved a girl after a bunch of talking and no action.

What was the name of those lame-ass movies? Oh yeah,
chick-flicks.

“A man cannot live on chick-flicks alone!” Jonesy shouted into the quiet of the car, the girls wincing.

“Jonesy, volume,” Mom said.

“Right, sorry.”

“We'll go see a girl movie next time,” John promised. His voice belaying how utterly cool he thought a
kill them all
movie would be.

The promise of violence was close enough to taste.

“You guys just want to see a bunch of Alpha males bash everyone and helpless females prance around until they get saved with the possibility of the gratuitous breast scene thrown in,” Sophie announced with confidence.

Right,
so
?

“I heard breasts but I don't know what all the other rant was about,” Jonesy said.

Cripes.

Sophie opened her mouth to spew forth her girl-wrath when John interjected, “I think we just like the movie as a whole, we're not trying to cop a look at naked bodies.”

“Speak for yourself, Terran.”

Oh hell.
“Ah, hello? My mom's in the car, morons.”

Discussions with the words
naked
and
girls
in the same sentence should not be uttered in front of The Parents.

At which point Mom burst out laughing along with Jade and John. Sophie and Jonesy looked puzzled, her glaring at him and he with the
what?
look on his face.

Just another ride back from the lake.

Mom pulled up to Helen and Bill's house and Jonesy piled out. “Thanks Ali.” He slammed the car door practically off the hinges. Turning, he gave me the thumb signal that I needed to pulse him later. I gave him a chin-bob in acknowledgment and he disappeared into his house.

The car started to roll and Mom looked disapprovingly at the lawn as we drove away. “Looks like it's barely legal.”

“It is,” I said, defending Bill. Bill believed in a lawn as a man's God-given right.

“Humph,” she muttered. “The flower beds are nice if a little redundant.” I sighed.

Mom, the gardening-Nazi.

“Not everyone lives for gardening, Mom.”

Jade smiled. “I have sure learned a lot this summer, Ali.”

Mom smiled back. “You're an apt pupil.”

I almost did a huge eye-roll (kinda against guy-code), 'cuz Mom had a new prodigy and it wasn't me.

Jade and Mom continued their discussion of plants all the way to Jade's house, (Sophie and John had already been dropped off).

I walked her to the door, noting her sexy white cover up and how it contrasted with her cafe-au-lait skin. Sun-kissed, Mom called it. Forget that, I wanted to kiss it.
All of it.

She looked over her shoulder at me just then. No Empath skills necessary. She knew that I dug her. Her smile said it all. She dug me too.

We got to the door and I looked around. Great, no adult eyes and I put a hand on each side of her rib cage, relishing the smallness. I could almost meet my hands when I encircled her waist.

“Don't, she said, backing up,” which I ignored, pulling her closer.

She giggled. “It tickles.”

I lowered my head and brushed my lips with hers, drawing her in tight against my body, every curve melding against me like it was tailor-made for it. She drew her mouth back and I pressed mine against hers until she opened her mouth and I licked a line against her bottom lip, nipping it a little.

She liked it, wrapping her arms around my neck, her fingers working their way through my hair. As we stood there making out on the porch, I let my hands wander over her body and they ended up on her little round butt and with not much effort (a buck five, remember), I picked her up and she wrapped her legs around my waist. Now
that
was a position worth keeping for awhile but Mom honked the horn and we had to disentangle. I let her body slide down the front of mine, her fragrant hair tickling my nose on the way. I pressed my lips against her forehead and squeezed her, not really wanting to let go.

She looked at me with her heart in her eyes and our hands lingered, until our fingers slipped out of their union. Jade walked backward 'til her butt hit the door, opening it from behind, never taking her eyes off mine and mouthed,
love you.

What could I say to that.
Me too,
I mouthed back. The door closed and I turned around, walking back to the car, Jade a constant thing on my mind. She just kept becoming more, way more.

CHAPTER 3

I didn't feel like one of those dudes that's easily overwhelmed but Kent Paranormal High was
huge.

I looked up at the school, only ten years old, and thought: I was gonna have to use the spinning weather vane in my head to find my way around. A guy could get lost, a completely uncool prospect.

I hung around front by the big, glass doors and waited for the group. We picked up our roster today and everyone agreed seven-thirty was the time to do it. Not too early, not too late.

Jade showed up first in her new school clothes which made me look at the same crap I had from June. Huh. Mom had dragged me to Zuimez to get new jeans because the old ones (besides having shredded knees) were three inches too short and doin' the crotch grab, a total no.

She wore a cute little mini that barely covered her butt (I liked that but I
didn't
like the way the other guys were gonna look at her, I'd wanna kick all their asses). Her long, green shirt that was almost the length of the skirt, two pearl buttons at the neck shimmering a little when she moved, and her trademark silver hoops swinging as she walked toward me.

“Hey,” she greeted me softly, and I planted a kiss on her lips, smelling her body spray, so much a part of her, that great vanilla smell.

She put an arm around my waist and we stood there in comfortable silence, just hanging 'til the rest showed.

It wasn't long before John showed up with Alex. Sophie straggled in right after, then the Weller duo made up the last of us.

Bry was a junior this year so there was a stream of kids passing him and he was nodding every other second.

