Devilish (17 page)

The delight faded from my parents’ expressions, and my sister quickly turned her interest to identifying all four cheeses on the pizza in front of her.

“Jane,” my mother said firmly, “we don’t
have
a day. Trust me, we don’t like the thought of you not living at home, but this is a one-in-a-million opportunity that just fell together at the right time. And it’s you who got kicked out. We’re trying to be positive about it—but this is
your
doing.”

“So what is it?” my father said.

I had no choice. I had to say something. And the smartest move seemed to be to say the thing that caused me the least trouble right now.

“Sure,” I said. “Okay. I don’t know what I was just thinking. You’re right. It’s perfect.”

The ride home was fairly joyous, considering. My mom starting making a list of all the things I would need for my dorm room. My father tried to explain to Joan the difference between the American South and South America.

We all went to bed early in preparation for the day ahead, but I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t go to Boston the next day. I couldn’t go to this perfect, wonderful program that was waiting for me with open arms. No. I had to stay in Providence and fight the devil.

I paced.

At around two in the morning, as I went down to get what had to be my twentieth glass of juice, I was not surprised to look out the window and find Owen silently waiting in the cold.

“I guess you heard the news,” I said.

I was sitting on my front porch, bundled in a bathrobe and my sister’s silver ski jacket. Owen sat beside me in a oversized plaid lumberjack kind of coat, an obvious hand-me-down.

“We heard. Allison turned on you. Not to depress you, but that’s not shocking.”

“Yup. And then magically, the perfect school in Boston decided to let me in. They just happened to get a grant
today
, which they need to use by
tomorrow
. Which is when I’m supposed to leave.”

“Tomorrow? You can’t go tomorrow.”

“I know that,” I said. “I have to wash dishes for a guy named Carbo tomorrow. Somehow, though, I don’t think my parents are going to accept that. We’re supposed to be packing my things in the morning. Oh, and Lazarus Fields is the headmaster. You have a plan, right?”

“Working on it.”

Even though my coat was warmer, he reached over and rubbed my arm hard to get the circulation going.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” I said.

“What?”

“How did it happen?”

“How did what happen?”

“How did you … you know?”

“What?”

“Die,” I finally said. “How did you die?”

“Oh, that. Accident.”

“What kind of accident?”

“I worked for a grocer,” he said. “Mr. Bioni. He wasn’t a really friendly guy. He used to make me sleep in the store to take early morning deliveries. He would lock me in because he thought that would keep me from stealing his things—not that I ever did. I worked really hard for him. My family needed the money. I was sort of the main support. My dad was sick and couldn’t work. So I was there, sleeping, when a huge fire broke out at the bakery next door. The flames went right through the wall. I couldn’t get out. That was pretty much that.”

“That’s horrible,” I said. “Lanalee said something about you knowing about fire.”

“Oh yeah,” he said dismissively. “She would. It’s been a while. It doesn’t bother me anymore. I think my death was even mentioned in a book on reforming working conditions in the early twentieth century.”

“The what?” I asked. “When was this?”

“1904.”

“You’re over a hundred years old?”

“Yeah.”

“How old were you when you died?”

“Same age I am now,” he said. “Fourteen.”

“You died when you were fourteen? At
work
?”

“It doesn’t matter how old you are,” he said. “Age is a human thing. It’s kind of meaningless, something people get hung up on, like clothes or something.”

“But you died kind of … prematurely.”

“There is no dying prematurely,” he said. “Whenever you die, that’s the right time for you. Maybe your time is when you’re three, maybe it’s when you’re a hundred and three.”

“So, Lanalee’s dead too?”

“Yeah, but she died old. Really old. I think she was ninety-five or something. The evil live a long time. They tend to be good at stuff—making money, taking care of themselves. They don’t usually get stuck in fires at locked grocery stores.”

He was trying to keep his voice level, but it gave way a bit. There was resentment there.

“But she looks young.”

“She took that body from a girl in France, maybe a year ago. See, they take things to help themselves. They take souls, bodies—they take whatever they need or want to sustain themselves. They’re like parasites. Sure, maybe they’ll give you some stuff to get you to sign, but they always do it for themselves.”

“So, what do you do it for?”

“I like to make things right,” he said. “I like to take care of people.”

He paused a minute.

“Allison sold out today,” he said.

“Good to know you were paying attention.”

“There can only be one reason for that,” he said. “The stakes must have changed again.”

“What?”

“A deal,” he said simply. “Lanalee’s done another deal.”

It was about three in the morning as we approached the Tremone house.

She came to the door in a pair of red Chinese silk pajamas. A fuzzy red eye-cover embroidered with the words
The bitch is sleeping
was pulled back over her forehead.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s you. I don’t hold court at this hour usually, but seeing it’s a special day, I’ll make an exception. Come on. And bring Owen. I’m sure he’s lurking around out there somewhere.”

I went back down the steps, over to the tree that Owen was, in fact, lurking behind.

“She says you can come in,” I said.

“No thanks. I’ll stay out here. We’re not really supposed to mingle—it confuses things. Find out what happened and leave. No dealing.”

“I know.”

“Seriously, Jane. No dealing.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

I went back up to the door, where Lanalee was drooping sleepily.

“He doesn’t want to come in,” I said.

“Yeah, Owen kind of likes the cold,” she said. “He hasn’t had much luck with hot places. Well, then, princess, you’d better follow me.”

Even though no one was in the room, the downstairs fireplace was going strong, and all of the lights were on.

“David!” Lanalee screamed.

A thing—a person—came down the stairs, wrapped in a plush red bath wrap. I barely recognized him. He was obviously cold, shivering visibly, and pruned to the point where he looked like he was about a hundred. Only his shoe-polish black hair and doe-like eyes were the same.

