Betrayal (2 page)

Finding out she was part demon had flipped Eve’s world, but knowing that her blood had killed Amunnic and saved lives made her heritage easier to accept. At least for her.

When blood tests done by the Order, an ancient demon-fighting organization, had confirmed that Eve was indeed part demon, it had horrified Callum, one of the Order heads. Eve had seen fear and pity in his eyes the day he’d given her the results of the tests. She could also feel the distrust from Alanna, another member of the Order. It made sense. The Order was founded to hunt down demons. No matter how many demons Eve had killed herself, no one in the Order was ever going to be able to completely trust her.

Eve had gotten used to thinking of herself as the Deepdene Witch, whose mission it was to use her witchy powers to keep her town safe from demons. Amunnic had just been the most recent one she’d had to kill. At first, finding out she was actually one of the things she’d been fighting – part, she reminded herself, just part – had horrified her as much as it had Callum.

Jess and Luke still trusted her though. They’d helped her get past the fear she’d felt when she learned the truth about herself. They acted like she was the same old Eve. Which she was – the same old power-enhanced Eve.

Who knew? Maybe she’d never have gotten together with Luke if she hadn’t been …
special
. Battling Amunnic side by side had pushed them out of the friend zone and into the couple zone. It had been so intense, and Luke had been staying with her because his dad had been stricken with the plague that warned of Many Faces’ arrival, and … things just happened. Things like kissing. Maybe even things like love – not that either of them had said that word out loud. Yet.

‘You two do know that you’re blocking traffic?’

A warm flush ran through Eve at the sound of her boyfriend’s voice. She turned and grinned at him. ‘You can’t get round?’ she teased.

‘I don’t want to get round,’ he told her. Then he leaned in and gave her a quick kiss.

Life was good. She and Luke were finally together. She had great friends, a shopping trip to Manhattan in the making, and no demons to deal with!

‘I came up with a list of stores that are musts,’ Jess told Eve as they stepped out into the warm May afternoon that day after school.

She flipped open her notebook and Eve peered over her shoulder at the list. ‘Serendipity sells prom dresses now?’ she teased. ‘That’s so weird for an ice-cream place.’

‘We’ll need to keep our strength up and stay hydrated,’ Jess said innocently. ‘Serendipity frozen hot chocolate will take care of that when we’re uptown.’ She looked up from her notebook and gave a little frown.

‘What?’ Eve asked.

‘I think … It looks like Simon Oliver is coming over to us,’ Jess murmured.

Simon had had a crush on Jess for about as long as Jess had had a crush on Seth, so in other words, for years and years. For him, the crush just meant staring at Jess a lot, and talking to her even less than he talked to anyone else. Which wasn’t much. Simon didn’t have any actual friends.

‘Us?’ Eve followed her friend’s gaze. Sure enough, Simon was walking across the quad on what looked like a collision course with them. Which was weird. Simon said maybe half a dozen words to Eve a semester, and then only if she said something first, but talking to Jess clearly gave him the jitters. It had probably been a year since he’d said a word to her.

‘You said hi to him again, didn’t you?’ Jess joked. ‘You got him all
talkative
.’

‘I actually did say hi the other day,’ Eve admitted. Every once in a while she made the effort. It was just too sad to see him all alone all the time – although maybe that was how he wanted it. ‘I don’t think he heard me. He was walking down the hall muttering to himself. It didn’t even sound like English.’

‘Probably Klingon,’ Jess suggested. ‘Or whatever they speak in World of Warcraft.’

Definite possibility. Simon had a strong geek vibe going and he had the pallor of someone who spent pretty much all his time indoors.

Eve took another quick glance in his direction. He really was coming over to them. She gave a little wave, and he looked at her like he was trying to interpret the strange gesture.

‘Um, hi,’ he said when he stopped in front of them. Way too close. He always stood too close to people, and he never seemed to realize it. Eve always felt like pulling out that old line from
Dirty Dancing – ‘This is my dance space. This is your dance space.’

‘Hey, Simon,’ she said instead.

‘I wanted to ask you something, Jess,’ he blurted out.

Eve blinked in surprise.

