Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #25)(5)

Obviously, I couldn’t afford to be any later on my first day. But it so happened I was quite the expert in the operation of clicker thingies. So I couldn’t very well justify walking past without helping, right? Not least of all because it might further anger the Great, Ethereal Being of the universe.

“Can I give it a shot?” I asked as I reached the girl.

She hesitated. Which was fair, given what she’d seen of my competence levels so far. I straightened and tried to twist my face into an “I’ve totally got this” expression. It must have worked, because she shrugged and passed me her keys. “Go for the gold.”

Stepping around to the front of the car, I brandished the clicker and pressed as hard as possible. For good measure, I focused on gratitude and positive thinking, with a dash of mindfulness thrown in. To my great relief, the headlights flashed, and the car locked.

As far as I was concerned, that was me mostly redeemed in the eyes of this morning’s only witness. Score one for Ollie. Ethereal Being: three billion. The gap was closing.

The girl raised her eyebrows, impressed. “Thank you.”

I went to pass the clicker back to her, but her hands were kind of busy with the stack of ten or so books balanced in the crook of her arm.

“Um, do you need a hand with all that?” I asked as we hurried on. The redbrick school building loomed in the distance, all menacing and intimidating. It was three stories high, with practically acres of freshly trimmed grass between the parking lot and the entrance, cut through the middle by a steep pathway lined with flagpole after flagpole. Why was Collinswood High so enormous? Collinswood was a teensy little pond, and it had no business boasting a school building that could house an ocean’s worth of fish.

The girl laughed. Ouch. Shut down, much? “You wanna carry my books to class?” she asked. “What is this, the fifties?”

“Not all your books,” I said. “Just maybe one or two of the light ones.” I pointed to the two paperbacks on top. “You could probably manage the rest without me.”

“I think I can manage all of them without you, thanks all the same.”

If it had come from someone else I might’ve been offended by that, but this girl had a way of half-smiling that made me feel like I was in on a joke with her. I decided I liked her. I hooked her key chain through one finger and held it up. “Guess I’ll walk these to your class, then?”

“Actually, that’d be really great.” She offered me a brilliant grin, which I caught and threw back to her. Up this close, she smelled like sugary flowers. “So, guessing you’re new,” she continued. “That, or you’re a seriously tall freshman.”

“Nope. A regular-sized senior. I’m Ollie. I just moved here from California, I guess. Kind of. Possibly temporarily, possibly for a while. Depends on some family stuff.”

Well, gee, are you sure that was awkward enough, Ollie? If you try really hard, you could sound even weirder. Don’t settle for halfway, here.

The girl didn’t seem to notice the word-vomit. “I figured you weren’t from around here. Your accent and all. Anyway, I’m Juliette. Where’s your homeroom? I can take you, if you want.”

Hey, I wasn’t the one with an accent. In fact, Juliette had even more of a Southern drawl than most of the other people I’d met so far. If I had to guess, I’d say Juliette had originated from farther south. So, it seemed someone else wasn’t from uh-ree-ound hay-err. I’d have to ask another time, though: Juliette had reminded me how late I was. I racked my brain to access the memory of my homeroom teacher. It had blurred together with the twenty other names I’d tried to memorize. “Um, I’m with Ms. Hurstenwild, I think.”

“Oh, snap, you’re with us! That makes things easy. Follow me Ollie-oop.”

“Ollie-oop?”

“Ollie-oop. Alley-oop. Roll with it, ’kay? It sounds cute.”

“For a three-year-old, maybe,” I protested, but Juliette didn’t seem to hear me. Convenient. She picked up her pace and powered up the path, through the glass sliding doors, and down several empty hallways. I hurried after her, cheeks flushing. Great. Everyone was already in class.

She stopped short somewhere in the maze of classrooms and nodded toward a door. Right. She had no hands.

As expected, a sea of unfamiliar heads turned as I walked in. Awesome. To my relief, Juliette stepped in front of me. “Hey, Ms. H. Sorry I’m late. Ollie was lost, so I stopped to help him.”

Way to throw me under the bus, Juliette. Ms. Hurstenwild, a middle-aged woman with an underbite and a neck that was too thick for the high collar of her shirt, didn’t seem pissed though. “I’ll give you a pass today, Juliette, but you’ll have to get creative for me to fall for that for the next hundred and eighty mornings.”

Juliette headed straight to an empty desk. How did she know which was hers? How would I know where I was meant to go? “I wouldn’t dream of it, Ms. H,” she said. “I’ll only blame it on Ollie for two weeks, max.”

Ms. Hurstenwild turned to me. Self-conscious, I crossed my arms over my chest. Was I supposed to introduce myself here? Was I supposed to insist that Juliette did not represent me?

“Good morning, Oliver. Glad to see you found your way here.”

Oh. That wasn’t so bad. I managed a smile. I managed to breathe. I even managed to ignore the rest of the students staring at me. For a few seconds, anyway.