Darker Days (The Darker Agency #1)(12)
I froze. “Are you serious? You want me to bring him to school?” She’d gone batshit. “Do you have any clue how much angst and attitude we teenagers spew? It’ll be a nightmare! His head will explode. Plus—time limit, remember? I can do more good by helping you track the Sins. Or the Wells family!”
“You’re taking the bench on this one, Jessie. I don’t want you involved. This isn’t a standard case we’re dealing with here.”
“Bench?” I squeaked. She was only trying to protect me, but I didn’t need it. She’d trained me well and should know better. I wasn’t going to step back and watch her scramble to fix this thing in time—and possibly end up dead in the process. We always had each other’s backs. That shouldn’t change now. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“I’m not kidding you.” Her brow wrinkled and she frowned. She leaned forward and grabbed both my hands, giving a good squeeze. “Please, Jessie. Don’t make more work for me. I won’t be able to tackle this if I have to worry about my teenage daughter going head to head with one of the oldest evils known to man. Got it?”
Great. Guilt trip. Something all moms apparently took classes on. “Well, what about Lukas? Bringing him to school is still a mistake.”
“I’ve spoken to him at length this morning. It’s fascinating—how it all works. I don’t believe it’ll be an issue.” She shook her head, a faraway, fascinated gleam in her eye. “He has amazing control… If it looks like there’s going to be a problem, then come back home.”
“Wouldn’t it just be easier to stay home in the first place? Avoid trouble?”
She backed away a step and folded her arms. “Wouldn’t it have just been easier to study for the history exam?”
Busted.
…
Mom left before we did. I went through her papers, hoping to find something about the leads she mentioned, but all I’d found was a small pink Post It note that said, Stop stalling and go to school!
The first part of the day was basically uneventful. No teacher-student death matches or science room frog corpse fights. There were whispers in the hall about a small scuffle between the mascot of the football team and a linebacker, but they were both tools on their best days. I was betting their inner ass was more to blame for that one than rampaging Sin.
“Okay, let’s go over it again,” I said as we entered the cafeteria for lunch. “Who are you supposed to be?”
This was the fourth time since we’d gotten to school that I’d made him repeat it. I’d managed to avoid most of my friends, but lunch period would be a free-for-all. When we’d stopped at my locker to dump my books, I found three notes asking who the hotness was I was toting around. They’d be all over him like vultures on a corpse the second we sat down.
Lukas sighed. “I’m your cousin and I’m visiting from out of town. We’re moving here, and I was sent ahead to check out the school.”
“Good. And you’re sure people aren’t going to freak out? Start slapping each other silly with plastic trays?” By the time we made it to the cafeteria, lunch was almost over. Suited me just fine. The last thing I needed to deal with was a massive food fight—or worse—a multi-person spork duel.
“It’ll be fine,” he said through gritted teeth.
He kept saying he was fine, but he didn’t look fine. Shoulders rigid and jaw tense, he looked like a guitar string ready to snap. His head tilted now and then as people passed like he was listening to something, and every once in awhile his fingers would curl into a fist until his knuckles turned white. If that was fine, then I was the Easter Bunny in drag.
A few more steps. “No impending explosions?”
“I’m fine,” he snapped. “Being trapped in the box didn’t make me an idiot.”
“Someone’s a touchy Sin this morning,” I muttered, readjusting my backpack. I’d loaded the thing up so I didn’t have to keep stopping by my locker. By the end of the day, I’d be in serious need of a chiropractor. “Okay. Let’s get this over with.”
We wove through the crowd and settled at my usual table in the front corner of the room. A set of aqua blue eyes bordered by ultra thick lashes pinned me before my butt even hit the seat.
“So, um, Jess. Introductions puh-leese?” Kendra said, eyebrows waggling. She tapped the side of her tray with a neon pink-tipped fingernail while the other hand fluffed her blonde curls. She’d been talking about cutting her hair lately, but it’d never work. She needed it to hide the horns.
Kendra was a novice witch with some seriously bad luck—or lack of skill, as Mom put it. She’d been forbidden from doing magic after a spell went awry and she ended up outfitting herself with a small pair of black horns. She’d been trying to fix the horn on her car… As a lesson, her Mom made her keep them until she could get rid of them on her own. It’d been three weeks now and she still wasn’t any closer.
She bit off the tip of her carrot. “I tried to get your attention all during math. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were avoiding me.”
I shot a quick glance at Lukas. He was watching Kendra with a blank expression. “I wasn’t avoiding you… I was just—”
“Not in a sharing mood, huh?” She pouted. “Can’t say I blame you, but…”