I was still stressed about it, though.
I desperately wanted to find Devon at lunch and find out if the story about Reese was true, but instead I set off for Celestial Foods. No matter how many fluttering doubts were building up inside me, I was going to stick to my plan. If I could work spells, then I was going to get that demon out of Devon and nothing was going to stop me.
I hurried out the side door, past the metal T-Bird, jumped over the little mouse. I had tripped on the mouse sculpture once and gone sprawling into a total make-out session. I swear, the school has this ivy and stuff pruned all the time to cut down on people sneaking over here, but it seems to grow back overnight. So I avoided the mouse and two different couples, but then my foot slid on the wet leaves and my next step took me into the bushes and sprawling over a leg.
A leg attached to a boy who stood up hastily out of the shadow of the overgrown bushes.
A boy I recognized.
A boy-band boy.
“Are you all right?” I said before I thought. “I was worried about you.” Then my face fell. How much was he hiding from me … and who was standing in front of me, hiding it?
I peered into kind green eyes, searching. Devon smiled the typical Devon shy smile and I was instantly relieved. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m doing much better.” He brushed wet leaves from his shirt.
“I was worried when I didn’t see you in algebra,” I said. And then forthright me just had to say it: “Look, I heard you were out having pizza with Reese last night. I mean, it’s none of my business, but I guess I was curious because you said you were at your band practice? Was that some sort of Estahoth-related thing, maybe?” Sure, I had reason to find out what the demon was up to, but the question came out all weak-sounding and I hated it.
“Yeah, Estahoth made a hologram of me while I was at band practice,” he said. “He was working on the tasks.”
“Ah. Cool,” I said. There was so much relief at that, that I didn’t want to acknowledge the niggling question in my head that said—why on earth was the demon taking Reese to pizza as part of a task? “Well, you’re looking tons better. Which is great. Because like he said yesterday, he’s here till Halloween anyway. Tomorrow. And … well, I guess he can hear or remember everything we say—Hi, Esty-snookums—so there are certain topics I’m not going to go into.” I was dying to tell Devon of my plan to trap him in a pentagram, but obviously that would be the dumbest idea ever.
“Er. That’s probably good,” he said.
“Yeah.” I knew I should get going to get the ingredients, but you know how it is when you run into your crush. And fine, I admit it, the shy boy-band boy was becoming more and more my crush every time we talked. Which is why I was so glad that the thing with Reese wasn’t a real thing. You know how it sucks when you like something for its inner essence but then everyone else likes it for its superficial outer stuff? And you want to say, “But I’m not following the herd,” and then you feel like some sort of fakey hipster? That’s how I felt about falling for Devon. If he was a boy-band boy, then he was my personal obscure boy-band boy, and I wanted him to stay that way.
“So … what about task three?” I said. “I think we might have to help Mr. Esty fill that one regardless.”
Devon shifted and kinda looked down at the bushes and back. “Why?”
“Because the, um, ‘woman’ says the, um, ‘bird’ is going to explode no matter what,” I said, quotation marking the substitutions for all I was worth. “And I think she’s telling the truth with this one. That energy has to go somewhere, and having it burst into flame on the school grounds would be … pretty awful. So it has to be found, and probably harnessed, because we can’t get old Rabby up to a barren mountaintop in time.”
Devon was looking at the bushes again. “Are you really doing okay? Is there someone back there?”
He looked up at me. “I’m going to make it to tomorrow. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Good,” I said. He looked kinda shifty, but I suppose it probably was taking a lot of control to keep the demon suppressed and their personalities nice and separate, no matter how slick he claimed it was going. “So what was the trick?”
“No trick,” said Devon. “We’re just sort of coexisting. It’s going great.” His hair flopped forward.
His black hair.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Your hair’s still black.”
“I like it that way?”
“It usually changes when you’re you.” I peered closer. “Is that lip gloss on your cheek?” I tried to laugh. “I mean, I know the demon likes changing colors, but surely he didn’t decide it would be cool to have a shimmery pink smear half on and off your ear.”
“Camellia,” he said formally. “Do you know Reese?”
12
Zombie Girl
A wobbly blond girl wobbled up from the bushes. “He kissed me,” Reese said dreamily.
“Really,” I said.