The Mephisto Covenant (18 page)

“Not a problem.” Her stomach growled. “Are you hungry?”

“I’m starving. Melanie was cooking a big breakfast, but all I got was a stale muffin. I’ve never been so hungry as I have the past couple of days. Maybe it’s the altitude?”

“Come with me, and I’ll give you some oatmeal cookies Mathilda sent.”

When they were outside the back door, standing on a small stoop that led down to the sideline of the soccer field, Jax reached into his backpack and pulled out a large Ziploc bag. She was eating her third when he said, “You’re more hungry than usual because of me. As long as you’re around me, you’re going to change. You’re getting stronger all the time, and that requires calories, so you want to eat more. You may notice other things that might seem a little weird, like the ability to see things in the dark and some telekinetic abilities. You can probably turn off a light just by thinking about it. The changes are the reason you can see the shadow around Bruno’s eyes, and why I can no longer block your memory.”

Now she knew why she felt out of sorts. Why was she surprised? Everything was happening so fast, her world turning upside down, and she couldn’t stop it. She wanted to get off and stand still, to catch her breath and have time to think things through before something else hit her broadside. She didn’t want to be like him. She just wanted to be herself, like she was last Thursday, before getting into Missy’s car. “Did it happen when you healed me?”

“When I kissed you.”

“Is that why you did it, Jax? So I’d change to be like you?”

“I kissed you because I wanted to. I didn’t know until later that it would do anything to you.”

“If you’d known, would you have kissed me anyway?”

He reached up to brush a crumb from her lips, then traced them with his warm fingers. “I don’t know, Sasha. Maybe. Don’t hate me for that.”

She stupidly wished he’d kiss her right now. “Will I stay like this?”

He shook his head. “After the Ravens and Bruno are gone, when I go back to the mountain and you’re not around me at all, you’ll change back to how you were before. You’ll also forget about me, and Eryx, and all you know about the other side.”

She was relieved to know she’d go back to normal, but the idea
that she’d never see him again,
then forget him, bugged her. It shouldn’t. She should be glad. “Will I still be Anabo?”

“The only way you can lose Anabo is if you ask Lucifer to take it. If he did, you’d be like everybody else.”

“That’s all I want, Jax, to just be a regular person so I don’t have to worry about someone finding out what I am and wanting to kill me for it.”

“You need to think very hard about that, Sasha. Your whole life since you were born, you’ve been Anabo. If you lose it, you’ll know what it is to be tempted to sin. Maybe you think of sin in terms of the big stuff—like stealing, or murder—but most humans deal with the daily pull toward rage, jealousy, hatred: things you have no idea about because you’ve never felt them. Losing Anabo also means you lose what’s basically a free ticket to Heaven. You’ll have to earn it, like every other person on Earth.”

He put the bag of cookies back in his pack, then held the door for her. “But it’s always your choice. Nobody can screw with free will, so bear with me for a little while longer, then I’ll be gone and you can stay Anabo, or be as ordinary as you want. Either way, you won’t be like me.”

As soon as she was inside, he walked past her and down the hall toward the front of the school, to the staircase that led up to the high school. Downstairs was for middle school, along with the cafeteria, library, and gym. Staring after him, aware that other people were watching her, she swallowed hard and squared her shoulders. This was how it should be, she was certain. There would be other Anabo girls he could meet, and maybe they’d be okay with dating a guy from Hell, becoming immortal, and doing what he did.

She just had to stop thinking about Jax all the time. Once she did that, everything would be fine.

Upstairs, she saw Brody meet him in the hall, and they walked together toward the other end, to English lit. A girl with long, blond hair and pretty blue eyes hurried past Sasha, all the way to Jax’s side, looked up at him, smiled, and chattered away like they were long-lost friends. He was right about bringing Brody. That girl wasn’t scared of Jax at all. She was so not scared, she kept touching his sleeve and laugh
ing, like this was the happiest
day of her life. Sasha watched while she followed, trying as
hard as she could
to be glad for him, that he could maybe hang out here for a while and not feel like a freak, even make some friends. But somewhere deep inside, she had a very strong urge to rush up from behind, shoulder that bubbly blonde out of the way, and grab Jax’s warm, strong hand—to announce to everyone in the hall that he was taken.

The English teacher, Mrs. Redmond, wore a gray sweater and gray pants that exactly matched her gray hair. She smiled at Sasha and handed her the class syllabus. “Take a seat anywhere you like.”