‘Sure,’ Jess said. ‘What’s up?’ Eve could tell her friend was a little freaked, but Jess was doing her best not to show it. She was always careful not to hurt anyone’s feelings.

Simon shifted his backpack – which looked like it contained half the books in the library – from one hand to the other, then shot a look at Eve. ‘Alone. If, uh, that’s OK,’ he added.

Eve glanced at her best friend to make sure she didn’t mind being alone with Simon. Jess gave her a quick I’ll-be-fine nod. ‘I’ll wait for you over there,’ Eve said, gesturing to one of the stone benches near the huge maple tree on the school lawn.

When she reached the bench, she sat down and rummaged around in her bag for her lip gloss. She didn’t want to sit there and stare at Simon and Jess, even though she was kind of curious. Make that
very
curious. Simon and talking – they just didn’t go together. Simon and talking to Jess – that went together even less. As far as Eve knew, when Simon wasn’t in class, he was in one of the cubbies in the back of the school library, hunched so far over a book that it was hard to see his face.

She applied the vanilla-scented gloss, returned it to her purse, then tilted her head back and closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of the soft, warm breeze brushing over her face. Tonight she and Luke were going to the movies, and Eve tried to decide what she was in the mood for. She wouldn’t drag him to a chick flick. She’d wait and go to those with Jess or one of her other girlfriends. Maybe that new horror remake? It could be fun to grab onto Luke and hold on tight. But there’d been enough real-life horror in the past few months. Maybe—

The sound of boys laughing, a bunch of boys, pulled her out of her thoughts. She straightened up and opened her eyes. Jess was coming towards her, Seth at her side, with three of his buds trailing along behind.

Uh-oh. Jess looked mortified. Were they laughing at her? It didn’t seem likely. Seth wasn’t the kind of guy who’d let his friends give his girlfriend a hard time. Eve stood up. ‘What’s so funny?’ she asked.

Seth and Jess both opened their mouths to answer, but Dave Perry beat them to it. ‘Let me tell,’ he begged, laughter mixing with his words. ‘You’re not going to believe this, Eve. That freak just asked Jess if she would “accompany him to the prom”. Seriously, that’s exactly how he said it. “Accompany him”. ’

Eve raised her eyebrows, turning to Jess. ‘Simon asked you to prom?’

‘He didn’t know Seth and the guys were behind us,’ Jess explained. ‘I was just starting to tell him that I’d already been invited when they all went nuts. This one getting all chest-thumpy about me being his girlfriend.’ She nudged Seth with her elbow. ‘That one laughing until I was afraid he was going to wet himself.’ Jess jerked her thumb towards Dave. ‘And the other two very helpfully offering to beat Simon into a hamburger.’ She flipped her hand at Al Defrancisco and Connor Bray, who both happened to be on the wrestling team and ended up in scuffles on a regular basis.

Eve sighed and rolled her eyes, and Jess did the same.

‘What, you wanted him to ask you?’ Seth asked.

‘No,’ Jess said sharply. She sucked in a breath, and Eve could tell she was trying to get a grip on her temper. ‘No,’ she said more gently. ‘What I wanted was to politely turn him down. Po-lite-ly. You guys were kind of jerks, you know that? You scared him off before I could even say thank you.’

‘Oh, kind sir, thank you kindly, but I must refuse your kind offer to escort me to the prom,’ Dave said in a high voice and an attempt at what Eve thought was a Southern accent. Al and Connor cracked up. Eve scanned the courtyard for Simon and saw him on the sidewalk just outside the school. He was staring at them.

Eve heart tightened like a fist. The expression on Simon’s face was a mix of coldness and fury. His normally pale cheeks had vivid red splotches on them, his mouth was pressed into a hard line, and his eyes glittered as if he had a fever. To Eve it looked like he wanted to come back over and kill Seth and his friends.

I feel like I’m standing in the power plant again, sucking in all that energy
, Eve thought that evening. Back when she was trying to defeat Amunnic, she had discovered that she could do just that: take in electricity and use it to boost her own power, the power she’d inherited as the new Deepdene Witch. Pulling in the electricity had felt amazing, exhilarating, thrilling.

