TWELVE
EVERYONE WAS SCREAMING. MOUTHS wide, tongues vibrating with the terror and shock, the whites of their eyes shining in the morning sun.
But in my head, it was silent. Like I was wearing a helmet of soundproof glass.
I was in motion before he landed, running toward the spot I knew he would hit.
Not because I wanted to save him. It was far too late for that.
Because I wanted to interrogate the Mazikin inside him.
But after the crack-split-thunk, I knew the creature inhabiting his body would never be able to answer my questions. Air whooshed from my lungs. My heart jacked up tight and painful, beating itself into a giant bruise.
Then a sound reached me, an animal wail, wretched and broken. I spun around. There’s another one here. But no. Tegan shoved past me, staggering toward Aden’s shattered body. Those horrible, wrenching sobs were coming from her. Beyond her, half the student body had their phones out, probably blowing up the emergency dispatch, calling for a completely unnecessary ambulance. Or snapping pics to post on Facebook. Ian and the rest of Aden’s teammates were still huddled by his SUV, all the blood drained from their faces.
A hand closed over my shoulder, and I jerked away.
“Are you all right?” Malachi asked as he shoved his hands in his pockets. “What happened?”
I nodded toward Aden’s body, which was now surrounded by a bunch of people, gray-green-faced teachers holding out their arms to shove students back, the weeping school nurse on her knees beside his head, the principal wringing her hands and shouting at everyone to calm down. The red-haired school counselor, Ms. Ketzler, had folded Tegan’s waifish body against her own and was rocking back and forth, mascara-laced tears falling from her round cheeks into Tegan’s hair.
“Mazikin,” I said quietly. “I think it was Ibram.” The Mazikin responsible for the death of Ana, Malachi’s former Guard partner.
Malachi’s expression sharpened. “Say that again.”
“They got Aden. He’d been possessed.” I jogged out of the way as an ambulance with screeching sirens pulled up to the curb and disgorged two frowning paramedics.
Malachi followed me back to my car. I didn’t realize I was still clutching Tegan’s phone until it started to ring in my hand. I put it in my pocket and then told my Lieutenant what had just happened.
“You know, Friday night? When Aden asked you to go out with him and his buddies? They were hunting the Mazikin. Jim and I ran into them as we were patrolling in south Pawtucket.” I looked over at the baseball team, still hovering around Ian. “I should have had you go with them.”
Malachi looked back and forth between the carnage and the pale-faced baseball players. “You think they found the Mazikin?”
I nodded. “If Ibram possessed Aden, he would have had access to his memories. He must have recognized you. And me.”
“They sacrificed Aden to make a point,” Malachi said.
And what a point it was. They could kill our friends, and from the outside, it would look like suicide. No way to prove otherwise. “What if Aden wasn’t the only one they got?” I asked.
The baseball players watched as the ambulance, sirens silent, carried Aden’s body away from us. The voice of the principal blared over loudspeakers, announcing that school would be cancelled for the day, but that any student who wished to talk could convene in the cafeteria. Parents were being alerted, which meant Diane would probably be home within half an hour, waiting for me.
“Ian appeared to be himself on Saturday,” Malachi replied. He watched the baseball players as they began to walk toward the school. “But it’s been nearly forty-eight hours since we’ve seen him. And there is no way to know about Greg and Levi just by looking at them.”
“Do you think you could get close to those guys?” I pulled Tegan’s phone from my pocket to see that Ian was trying to reach her. Picking up where Aden left off? “You’re right—a lot of time has passed since Friday. Some of them might have been taken, too. And they might be trying to lure others. Aden—Ibram, I mean—tried to get ahold of Tegan on Saturday. If her dad hadn’t been home, he might have succeeded.”
“Then I’ll question them,” he said, glaring at Ian’s back as he and the others disappeared into the school.
Seeing the fierce look on his face, I reached for his arm but stopped as my hand bounced off the boundary of the no-fly zone I imagined around his body. “Go easy, all right? Act like a curious, concerned guy, not a Guard. I mean, if you smell a Mazikin, let me know immediately, but stay cool. Don’t gut anyone in the school cafeteria.”
He looked down at my hand still suspended in midair. “Understood, Captain.”
I wished he’d just punch me. It would have been less painful than his remoteness. I drew a shaky breath. “And make sure you have their numbers, okay? We need to start keeping closer tabs on all of Aden’s friends because Ibram made sure to tell me that the Mazikin know who they are. I’m going to check on Tegan. I’ll touch base later.”
I walked away without another word, too fried for politeness, too brittle to look Malachi in the eye. Probably too burnt to talk to Tegan, but it was the right thing to do. After all, if the Mazikin were infiltrating our school and targeting people I knew, she would be at the top of the list.
I ended up taking Tegan home. She was too distraught to drive. Plus, until I knew whether any other students were Mazikin, I didn’t feel like leaving her alone. They might know they could get to me through her now.