She saw Erin wave at her, so she took the seat just behind her and across from Rachel. Jax and Brody were on the other side of the room, next to Thomas and Mason, the friends of Brett’s she’d met Saturday. Bubbles the Blonde sat right next to Jax, smiling at him like he was a new toy. She kept touching him, plucking at his sleeve, resting a hand on his shoulder when she leaned over to whisper something. Maybe it would have bothered Sasha more if Jax looked like he was interested. If anything, he looked aggravated. And that made her enormously happy.

Making her less happy, Brett and East sat at the back of the class, slumped down in their chairs, arms over chests in the classic I’m-all-that pose, surrounded by the beautiful people. Sasha didn’t need to ask Erin and Rachel if these were the kids everyone wanted to hang out with. Queen Bee Julianne was there, along with all her little worker bees, Burch flats, carrying Hermés bags and wearing überbored looks on their perfect faces. When she risked glancing back at them, East was staring a hole through her, and she quickly looked away, toward the front.

Erin said in a low voice, “I heard East plans to fight that new guy, Jack, because he did something to Julianne.”

“The only thing he did was make her stop pulling my hair. She was all up in my face because I supposedly came on to East.” She told Erin and Rachel what happened.

Rachel shook her head, like she was disgusted. “Boy, East needs some desserts.”

“Just deserts,” Erin said.

“Right. Only desserts. Nothing else. That Jack guy is way hot, but a wild child. I heard he got kicked out of boarding school in England for smoking weed in the library.”

Sasha almost laughed. It was amazing how gossip got started and spread. Just for kicks, she asked, “What about his brother, the nerdy guy? Did he get kicked out, too?”

“I think their dad makes him stick with Jack, to try and keep him out of trouble.” Erin was looking across the room at them. “He is a geek, but he’s kinda cute, in a way.”

“Yeah,” Rachel said, also looking, “he is sort of cute. And it’s so sweet that he looks after his brother.”

Jax and Brody would love this, Sasha was sure.

He wouldn’t, if he was just a guy. But Brett wasn’t. He was driven by something dark and evil, without a conscience. He was a cold-blooded murderer. But they didn’t know. They couldn’t know. Looking between the two of them, she finally said, “I don’t know why he’d tell a lie about me, or even what it was.

He likes to play practical jokes, so he’s probably thinking this is way funny.”

They didn’t look completely sold, but they relaxed a little before Erin said, “We’re going to biology now. What about you?”

Pulling her schedule from her pocket, she looked and wished like everything it said biology. It didn’t. “Calculus.”

“We’ll see you later, Sasha,” Rachel said, already turning away.

She watched them catch up to Bree, who said something, then they all three turned to look at her with the same expression as the bees. Like she was something nasty.

To Jax, calculus was as boring and never-ending as English, made worse by the blonde who didn’t take a hint. He kept forgetting her name, even though he was trying like hell to follow the rules of the making-friends book. Her constant giggling and silly chatter made him nuts. He tried ignoring her, but that only seemed to egg her on. He told her he had a girlfriend already, but she only laughed and said, “Her loss.”

Brody was enjoying himself hugely, even though Jax kept reminding him this was all temporary, that he needed to find a girl on the mountain.

“I will,” he said, “but for now, this is pretty awesome. Jenny is a nice girl, and she has the entire first season of Star Trek, with outtakes. Her granddad used to be a producer, so she has all k
inds
of cool stuff.” “You can’t go to her house, Brody. Don’t say you will.” “I won’t.” Always, he was hyperaware
of Sasha, never lost her scent,
his sixth sense kicking in so he knew where she was at all times, even when he couldn’t see her. When he could see her, he knew she was miserable. The other kids were avoiding her, and he didn’t know why.

He wanted to talk to her, to say he was there for her, that he’d be her friend—he and Brody—and she wouldn’t be all alone. But she didn’t want that; she’d made it really clear. So he stayed away and felt her misery, his heart breaking a little more every time he looked at her.

The tall guy, Thomas, was the only thing even mildly interesting to Jax about Telluride High. He was good like the Luminas were good, a guy with deep compassion and a certain intuition about people that made him extremely well liked. He’d evidently been running around with Brett and East and Mason since junior high, but after Brett and East took the oath, everything had changed.

“Now they’re all about this new club, the Ravens,” Thomas told him while they waited for third period to begin. “If you’re not interested, it’s like you’re dead to them. Which is fine by me, because I don’t like hanging with them anymore. I mean, I’m up for a good joke on somebody, but the stuff they pull isn’t so much a joke as it’s sadistic. Brett’s even doing it to his cousin. Who does that? Maybe I don’t hang out with my cousins, but they’re family. You don’t hose your own family.”

