The Demon's Game (22 page)

Hail met me at the door. “What has you so happy?”

Before I could answer, Xul put his hand on my back
and leaned down to whisper. “I’m going to walk you to English, but then I have
to go back to the gym.
Do not
leave your classroom without Hail. If your
teacher lets you out early, you call Hail to cut class.”

I knew that if I got hurt because Xul wasn’t watching
me, my dad would do worse than kill him. I nodded, thinking about the demon kid
who attacked me the day before. “I won’t go anywhere without you or Hail. That
boy from yesterday… What did you do to him? He was demon, right? Wizards don’t
have glowy eyes.”

Hail shot me a look, but I didn’t consider him a
wizard; he was better than just a wizard. A wizard was the descendent of a
Guardian, which he was. But while Hail technically Vivian and Nano’s son, he
was also the son of Vretial. That made him a demigod, as well as a seer. In
fact, Hail was more than that if my dad was right, as he usually was.

“He is half demon. His mother is human and his father
was a one-night stand. His mother is also a strict woman who wouldn’t let her
child get away with anything, so I took him to her and told her what he did. He
was getting grilled when I left.” When we both stared at him, waiting for more,
he shrugged. “I wasn’t about to hurt a child. I’m still paying for my crimes.”

I pulled a watermelon Jolly Crunch out of my pocket
and held it out for him. “Good demon,” I said as he took it. “I saw Mrs. Sharp
and Ms. Sterling fight in Hail’s vision. Are they demons?”

“Sharp is a demon and Sterling is a wizard. When did
you see them fight?”

“So Mrs. Sharp is the enemy?”

He gave me a sour look. “Not every demon is the
enemy. Now, when are they going to fight?” he asked again.

I opened my mouth to tell him. “Sometime before
school,” I lied. I didn’t mean to, that was just what came out. Hail took my hand.
“We couldn’t hear anything they said.”

“Let me know if you figure anything else out.
Otherwise, don’t worry about it.”

We arrived at my English class and both Xul and Hail
left me. My concentration was tainted by the knowledge that my English teacher
was likely to die that afternoon. Ms. Sterling was a very happy, friendly woman
who could explain concepts of grammar like my dad could math. With every word
she said, I waited for the clue that would save her life.

I got nothing.

I was irritated as Hail walked me to FACS, for I
didn’t like being bested. In FACS, the boy who attacked me was gone, but
unfortunately, that irritated me even more because I wanted someone to spar
with. I was annoyed that I didn’t have answers to Hail’s riddle, I was annoyed
that I had to be babysat by a demon, and I was annoyed because there was a
little girl missing and nobody would listen to me long enough to help her.

I could still smell the sour, putrid scent of demon
and the stack of missing child fliers was depressing. Even more so, I was
annoyed because the balance wasn’t bothered at all.

“You smell weird,” one of the boys said.

This boy caught my eye from the first day because he
had an odd wildness to him. He was obviously colorblind, for the bright yellow
t-shirt and lime green shorts made me want to scrub the taste out of my eyes
when I looked at him. The fact that he had his shoes off every time the teacher
turned around made me shudder.

His blond hair was shaggy and unwashed. His brown
eyes weren’t strange in their color, but there was something very subtly
unusual about the shape of them. Un-human at least. Scrawny was never a word I
would use, especially since he was bigger than me, but Hail could compare him
to a shrimp.

“Taper, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m Taper. You’re Ron? Is it short for
Ronald?”

“It’s short to Ronez.” Why the ‘oh’ in Ronez changed
to an ‘ah’ sound in Ron, I didn’t know. “How do I smell weird?”

“You smell like cookies.”

I looked at the chocolate cake I was making. “I bake
a lot.”

“You also smell like blood,” he added easily.

“Um… I have blood inside me. You do, too… right?” I
asked, wondering if I was dealing with another supernatural being. He laughed
as he walked away. I frowned at my cake and stuck it in the oven. “Have fun,
cake. Good luck.”

“You say bye to your cake.”

It wasn’t a question or accusation, merely a quiet
statement. I turned to see a girl with long blond hair and brown eyes that
matched Taper’s. Luckily, she had better style than him; her hair was clean and
combed and she wore a simple blue dress with silver sandals.