“This doesn’t make sense. He had a scholarship to BU,” she whispered after several minutes of silence. “He was so psyched. And he said he was going to travel this summer. To Europe. He wanted to get drunk at an Irish pub. One in Ireland.”
I turned onto her pristine street lined with carefully trimmed shrubs. “I’m sorry, Tegan.”
“Why would he do something like that? He wasn’t depressed. He was, like, the opposite. He had a great life, and he knew it.”
I glanced at her. “Maybe … do you think he was high or something?”
“It was baseball season, Lela. Hello, drug testing? He would have lost his scholarship.”
Damn. “Well, I know that some mental illnesses can kind of come out of nowhere.”
She sagged back in her seat. “He was acting really weird on Saturday. And he smelled so bad. I actually did wonder if he’d been smoking something.”
My stomach turned when I considered how close the Mazikin had gotten to her. And how they could try again at anytime. “Maybe he was self-medicating.” I’d become familiar with the term a few years after I entered the child welfare system, when I was about six years old. Long before I was ready to understand it, I heard some social worker talking about my mom to one of my foster parents, explaining why she hadn’t shown up for a scheduled visit with me. I’d stood barefoot in the dark hallway in my pajamas, listening as the lady said that my mom was mentally ill. That she’d drugged herself into oblivion, trying to silence the voices in her head. I’d spent a long time wondering where oblivion was and if I could find my mom there.
Tegan sniffled. “Like Nadia was, right?”
I’d never even thought of it that way. “Yeah.” I pulled to a stop in front of Tegan’s gated drive. She told me the code, and I punched it in; then we drove up her long driveway and parked.
Tegan folded her arms over her chest, shivering like she was cold even in the warm air of the car. “Do you ever wonder where she is now? Do you believe in any of that afterlife crap?”
I let my forehead rest on the steering wheel, not wanting her to see the look on my face: bitterness and awe and rage and wistfulness all rolled up in one. Too painful to share. “I do believe Nadia is in a better place.” I gave myself a moment to smooth my expression and turned to her. “I know that for sure, in fact.”
Tegan rolled her eyes and wiped a tear from her cheek. “I’m so tired of people saying that.”
I tucked some stray curls behind my ear. “I was too. But I know this, Tegan. No bullshit, right?”
She stared at me, her shell-pink lips trembling. “No bullshit. I hope you’re right.”
“It doesn’t mean I don’t miss her. I will always miss her. And I will always regret that I didn’t do more for her when she was alive.”
Tegan’s face crumpled. “Me too,” she choked out as she began to sob. “And now Aden. Oh, God, is it me?” Her whole body shook, twisted up with guilt and sorrow I understood so well.
I knew I was supposed to hug her, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
Then I thought about all those times I’d shrugged off Nadia’s casual, caring touches. I thought about how I craved Malachi’s touch, how comforting I found it and how much I missed it now that I couldn’t have it. Was this really so different?
I reached out and touched her shoulder. Tegan put her hand over mine and took a snuffling, shuddery breath. When she let it out, it was as a wet, hoarse sort of … laugh. “Thanks for trying, Lela. I really appreciate it.”
She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and got out of the car. I followed her. “Hey,” I called as she trudged toward her house. “Are your parents home?”
She nodded. “My mom’s here.”
I fingered my keys. “All right. I’m going to call you later. Just to see how you are.”
“Since when do you care, Lela? Are we friends now?”
My fist closed over my keys, the teeth biting my palm. She wasn’t Nadia. She could never be Nadia. But I didn’t want anything to happen to her, and it wasn’t just because Nadia had cared about her. Somewhere along the line, I started to care about her, too. A little. “I was wondering the same thing.”
She gave a raspy laugh.
“Hey, Tegan. Aden obviously got into something bad. If anyone shows up here acting the same way, don’t let them in, and don’t go with them, okay?”
“I’m not an idiot.”
I handed over her phone. “Later, then.”
On the drive home, finally alone, my mind whirled through the events of the last few hours. Aden was gone. Dead. Where was his soul now? Was he trapped in the Mazikin realm, which was supposedly so terrible that the dark city looked like a paradise by comparison? Or maybe his soul had been liberated the moment Ibram had crashed his body into the slab of cement. That’s what Malachi believed. That was why he was so determined to kill the Mazikin and the bodies they inhabited. Sure, it gave the Mazikin a chance to come back, but if it freed the souls of their victims, he believed it was worth it.
Which meant that if Levi or Greg or Ian or any of the others had been possessed, Malachi would want to eliminate them immediately. We would end up murdering our classmates, one by one. Well, not really, but as I thought of Ian’s surprisingly sweet, dimpled smile, I knew it would feel that way.
As I pulled into Diane’s subdivision, I was already making plans to check in with the other Guards and scan the news to see if there had been any additional attacks. But all my plans scattered when I saw the car parked in Diane’s driveway. It belonged to Nancy, my probation officer. And parked right next to it was a police cruiser.