Death, Doom and Detention - Darynda Jones Page 0,2

clenched teeth, “I summoned you, dammit. Not her.”

He was screaming in our face and we didn’t like it. We looked over, found a stick, and decided to stab him. With a lightning-quick thrust, we sank the piece of wood into his abdomen. Part of us was surprised at how easily the stick penetrated the material of his shirt, the muscles of his abdominal wall. The other part was pleased.

The dark spirits no longer rushed past us. If they got close, they would turn suddenly and head in a different direction, like fish in an aquarium. We watched as the gate in the sky closed with a wave of our hand. We watched as the wind died down and the countryside settled into complacency. We watched as the man staggered away from us, his eyes wide with fear and disbelief.

Then we lay down and slept. And while we slept, we forgot.

No, I forgot.

For ten years, I buried that memory—the last memory I had of my parents—until a chain of events so unfathomable, so unbelievable, brought it crashing through the surface of my consciousness. And with it, the knowledge of what I’d done.

I’d led my parents to their own deaths. I’d pointed the way. Begged them to go. How would I make amends? How would I ever learn to live with what I’d done?

And how would I ever find my way back to normal?

FUZZY EDGES

“Is this class ever going to end?”

My best friend, Brooklyn, draped her upper body across her desk in a dramatic reenactment of Desdemona’s death in Othello. She buried her face in a tangle of arms and long black hair for effect. It was quite moving. And while I appreciated her freedom to express her misgivings about the most boring class since multicelled organisms first crawled onto dry land, I wondered about her timing.

“Miss Prather,” our Government teacher, Mr. Gonzales, said, his voice like a sharp crack in the silence of study time.

Brooklyn jerked upright in surprise. She glanced around as our classmates snickered, either politely into their hands or more rudely outright.

“Is there something you’d like to share with the class?”

She turned toward Mr. Gonzales and asked, “Did I say that out loud?”

The class erupted in laughter as Mr. G’s mouth formed a long narrow line across his face. Miraculously, the bell rang and Brooklyn couldn’t scramble out of her seat fast enough. She practically sprinted from the room. I followed at a slower pace, smiling meekly as I walked past Mr. G’s desk.

Brooklyn stood waiting for me in the hall, her face still frozen in surprise.

“That was funny,” I said, tugging her alongside me. She fell in line as we wound through the crush of students, fighting our way to PE. I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t particularly enjoy having my many faults and numerous shortcomings put on display for all to see, so why I would fight to get there was beyond me.

“No, really.” She tucked an arm through mine. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

I couldn’t help but smile despite the weight on my chest, a weight that seemed endless. “Which is why that was funny.”

I did that a lot lately. Smiled. It was easier than explaining why I wasn’t.

“You don’t get it,” she said. “This is exactly what I’ve been talking about. Everything is weird ever since … you know.”

I did know. Ever since Jared Kovach came to town. Ever since he’d saved my life after a huge green delivery truck slammed into me. Ever since we’d found out he was the Angel of Death and had been sent not to save my life but to take it. To tweak the timing. To take me sooner than nature—or a huge green delivery truck—had intended.

And ever since I found out I’d been possessed by a demon when I was six years old.

Still, that wasn’t the worst part of that day all those years ago. The worst part was the fact that my parents were gone. Vanished in a whirlwind when some guy—we still had no idea who—opened the gates of hell. And I’d led them straight to it. The fact that a demon—Malak-Tuke, to be exact, Lucifer’s second-in-command—escaped from his fiery pit and decided to crash at my place was just the icing on the cake. But I didn’t know any of this until two months ago.

I’d been living with my grandparents since the disappearance, but my semi-normal existence changed forever when I was knocked into the street by a skateboarder and hit