“My brother says I’m a great chef, so I can talk to
my cake if I want,” I defended myself.

She shrugged. “I wasn’t making fun of you. I think
it’s weird. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m Tatum.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being weird? The history
of the human population says otherwise.”

“Do you want a cupcake?” she asked, holding out a
tray of pink cupcakes. “They’re raspberry flavor. I think. Or maybe they’re
pink flavor.”

“Maybe raspberry tastes like pink. Then how could you
tell?”

She frowned for a second and then smiled. “I don’t
know. That’s a good question. I ate a pink crayon before. It tasted bad.”

“Not as bad as brown would, probably,” I added. Her
smile was cute. I took one of the cupcakes and ate half of it before getting a
plastic ziplock bag out of the drawer. I put the remaining treat in it.

“You don’t like it?” Tatum asked.

“I do, but I want to share with my brother.”

“Oh. I don’t share anything with my brother. I mean,
I share my mom. And Mom said we shared a womb. Most of the time, my brother is
mean to me.”

“Taper is your brother?” I asked. She nodded. “Make
chocolate cake for him. Cake always makes Hail happy. Actually, most sweets
make him happy.”

“You smell like cookies,” she said. I nodded, because
I probably did. “And blood,” she added before walking off. The bell rang and
Tatum was there before I could make it out the door. “I’m going to follow you.”

“Why?” I asked.

“So that you don’t get attacked again like
yesterday.”

“My brother is with me today.”

“Then we can help, too,” Taper said, taking a
position on my other side.

I just shook my head and found Hail waiting for me
outside. He gave Tatum and Taper a look, but otherwise ignored them. In the
cafeteria, Tatum and Taper took a seat across from Hail and I.

“Hail, this is Tatum and Taper.”

Tatum pulled a small box out of her bag and held it
open for Hail. “Cupcake? They’re pink flavor.”

“I love pink flavor! Thank you.” He took the largest
cupcake and pushed aside his tray.

I took the cupcake from his hand before he could eat
it. “Eat your vegetables and milk first,” I growled, trying to sound like Dad.
His bottom lip stuck out and he gazed at the cupcake longingly. “Eat!”

He put one piece of broccoli in his mouth, grimaced,
and reached for the cupcake.

“Eat your veggies or I’m telling Dad.”

He looked behind me. “Zeb, what are you doing?” my
brother said suddenly. I turned to look, but the demon was nowhere in sight.
When I turned back to Hail for an explanation, his tray was empty and the
siblings suddenly had more food on theirs.

I glared at him as he took the cupcake from my
unresisting hands.

*          *          *

I was both relieved and disappointed that Drake was
missing during English again. I was relieved because I didn’t want him near the
demon teachers, and I was disappointed because that meant he was still feeling
bad.
“Dad won’t let us leave the house, but maybe he’ll let us call Drake,”
I suggested.

“Maybe he’ll let Drake come over.”

“So, Ron, what mistake did the Japanese make in the
war?”

“Their first mistake was to side with Germany. But
the textbook, egocentric answer is that they attacked Pearl Harbor.”

“Do you know what egocentric means?” she asked with
irritation.

“Of course, ma’am. I’m nine; I’m very egocentric, but
to be perfectly honest, I get most of it from my mother, so my uncle says I’m
not going to grow out of it. In fact, I will probably get worse.” She didn’t
seem to know what to say to that.

Science was boring, but soon enough, it was time for
archery. I watched my brother’s natural ability with the bow and wondered what
good I was to him. Hail could master any weapon. He was the son of the most
powerful god and was born a Guardian. All I did was get him in trouble. Oh, I
could usually think my way out of whatever trouble we were in, but that was
only after I got him into it.

Vretial wanted both of us as his Guardians, whereas
Avoli only wanted Hail. Honestly, I could understand Avoli’s standpoint; I was
the wildcard. Avoli feared my father turning on the gods more than any other
Iadnah did, so of course I would be held to the same suspicion.