And that’s what knowing she had a date with Luke did to her: made her feel all tingly and alive from each strand of hair down to her pinky toes.

‘Look at our daughter,’ her dad said to her mom. Eve and her parents were just finishing up dinner. ‘Does she look odd to you?’

‘Odd? I’m not getting a pimple, am I?’ Eve exclaimed.

Mr Evergold laughed. ‘Nothing like that.’ He reached out and gave one of her long, dark ringlets a tweak. ‘I was just thinking that you looked almost glittery.’

‘As a heart doctor, I’d say the condition is caused by being in love,’ Mrs Evergold answered.

Her mother wasn’t usually so goofy. That was more a Dad kind of comment. ‘I am definitely extremely in
like
,’ Eve agreed. Although maybe it was more. Maybe. No guy had ever made her feel the way Luke did. And he was such a cutie with his longish blond hair and those green eyes of his.

‘
Extremely in like
,’ her father repeated. ‘Is that—?’

He was interrupted by the doorbell. ‘That’s gotta be Luke.’ Eve grinned.

‘I’ll get it. You finish your dinner,’ her mom said, rising from the table. A few moments later, she returned with Luke. Eve smiled at him, and decided that her dad had got it right. Glittery was exactly how she felt when she looked at her boyfriend.

‘Sit down for a minute,’ her father told Luke, and her mother offered him a soda.

‘No thanks. I like to get a vat of Sprite at the movies.’ He held his hands apart, indicating the world’s largest soda cup.

Eve took her last bite of chicken and stood up. ‘Just give me one second, and I’ll be ready to go,’ she told Luke. She needed to do some quick tooth brushing and lip gloss re-applying.

‘I want you two to be sure to stay away from the woods,’ her mother said before Eve reached the dining-room door. ‘I ran into Becky Poplin at the grocery store. She was putting a flyer up on the bulletin board because their dog – you remember, that little schnauzer? – is lost. There were two other missing pet posters up already, new ones.’ She frowned. ‘I don’t like it. That’s a lot of animals in a town this size. It got me wondering if there are still a few of those creatures that killed the Rakoffs’ son out in the woods.’

Eve and Luke exchanged a look. They both knew that the creatures – which were actually dog-like demons called wargs – were gone. Helena, the girl who had summoned them, had been a descendant of Lord Medway, the man who had built a portal between our world and hell. He had done it as part of a deal with a demon. The portal allowed the demons into Deepdene, and in exchange they gave him wealth and power.

When Helena learned the truth about her ancestor, she had decided to try to make a pact with a demon herself, but instead, the creatures she’d let through the portal killed her. Eve had used her power to close the portal, preventing the wargs and any other nasties from coming through again. But it wasn’t as if she could tell her mother any of that. Parents had a way of not believing in things like demons and hell portals.

‘We’ll be careful,’ Luke told them.

‘No going in the woods,’ Eve agreed. Still, she couldn’t help wondering what had happened to those missing pets since she was positive that the wargs hadn’t gotten them.

As Luke walked down Main Street with Eve, he couldn’t stop himself glancing over at the woods. The forest surrounded pretty much all of Deepdene, so the treetops were visible from anywhere in the whole town. ‘I know we whipped us some warg butt,’ he said, ‘but the thing your mom was saying about the animals is freaky. Do you think there could be a new demon in Deepdene?’

‘Telefriendic moment! I was just thinking the same thing,’ Eve exclaimed. ‘But I pumped everything I had into closing the portal. Everyone from the Order seemed to think it’s secure.’

Luke was glad the Order had made itself available if they needed help with any Deepdene strangeness. He was also glad to have them as an information source. He was working on building a demon database. Living in Deepdene, known in its early days as Demondene, he figured it could be useful.

‘You’re right. They definitely said the portal was shut. Three missing pets doesn’t mean that we have to gear up to save the town – again,’ he agreed. Although it was normal for him to be a little paranoid. Since he and his dad had moved to Deepdene from Santa Cruz, California, at the beginning of the school year there had been three demon attacks on their new town, one of which had almost killed his father.