Free Demonica by Preston Norton Page B

play that card. My lips pressed into a hard, straight line. I swallowed against the knot in my throat.
    “Okay. I’ll do it. But under one condition.”
    “Which is…?”
    “After school. You explain everything. And I mean everything .”
    Dante smiled. Not a devious smile or even his usual sarcastic smile. He extended his right hand—the same one we had mixed blood with—and locked it with mine.
    “Deal.”

8
    The Unusual Suspects
    It was weird.
    I had grown up my entire life in Villeneuve. The past two and a half years of my life had been spent in this high school. Yet, as I walked down these familiar halls, I couldn’t help but notice the small insignificant details. Things I had seen a million times. Sneaker-scuffed tile floors. Long rows of dented and paint-chipped lockers. Gleaming display cases, illuminating plaques and trophies. Hanging banners flaunting the red and black school colors.
    Why did this suddenly feel like that inevitably shitty First Day of School that known universe revolved around?
    The crowds of students in the hallways dwindled, hinting that the bell was about to ring. I shifted from power-walk to jog to run to GO, MOTHERFUCKER, GO! I made it into Geometry just as the bell screamed its obnoxious tardy war-cry.
    “Cutting it a little close, aren’t we, Miss Binsfeld?”
    Mr. Garrison, asshole-extraordinaire, eyed me impatiently through his coke-bottle glasses. A dry-erase marker was already in his hand, pressed against the white board.
    “Yeah, sorry,” I said. My voice was an incoherent mumble. I pretended to be invisible and shuffled to my seat.
    Mr. Garrison proceeded to outline the formula of an unfriendly equation, explaining each step in some incomprehensible numerical language that only math teachers and conspiracy theorists speak. Something about isosceles trapezoids that I was bound to use repeatedly and treasure throughout the course of my life. I attempted to pay attention to his lecture for about fifteen seconds. Then I remembered that math is bullshit.
    It took some self-reminding to get myself back on track. This wasn’t the time for math. Math could go suck a perpendicular bisector. Today I had a new subject.
    Though my mechanical pencil was still hovering over my notebook, I leaned back and soaked in the students around me. I scoured from left to right. Sorted through the students I knew, the students I only knew of, and, of course, the students that I knew absolutely nothing about.
    After a half hour of studying my classmates, I decided they were about as paranormal as someone wearing a bed sheet with eye-holes cut out.
    I eventually surrendered to Mr. Garrison’s lecture, absently copying down notes. My mind continued to wander, but at least I wasn’t racking my brain over something that wasn’t there.
    Here were all TWO of the classmates I knew:
    Levi. He was on the student council with me. He also happened to be the school photographer. The kid was a photophile. Seriously. He probably slept with a camera. I’d never seen him without one, whether it was his ridiculously tiny travel-size digital or sported a lens the size of a bazooka. He was kinda cute with his curly brown hair and smiley outgoing personality. But shit, let’s be honest. He was weird.
    But Demon-weird? I seriously doubted it.
    The other classmate I knew was Kelly, who sat beside me. She liked to talk. A lot. More than ten Zoeys combined, and that’s saying something very disturbing about the capacity of human vocal chords. And , apparently, she’s always been under the impression that I like to listen. As the bell rang for class to end, she began babbling about some new kid in our class with dreamy eyes and long black hair. My attention span in this one-sided conversation lasted even less than the few minutes I had devoted to Mr. Garrison’s lecture.
    Spanish and then Chemistry followed a similar pattern—blatantly boring without the slightest hint of irregularity. Which included the twins,