“Well, gotta split. Off to Kent Lake, just dropping off the sib-spawn.” That got a glare from Tiff, but Bry was tough and mock-punched her in the arm. Nice.

Tiff turned, rolling her eyes (Wow, she must stand in front of the mirror to perfect that). I couldn't help noticing she'd pulled out all the stops and bought a new hoodie for this year. The Weller kids took their hoodies
damn serious.

Bry walked off and we got back to the business at hand.

“Hey Alex, how goes it?” I asked.

“Good,” he said, nervously hitching up his glasses.

“How come you don't do the laser on your eyes, you could lose those glasses?” Sophie asked logically.

“No chip, no laser,” he replied.

“No kidding?” Jade asked.

He looked at her. “Yeah, my parents are big-time paranoid about all that imbedded chip technology. They think the government is keeping tabs on us with that stuff,” he said, pushing up his glasses again.

John and I looked at each other.
Yeah, duh.

I looked at Alex. “What are you anyway?” I always meant to ask but was too busy enjoying the break from all the chaos of last year to be curious enough to remember that Alex had pinged paranormal on our eighth grade Aptitude Test last spring.

“Ah, I'm gonna be
unclassified
this year.”

Huh, that blows. He's
something
but nobody knows what?

John clapped him on the shoulder, making him move a half a step. He probably weighed less than Jade. Geez. “It'll be okay. I heard that class is the biggest this year it's ever been.”

“They don't have a handle on dick. Adults think they've got all our paranormal skills mapped and they just flat don't,” Sophie said and Jade nodded.

We'd gone round and round with this last year. There were too many unknowns and the adults were too perfect to admit it. Kids were cropping up with new paranormal abilities and not always on schedule. Even Jonesy's school (at least Bry would be there) was going to do another round of AP Testing in the first two weeks for all incoming freshman.
They had to.
Or they'd have Paranormals popping up like weeds in the mundane flowerbed, not good.

We were all quiet for a second. “Doesn’t feel the same without Jonesy,” Sophie said.

I had to agree with her there and John nodded. Alex, who didn't really know Jonesy just watched all of us mope about his absence.

“Nah, we don't need him. He got all our collective asses in trouble anyway,” Tiff said, blowing the hugest bubble I had ever seen and snapping it so loudly I felt Jade jump beside me.

“Touchy,” she said, looking at Jade.

“No, I just, I just was startled, is all,” she said, looking down at her feet. Tiff was kinda in-your-face sometimes. Jade, well Jade wasn't. Of course, Jade was a little sensitive. Being an Empath and having an abusive, drunken dad will do that to a person.

We trudged into the school and stood in the line waiting for the roster.

As soon as we were all through, we compared our schedules.

John and I snapped our heads up at the same moment.

The enraged cow, Griswold, was our PE teacher again this year.

Jade and Sophie groaned and Jade said, “Griswold?”

“Yeah?” Tiff smacked. “I don't care, she can
get at me.
”

“Yeah, she'll do that,” I said with confidence.

“I had her last year and kept her in line,” Tiff said.

“Really?” Jade asked. “She was just...”

“...
her
,” Sophie finished.

“Yeah, that,” I said.

“Who's Griswold?” Alex asked.

“In the dictionary where it says, 'Fun-sucker'...”

“Ah, I don't think that it's actually in the...” Alex began.

I waved that away dismissively. “
Anyway
, there's a photo of her. No. Definition. Needed.”

Alex looked at John who said, “True.”

The girls chimed in, “True.”

“I'm not really that skilled in PE,” Alex said.

We all looked at him, kinda pathetic and puny with his slightly uncool clothes and horrible glasses. But, there was something about Alex that was interesting. John dug him, for starters. Plus, he had some cool theories about comic book messages from other Paranormals. We'd explore that later, maybe at the Jonester's house.

“You call Garcia yet?” Tiff asked as we made our way to the lockers.

I looked over at her, an errant kid knocking into my backpack. “Hey man, sorry...” I looked at him. Geez, a thousand kids if there was one.

“No, I've been putting it off. Maybe we can do it together.”

She stared at me, then said slowly, “Yeah, okay. But, I don't wanna get sucked into your undead drama again.”

That didn't make a ton of sense, since she was AFTD too.

Sophie and Jade stopped, looking at her. The swarm of kids milling around us.

“I think you kinda are already,” Sophie said.

“Yeah, you can't really go through all that we did last year without being a part of it, Tiff,” I told her.

Tiff shifted her weight, moving her tennis shoes back and forth over an invisible spot on the recycled quartz flooring. “I guess. I just don't want it to get so crazy like it did. My brother, he got pretty beat up, and you almost got taken...”

We moved against the lockers, too much jostling with the kids. “The Graysheets aren't after me now; we can use what we have to find that scum-bucket that's killing kids.”

She nodded. “No, they're not after you,
now.
” Her eyes met mine, the green flecks in them bright glitter in the brown. “I'll pulse you later.”

A long breath escaped me that I didn't realize I'd been holding. Good, I didn't want to do it alone. Her words lingered in my head, battering the inside of my skull, they weren't after me
now.

Like, at this moment.

I looked at the group and we silently walked away, Jade's hand an abiding comfort in mine.