Personal Demons Read online

  She starts across the hall to her locker and I hang back to admire the view for a few seconds before following her. She is petite—maybe five-two. Nearly a foot shorter than my human form. But she’s no little girl. There are curves in all the right places.

  I laugh at myself. Although lust is one of the seven deadly sins, it’s not the one that got me where I am and not something I’ve experienced often in the seven millennia I’ve existed—though I’ve used it to my advantage a few thousand times. This is going to be fun.

  I stride across the hall and catch her just as she reaches her locker. I spin the lock on mine a few times, and it springs open.

  “How’d you do that?” she asks, like she could possibly know I used my power.

  “What?”

  “I had that locker at the beginning of the year and switched ’cause the lock was broken.”

  “Hmm. They must have fixed it.” I’ll need to be more careful. This mortal is extraordinarily observant. I slipped up in class by not keeping my eyes on the book—which she’d noticed because her eyes weren’t on the book either. And again with the locker, because as I try the real combination, I find she’s right: it is indeed broken.

  She looks skeptical. “Yeah, I guess, except they never fix anything around here. Welcome to Hades High.”

  What the Hell? “Excuse me? Hades High?”

  “Yeah, get it? Haden High—Hades High. It’s just one letter, but it so much more accurately describes this hellhole.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Well, wouldn’t you agree?” She gestures to the cracking plaster, peeling paint, burned-out lightbulbs, gouged gray linoleum, and dented gray metal lockers surrounding us.

  “Well, it looks like I’ve chosen just the place, then.” A grin stretches my face. How perfect is it that my target goes to a high school nicknamed Hell? This is too rich.

  She looks away and reaches into her locker, but she can’t hide the smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “If your ‘just the place’ is this crappy, washed-up fishing town, then you’re more pathetic than I would have guessed.”

  I laugh—I can’t help it—and then shudder when I catch a hint of Frannie’s ginger. Mmm … pathetic must be her type.

  “How come you had to change schools a month before graduation?”

  I smile inwardly. “Business.”

  “Your father’s?” she presses.

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  She looks at me and her brow furrows as she tries to figure out what that means. Then she pushes her locker shut with a crash. “So … what’s your next class?”

  I pull my schedule out of my back pocket and shake it open. “Looks like calculus, room 317.”

  “Oooh, you have Mrs. Felch. Sooo sorry.”

  “Why? What’s the deal with Mrs. Felch?”

  Just then the bell rings. She cringes. “First, you get detention if you’re not in your seat at the bell—so, sorry—and, second, she bites.”

  “Mmm. We’ll see about that.” I kick my locker shut and turn to head to building 3—and don’t try to hide the smile that pulls at my lips as her eyes burn a hole through my back the whole way down the hall. A good start.

  2

  Hell to Pay

  FRANNIE

  It turns out that I’m a little preoccupied and basically useless in physics lab. Luckily, my lab partner, Carter, is an obsessive science geek who usually wants to do the whole lab himself anyway. So today I put my elbows away and let him have his way with the circuit board. Carter pushes up his glasses and hunches over it like a protective mother while I sit contemplating how it is that Luc shows up out of nowhere and turns me into mush. Which I never am. For any guy.

  I follow along with what Carter’s doing, ’cause he’s not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, and occasionally risk life and limb by sticking my hand in to fix his screwups. But at the end of lab, I look at my write-up and realize I’ve written “Luc” instead of “ohms” all over it. In pen. This is bad.

  Despite my best effort, I catch myself nearly running back to my locker after my double-lab period. But, just as I turn the corner, there’s a hand on my shoulder. I spin and find Ryan Keefe, or Reefer to all his friends. He steps up, too close, and stares down at me. Then his lips curl into a lopsided smile and I know what’s coming.

  “Hey, you,” he says, pushing his brown shoulder-length dreads off his face with the heel of his hand.

  I slither out from where he’s trying to maneuver me against the wall. “Hey, Reef. What’s up?”