Belying his sudden fury, Jax kept his face impassive, leaning across his desk with one forearm resting on his Spanish book, forcing himself not to look across the room at Sasha. “Yeah, my brothers and I get into it all the time, but that’s us. When it comes to outsiders, I’d kick anybody’s ass who messed with any of them. So what’s Shriver doing to his cousin?”

Thomas shot a glance at Brody, who was deep in conversation with Jenny, before he said, “He’s telling everybody that his cousin was kicked out of her old school because she let her boyfriend make a video of them having sex, then put it on the Internet. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t, but why the hell would he tell people something like that? If it’s true, maybe she wanted to start new and leave that behind her. If it’s a lie, then he’s even more of a prick than I thought.”

Jax couldn’t help it. He looked across the room at her, sitting alone in her pretty new sweater, her soft, gold hair hanging down her back, her eyes on her notebook while she sketched and waited for class to begin. He remembered that guy in Macy’s, Smith Hardwick. He’d been really glad to see her. She was somebody at her old school, with lots of friends. She should be somebody at this school, and every damn kid should be fighting over who’d be her friend. Instead, sh
e was all
alone, a pariah, because Brett was a lost soul. Brett was a lost soul because Bruno conned him into it. And Bruno was a con man because Eryx tricked him.

He hated Eryx with every cell in his body.

He wanted to go after Brett, Bruno, and all the others, take them away from here, out of her life. The unfairness of what was happening to her nearly strangled him.

“Dude, stop staring,” Thomas said. “She’s gotta feel like shit right now. Don’t make it worse.”

He caught Brody’s look and knew he’d heard everything. His calm, kind eyes never changed, but he sent a message all the same. Patience. Have patience. They’ll be gone soon.

Clearing his throat, Jax looked again at Thomas. “No way that girl would do something like that. She looks like one of those straitlaced British girls I knew in boarding school, who go off to university to become a doctor or a teacher or something, and marry a nice guy like my brother here. Check her out. Does she look like she’d let some joker videotape her having sex?”

Thomas glanced over his shoulder at her, then looked at Jax. “You’re right, but it doesn’t matter now. It’s out there, and no matter what she does, or even if Brett admits he made it up, there’ll still be people who believe it. I guarantee, some guys will be all over the Internet as soon as school’s out, looking for that video. And I can also guarantee that Brett will think that’s funny, because he’s twisted.”

“But he didn’t used to be twisted?”

“No way. He was a cool guy. It’s that stupid Ravens club that did this to him. I don’t know what they do there, but it almost seems like a cult, where they brainwash people. Brett and East do and say the weirdest things. It’s like I don’t know them at all.” “Who else are members?” “I’m not sure because it’s supposedly a big secret. They’re into

the secret thing, probably trying to make it sound cool. I guess some think it is, because a lot of other kids are saying they plan to join, if they get asked. Brett and East kept bugging me about it until I finally told them I’d become a priest before I joined the Ravens.”

Jax was confused. “You have something against priests?” Thomas cocked a smile. “I’m Jewish. You do the math.” Genuinely interested, and s
lightly amused, Jax asked, “How
does a Jewish guy have a name like Vasquez?” Thomas’s smile became a grin. “By having a mother named

Roth who married a red-headed Spaniard named Vasquez.” Class started then, and all through Spanish, Jax tried to think of some way to fix things for Sasha, but came up with nothing. Every idea involved himself in som
e way, and she’d said, multiple
times, she wanted nothing to do with him. Finally, Spanish was over, and
it was time for lunch. He went
to the cafeteria with Brody, Jenny, and the blond girl he couldn’t shake. Thomas and Mason went along as well, and when they had their food and looked for a table, he became aware of the hierarchy that was high school lunch. The first tables were filled with Brett’s group, the next tables were some guys who looked like jocks and girls who looked like their female counterparts, probably on the ski team. One
of the guys, he noticed with a
sinking heart, was a lost soul. A new one. After that was a group of kids
dressed in lots of black, with
multiple piercings and some interesting tattoos. Jax immediately thought of his brother, Zee. Then there were some girls who looked more shy than anything else, checking them out as they passed, especially Thomas, but trying hard not to be obvious. Behind their table was a group of guys and girls who reminded him of Brody, the supersmart nerds. After that were several tables with only a few people at each one, all sitting apart from the others. Alone. These were the kids nobody wanted to hang with, even the geeks.

Sasha sat at the last table, sketching in her notebook, not one bite of food in sight.

Jax wanted to sit by her and ask why she wasn’t eating, because he knew she must be starving, but he remembered what she’d said earlier, about just wanting to be a regular person. She wouldn’t welcome him, or his concern.

So they walked past her table and went to the other side of the cafeteria.