I couldn’t feel jealous of my brother. While he
looked more than two years older than me and things came naturally to him that
I struggled with, I wasn’t stupid. I understood that he was mine in a way
nobody but my dad and Mordon could understand. My weaknesses were his strengths
and vice versa. Hail reacted with his heart and could see the truth through any
illusion, where I could use my head even if my heart was breaking. Hail was
strong, where I was clever. Although my brother wasn’t a fool, he could enjoy
life without cracking puzzles and solving mysteries every minute of every day.
I couldn’t be jealous of him because I was proud of him.

I was so deep in thought about Hail’s vision and the
missing girl that I shrieked and jumped a foot in the air when a hand came down
on my shoulder. Tatum and Taper were both standing behind me on the bleachers.

“You didn’t know we were in the same class with you,
did you?” Taper asked.

I put my hand over my racing heart. “I really didn’t
know anything about either of you until today. I’m not here to make friends. I
really only ever pay attention to people when they can help me or my brother.”

“Ron, wait,”
Hail said. I turned to see him
walking towards us.
“Dad says to treat everyone as your friend until they
prove otherwise. Dad has friends all over the universe he can go to for help or
information. We need that.”

“Do we want these two as friends?”

“Yes. Tatum gave us cupcakes.”

I rolled my eyes and turned back to the siblings.
“Where are your shoes?” I asked, realizing for some reason that they were both
barefoot.

Tatum looked down at her bare feet. “Oh, hey! You’re
right; they’re missing. I wonder how that happened. So, we’re all meeting up
after school today.”

“Who is ‘we’?” Hail asked.

“A bunch of us realized that Alyssa Cofer went
missing a few nights ago. Maddie Glave and Ben Butler are missing, too. We’re
going to find them,” Taper said.

“Shouldn’t that be the police’s job?”

“The police are slow.”

“How many is ‘a bunch’?” Hail asked.

“Four,” Tatum said confidently.

“So, you two, and four others? Six is a little small
for a rescue mission,” I said, thinking. Six human fifth graders against a
demon… I didn’t like the sound of that.

“No. Me, Taper, Luca, and Logan. Plus you,” Tatum
added.

“We’re---” Hail started, but I slapped him in the
chest and he shut up.

“We’ll be there. We’ll meet in the archery field at
four-thirty.”

“Oh, god, we’re going to be so dead. Dad said to
be home right after school.”

“And we will be. We’ll just have to sneak out
afterwards.”

“Oh, god, we’re going to be so dead.”

*          *          *

Xul walked us home, but he slowed when we passed the
house with six police cars parked in the yard. The police tape was gone, but it
was pretty obvious something had happened. “That’s the place I tried to tell
you about this morning,” I said. “A little girl is missing and a demon was
there.”

He paused, obviously concerned, but then pushed us
both forward. “It doesn’t concern us. In fact, the only thing that concerns me
is keeping my skin attached to my body, and that means getting you two home
before your dad has to check his watch.”

“Is Dad at home?”

“No, he’s at work. Mordon is at home, and if he
doesn’t tell Dylan you’re there by three-thirty, I am under orders to destroy
all the food in the house except for vegetables.”

Hail took off running.

We made it home with two minutes to spare and Mordon
told Dylan we were in the clear. Then Mordon left, saying he had to meet with
some people and wouldn’t be back until very late. Dad was supposed to get off
work at seven, which meant we had to make it back by then.

Hail got us some poptarts out of the kitchen for our
dinner. I pushed open our window at four-fifteen.

“We’re going to die.”

“Well, then, I think we should live a little
first.”

With no more arguing from him, we made it to the
archery field without incident. Tatum, Taper, and two others were waiting for
us. Logan was a tall seventh grader with a moody air about him, ordinary brown
hair, and hazel eyes. Even his t-shirt and jeans were ordinary. Luca, a sixth
grader, had a darker Italian complexion with very dark brown hair and light
blue/gray eyes. He dressed in a high-quality red sweater and black jeans. His
hygiene alone clued me in that he was more intelligent than most of my
classmates.

“Where do we start?” Logan asked.

“There is a house on Fourth Street where a girl went
missing,” I supplied.

“That is Alyssa’s house.”

“Okay, you guys discuss the plan. I’m going to run to
the bathroom.” I gave Hail a quick nod and took off for the school building.
Hail would understand that I wanted the others distracted.