  He props his short, stocky frame against the wall and glances down the hall at his crew, hanging near the cafeteria door. “We want you back,” he says with a jut of his chin.

  I turn and start walking away, pretending he doesn’t still send my pulse racing. “Not gonna happen.”

  He heads me off with an arm against the wall. “I want you back,” he says, his voice low.

  I hesitate long enough to pull a deep breath before turning back to him. When I do, I try to keep my expression hard, but I feel my heart melt when I look into his big, muddy-brown eyes. “Listen, Ryan. I’m … It’s not you, really.” I cringe at how lame that sounds, but it’s true.

  He slumps against the wall and looks sick. “Great. The ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech. Just what every guy wants to hear.”

  “Sorry, but it is. Me, I mean—not you.”

  He can’t contain his frustration. “Why? Why is it you?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m just not looking for a real relationship.”

  His smile is dubious. “I’d be okay with that. No strings,” he says, like he thinks I’m going to forget he said he loved me.

  I smile and shove him, ’cause there’s no point in calling him on it. “I’m sure you would.”

  “Seriously, Frannie. The guys want you back. We can’t find anyone nearly as good as you.”

  “You can sing. You don’t need me.”

  “I’m strictly backup caliber. We need a real singer. Female, preferably. You know, for the hotness factor.”

  I roll my eyes. “Sorry. You should post something. You know, like have an audition. There’s gotta be a thousand people right here in this school who can sing better than me.”

  “We did. Only got Jenna Davis, who sounded like an opera singer, and Cassidy O’Connor, who’s hot, but …” He cringes.

  “I know someone who’d be perfect. She’s a friend of my sister’s. I’ll give her your number.”

  I start walking again, but his hand against the wall stops my progress. I groan internally and resist the sudden urge to twist him into an arm lock and throw him against the wall.

  He leans in, his lips brushing my ear, and I catch the scent of boy musk. He runs his guitar-calloused fingers down my arm, making me shudder. “But I want you. I miss you, Frannie.”

  My heart flutters as I remember how good those lips felt on mine, but I breathe it off. You don’t love me.

  I shrug, duck under his arm, and head down the hall at a jog, only to find my locker surrounded by girls. It’s a freakin’ who’s who of Haden High with Luc right in the middle. There’s Stacy Ravenshaw and her cheer-bitches; Cassidy O’Connor, chaste Irish beauty; Valerie Blake, tall, dark, and gorgeous captain of the volleyball team; and Angelique Preston, senior-class goddess—blond, beautiful, and stacked, with the intellectual depth of a mud puddle—front and center.

  Suddenly I’m furious. The totally ridiculous and insanely irrational thought—I saw him first—shoots through my head. I picture myself pushing and shoving through the fluttering and palpitating crowd to get to him, ripping out handfuls of hair and gouging eyes on the way.

  I seriously need to get my shit together. I draw on my judo training to center myself. After a ten-second meditation and a balancing breath, I shoulder my way through the groupies to my locker, where I exchange my books and turn to make my escape … just as a hand darts out and burns into my shoulder.

  “Hey. What do you have now
?” That sticky-sweet, warm honey voice is behind me, so close I can feel its heat.

  I turn and smile at Luc as the sharp edge of Angelique’s glare nearly cuts me in half.

  LUC

  She turns and I smell her fury—black pepper—overpowering the ginger lust of the others. Mmm … That’s a good start. The first step. She smirks at Angelique and says, “History, Mr.—”

  “Sanghetti, room 210?” I interrupt.

  “You too?”

  “Yep.” I start to reach out for her arm as she turns up the hall, but I catch myself because I didn’t miss the way she flinched back from the heat of my touch when I grabbed her shoulder. I’m literally too hot to handle.

  I give Frannie a sidelong glance, and she drops her gaze to the floor.

  “So … do you have lunch after?” she asks.

  “I think so.”

  “Do you wanna sit with my crew?” She sounds tentative—not her usual confident fire.

  “As appealing as that sounds, I have some things I need to take care of. Maybe another day.” Truth is, all human food is repulsive, but high school cafeteria food … just can’t do it.

