***
When they'd first arrived at the police station, Jinx had been quickly separated from his friends. While the police jostled him down the hall, towards an interrogation room, he protested, "Hey, I get one phone call."
"Fine," the beefy cop with slicked-back hair grunted at him. "There's a pay phone over there. You got any change?"
Jinx shook his head.
With an annoyed sigh, the cop shoved some coins into his hand, then shoved him up to an ancient wall phone that looked ready to fall off its post.
"If you'd just give me my cell phone back…" Jinx grumbled.
"Ha! Fat chance, kid. Get your call done."
Jinx punched in his home number, but he had little hopes of his mom picking up. And, if she did, the chance of her being sober was slim. On the third ring, she answered with a slurred, "Hallo?"
"Mom, can you get down to the police station? I…I'm being held for questioning."
She let out a garbled string of curses. Jinx heard a man's voice mumble something in the background, and he sighed and rubbed his eyes, wishing just one of his parents wasn't so absent all the time. He felt like he'd raised himself, and, just once in his young life, he'd like to feel a bit less alone when it came to his family. Sure, he had great friends, but he had no responsible adult in his life to turn to when he desperately needed one. It made him feel old before his time, but he tried to hide that from the others.
"Look, Jinx…" Mom's words melted in a loud yawn and smacking of hangover-dry lips. "You'll have to take care of yourself, kiddo. I've got Larry over, and—"
"Don't I always? Never mind!" He hung up, slamming the ancient receiver back in its cradle and thinking how satisfying it felt to do so.
Now, sometime later, he sat in the interrogation room alone, doodling video game characters on a pad of paper he'd snuck in by tucking it under his shirt. The two cops questioning him had briefly left the room to grab coffee. He had read their energy loud and clear, though, before they took their break. They had no evidence to pin on him, but they were doing one last sweep of the classroom. The pair would return to try and put the squeeze for information on him.
Just before they did, his cell phone vibrated in his back jeans pocket.
He sat up, stopped drawing. "What the…?" The cops had taken his phone when they’d brought him in, for evidence, they said.
Quickly he took the slim red phone out and looked at it. It definitely wasn’t his phone. When he flipped it open, the number on the call screen made him moan in dismay. Just what he needed: a call from Satan himself. He pressed TALK then END swiftly, just as one cop returned to the room.
"Okay, kid." The burly cop with dark brown skin and chocolate-colored eyes towered over him. "One last time. You sure you didn't see anyone leaving the classroom as you and your friends arrived?"
He shook his head. Just as he opened his mouth, his cell phone chirped loudly again.
The big cop frowned. "What was that?"
Jinx scratched the back of his neck, coughed to try and cover up the ringing. "I didn't hear anything."
The cop tilted his head, listened. Jinx swallowed hard and willed the man not to hear.
The ringing rose in volume.
Glowering down at Jinx, the cop placed a hand on the table and leaned closer. "I heard a cell phone. I know I did. Now how could that be, when I took yours away?"
Jinx shrugged and silently cursed his father. Why was it when he didn't want his parents to interfere, that was exactly when they did, and the results usually turned out for the worst?
"Get up," the cop commanded when the phone gave another sharp bleat. "And give me what's in your back pocket right now." He held out his hand and waited.
Jinx shuffled to his feet, head down as he fished the cell from his jeans. With a heavy sigh, he placed it in the cop's outstretched hand.
"Ahhhh! Too hot!" The cop promptly screamed and dropped the cell, which now billowed black smoke. Tiny flames licked out of its unfolded face.
Jinx screwed up his face and mumbled, "Geez, Dad. Why now?"
"Because I'm saving your behind, son," came the silky, insidious reply, which billowed out of the phone in time with the smoke.
The cop gave another shrill squeak and staggered back from the spectacle. Jinx just stood there, head down, hands buried in his pockets, and waited for the embarrassment, Dad's showboating, to be over. He was in enough trouble already. He didn't need an appearance by the Prince of Darkness to add to his stress, but there was no holding Dad back when he wanted to make a statement.
