don’t suppose you’ll be coming back to the team?”
Cooper shook his head, relief at the warm greeting actually making his head spin. When the doctors had first told him that it was a very bad idea for him to go back to football, it had seemed like a death knell. Now, months later, he managed to smile as he said, “I’m going to have to watch this season.”
“Well, you two look like you need to catch up,” Brent said, apparently having decided he had stood awkwardly nearby long enough. “I’m going to bail. Unless you still need help with that thing, Cooper?”
Cooper recognized the offer as an excuse to leave, in case he needed or wanted it, and was grateful.
“You should stick around, Coop,” John said. “Hang with us. We’re all going over to the beach after we’re done here if the weather holds, and then we’re going to hit Frank’s Grill for dinner.”
Cooper was shaking his head before he even realized it. “I’ve got work in the morning,” he said, even though he knew perfectly well that his father would let him off work in a heartbeat if he asked, and his mother would be delighted he was going out with the guys from the team. Unless he could find a swimsuit that didn’t show his arms, torso, or legs, he wouldn’t be hitting the beach anytime soon. Maybe someday, but he wasn’t quite ready to show off the extent of the damage to the world yet.
“C’mon,” John said. “You can come out for a while. Who needs sleep, right? You don’t even need to do suicide drills at practice tomorrow. You can handle—”
“I can’t,” Cooper said, more sharply than he had intended.
John went quiet.
“Sorry, man,” Cooper said, dropping his head as he tried to push back the anxiety that was starting to spike again. “I’m still a little … off. I don’t know. Say hi to the guys for me, though?”
“Say hi to them yourself?” John suggested, gesturing over his shoulder to the rest of the team, who were manning the car wash when they weren’t glancing not entirely subtly over at John, Cooper and Brent. Delilah wasn’t with them; either she had decided not to come back to the car wash, or she was promoting the car wash somewhere else.
Cooper was glad not to have to face her again yet, but disappointed to see that Samantha wasn’t here, either.
“Might as well say hello,” Brent encouraged him.
Cooper looked skeptically, wondering if Brent was trying to help or get rid of him.
John seemed equally confused, as if he were trying to figure out who Brent was and why he was involved. “Do I know you?” he asked.
“I went to a couple parties with Delilah,” Brent answered with a sigh.
“Oh,” John said, his eyes widening in surprise. “Well. Um. Huh.”
“Let’s go say hi,” Cooper said, changing the subject. Cooper wondered how recently Brent and Delilah had broken up, and what she had been saying to the guys since.
He started across the parking lot, acutely aware that the rest of the team had dropped any attempt at discretion and had turned to smile at him. He tried to remind himself that these were his friends, and not to be feared.
But when Reggie, one of the biggest guys on the team, clapped him on the shoulder, he remembered one of the reasons why he had avoided these friends in the first place. The friendly gesture, once so familiar, not only made him stumble but sent a shard of pain from his shoulder, past his once-broken ribs, and into his recently fractured hip.
He managed to bite back what would have been a very loud curse, but couldn’t hide his pain or the way it made his skin pale.
Not all of his issues were supernatural or in his head.
“Oh, God. Sorry, man,” Reggie said.
“You okay?” John asked, immediately at his side.
Pity. Yeah, that was the other thing he had really not wanted to deal with. Just thinking about it made the world around him seem to darken, and he had a feeling that the shadows had found him.
He took a couple steps backward, trying not to limp but knowing he wasn’t completely hiding it.
“Good to see you all,” he said, “but I’ve got to get going.”
“Coop, I’m sorry,” Reggie said again.
If they had told him to suck it up, be a man, or laughed it off, that would have been normal. Maybe they would even have acted that way if Cooper hadn’t brought along his own little cloud of misery.
“It’s fine,” he answered. “I’ve just got to go. I’m late.”
He didn’t say for what, didn’t know for what.
“Hey, Cooper,” John called as Cooper attempted to walk away with some dignity. “Tomorrow afternoon, my place, opening-season game party. Hope to see you there.”
Cooper nodded acknowledgement, but not agreement.
He got out of eyesight of the team, rounding the block, and then had to stop and lean against the building and suck in deep drafts of air. Reggie had managed to hit him just the wrong way.
“Can you get home or back to the shop?” Brent asked him.
He had forgotten Brent was even there.
He started to nod, but then realized the answer was no. “Give me a hand?” he asked.
Brent didn’t hesitate, just threw Cooper’s arm over his shoulders and helped him limp back toward the shop. “My car’s right around here, if you’re okay with a short trip.”
“No highways?”
“We can do back roads.”
“Can you give me a ride home?”
“No problem.”
Tomorrow, Cooper knew he would have to swallow his pride and go back to Ryan, and hoped he would learn something useful. He couldn’t go on this way.
16
Delilah tried to keep up a cool front, but she was almost as nervous as she was excited. The warded circle she had created in the woods kept the scavengers out, but that wouldn’t matter if she had misjudged and Samantha was actually malevolent. Then the instant Delilah summoned power and lowered her defenses, Samantha could just reach in and hollow Delilah out, stealing power and mind and leaving Delilah’s body an empty shell.
She had just pressed her hand to the edge of the circle when Samantha, still locked outside for the moment, asked, “How powerful are you, anyway?”
Truth? Lie? Bluffing about the strength of her abilities might make her seem too dangerous for Samantha to mess with. On the other hand, if Samantha was really as powerful as Delilah thought she could be, then she might know perfectly well that she could overpower any firstgeneration sorcerer, in which case it would be more valuable to downplay her own power and its worth.
“Powerful enough that I think I can help you,” she finally answered.
With a tight breath, she parted the edge of the circle. Samantha did not wait to be invited forward. It took some effort to let Samantha in while keeping the pacing scavengers around her out where they were harmless, but Delilah managed.
She turned her eyes from the shadows and back to Samantha, and jumped with surprise. Inside her own circle, Delilah could see Samantha more easily and more clearly. She understood now why Cooper had been convinced his ghost was harmless.
Samantha—no, the illusion Samantha projected—was a couple of inches shorter than Delilah. Her hair and clothing were a style that could best be described as punk or scene, with bright, mismatched colors. Her faded blue jeans with splashes of pastel orange and pink paint had enough holes in them to reveal the green-and-yellow paisley tights she was wearing underneath. Her T-shirt was neon purple, with a cute line-art version of the Lenmark Ocelots’ logo. Delilah was pretty sure that if she copied it, she could get all the girls on the squad to buy
