A Dance with Darkness: An Angelfire Novella (HarperTeen Impulse) (11 page)

My mom’s Mercedes was nearly indistinguishable from every other silver Mercedes lining the roundabout. I peered through windshields until I spotted my mom. She and my dad looked nothing like me. Mom’s hair was more of a light brunette compared to my rich chocolate red. People asked me all the time if I had my hair colored this way, as if it were hot pink or some other unnatural shade. No, my hair just came this way. Also, she didn’t have any freckles. A lot of people think all redheads are completely covered in freckles. Not true. I only have six on the bridge of my nose. You can poke at my face and count them. There are
six
.

I climbed in and we exchanged our typical after-school conversation.

“How was your day, Ellie Bean?” my mom asked, like she did every single time.

“I didn’t die,” I answered, as usual.

“Well, that’s good news” was always her reply.

I looked back out the passenger window to the tree where I’d seen the boy, but he was gone. My eyes scanned the lawn, but I couldn’t see him anywhere.

“What are you looking at?” Mom asked as we pulled away.

“Nothing,” I replied distantly.

My mom shouted an obscenity at the driver in front of her, who was taking too long to turn at the light. Wiping her expression clean of anger the next moment, she smiled at me. “I’m so happy this is the last week I will ever have to pick your butt up from school.”

“Good for you.”

Mom was a web designer and worked from home—she had always been able to drive me to and from school, thankfully sparing me from ever having to attend daycare. My dad, on the other hand, was rarely home. He worked in medical research, and there were many nights when I would go to bed without seeing him. Sometimes I wouldn’t see him for a week. Lately, that was a good thing.

“So you never told me what you want for your birthday,” my mom said.

“Lambo.”

She laughed. “Yeah, sure, let’s just sell the house and get you a Lamborghini for your birthday.”

We finally pulled out of the school’s drive onto the main road and headed home.

“Really, what
do
you want? I know we talked about a car, and your dad says yes.”

“I don’t really know.”

“Don’t make me choose,” my mom warned. “I’ll get you a moped to drive to school on.”

“I’ll bet.” I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know—just get me something cute, safe, and that has an MP3 adapter. I’ll be set for life with that.”

I woke to music blasting into my left eardrum. I grappled for my cell phone and hit the reject button without opening my eyes. A few seconds later it rang again. I opened a single eye to check the clock. It was a quarter to six in the morning. Uttering a half-mumbled curse, I dragged the phone off my nightstand and looked at the caller ID. It was Kate.

I rubbed my hand against my forehead, forcing myself out of that groggy post-nightmare haze. In the past few months, I’d been having the strangest dreams that were like period horror films, like the Dracula movie with Gary Oldman. Creepy stuff. They’d kept me from sleeping well for the first few weeks, but I’d started to get used to them, and now they didn’t bother me so much. Up until a month before, I’d woken up screaming every single night.

Too lazy to press the phone to my ear, I turned it on speaker mode and thunked it back onto my nightstand. “What is your damage? My alarm hasn’t even gone off yet.”

“Jesus, Ellie, turn on your TV.” Kate’s voice was low and frantic. “It’s Mr. Meyer. Channel four.”

I reached for my remote, flipped on the television, and went to channel four as instructed. I bolted upright.

“He’s dead, Ellie,” Kate whispered. “They found him behind that bar, Lane’s.”

My eyes were glued to the chaos live on-screen.

“ … the lack of blood at the scene indicates to investigators that Frank Meyer may have been murdered at another location and dumped here behind Lane’s Pub along with the possible murder weapon: a very long hunting knife with a gut hook. The reason for that can only be a matter of speculation at the moment, as authorities have revealed very little about this gruesome discovery. In case you are only just tuning in, this is Debra Michaels reporting from Commerce Township, where the severely mutilated body of one of the community’s most beloved educators, Frank Meyer of West Bloomfield, was found early this morning….” I felt like vomiting. I saw the location behind the reporter, swarming with police, the fire department, and ambulances. Mr. Meyer? He was one of the nicest teachers I’d ever had. I had seen him less than twenty-four hours before. How could he be dead? He was
murdered
? And
severely mutilated
?

“Do you think school is canceled?” Kate asked.

I had forgotten she was on the phone. “I’m going to talk to my mom. Meet me here.” I hung up.

An hour later I was sitting on a stool at the island bar in the kitchen, staring at an untouched plate of pancakes. Mom only ever made pancakes when I was sick or had a horrible day, or when it was a special day like Christmas. I supposed this was one of those days when pancakes were warranted, but I couldn’t bring myself to take a bite. The too-rich smell nauseated me.

Mom walked up behind me and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “You need to eat, honey. Please? Get some food in your stomach and you’ll feel better.”

“I’ll just puke it all up,” I grumbled dismally.

“One bite,” she ordered. “Then I won’t feel so bad about having to throw away this uneaten breakfast.”

I scowled and stabbed begrudgingly at the stack before scooping up a bite with my fork, but it toppled over and plopped into my lap. I groaned and banged my head on the counter.

Mom frowned. “You have to be smarter than the pancakes, Ellie.”

I glared up at her. Weren’t teenagers supposed to be the smartasses, and not their parents?

She ignored my reproachful look and handed me a paper towel to clean up my pajama pants. “Well, I finally was able to reach someone at the school. They’ve been trying to deal with this tragedy all morning, so their lines have been all tied up. I’m sure every single parent in the district has been calling them. Anyway, school is closed today, but I suspect it’ll reopen tomorrow. I know you really liked Mr. Meyer, and the assistant principle let me know that grief counselors are being assigned, so if you need to talk to anyone—”

“I’m fine, Mom,” I said. “I’m not freaking out or anything. I don’t feel well, that’s all.” She was always so on top of things. She had a plan for everything.