The cop choked and moved back from the smoke. He opened the door and fled, yelling, "I need back up in here," as he vacated the room.
Soon the column of blue-black smoke took on a form, appearing more human as arms extended from the mass and a chest puffed out. Shoulders and a head were carved from the shapeless darkness.
"I heard word through my League of Extreme Evil contacts," Satan said, as his sharp, angular face and piercing blue eyes materialized and he leaned forward menacingly over the table, "that you did a very bad deed, son."
Jinx glanced up at his dad, who was clad in an impeccable grey Armani suit, his jet-black hair slicked away from his high forehead. He shrugged, shuffled back, then said, "If you mean Blaze, I didn't kill him."
"Oh." Satan clucked his tongue. "I'm so disappointed to learn that." The click of his shoes as he drew nearer made the nerves along Jinx's spine jump.
"Sorry," he whispered, holding his breath when his father touched his shoulder. Latent heat always lingered in the tips of Satan's extremities, and Jinx began to sweat profusely from a combination of nerves and Dad's combustible qualities.
"Jinx…son." Satan sat on the edge of the table and stared at him. "I need you to embrace your darker nature." He sighed and smoothed a hand over his impeccably styled hair. "Truth? I'd be happy if you'd just use your grey magick a bit more."
Jinx scowled, but his gaze remained fixed on the floor. "I'm not doing that. I don't want to get in trouble, Dad. I just want to fly below the radar, be invisible, you know?"
Satan shot up from the table and sharply pulled the wrinkles from his suit. "Invisible? No son of mine will be invisible, thank you very much…!"
"Dad, I—"
Satan held up a long, thin finger, gesturing for Jinx's silence. "Listen, you little shit. I'm going to give you a choice. You can be a boring mundane, just as you wish, but it means severing all ties with me. I won't have a nobody for a kid." He sniffed and his nostrils flared with smoke. "Or you can start embracing the dark side, do me proud as the future Heir of Hell, and for that I'll help you out of this little mess here." He indicated the interrogation room with a sweep of his hand.
Jinx chewed on his bottom lip. He turned his glare on his father, who merely arched an eyebrow at him, gave a smug smile, and waited. What could he do? If he didn't accept Dad's ultimatum, Satan would surely cause chaos and get Jinx in deeper trouble. If he did accept it, he'd owe Dad a bad deed or two, and he hated owing his father anything. But the thought of having two parents non-existent in his life frightened him even more than being in trouble.
"Will you make sure my friends go free, too?" he asked.
Dad nodded. "You just say the word and I'll create all the diversions you need."
"Okay." A part of Jinx hated himself for agreeing, but… "I'll do something to prove my worth if you let me and the others go free."
A demonic smile curled Dad's lips and exposed wide, white teeth. "That's my boy." He patted Jinx's cheek with one burning hot hand and poised himself in front of the door moments before three cops burst through.
Just as cop number one drew his gun, he froze—literally. Satan's skin took on a hint of blue and the temperature in the interrogation room dropped drastically as the Prince of Darkness accessed the power of the Ninth Level of Hell, the coldest level of them all, and froze the policemen in place.
Jinx whirled on him. "You killed them!"
Satan wa
ved him off. "Oh, don't be so melodramatic. They'll thaw out not long after we leave. Then they'll be as good as new." He shooed his son out of the interrogation room and Jinx slipped by the police popsicles and made his way down the hall to find his friends and get out. At his heels, the devil followed close.
As Jinx and his dad breezed by more people, they, too, froze in mid-step or mid-question. One well built lady cop, who stood nose-to-nose with Satan, turned and said, "What're you—?" but that was all she got out before icy feathers formed on her pursed lips.
