I’m not rebellious enough to doodle the cover with marker, but when I flip open
Now, if only I could be more daring in everything else. Too bad real life isn’t erasable.
Chapter 9
Monday morning comes too early and too hard. I ditch first period to catch an extra hour of sleep in the third-floor janitorial closet and to avoid running into Nick in biology. After what he saw on Friday night, I need to come armed with a reasonably believable excuse for two guys vanishing out from under me in that courtyard. I’ve got a marginally lame one, but I’m in no rush to feed him the story.
Instead, I snooze until the bell and then slip into the between-classes crowd in time to make second period. Mr. Alioso’s lecture on the Constitution lulls me to sleep, and since it’s a PowerPoint presentation and the lights are off, I get to catch a few more winks.
But the power nap must dull my senses, because when I head for my third period, I forget to take the long way and wind up slamming right into Nick as I round the corner on my way to the stairs.
“Gretchen,” he says with a huge smile. “I thought you were out today.”
Stupid, Gretchen. Top-notch stupid.
Can’t exactly pretend the full-on body crash didn’t happen, so I might as well face him now instead of later. It’s not like he’s the type to let things go anyway.
I back up a step. “Nope, I’m here.”
“You’re not trying to avoid me, are you?” he teases.
“Whatever gave you that idea?” I ask with full-throttle sarcasm. “I’ve been nothing but nice to you since we met.”
He laughs at my joke, but his grin quickly turns into a scowl of concern. “I really was worried about you all weekend. After what happened at the club, I thought—”
“Nothing happened,” I interrupt, ready with my stupid story.
“Nothing happened?” he says with a humorless laugh. “You beat the hell out of two creeps and they disappeared right out from under—”
Before he can finish his sentence and blurt out everything right in front of the stream of students swarming around us, I grab him by the T-shirt and yank him through the crowd, across the hall, and into the empty computer lab. I don’t want to deal with a school full of red-flag-raising questions and gossip. I’m not messing around anymore.
Once inside, I push him against the cinderblock wall and slam the door shut. Nick needs to be off my trail once and for all.
“Look,” I say, squaring myself in front of him with my hands on my hips. “I don’t know what you think happened on Friday night—”
“I know exactly what happened.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “You were fighting with two thugs and then, in a flash, they were gone. They evaporated.”
I clench my jaw and roll my eyes behind closed lids. There goes the hope that maybe he didn’t see anything truly wacky or that he might have convinced himself he was seeing things. Why couldn’t I be lucky with him just this once?
Why couldn’t he think he’s delusional?
No, he has to just stand there with his dark eyes fixed on mine, one hundred percent confident in what he saw that night.
Fine. The lametastic lie it is.
“I heard it was something in the drinks,” I say, giving him the only conceivably plausible line I could think up to explain what I know is unexplainable reality. “Somebody spiked the water supply with something way worse than alcohol.”
“Gretchen,” Nick says in a disappointed tone, “we both know it wasn’t something in the water.”
From the intensity in his eyes, I almost believe he really does know exactly what’s going on. But that’s impossible, isn’t it?
He pushes away from the wall, advancing on me in such a way that I have to back up and turn at the same time. In less than three steps he’s maneuvered me against the door, penning me in place with his long body and his arms braced at either side of my head. I’m trapped like the monsters I usually hunt.
My heart rate and my breathing pick up and I feel my cheeks warm. I don’t know if it’s because of his nearness or his tactical dominance or the possibility that he knows more than he should about this situation. Whatever the reason, as he leans in close, his dark eyes growing bigger and bigger in my vision, my self- preservation instincts kick in.
I’m about to execute a sharp knee to the tenders when he bobs to the left and whispers, right next to my ear, “You know you want to tell me what really—”
Before he can finish, the door handle by my hip turns and I’m shoved into Nick as the door bursts open. His arms clamp around me as we both stumble away from the doorway. I try to jump away, but he holds me tight.
“Let me go,” I insist, pushing against his chest. “Don’t say a word.”
He lets go and I turn around to explain to the interrupting teacher why I’m in an empty room alone with Nick. No one ever said I couldn’t use my hypno-eyes for personal gain.
Only I don’t find myself face-to-face with a teacher. Or even a human.
The thing barging into the room has the head and arms of a woman, but that’s where the resemblance ends. Everything from its shoulders to the floor is covered in an armorlike shell, and behind it swings the long, curving tail of a scorpion. A nasty skorpios hybrid. Ten to one that stinger is coated in poison.
My fangs drop into place automatically.
What the hell is this thing doing out in the daytime?
“Huntress,” the beast spits.
It obviously came in here after me.
“How did you—” I sense Nick start to move. I swing my arm out to keep him safely behind me. “Uh,” I glance sideways at the normal—but unhypnotizable—human boy behind me, forcing my fangs back into their hiding spot, “my name is Gretchen. You must have me confused with someone else.”
The beast’s eyes follow my glance and focus in on Nick. For a second I almost think I see a glimmer of recognition. Then I don’t have time to think anymore as the beast lunges past me, grabbing for Nick’s throat.
The monster-hunting side of me goes into autopilot. Even without my gear, even with it coming after me on my turf, even in broad daylight when monsters should be nowhere in sight, I’m instantly in fight mode.
With a powerful spin, I land a roundhouse kick to the beast’s belly, using my momentum to push Nick away with a shove that sends him flying backward.
“Watch out!” he shouts.
I turn just in time to see the beast’s giant scorpion tail swing down at my head. I drop and roll to the left. The foot-long stinger pierces the yellowing linoleum, and for a second the beast is anchored to the spot. I use the opportunity to jump to my feet and race around to the beast’s back, pulling out the ABS plastic dagger that never leaves my right boot and plunging it in between the exoskeletal plates covering the torso. It sinks deep into the vulnerable interior flesh.
The beast lets out a howl of pain that I’m sure can be heard on the other side of school. Great. Someone’s going to call the cops. I need to finish this quickly.
There’s no way I can get my fangs in through any of the armored parts of the body. My best chance is the spot where the neck meets the exoskeleton.
I leap onto the beast’s back, trying to get high enough to reach the unprotected flesh, when it pulls the stinger free. Suddenly it’s like I’m riding a bucking bull, holding on with a death grip to keep from getting flung into