She looked at me fondly. “You’re my little miracle. I want you to be okay.”

I rolled my eyes. “You always say that.”

“I’m worried about your nightmares,” she said sadly.

“I barely have them anymore,” I lied. I thought it would be better for her to worry less about me than she did. I still had nightmares almost every night, but I was learning to deal with them, since the medication I’d been on was useless.

“What if this tragedy starts them back up again? I can get you an appointment with Dr. Niles next week.”

“Bye, Mom,” I said, dismissing her. I hated when she brought up the shrink she and my dad had sent me to for three months. All that guy did was tell me a bunch of crap I already knew and give me drugs that didn’t work. Of course, they thought I’d been fixed. What they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.

“I didn’t mean to make you angry, Ellie Bean.”

I exhaled, letting the tension wash from my face, and I looked back up at her. “I know. You just have to trust me when I say I’m going to be fine.”

She paused a moment before she said anything. “I’ll tell your father to say good-bye to you before he leaves.” Mom disappeared from the kitchen.

I picked up my cell phone and texted Kate, asking where she was. A few moments later, I received a reply: “B therr so5on! mayb.” I immediately regretted texting Kate while she was driving—for obvious reasons.

I poked at my breakfast a few more times. My dad walked into the kitchen, adjusting the front of his suit jacket. I looked up at him briefly and gave a small smile. He patted the top of my head awkwardly as he passed by.

“Sorry about your teacher,” he said. The lines in his face told me that he was sad, but his eyes didn’t match. They were calm and unaffected, his mind elsewhere.

I was sure he meant what he said, but he never really knew how to show it. I assumed he had learned how to comfort others by imitating someone else—like he saw it on TV somewhere. It never felt natural, never felt as if he really cared.

“Thanks, Dad,” I said sincerely. “Kate’s on her way over.”

“Oh,” he said.

“I don’t think we’ll do much,” I said.

“Okay, then. Good-bye.”

“Later.” He probably should have said something like how he hoped I’d be all right and that he loved me, but it would shock me to death if I heard those words come out of him these days. I watched my dad head to the garage and listened to him drive away.

When Kate arrived, she let herself in the front door. She sat down quietly on a stool next to me, picked up my fork, and took a bite of my pancakes.

“I can’t believe Mr. Meyer’s dead,” Kate said through a mouthful.

Thinking about never seeing his kind, smiling face in class again made me really sad. “I can’t believe he’s dead either. Did the news say anything else about it?”

“They just said he was ‘severely mutilated.’ I have no idea what they mean by that, though. Could be anything. It was probably some psychopath. Detroit
is
like five minutes away.”

I took a bite of my breakfast. Immediately, I felt ill. “I think I might sleep a little more. Come with?”

“Best idea I’ve heard since Landon and Chris decided they’d steal a zebra from the zoo and turn it loose during commencement for our senior prank,” she said. “Do you think they’re really going to do it?”

“Doubt it.”

I WAS SMOOTHING MY HAND OVER THE WIDE CLAW marks that ran down the length of the metal door when I heard the roars from somewhere deep within the cavernous textile plant. The angry wails shook the dusty floor beneath my shoes in desolate echoes, announcing the reaper’s presence below. I conjured both my swords out of thin air and stepped silently through the door and into the darkened hall. The air smelled like smoke and brimstone, the unmistakable stench left behind by the demonic and the only thing that linked the mortal world to the Grim. The floor was littered with yellowing paper, and nothing remained of the small industrial windows dotting the walls but jagged broken glass. Sickly pale light from the streetlamps lining the darkened streets outside streaked in through the shattered windows. Trash was piled up against the walls, which were covered with strips of peeling, decomposing paint. I stepped around everything, making no noise, but I knew the reaper could feel me. My silence could not mask the energy rolling from me. Nothing could, and the reaper was hungry for me.

I stepped into the Grim, passing through the smoky veil and into the world that most humans could not see. Here the reapers dwelled. The remnants of the mortal plane tugged at my arms and clothes like viscous tendrils. A passing police cruiser lit up the ground floor of the factory like blood-red fireworks, the wail of its siren deafening me for a moment. I took a deep breath to regain my composure and stalked toward the closest emergency stairwell. I kicked the door open, and the heavy clunk of steel gave my position away. I held the helves of both my silver sickle-shaped Khopesh swords tightly as I peered over the edge of the metal railing down the shaft to the basement level.

A dark, massive shape flashed across the floor below. The reaper roared again, making the stairwell shudder.

I descended quickly, whipping my body around the steel spiral staircase at every turn, determined not to let him escape. My footsteps were light, barely brushing the floor beneath me. With one story to go, I jumped over the railing and landed safely with nothing more than a bend of my knees and a thud of my shoes. I kicked open the stairwell door and froze to peer carefully into the darkness. Unseen claws raked the concrete. He wanted me to know he was there.

Behind me came a low, throaty rumble. I spun around and caught a glimpse of the reaper, but he vanished deeper into the blackness. I clenched my teeth bitterly, and angelfire erupted from my swords, readying for battle. The flames were the only thing that could truly kill a reaper, and I was the only one who could wield them. They lit up the cavernous basement in white light, but the reaper evaded the glow and stuck to the shadows.