Malachi’s eyes narrowed.
We sat there in silence until I remembered that I was supposed to be in charge. I drew my shoulders up and tried unsuccessfully to ignore the burning in my cheeks as I pretended to know what I was doing. “Rest up, then. I’ll pick you up tomorrow night.”
Henry nodded as I rose from my chair, and Jim’s eyes bounced between my face and my chest. Malachi glared at him and stepped between us, blocking Jim from sight. My Lieutenant kept a respectful distance between us but gave me a lingering look, full of wish and want. It took everything I had not to touch him. With Henry and Jim there, though, it wouldn’t be very Captain-like of me to fling myself into Malachi’s arms.
So I headed home.
I let myself into the house as quietly as possible, but as soon as I closed the front door, I could hear the heavy, even breaths that told me Diane was deeply asleep, as Raphael had promised. I padded down the hall to my room and closed the door. My books and papers lay scattered across my desk. My backpack was propped against my chair, my camera tucked into one of its side pockets. A pile of dirty clothes in the corner, a pair of sneakers under the bed.
Life as it had been.
I lifted my fleece jacket and looked down at my waist, at the black leather belt and sheathed knife.
Life as it was now: a weird intersection of normal and crazy, of life and beyond-life, afterlife, undead, whatever. I put my hand to my heart and felt it beating, remembered feeling Malachi’s pounding through his shirt as he kissed me. Were we alive? Were we here on borrowed time? Did we have a right to live or only to serve as Guards? Did we have a future, or were we headed back to the dark city when we were done? Did anything we did here, apart from eliminating the Mazikin, matter? Could we keep anything for ourselves? I hadn’t exactly signed a contract that spelled that out for me.
Raphael had told me I should finish high school, that I should “go be a normal American teenager.” But this wasn’t the dark city, where all the Guards had a Station, a base from which they patrolled. Where they had authority. Where they could get things done.
Nope, this was freaking Rhode Island. And I was freaking Lela Santos. I was stuck in this house with my overprotective foster mother—the department of child welfare had custody of me for another three months and sixteen days. I had to attend school so that my probation officer didn’t come calling, and so that I could stay away from an all-expenses-paid trip back to the Rhode Island Training School, or the RITS, the state’s glorious juvenile facility. I had to keep my grades up so that I could stay eligible for that scholarship to the University of Rhode Island. If we could get rid of all the Mazikin, maybe the Judge would let me have that chance. Maybe she would let me have a future.
“And in the meantime, I have to save the world and be home by ten,” I whispered.
The Judge had said this would be hard. From where I was sitting, it looked impossible.
FOUR
AFTER WAKING IN A panic from nightmares of battling a million Mazikin who closed in on me with grasping hands and crazed, hungry grins, I drove to the Guard house early, only to find Malachi waiting on the porch swing. He slid into my front seat and gave me a concerned once-over. “Did you sleep well?” he asked, stroking his fingers down my cheek.
“It could have been better.” I pulled out of the driveway and steered toward the school.
“What’s wrong?”
“Four against a million,” I said, feeling the sense of dread in the pit of my stomach.
“Only if we sit back and do nothing, Lela. It will take the Mazikin a long time to bring that many into this realm, and that’s even if they were unopposed.”
“But the odds—”
“Were never in our favor. This is not new.” He sighed. “In the dark city, we were given enough to fight them and no more. My requests to double the number of Guards and outposts were refused on many occasions.”
“And did Raphael tell you that you wanted more but didn’t need it?” I asked with a laugh that died quickly as I glanced over at him. He was staring at his empty hands.
“Sometimes I wonder if they don’t want us to win or if it’s more entertaining to watch us struggle,” he said quietly, and then shook his head. “But if I dwell on that, I only feel angry. So I choose to believe that we are not given more because we have to find the rest inside ourselves.”
“I’d rather have an army.”
He chuckled. “So would I, but it helps to believe there might be a reason we don’t.”
