Free Demon Girl by Penelope Fletcher

eat enough to be anything other than thin. Maybe it
was like a bonus scheme. Kill a demon-child and get an apple.
Chucking his crimson blazer and satchel behind him, he smiled,
stretched, and a few girls and guys sighed as the muscles on his
torso rippled under his thin tunic.
    “Who can tell me the standard attributes of
identifying a demon?” he asked. Dead silence was broken by a
giggle, and the squeak of a shifting chair. His eyebrows rose high
at the lack of enthusiasm, mouth pulling down. “Don’t make me pick
you one by one.”
    A few hands climbed lazily.
    I was too busy doodling a picture of silver
eyes on my notepad to lift mine. Hs eyes had calmed me down that
morning when I was half out of my mind. Maybe on paper they could
help too.
    “Yes, Jono,” Tu said.
    “Vampires,” Jono, a decent looking boy from
the upper dwells began, and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his
crooked nose, “have a body temperature below fifteen, descendible
canine teeth, fixed cellular activity, and the appetite for plasma
most easily found in–”
    “Aint it cruel to call them demons?” Alex cut
in thoughtfully. “It be like the vampires calling us
bloodsacks.”
    Jono sent a scathing look her way, continued
as if she hadn’t spoken, “Shifters can change to a single other
form, and this metamorphosis tends to present itself during–”
    “Why we humans always gotta be placing names
on things,” she added after a few beats.
    “Then there are witches,” said Jono through
his teeth, face twisted sourly, “Who can be male or female, and
manipulate matter with the power of–”
    “They evil and that’s that,” Ro told Alex,
sending her a slow smile. “What else we call them?”
    “I’m speaking,” Jono spat, his glare
switching between the both of them.
    Alex dragged her eyes from Ro’s chest and
glared at Jono. “Dwells,” she muttered. “Think reading and writing
good makes you better than us.” Tipping her chin up, her voice
rose. “I got as much right to talk as you do.”
    He sneered at her. “Life sucking mambo.”
    She lurched up, knocking her seat over. Then
waved him forward. “You talk much. Let us see how you do with no
teeth.”
    Mambos were the name of voodoo Sorcerers
eradicated by the Sect nearly a decade before. It was well known
that Alex’s mother had dabbled in black magic, and was whispered
that not only had she dabbled, but was a proficient Sorceress of
the craft. Her dark past was not something the upper dwells let
Alex forget, and though she did not embrace her origins, she didn’t
deny them either.
    The sound of Tu slamming his fist on a desk
cut above the shouts of encouragement from the other Disciples.
“Show disrespect to the slum dwells and you disrespect me,” he said
and made eye contact with everyone. “Anybody does it again and
we’ll have a problem. Alex, cool it.”
    Setting her chair right, Alex sat back down
and shot daggers at everybody, mumbling obscenities under her
breath. I caught her eye and saw the tears there. I wasn’t the only
one. Jono flushed, the colour spreading out from his cheeks to kiss
his hairline and darken his neck.
    Satisfied the peace had been restored, Tu’s
handsome face returned to its normal cheerful mien. “Carry on,” he
said.
    “Of course, Lord Cleric,” Jono replied
somberly.
    Ro, not one to forgive and forget, mimed a
neck slicing action at him. He would have to watch his step in the
days to come. Ro had come from the slums too, born into one of the
gang families who were rumored to have a Bokor in their ranks; a
man with white hair who called malevolent corpses back from the
grave. I myself thought it was simply the skewed reputation of an
old man who was good with herbs and medicine, as did the Temple
Priests. The slums had been searched for practitioners of
witchcraft and black magic, but none had been found.
    “The last is goblin,” Jono continued in a
somewhat humbler voice than before. “The gene presents itself