Mooncalf

A/N: I know, I know. I have posted a new chapter in forever. Bad Dane. No cookie for you. I'm sorry to say that I don't have a good excuse--I just haven't been feeling it, you know? Hopefully, I'm back in the swing of things now. And, good news: I've already got a good start to Chapter Eight as well! So, if you forgive me, pretty please leave a review. I really do write better and faster when fueled by reviews.

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Chapter Seven


My head hurt.

Partly because I couldn’t stop wondering who had it in for me. I was pretty sure that I was becoming paranoid. Or that my life had turned into a giant, messed-up game of Clue. Was it the Cardinal in the Art Museum with the holier-than-thou attitude? (Even though he undoubtedly is holier than me.) Was it a Demon in the Underworld with a desire to guarantee my soul? For all I knew, it could even have been my father. It wasn’t something I liked to think, but he was evil. And he did want to keep me away from boys. Jack would have been too young to steal the death certificate, but if the Guardians had kept a copy for some reason, he could have gotten hold of it. Really, the whole situation would have given anyone a headache.

But I think mine was more caused by the fact that Marabell had tried to rip my hair out of my scalp after detention, when she realized I’d emptied her White-Out pen into her hair.

Jack lectured me about being nicer to people I didn’t like, such as Marabell. Such as most of the human race, actually, but mostly such as Marabell.

He prattled on the entire walk back to the girls dorm. When we reached the door, he shot me a Look.

“Cam, are you even listening to me?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Of course I am. You think that I should treat all human beings with respect, regardless of whether or not I think they are a waste of perfectly good atoms.”

That’s probably what he had been saying, anyway. It was what you would call an educated guess. Truth was, I hadn’t been listening. I’d been thinking that Jack had somehow gotten himself a really nice pair of lips in these last few days, and that I wouldn’t argue or bite him if he kissed me.

Well, maybe I’d bite him a little. But only in a good way.

I had realized this rather suddenly, as I’d pretended to pay attention to what he was talking about, and needless to say, if I hadn’t been distracted before, I was now. I mean, I wasn’t entirely positive he wasn’t the one threatening me. This probably wasn’t the ideal time for my teenage hormones to kick in, but whatever.

“It certainly isn’t,” he snorted.

I blinked and did my best impression of Grigori—before he started talking. Just, you know, the blank stare and mouth hanging open thing that fish do. Then I realized Jack was just calling me out on my interpretation of what he had likely said to me on the walk from detention.

“Then what did you say?” I countered, deftly avoiding an actual confession that I hadn’t been listening. Jack rolled his eyes.

“I said, you don’t have to like everybody, but you should at least remember that there are a lot of folks keeping tabs on what you’re doing, and tallying up your good and bad deeds, especially since your Trial is less than a week away.”

“What good deeds?” I queried.

“Exactly my point.” He looked smug. Also kissable, but I put a valiant effort into staying focused.

“I have to do good deeds?” I asked incredulously. Who ever said that you had to be a nice person in order to not be a bad person? Huh?

“Well,” Jack quibbled, “you should be doing good deeds.”

Right. Here’s a factoid I’ve learned on this world: When people say you should do something, it means you don’t really have to, and you are free to ignore the advice. Actually, this is usually true with advice. (Now you can’t say you didn’t learn a valuable life lesson while reading this.)

It was my turn to look smug. Jack just rolled his eyes again.

“You’re too smart for your own good,” he muttered. That was true. Not that I cared.

I considered informing him that he was really too cute for my own good—just to see his ears turn red—but was rudely interrupted in my tormenting of Jack by Principal Cureton. He wore some sort of expression that school administrators like so much. Sadness, maybe, or disappointment. He laid a hand on my shoulder, saying grimly, “Miss Goodchilde, I need to see you in my office. Now.”

Aw, crap.

I looked quickly to Jack, but he was already headed toward Forfax Hall, where Principal Cureton had his office. If I felt any relief that he wasn’t abandoning me, I’m not about to admit it to you. What do you think this is—a confessional?

Jack waited on the bench outside Cureton’s office, under the vigilant glare of the receptionist, Sharon. Apparently, she was still unhappy that I hadn’t read my letter from the Guardians in front of her. I had to follow the principal into the lion’s den, as it were. I stood nervously by the closed door while Principal Cureton seated himself behind the desk that dominated the room.

“I got a letter today, Cambion. Do you want to know what it said?”

This was clearly a rhetorical question, so I waited.

Cureton continued, “It suggested that you were behind the disgraceful acts of Satan-worship happening on campus.” He looked at me expectantly, but I didn’t know what he wanted, so I kept waiting.

“Is there anything you want to tell me? Now, before I tell you what we found in your bedroom?”

“Um, no?” It seemed the wisest response. Of course they had discovered the portal and Grigori the Vampiric Goldfish. They may even have found the latest love note from my stalker—the one calling me out as a Mooncalf and including my own death certificate.

The Guardians would kill me when they found out I had a direct line with Hell. And that I had lost the note. And that my pet was a creature of the night. And they would kill me again when they discovered I’d been expelled, as I most certainly would be.

The portly principal sighed deeply and pulled a plastic bag from beneath his desk. The stench of chicken blood hit my nostrils before the mortar, pestle, and fancy cup—a goblet, I guess you’re supposed to call it in these situations—fell to the desktop. Cureton looked at me meaningfully.

“Anything you want to tell me now?” he asked.