“Have you been in the bath all this time?” I asked.

“I forgot about him,” Lanalee said, twisting her face into a smile. “I never told him he could come out.”

David gripped the rail and sneezed with such force I thought he’d broken a rib.

“David, refreshments for us, please. Maybe some cocoa with those little homemade pink marshmallows. I got the best marshmallows at Trader Joe’s!”

She said this last thing to me, excitedly, as if I’d just stopped over in my robe and slippers in the middle of the night to see if she had any good snacks. David came down the stairs, gripping the rail fiercely. I could see his pale legs now, bloated and purplish from being in bathwater for
days. He seemed barely able to walk. He went through the archways to the kitchen.

“Seriously,” she said “They’re square and pink, and they’re handmade by these farmers or something. They are
too
good.”

“We need to talk,” I said.

“Oh, I know why you’re here,” she said with a smile. “You’re here because you’re not stupid.”

She got up and went over to a long shelf mostly full of anatomy textbooks and art books. The bottom shelf had a few leather-bound albums. She pulled out one of these, a cracked red one.

“This is the Codex,” she said. “This is the record of all disagreements I make.”

“Disagreements?”

“I don’t like to call them agreements. It’s too positive.”

“Disagreements? You seem like more of a poser than any poser I’ve ever met.”

She smiled faintly and opened it. After flipping through a few pages, which I could clearly see were class notes and homework assignments, she found what she was looking for.

“Here,” she said, passing me the book. “Read it yourself.” I did. It read:

“I’m quarry?” I asked.

Lanalee grinned.

David returned in the interim, with a massive mug of cocoa that Lanalee greedily grabbed. She shoved the Codex into his chest, and he dutifully staggered over to the bookshelf to replace it.

All I could think to say was, “Why?”

She laughed so hard that she had to squeeze her nose to keep cocoa from coming out. David laughed as well, out of obligation.

“Ow,” she said. “Hotness on the nasal membrane. Why? Okay. Let me give you a for instance. You know how you watch television sometimes and you see some new
somebody or other? Usually blond, usually skinny, usually very talentless, often in synthetic fibers? These people can’t really sing, are too stupid to know their own names—they just have a catchy song and some really good eyeliner? And you ask yourself, not unreasonably,
how
? How did this happen? How could some no-talent idiot get a big record contract, make big dance music videos, rise up overnight?”

She got up and went over to finger-dust her perfume bottles. David sat on the floor near our feet and watched her admiringly.

“It happens because
we do it
, Jane. I can do a celebrity conversion in less time than it takes me to get a pedicure.”

“Mistress is so good at this stuff,” David said, hugging his robe tight around his purple legs.

“All it takes is a few phone calls to some friends,” Lanalee said. “And it’s very, very hard to go back when you’ve had a taste.”

“It’s true,” David said, nodding sagely. “So true.”

“David, shut up and get Jane some cocoa. She hasn’t tried my pink marshmallows.”

David unwillingly left his spot by the fire. Lanalee came and sat next to me, adjusting Joan’s ski jacket so that it sat more easily over my fluffy robe.

“Allison didn’t want to lose what I had given her,” she went on. “So she came back and asked me to give her everything, and in return, she would simply make sure that you lost. I get you. She gets stuff. Simple. Beautiful. And just plain wrong. And really, more than I expected from
her. I
like
that girl now! I’d still rather have you, though. I’m glad we’re taking care of that.”

David returned with another cup, which Lanalee took as he was passing it to me.

“So, is that what you wanted to know?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, feeling a churning pain in my stomach. I had put myself on the line to save Allison, and she had turned on me. My best friend.

“Great.” Lanalee downed the cocoa in one gulp and stood. “Well, I’m awake now. Want to make some pancakes or something?”

“No. I just want to go.”

“Whatever you want. You know where the door is. See you in hell!”

Owen Secret-Serviced himself out from behind the tree as I came down the steps. I sank down on the last one and put my head in my hands.

“What happened?,” he asked, coming and standing over me.

“You were right,” I said. “Ally went back. She did another deal. And she’s going to make sure I lose.”

I wrapped my arms completely around my head and tried to see if I could squeeze myself out of consciousness. It didn’t work. Owen didn’t sit down. He just continued to stand there, looking down at me.

“There’s only one thing you can do,” he said.

I squeezed my head some more.

“Are you listening?”

“No.”

“In sixteen hours, you have to win this bet.”

“And send my best friend to wherever it is that Lanalee comes from? Hell?”

“That’s right.”

When I peered up from the folds of my own arms, I noticed what seemed like a thousand tiny gold dabs of light all around us. They were under parked cars. On porches. Across the street. In the bushes.

“What,” I asked slowly, “are those?”

He turned and looked.

“Cats,” he said.

“Cats?”

Now that he said it, I could make out tiny shadowy forms, crouching low, pacing slowly.

“What are they doing?”

“Watching the house.”

“Why?”

“Because they know something is wrong. Cats are good guards. They can feel the time is coming.”

“There were cats on my porch the other night.”

“They were probably trying to protect your house. They can’t do much, but it’s in their nature to try. So
get up
, Jane.”

“And go where?”

“Come with me. There’s no time for you to go home. You can’t go back. Not right now. You know that.”

So that, in short, is how I ended up running away from home on the night of my high school expulsion.

Owen led me up a narrow, very steep staircase, past three bedrooms, to an even tinier staircase. The floorboards creaked so loudly that it sounded like the house was about to implode into a shower of match-stick-sized pieces, but no one stirred.