Death, Doom, and Detention

Grandma went for her phone just as an older man rushed into the store. “I’m looking for someone named Azrael,” he said, glancing around, his expression panicked. “My granddaughter. There’s something wrong.”

“Where is she?” Cameron asked.

“In the car. Out here. Please, hurry.”

We hurried outside, leaving Grandma inside to help with Noah. I was right behind Jared and slid to a stop when I saw the little girl.

“Please,” the man said.

Glitch took over. He went to the man’s car and lifted her out, so tiny and frail, no more than five.

“Jared,” I said, my voice a soft whisper. He wrapped an arm around me and looked up at the sky. The clouds were dark and low, rolling over us in waves.

“It has begun,” he said, words I never wanted to hear. Words I feared more than anything.

I felt a sprinkle then, a drop of rain, and I knew everything I’d ever known was about to change.

THE LIGHTS OF RILEY’S SWITCH

Everyone close to me is going to die.

Those words reverberated in my head over and over as I gathered my belongings by candlelight. After the incident with Noah, I realized my presence was the problem. I was the problem. I was the reason bad people were coming to Riley’s Switch and I was responsible for all the horrible things that were happening to everyone around me. So I did the unthinkable. I bent to my grandparents’ wishes. I went to them and agreed to be secreted away, thus the 5 A.M. wake-up call. I’d packed that evening while everyone was at church so no one would know what I was doing and then hid the bags in my closet until

Brooke and Glitch went home.

“Don’t forget your pillow,” Grandma said, holding the candle up high to give me more light. “You’ll need it.”

Her voice trembled like china during an earthquake, and I understood at last how hard this was for her.

For both of them. They were doing this to keep me safe. I was doing this to keep them safe. If my presence was going to get everyone close to me killed, then surely my absence would keep them alive.

But sneaking out of town with two supernatural beings on full alert was not as easy as it sounded.

Granddad sent Jared back to the Clearing with the sheriff to investigate some mysterious anomaly he’d made up. Then he sent Cameron to the church to check the munitions supply. There was about to be a war, after all. We had to prepare.

Even with those precautions, we didn’t want to turn on any lights. It might alert them to our plan. We had a very small window of opportunity in which I could sneak out of town. If we were successful, I would be handed off to another set of believers. Then another and another until we got to the boarding school in the Northeast where I was registered under the name Lorraine Pratt. Granddad had papers, a birth certificate, a student ID from a school in Arizona … everything a girl needed to start a new life. A new existence.

They drove me to the edge of town, where an SUV sat idling on the side of the road, its parking lights on. We climbed out and Granddad grabbed my bags. He handed them to a man in his early thirties. I had never seen him or the woman with him before. These were complete strangers to me, and I was about to be wrapped in a bow and handed over to them.

But this was my choice. The only way I could keep everyone safe.

“Pix,” Grandma said, and the pain in her voice brought tears to my eyes. Before she could say more, she pulled me into a hug, and I realized she couldn’t have said more if she’d wanted to. vzyl Granddad patted her back as she hugged me to her. “Vera, we don’t have much time. Cameron’s going to figure this out sooner than we want him to if we don’t get back.”

Her breath hitched and she held me at arm’s length. “You know how to contact us if anything goes wrong.”

I nodded and bit my trembling lip, afraid to say anything. Granddad hugged me then, and his shoulders shook with emotion. Emotion that almost crushed me into dust. When he let go, I hurried to the SUV and slammed the door shut. I hugged my pillow to me as the couple got in. They introduced themselves, but I didn’t hear a word they said. They smiled nervously, and I got the feeling they thought I was something special. It made me dislike them. Just a little.

I was going to be in one car or another for two days straight. Four legs of the journey. Four different vehicles. Trying to keep supernatural entities off my trail was going to prove tricky, but Jared and

Cameron had been through enough. They had both been shot because of me. And they would both give their lives for me because they also thought I was something special. No one understood I didn’t know a thing about war, much less how to stop one. I refused to let their blind faith in my abilities get them killed.

Fear consumed me as we drove off. Fear for my friends. For Jared and Cameron. For my future. But especially fear for my grandparents once everyone figured out what they’d done. Just the threat of sending me away had the Order up in arms. I couldn’t imagine what the members would do when they found out I was gone. What my grandparents would face. Derision? Hatred? Hostility?

I turned to look out the back window. We were on an incline and Riley’s Switch sat nestled in a lush valley below, its lights twinkling in the thick darkness. Jared was somewhere on the other side. The

Clearing lay a couple miles out, and whatever he and the sheriff were supposed to be investigating would keep them busy for a while.

Hopefully it would be long enough.

Read on for a sneak peek at death and the girl he loves

Coming October 2013

Copyright © 2013 by Darynda Jones

SAME DAY, DIFFERENT DEATH

The Bedford Fields Academy pitched itself as one of the most prestigious private schools in North

America, promising a stellar education and a future brighter than an exploding supernova. Or something along those lines. In reality, it was a last-ditch effort for rich parents with kids who’d been kicked out of every other institution in the free world. The boarding school was insanely expensive, but those parents with unruly children and money to burn would pay anything for the illusion of a good education. They took their public guise seriously. Keeping up the pretense of good parentage took effort. And trust funds. And the school kept the children out of their hair. For that, they would pay extra.

I didn’t know that when I started at Bedford Fields, of course, but a pretty blonde with too much eyeliner and too few scruples explained the rules and regulations of the school in the bathroom while cleaning her nails with a switchblade. She’d lifted the knife from a pickpocket while on vacation with her family in Cabo San Lucas the summer before, and she made sure to mention how she’d honed the blade to a razor’s edge for ease of penetration. That was my first day and my introduction to life sans everything

I’d ever known. It pretty much went downhill from there.

First of all, the reality of winter in the North was a complete shock to my system. I couldn’t get warm, even bundled in seven layers as I was then. Second, I’d started school in the middle of the semester, thus I was behind in almost every class they’d assigned to me. And third, I apparently had an accent, a fact that some of the more irritating students reveled in making fun of.

But the worst part of all was the homesickness, which I took to a whole new level. I missed my grandparents, my friends, my old school to the point of feeling like I had the flu twenty-four/seven. I even missed Tabitha Sind, the bane of my existence. Luckily, I had Kenya here to take up where Tab had left off. At least Tabitha had never threatened me with a switchblade. Life was simpler in New Mexico. Life at a boarding school for rich kids in a state where the weather rivaled that of Siberia was far too complex. And hazardous to my