“Yeah. Those aren’t mine.” I shrugged to cover my stomach dropping.

“They were in your room, Cambion,” Cureton said gently.

“I know you’re not going to believe me, but I don’t know how they got there. They really aren’t mine. And isn’t that dried blood in the goblet?” (Of course, I knew perfectly well that it was. But explaining that I could smell it from where I sat would have been a tad difficult.)

The principal nodded.

“Well, there you go,” I said victoriously. “I’m a vegetarian. I’m a card-carrying member of PETA. I would never engage in anything that involved any part of a dead thing. Unless it was, you know, a dead rutabaga, or whatever.”

Shut up. Just because I don’t condone cruelty to animals doesn’t mean I can’t kick your ass if you even think about laughing at me. Animals I like. It’s you human beings that I abhor.

“I know—“ Cureton began, but I rolled over him.

“So someone must have broken into my room or snuck in when I ran to the bathroom or something, but that stuff isn’t mine. You should really replace the locks in this place, by the way. Anybody with a deck of cards could get in before you could say, ‘Hey, don’t steal my crap!’ Or, ‘Hey, don’t try to pin your dirty devil-worshipping crimes on me,” whatever the case may be.”

“Cambion, I know you didn’t do this,” he said. I gaped intelligently.

He continued with a Look Jack would have loved, “You haven’t exactly been an exemplary student. You’ve got more detentions accumulated than you can serve before the school year ends, and your timely completion of school work could use some improvement. A lot of improvement. Nevertheless, you haven’t shown any signs of being involved in anything so . . . diabolical.”

Oh, if only he knew.

“Plus,” he said casually, “we caught the perpetrator red-handed.” He hit the intercom button, and informed the secretary that she could send her in. Her? Was Marabell behind everything after all? It seemed I had a lot more to get back at her for than just pulling my hair.

It was not Marabell who entered the office, however. It was Jane. She looked worried. It was an appropriate response, given the plots of revenge dancing in my head. I could hand her over to my father. Or let Mara sit on her, after all. I could convince her to sing Micheal Jackson songs in front of the entire student body. Or I could just punch her in stomach. Principal Cureton grabbed my arm, effectively stopping me before I could put any of those plans in motion, though.

“Explain yourself, young lady,” Cureton said to her.

Instead of answering him, Jane swung her eyes to me.

“Cam, you have to believe me. I don’t know how this happened.”

I did. She had gotten ahold of these terrible objects and cast some evil spell, and then she had tried to pin it on me. Except that she had gotten caught. Sucked to be her.

“Jane, please explain how exactly you came to be in Cambion’s room with the objects on my desk,” the principal repeated.

“I don’t remember,” she stammered. Convenient.

“Try,” Cureton ordered. Jane started to cry. I rolled my eyes. His approach to getting the truth out of her was clearly ineffective.

I convinced Cureton that he absolutely had to check his email at that moment and ignore the two girls in his office. Then I turned to Jane.

“Tell me why you’ve done this,” I demanded in a way she couldn’t refuse.

Jane sort of fell back into her eyes. I mean, she was still standing before me, cluthing her book bag just as she’d been doing, but she had disappeared deep inside herself. Something else looked out of her eyes.

It smirked at me.

“You know that trick won’t work on me,” it taunted.

“Get out of her!” I screamed. Now that I knew Jane had been telling the truth about not remembering setting me up for devil worship, I was free to be sincerely pissed off at the thing that had.

“Or what? You’ll hit me? You’d never hurt your little friend.”

“You’re the one who’s been sending me those letters,” I gasped. Who was this? I knew this thing, I was certain of it.

It smiled, slow and easy. “I’m not the only one who wants you sent to hell, you know,” it purred with Jane’s voice.

“Yeah, I know. You saying you haven’t been sending the notes, the death certificate?”

“The death certificate, you say? I was wondering if she’d manage to get ahold of it,” the thing said thoughtfully.

She? Which she? I didn’t scream the words, though I wanted to. It would only talk in more riddles. The thing about us demons is, we can tell the truth and reveal nothing at the same time, when we want to.

“I’ll have you exorcised,” I promised. “I’ll send you back to hell where you belong.”

The thing in Jane eliminated the distance between us and raised a hand to my cheek. The look of care I always longed to see in her gleamed in her eyes.

“Come with me,” she pleaded. “It’s not what they make it out to be. You’ll be among your own kind there, never to be belittled for your heritage again. Think of the power you have, Cambion. Think of what you’re capable of, if only you didn’t have to hide behind this pathetic human façade. You’ll never have to hold yourself back. You’ll be totally free.”

It was a convincing argument, and Jane looked so earnest, as if she longed to share that with me. All those possibilities. And freedom. Real, actual freedom to be nothing more and nothing less than what I am.

“Freedom. Power. Acceptance. You’re absolutely right. I want all of those things. But what freedom will I have, having sold my soul? What power will I find, with my free will a possession not my own? And what would any acceptance be worth, when I’ve paid for it so dearly? So you know what? You can take your stupid promises and shove them up your ass.”

It hissed and raked its nails across my cheek. I gasped. Shit, that hurt. My fingertips came away bloody. I looked back to the demon. Jane’s fingernails were long enough to break skin, but human hands alone could not have harmed me. The demon’s desire to inflict pain had done that. For the first time since it had revealed itself, I felt the stirrings of fear.

And I reacted on instinct.

I bitch slapped Jane.