We spent the rest of the ride in silence as I mulled that one over. Was this whole thing a game the Judge had set up to amuse herself? Or was it some kind of “growth experience”—as my probation officer had once described the RITS—for a lucky few? Either way, it seemed like a lot of effort and hassle. And I wasn’t sure I believed either was true, but I didn’t feel like arguing about it, either. If it helped Malachi to believe his own inner strength could make up for miserable odds, who was I to take that hope from him? Especially when I’d never met anyone as strong as he was. I couldn’t be sure he was wrong—about himself, at least.
We made it to school with time to spare, so I headed to the vending machines to get myself a granola bar. Standing close beside me, Malachi was alert and scanning the hallways, always the Guard looking for danger, but his eyes got snagged on the selection of goodies behind the Plexiglas.
“You didn’t eat breakfast, did you?” I asked.
“I’m still getting used to being hungry,” he said as I popped another three quarters into the slot and got a bar for him, too.
Nutrition in hand, we headed into the open cafeteria, past the Goths sleeping on their backpacks, past the skinny, wannabe-gangsta kid in dirty jeans completing his oh-so-sneaky drug deal behind one of the wide, round pillars around the perimeter of the room, past the procrastinators hunched over their homework, and past the cheerleaders crowded around …
Tegan.
She sat behind a table, underneath a banner that said NADIA VETTER MEMORIAL FOOD DRIVE.
“Is that for your Nadia?” Malachi asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, indeed. I have no idea what she’s up to.”
I set down my backpack at a table and slid into a chair, watching Tegan accept cans of food and cash donations from the rest of the student body. Her short brown hair was stylishly messy around her pixie-like features, and her attire carefully treaded the line between painfully fashionable and outrageously slutty. She had this holier-than-thou look on her face, and I had to turn away because it was pissing me off.
“Are you going to eat that or merely crush it to dust?” Amusement laced Malachi’s voice as he sat down in the chair next to mine.
I looked down at my now manhandled granola bar. “This is how I like them.”
At that exact moment, Tegan spotted us. She waved me over, first happily, and then frantically when I didn’t move fast enough for her.
“If I want to avoid drama, I should at least go say hi. She’s trying to be nice.”
Malachi stared at her with curiosity. “Do you want me to go with you?”
This was our fifth day of school together, but we’d spent morning and lunch times discussing everything from the finer points of knife wielding to the art of sending a text message, leaving us little time for socializing. Which was fine with me. Especially as I took in the hungry expressions on the faces of the cheerleaders, all eyeing Malachi like they were hoping to have him for dinner.
“Um … maybe let me handle this one alone.” I got up from my chair. “I won’t be gone long.”
Tegan came out from behind her table to greet me. “I left a message for you last night. You didn’t call back.”
Ah, the smell of entitlement in the morning. “I haven’t checked my messages. I was kind of busy.”
Tegan’s eyes lasered past me and zeroed in on Malachi, who was perusing his history textbook in a way that told me he was completely aware of his environment and ready for anything. She made a sug
gestive noise that made my fists clench. “I heard you had gotten together with some guy. I sincerely hope the rumors are true, for your sake.”
My cheeks were on fire. “People exaggerate. You know that.”
Her shell-pink lips curled into a lazy, speculative smile. “Too bad.”
I didn’t know whether to be flattered or to tell her to step the hell off. I was gravitating toward the latter when her smile fell away like a mask that was too heavy to wear for another second. “I wanted to talk to you,” she said quietly. “I’ve been thinking. You know. Since she died. About stuff. And people.”
I looked around, at the entire cheer squad staring at Tegan like she was crazy for speaking to me, and at the Goths, who had raised their heads to watch us like they wondered if they were about to witness a girl fight. Had she really chosen me to be the recipient of her thoughts about stuff and people?
“Tragedy has a way of making people think about life,” I said, offering the same empty statement I’d heard from one of our teachers after Nadia died. I waved my hand at her banner. “I take it this … whatever this is … is the result of your thinking?” I opened my mouth to suggest suicide prevention might have been more relevant, but her haunted expression stopped me. “This is … nice. A nice thing to do. Nadia would have approved.” It was the friendliest thing I could manage.