Jinx raced into the waiting room and found Nikki, Serena, and Isaac propped on a bench that sat against the back wall. When Serena focused on Satan behind him, Jinx noticed her face pruned in confusion. As he drew near, she stood and asked, "Ummm….who is that?" She looked around, eyes widening as she took in the mass of frozen people. "And is he doing this?"
Jinx grabbed her hand and motioned to the others to follow. "Not a lot of time to talk, but that," he pointed beside him, where Satan now stood, "is my dad. The Prince of Darkness. Dad, meet Serena, the new girl at school. And, yeah, he's creating a diversion so we can get the hell out of here."
Satan wiggled his fingers and smiled. "Hello." Then he promptly turned the people near the double glass doors into ice sculptures by pointing at them. "Go," he commanded, and the kids ran toward the exit.
Just as Jinx stepped off the bottom step of the police station and onto the sidewalk, a cold hand folded over his shoulder. "Remember your promise."
He turned to look at his father, whose face was now losing the blue pallor and returning to its usual rosy hue. "Yeah, I'll remember." Jinx looked after his fleeing friends, who hadn't yet realized he wasn't with them.
"Good. Because I'll be watching, son…waiting." With that, Dad began to melt into a column of smoke once more. His face and form lost definition, curling in on themselves. The column grew thinner and thinner, then began to descend, folding into a tiny, compact mass. The mass bloomed a vivid red and a cell phone sat on the pavement.
Jinx looked inside the police station. Already he could make out some people moving slightly, nearer to the exit. Their stiff limbs jerked spastically as they began to thaw.
"You've got twenty minutes to get out of here and begin planning your bad deed," Dad said from within his new cell phone form.
Jinx glowered at the phone. "What if I just leave you behind? Can't watch me if I don't take you along."
The phone gave a hearty, cruel laugh. "Don't be silly, son. I can see you anytime I like. If you leave me behind, I'll just assume another form and follow."
Giving a defeated sigh, Jinx scooped the phone up and shoved it in his back pocket. Briefly, as he fled to catch up with his friends, he wondered if butt-dialing Dad would provide some small, petty satisfaction. Maybe it would at least annoy the Prince of Darkness, he thought spitefully.
He caught up with the others after he rounded a second corner past the police station. "Hey, wait up."
"Where were you?" Isaac turned and gave him a worried look.
"I… kind of got tied up with Dad," Jinx said, and he pulled the cell phone from his back pocket, holding it up and giving it a sideways glance to indicate to the others that Satan was still lurking and could hear them. "Made a deal with him to get us out of there."
"Oh, Jinx." Nikki came forward to stand beside her brother. "No."
Serena joined the three. "Can we help?"
Jinx smiled at her, but it was a smile filled with sadness. "Better you stay out of this, Serena." Then he looked at the others. "You guys, too. I should do this alone. He’s my dad, after all."
Isaac clenched his meaty fists and frowned. "Whatever you got planned, I'm coming along to stop you."
The cell phone, still in Jinx's hand, chirped and squeaked. "You stop him, and there will be consequences."
Jinx screwed up his face, glared at the red plastic in his hand. "Go, you three. Just go. I'll see you at school tomorrow…I hope."
And then he turned and ran off, leaving Serena, Nikki, and Isaac standing in the center of the street, staring after him.
"We should follow," Isaac said. "We have to follow."
He moved a step forward, but Serena held back some, and Nikki obviously noticed. She reached out and touched Serena's wrist. "If you can't come with us, we understand."
Serena screwed up her face, feeling guilty. "It's not that I don't want to, but Aunt Macy is probably worried by now. I should really get home."
Nikki gave her an understanding smile, and so did Isaac. "No worries, Serena," he said.
Before she left, she told them, "I'll give you a call later to see if you're okay."
Nikki fished a pen out of her purse and scrawled a number on Serena's hand. "That's my cell." She gave Serena a quick hug. "Talk to you later."
They waved and Serena watched them leave, a sinking feeling growing in the pit of her stomach.