  “Whatever,” she says, brushing it off.

  I catch a hint of ginger, and everything in me vibrates like a plucked guitar string as a crackle of hot lightning shoots through me. She’s The One. I’m sure of it. Her soul is to be tagged, but not collected—which is good, because collection isn’t in my job description. She’s been tricky, though. The last two demons we sent couldn’t find her and are now burning at the bottom of the Fiery Pit. But they were lesser demons—Third Level. So now we’ve sent in the best, which, of course, would be me. My razor-sharp instincts have gotten me to where I am: First Level, just shy of the council. They’ve never steered me wrong. And now they’ve steered me to Haden High, right into the path of one Miss Frannie Cavanaugh.

  We walk into history and Frannie sits near the middle of the room. I head up the aisle to Mr. Sanghetti, who is leaning back in his chair, just at the tipping point, with his heels on his desk. I smile as I imagine bumping his chair—just by accident—and sending him over backward.

  “Mr. Sanghetti?”

  He looks up. “Yes.”

  I hold out my schedule, and he rolls his eyes, sighs deeply, and makes a huge production of pulling his feet off the desk and dragging his husky, middle-aged frame to a stand. “I suppose you need an admit slip?”

  “That’s what I’ve been told.”

  He rummages in his desk and finally comes out with a crumpled yellow slip of paper, then turns and pulls a textbook from the bookshelf behind his desk.

  He looks at my schedule again and writes my book number next to my name on his roster. “Anywhere is fine, Lucifer,” he says, handing me the book and gesturing to the room.

  “Call me Luc.”

  “All right then, Luc. Just take any seat,” he says with another wave of his hand.

  I turn and make my way back to Frannie, taking the desk to her right. As I sit, Mr. Sanghetti starts calling roll.

  “Jose Avilla. Jennifer Barton.” Hands shoot up in turn. “Zackary Butler. Lucifer Cain.”

  Her eyes dart to mine and snap wide. I just grin at her.

  “Mary Francis Cavanaugh.”

  I feel my grin widen as Frannie raises her hand. Mary Francis. Oh, this is rich.

  When Mr. Sanghetti finishes taking roll, he has us turn to page 380 in our text and drones about the fall of Christian Jerusalem during the Crusades.

  I just stare at Frannie—excuse me, Mary Francis—and chuckle to myself.

  And about half the time, Mary Francis is staring right back at me.

  Then the lights go down and an image of ancient Jerusalem flashes onto the smartboard.

  “What was at the root of the struggle for Jerusalem?” Mr. Sanghetti asks. A few hands go up, and I listen to the answers, remembering how it really happened. Having actually been there makes every history class I’ve ever taken—all hundred or so—really amusing. It’s like that game where someone whispers something in someone’s ear to start and it gets passed down the chain until the last person says it out loud and it’s nothing like what the first person really said.

  FRANNIE

  So, I keep looking over at Luc—shoot me, I can’t help it—and all through history, he’s got this smug little smirk on his face. No idea what that’s about, but, now that I think of it, maybe it’s good that he blew off lunch. I’m not sure I’m ready to share him with Taylor. She and Riley are always on me about being a charity dater, meaning they think I always choose the needy semi-losers. Riley thinks it’s a control thing, and she may be right. I don’t do anything I don’t want to, and I’m not gonna end up in some relationship where I feel pressured. But there’s also the Taylor factor. Since we met in fourth grade our relationship has been a friendly rivalry. Unfortunately for her, I always get the grades. Unfortunately for me, she always gets the guys. All things considered, the needy semi-losers are just a safer choice, mostly ’cause they’re not Taylor’s type.

  But, watching Luc smirk at Mr. Sanghetti, I know two things for sure: Luc is no needy semi-loser, and Taylor’s gonna go after him. So, whatever all of this insanity going on inside of me is, I better get over it.

  I’m still staring at him. And, of course, he catches me and locks my gaze with his. When I see that he’s not breathing, I realize that I’m not either. I take a deep breath. He seems to notice and breathes deep too. And smiles. And twists my insides into a knot. Ugh!

