The bell rang, startling me. I stared at him, wishing Hell would open up and welcome him back with open arms.
Roth glanced at the door, frowning. He turned back to me, lips curving into a strange smile. “I mean it. Don’t tag after school.” He pivoted around. At the door, he stopped and looked over his shoulder. His eyes met mine. “By the way, I wouldn’t tell your family about me. I’m afraid you’d find out just how much they really do care for you.”
My brain was having a hard time processing Roth’s sudden appearance. Telling me that I was attracted to him? Ordering me to stop tagging? Who in the Hell did he think he was? First off, he was a demon—a hot demon—but ew. There was no reason for me to believe anything he said. Second, he wasn’t just any demon, but an Upper Level one. Double the reason not to trust him.
He might have been right when he said I didn’t know a lot about my heritage, but I knew my demons. Hundreds of years ago, there’d been a race of them that could pluck up a soul just by touching a human. They’d been called the Lilin, and they’d been wiped off the planet by the Wardens. Sure, there were still succubi and incubi who fed off the energy of humans, but in this day and age, the ability to completely take a soul was rare. Abilities and traits in the demon world were hereditary, just like in the human world.
The first stirring of unease I’d felt upon hearing Roth’s words tripled.
If the other demon he’d mentioned, “the one before me,” was my mom and she was still alive... I couldn’t even finish that thought without my chest squeezing. Because even though mommy dearest was a demon, the fact that she hadn’t wanted me still hurt. The only good that could come out of discovering who she was would be learning what kind of demon she was, and who knew if that would actually be a good thing.
At lunch, I managed to convince Stacey that faking sick had been my last-minute solution to getting out of the bio exam. She bombarded me with questions, wanting to know how I’d met Roth.
“Met who?” Sam asked, shrugging off his backpack and sitting down next to us.
“No one,” I muttered.
“Whatever. Layla ditched us last night so she could shack up with this superhot new guy.” Stacey pointed her square slice of pizza at me. “You dirty ho. I’m so envious.”
“Layla hooked up with someone?” Sam laughed as he popped open his soda. “Was it a Warden? Wow.”
Pulled back into the present, I frowned. “No. It wasn’t a Warden. And what the Hell is that supposed to mean?”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. I just can’t picture you hooking up with anyone.” He took his glasses off, using his shirt to rub them clean. “And I assumed he was a Warden or something. Who else gets Stacey all crazy?”
Stacey took a bite of her pizza. “He was...wow.”
“Hold on a sec. Why can’t you picture me hooking up with anyone?” I sat back in the chair. I had this ridiculous urge to prove I was hookup material.
Sam shifted uncomfortably. “It’s not that people wouldn’t want to hook up with you.... It’s that, well, you know...”
“No. I don’t know. Please elaborate, Samuel.”
Stacey sighed, taking pity on him. “What Sam is trying to say is that we can’t picture you hooking up with anyone because you don’t really pay attention to guys that way.”
I started to disagree, because I totally paid attention to guys. But I was always on the sidelines, which probably made me seem uninterested. The truth was I was so interested. It was just that I couldn’t have a relationship with anyone who had a soul, and that really limited the whole dating pool.
“I hate you both,” I grumbled, attacking my pizza with a vengeance.
“All right, as much as I love talking about hot guys, can we change the subject?” Sam poked his slice around the plate, watching Stacey from under his lashes. “Guess what I learned last night.”
“That the number of hours you play video games per day equals the number of more years you’ll be a virgin?” she asked.
“Ha. No. Did you guys know that Mel Blanc—the guy who voiced Bugs Bunny—was allergic to carrots?”
We stared at him.
His cheeks flushed. “What? It’s true and it’s also ironic. I mean, Bugs Bunny ran around all the time with a damn carrot in his hand.”
“You are such a fountain of random knowledge,” Stacey murmured, somewhat awestruck. “Where do you keep it all?”
Sam ran a hand through his hair. “In my brain. You have one, too, I think.”
The two kept up the bickering, and after lunch, I spent the rest of the day expecting Roth to pop up and snap my neck, but I didn’t see him at all. I could only hope he’d gotten run over or something.
After the last class of the day, I shoved my books into my locker and hurried outside. Don’t tag? Ha. I was going to be a tagging maniac.
I was just going to be a little more careful about it.
Paying close attention to the demons I spotted as I wandered the D.C. streets, I waited until I was absolutely positive the suckers weren’t going to whip around and morph into waxy, soulless Seekers. In other words, I was being a total stalker. Within an hour, I’d already bagged a Poser and three Fiends.
Fiends were the most common demon topside and they always appeared to be young. Although no less dangerous than Posers or Seekers, they were more into creating mayhem wherever they went than fighting. Their abilities were a smorgasbord of messed-up-ness. Some were little pyro-heads, able to create fires with a snap of their fingers. Others were into mechanical things. Well, they were into breaking down mechanical things, which they could do with just a touch. I could usually find them loitering near construction sites or power grids.
I lit them up, every single one I came across, knowing full well the Wardens would find them later that night. Sometimes, but not often, I wondered if it was unfair that the demons had no clue that after I “accidentally” knocked into them, they had a bull’s-eye on them. But it didn’t stop me.
Demons were evil, no matter how normal they might look.
I just didn’t know what category I fell into.
Tagging three more Fiends by five, I decided it was time to call it a night and found a pay phone. Morris answered with his normal silence, and I asked him to pick me up. He hit the keypad twice, signaling a yes. My totals for the evening weren’t astronomical, but I felt good about them, and as I waited at my usual bench, relief eased the muscles in my neck. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The tagging had been run-of-the-mill.
Since no one tried to play grabby with my head, it proved that Roth was full of it. Now I just needed to figure out what to do about the punk demon. From the moment I’d first begun tagging, I’d been ordered never to interact with Upper Level demons and required to report any possible sighting. Roth was the first one I’d ever seen.
But if I told Abbot about Roth, he would pull me out of school.
I couldn’t have that. School was my only real link to normalcy. High school was Hell on Earth for most, but I loved it. I could pretend to be normal there. And I refused to let a demon—or even Abbot himself—take that from me.
As I waited for Morris, I wished my cell phone wasn’t floating somewhere in the sewers. Damn Roth. Without my cell, I couldn’t even play solitaire. Instead all I could do was people watch, and I’d been doing that since I left school.
Sighing, I sat on my bench and kicked my feet out. I ignored the looks I was getting from an old lady sitting on the other side.
The first tingle that danced along the nape of my neck didn’t really raise any warnings, but as the sensation increased, so did the feeling of restlessness. Twisting around, I scanned the crowd of people hurrying down the sidewalk. A pretty parade of souls hummed along, but in the mix, standing back under the alcove of a thrift store, was a void where no color shone through.