There was an audible, painful pause and I held my breath until Alex spoke. “Look, Lawson, I appreciate the tip, but you’re with Will on this, aren’t you? Working the Underworld angle?”
I could hear a strain of something—annoyance? jealousy?—in his voice, but I couldn’t recognize it. “Yes, but—”
“How about you two stick to your end and I’ll stick to mine, okay? Physical evidence—anything other than black cats or pointed hats—is my end. Bring me the uniform tomorrow.”
The sudden change in Alex’s tone hit me like a ton of bricks. “Uh, well, oh—”
But Alex’s phone hit the cradle before I had a chance to respond.
I was determined the next day would be better. Nina laid out my clothes—a kicky combination of two items that I never would have thought to put together matched with a pair of shoes that were edgy enough to be cool, but not cool enough so that I’d blunder like an idiot and fall all over myself.
Nina was puttering in the kitchen when I walked in. She beamed when she saw me, her fangs tinged a faint raspberry red from her breakfast—O neg, I figured. Her face fell when I came closer.
“You look simultaneously ab fab and like your puppy just died.” She immediately clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyebrows quirking. “Oh, no,” she let out an aching whisper. “Not ChaCha.”
At the utterance of her name, ChaCha came prancing in, nuzzling up to Nina. She scooped him up, chirped, “Oh, thank God!” then turned to me. “Then, what happened to you?”
I yawned and filled a Big Gulp cup with coffee. I craned my head over the kitchen pass-through and found Vlad—as always—perched behind his computer screen. “Last night while you guys were out gallivanting I had to deal with the ghost of Vlad’s girlfriends past.”
Vlad’s eyebrows shot up over his laptop screen. “Kale?”
“Are you insinuating that there could be someone else blowing our doors off at three a.m.?”
Vlad shrugged and went back to sucking CGI blood.
“Anyway, Kale’s easy enough to deal with. There’s this popular girl at my school. I swear she’s hell bent on making my life miserable.”
Nina sat down across from me. “What’d she do?”
“Nothing. But you know the type. Super pretty, evil. Her name is Fallon.”
Vlad choose that minute to walk into the kitchen and snatch himself some breakfast. “Fallon.” He tried out the name, rolling it on his tongue. He must have decided he liked that because he nodded with a self-satisfied smile.
“She’s evil and she must be stopped.”
“Why don’t you hit her with a spit wad?” Nina grinned while I poured myself a bowl of something non-sugar-coated and vaguely healthy. I took a bite and reminded myself that I was a responsible adult who ate responsible adult food and I would not be flustered by an oversexed sixteen-year-old in a push-up bra.
“Oh! I made lunch for you!” Nina plunked a brown paper bag in front of me.
“Aw, Neens!” I pulled open the bag and peeked in: apple, hard-boiled egg, granola bar, something that looked like a sandwich. “This might be the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me.
She grinned, looking every bit like a sweet, doting mother and I felt a twinge of sadness, knowing that she’d never be able to have—or be—that. I slung an arm around her neck and pulled her to me. “You’re the best.”
She tossed a handful of her perfect Pantene hair over one shoulder. “You’d better believe it.”
Like a sweet, doting mother with fangs.
I got to school so early that I met Heddy in the parking lot and Janitor Bud in the hall.
“He’s taking a leave of absence starting tomorrow,” Heddy told me as an aside.
“Isn’t that a little suspicious with a girl having just gone missing from the school?”
Heddy looked at me, indignant. “Janitor Bud has been with us for sixteen years. And the police did a full background check just to rule him out.”
“And did it?”
I thought Heddy’s eyes would explode out of her head with a trail of steam. I immediately started to backpedal, to open my mouth in an attempt to help Heddy simmer down, but she held up a single finger to me, her orangey lips pursed, eyebrows diving down. “And, he’s had this planned trip for seven months.”
I gave Heddy a moment, then licked my lips. “I wasn’t implying anything, Heddy.”
She gave me an over-the-shoulder harrumph and walked away, her sensible heels clicking down the pristine hall.
I went into my classroom, first flipping on the lights and doing my precursory “what wants to kill me?” scan, then dumping my things on my desk.
I was still feeling wounded from my early morning phone call with Alex. I let my fingertips ramble over the Ziploc bag of clothing that I hadn’t had the courage to drop off on my way to work, then felt a hint of smugness.