  “Luc, any thoughts?” Mr. Sanghetti is standing right in front of us. How the hell did he get there?

  Luc leans back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head and straightening his legs out from under his desk, crossing them at the ankles. He stares up at Mr. Sanghetti. “Well, it’s really impossible to ferret out a single issue. I suppose it boils down to theology—though the First Crusade didn’t even start out as a religious war. I think that Pope Urban was stressing because of the Constantinople crew bailing on him, so he was looking to score some points and bring them back into the fold.”

  Mr. Sanghetti stands there staring, wide-eyed, for a second, then turns and walks to the front of the room. “Well, I suppose that’s one perspective.” He turns back to face us. “Not necessarily the right perspective … but a perspective nonetheless.”

  Luc leans forward, elbows on his desk, and his eyes flare. Then a calm smile settles over his face. “Well, if you don’t want to believe it was just a big power grab, there’s also the opinion that a bunch of French nobility were bored stiff and looking for something to do.”

  And the old “saved by the bell” cliché becomes a reality, except I’m not sure exactly who was just saved, Luc or Mr. Sanghetti.

  I turn to look at Luc. “Lucifer?”

  “Yes, Mary Francis.”

  I glower at him. “Your name is Lucifer? As in the devil?”

  And there’s that wicked grin again. “In the flesh. It’s a common name where I come from.”

  I pull myself out of my seat. “Where is that?”

  His eyes flash, hungry and eager. “Nowhere you’ve ever been.”

  I shudder and shake my head. “What some parents do to their kids.”

  There’s an amused gleam in his obsidian eyes as he walks with me to the door. “So let me guess. Mary Francis … a good Catholic family with—wait, don’t tell me … eight kids?”

  “Five.” I don’t like his tone. “Later,” I say over my shoulder as I turn toward the cafeteria.

  “Later,” he says, but I can feel his eyes burn through my back as I walk up the hall.

  I’m washed through the door of the cafeteria by the human tide and find Taylor and Riley at our usual table, just inside the door for an easy getaway. The walls, floor, and tabletops in the cafeteria are all puke green so the real puke won’t leave stains. Just looking at it always leaves me feeling a little queasy.

  Riley’s leaning over a book and picking through her salad with
a bent fork. Taylor is bouncing in her seat, her spiky yellow-and-pink hair vibrating wildly. Between the bouncing and the lascivious gleam in her eye, I know there’s no keeping Luc to myself. She knows.

  Despite everything, Taylor has always been exactly what I needed in a friend. ’Cause, really, we’re just alike in all the ways that matter. Neither of us is warm and fuzzy. We both have our boundaries to keep anyone from getting too close. And we’ve both respected those boundaries from the beginning. I don’t know what hers are about, and she’s never asked about mine. I’ve never had to be afraid of Taylor pushing me, trying to get through my defenses. And neither has she.

  Riley and all her feelings, on the other hand, are dangerous. The first time I ever saw Riley’s face, Angelique Preston was grinding a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone into it. It was the summer after seventh grade, and Taylor and I had walked to the ice cream shop, where Angelique had Riley pressed up against the outside of the building. I could tell from the words coming out of Angelique’s mouth—something along the lines of “lard ass”—and the wounded and humiliated look in Riley’s eyes that this was no harmless prank amongst friends. Without even stopping to think, I yanked Angelique’s arm off of Riley and twisted her into a headlock. And, in that instant, all in one fell swoop, I made an accidental friend and a mortal enemy.

  Looking at Riley now, she’s a mere shadow of her former self. Still curvy, but in a way that turns guy’s heads. I would bet money it was in that moment, shoved up against the brick wall of the ice cream shop, dripping mint chocolate chip, that she’d resolved to lose weight.

  “Dish!” they both say as I drop my book bag on the floor.

  “What?”

  Taylor glares at me, which she’s very good at. “No holding out, Fee! We know about New Gorgeous Hunk Guy, so dish! Now!”