Tegan gave me a fragile smile. She’d always been an organizer. She liked bossing people around. But it was usually team fund-raisers and running for student council and stuff. Charity wasn’t really her thing.
“I wanted to do something real,” she said, staring down at her french manicure. “For her. Something that wasn’t bullshit. So I’m collecting food to take to Anchor House. It’s like a homeless shelter and soup kitchen kind of place. Nadia’s mom is on their board, and so is mine.” She bit her lip and looked at my hands, at my broken, unpolished fingernails. “I wondered if maybe you wanted to come with me tomorrow when I take it. We could work the lunch shift at the kitchen. They need volunteers.”
Tegan’s therapist must have put her up to this. “Where is it?” I asked.
“Pawtucket. You know, in the sketchy part?”
I did, having lived in that area at one time. It also happened to be pretty close to where the Mazikin had been caught on video, north of Providence’s East Side. And if Henry was right about the Mazikin targeting the homeless specifically … I groaned inwardly. Nadia had considered Tegan a close friend, and I didn’t dislike her enough to wish Mazikin possession on her. I also didn’t feel like carrying the guilt if anything happened to her. “Yeah … I’ll tag along.”
She flashed me a winning smile that screamed mission accomplished. “Cool. Aden’s coming, too.”
I snorted. Aden, Tegan’s boy of the month, was the starting pitcher for the baseball team and, as far as I knew, a first-class jackass, one of those golden boys who believed the world owed him something special. He seemed more likely to shout, “Get a job!” from the window of his car than to work a shift at a soup kitchen. “I have new admiration for your powers of persuasion.”
Tegan arched an eyebrow and gave Malachi another speculative look. “How about yours? You can bring your boy toy if you want. Or do you need me to help you convince him?”
The idea of Malachi being anyone’s toy made me want to laugh. And the idea of Tegan going anywhere near him made me want to kidney-punch her. “I’ll ask him.”
Then Tegan reached forward and grabbed my arm, which made my muscles tighten. I hate being touched without permission, but she didn’t seem to take the hint. She also didn’t seem to notice that Malachi was on his feet as soon as her hand moved. He was watching us with total concentration, like he thought Tegan might attack me or something. As if I couldn’t kick her ass without blinking. Still, his concern felt nothing short of awesome.
“Lela, I was thinking maybe it would give us a chance to talk.”
The way she said the word talk made me queasy, and I suddenly craved the opportunity to give her therapist the finger. But her trembling bottom lip and her waifish fingers on my arm reminded me of Nadia. Maybe Tegan was overachieving on the outside while she caved in and shriveled up inside. “We should do that,” I forced myself to say.
She grinned as the bell rang. “Later, then,” she said, and she headed back to her table.
“Later,” I mumbled, wondering if I would live to regret this.
The school day raced by. The teachers were outdoing themselves with final project assignments and homework, and all I could think about was how I’d never get any of it done because when I got home, I had to figure out how to prevent a full-scale Mazikin infestation.
When I passed Aden in the hall, he actually nodded at me, as did Ian Moseley, his best friend and the star slugger on the baseball team, and the five teammates crowded around them. Had Tegan told them to be nice to me?
Or was it that I was holding Malachi’s hand?
After all, he was the hot foreign guy who, within an hour of arriving at our humble school, had nearly strangled Evan Crociere—who would forever be known as “Dirty Jeans” in my mind—our school’s resident drug dealer. And not only that, Malachi had performed said strangling defending the honor of Lela Santos, who, it was rumored, had killed someone, and who, it was also rumored, was either a lesbian or a stone-cold bitch more likely to shank a guy than let him touch her … or both. Our reunion by the fence behind the school had been the source of gossip that had been building for a week.
I had only two classes with Malachi—Pre-Calc and Senior Lit—which wasn’t nearly enough for me. Apparently, Raphael didn’t think we needed to be together all day. And … maybe he was right. Sitting next to Malachi was a full-on distraction, and I wasn’t the only one who seemed to think so. But if everyone else was distracted, he was totally focused, his eyes on his work, his pen in constant motion, taking scrupulously neat notes.
I watched him like a movie. The way he put his elbow on his desk and pressed his thumb between his eyebrows, propping his head up with his knuckles as he wrote. The way his eyes scanned the hall, not just on guard, I realized, but taking everything in. Every flyer, every person, the lockers and the trophy case—his gaze slid over all of it, tracing and memorizing, and the whole time, his lips were curved up into this tiny smile, easy to miss yet impossible not to stare at once you knew it was there. If I had been tossed into high school cold, I couldn’t have pulled it off. But Malachi looked like he’d won the lottery. It made me want to ask him about it, to hear what kind of future he hoped for now that he was here. And I wanted to be a part of it.
At lunch, we loaded our trays and threaded our way toward an empty table in the corner. As we were walking, Tegan waved us over to hers, where she sat with Aden and a bunch of her friends.
Malachi nudged me with his shoulder. “They want you to sit with them very badly.”
I laughed. “I think it might be you they want to sit with.”
His brows lowered in confusion. “Me?”
“You really don’t know how you look to people, do you?” Tegan and Laney Fisher were staring at his chest. Jillian Flemming and Alexis Campbell were staring at his face. And the guys were all kind of sizing him up, like they wondered if he was as much of a BAMF as they’d heard.
Malachi looked down at his jeans and white thermal shirt and frowned. “Raphael said this was what people wore. He told me that I would blend in. You should have said something if—”
I leaned my head into his shoulder, working hard not to crack up and sneaking in the opportunity to inhale his scent. “It’s not your clothes, my friend. Look, don’t worry about it; all right? You’re just kind of mysterious to them. If you’re ready to answer a bunch of questions about where you come from and what it’s like there, I’m fine with going over to sit with them.”
Malachi’s eyes darted over to Tegan’s table. “That boy, the one named Aden, is in my physical education class.”
When he saw Malachi looking, Aden stood up
and made this exaggerated get-over-here wave. All eyes at that table were on us.
“Holy cow, dude, I do believe Aden Matthews is bro-crushing on you,” I said with a laugh. “At least he has good taste. Look—we’ve got to go over there now.”
Malachi gave the empty table in the corner a look full of longing. “Is that an order?”
I nodded solemnly. “It’s in the high school code of conduct, clause H-twenty-three-point-one-five, that if the two most popular people in school invite you to their table, you have to answer their summons. Plus, it will increase your pain tolerance.”
Malachi’s expression told me he actually thought there might be such a code. “Very well, then.”
As we approached the table, Aden and Tegan scooted down, and Ian and a couple of other guys made way on the other side. Levi, another of their close friends, moved around the end of the table to sit next to Jillian, his girlfriend. I ended up sandwiched between Ian and Malachi. They were built similarly, with lean hips and broad shoulders, leaving plenty of room for my ass but no room for the rest of me. I wondered if I might drown in testosterone and Axe body spray before I finished my sandwich.
I was taking my first bite when Greg, Nadia’s ex and one of the baseball team’s relief pitchers, approached the table, tray in hand and clearly irritated that I was seated there. He was one of the hangers-on, a kid who desperately wanted to be a part of this clique. But like me, he drove a crappy secondhand car, and his clothes were more likely to come from Walmart than J.Crew. One would think I’d feel some sympathy for him … but I didn’t. He hadn’t treated Nadia very well, and I’d come to the conclusion that he was a wannabe user who latched onto her because it made him look good.
I refocused my attention on the conversation as Ian scooted even closer to me to make room on his other side.
Laney flipped her auburn hair over her shoulder. “How are you liking our school?” she asked Malachi in a loud voice, enunciating every word and speaking slowly.