"Nope. But let's do it anyway." I kissed her and slid off the bench seat of the pickup. Neither of us had our schoolbooks with us and I felt naked without my full-to-bursting Lord of the Rings backpack slung over my shoulder. I took Elyssa's hand in mine and we walked toward the school.
"Oh my god, you're back!" Elyssa and I both jumped as Katie emerged from a car and raced toward us. She gripped me in a hug. "I thought you'd died or something horrible. And I couldn't remember how to get back to those magical stairs."
"That was for the best," I said. "Believe me."
"What happened after I left?"
I extracted myself from her grasp and said, "That story could take a while."
Katie's eyes darted around the parking lot. "Things have changed around here in the past couple of days, Justin. Or maybe I just know what to look for now. I think there are vampires at our school. There's this group of strange kids who keep to themselves and don't talk to anyone else. They have their own table at lunch, too."
"And what exactly makes you think they're vampires?" Elyssa asked with a smirk.
Katie scrunched her forehead and gazed upward, like she was trying to look inside her brain. "The ones whose faces I could see wear hoodies all the time, their skin is really pale, and their eyes have a reddish tint although I think some of them started wearing contacts."
Elyssa rolled her eyes. "You're sure they aren't just Goth or emo?"
"Dangit, Elyssa, I'm trying to be helpful here. No need to patronize me." Katie folded her arms across her chest and gave my girlfriend a hurt look.
I headed for the school with the two girls in tow. "Point them out to us, Katie, and we'll know for sure." A lump of ice formed in my stomach. The mention of hoodies definitely reminded me of the mystery people who'd watched me at football practice a week or so ago. These might be the vampires Underborn was talking about or they might be albinos who wore hoodies to protect their delicate skin.
Yeah right.
We entered the school and hooked left into the gymnasium. As the gentle roar of conversations met my ears, a strange sense of not belonging crept up my spine, as if everyone here were somehow so different from me I could no longer fit in. I glanced around the huge room, catching a few surprised stares from other students when they noticed me. A shock of unnaturally bright red hair hooked my questing eyes as I spotted Nyte. Ash, shorter and Asian, sat next to him. Nyte's eyes widened when he saw us. He nudged Ash and the two of them stood and waved. I grinned like an idiot and waved back. A mixture of relief and happiness warmed me from the inside out as I saw they were okay, untouched as yet by Coach Burgundy and his thugs.
"You're alive!" Ash said, giving Elyssa a big hug.
"More or less," she said, her bright smile filling her eyes with radiance. "We were feeling under the weather."
"That's an unfortunate side effect of having a significant other," Ash said. "It's much easier to spread disease and germs."
"Nice," I said. "Way to kill the romance."
Katie leaned around Elyssa's taller frame to make herself visible. "Hi, I'm Katie."
Ash's eyes went wide and his complexion went from olive to white. "Hi," he said, his voice almost a whisper.
"Hey," Nyte said, waving uneasily.
"Something wrong?" I asked the two of them.
Nyte shook his head while Ash started playing with his smart phone. Elyssa's grin grew even bigger. I motioned Katie to sit between me and Ash since I felt certain putting her next to Elyssa was only asking for trouble. Ash's fingers froze on his phone and sweat broke out on his forehead.
"Dude, are you feeling okay?" I asked.
He nodded.
"You look so much better without the Goth stuff," Katie said. "Although I think it was wrong of the principal to say you couldn't wear it. That's definitely against the First Amendment."
"It's an unlawful abrogation of our rights," Ash said, finally finding something he could talk about without his voice shaking.
"I think you're right," she said, her eyes a bit uncertain. She leaned toward me and whispered, "Do they know about the vamps?"
I shook my head and glanced at Elyssa whose super hearing had picked up the question as well. I leaned toward her. "Should we keep them in the dark?"
"Telling them isn't an option, Justin."
"But Katie knows. Why shouldn't we tell our friends?"
"It's dangerous knowledge." She glanced at Ash as he carried on a conversation with Katie about repressed rights. "Members of the Overworld are forbidden to speak about it to noms."
"So it's like Fight Club?"
She smiled. "Yeah. First rule of the Overworld: You do not talk about the Overworld. Same goes for exposed noms. We need to get her into the Arcane Council's program ASAP before she slips up."
"Her and me both," I said. "I still don't know crap about the Overworld and I'm tired of asking questions about every little thing."
Katie nudged me. "Over there." She pointed to the bleachers on the opposite side of the basketball court, all the way at the back where almost nobody sat except a huddled group of three people wearing a mix of black or gray hoodies.
"Looks like a convention," I said, trying to peer at the faces obscured by the hoods.
"Bunch of weirdoes," Nyte said.
"They're entitled to wear their garb of choice," Ash said to Nyte. "How can you be so judgmental?"
Nyte shrugged. "I like having double standards."
As my eyes roamed the bleachers, they found Nathan and his gang across the gym from us. He and his buddies were looking my way. My supernatural batteries had apparently recovered from the thrashing Meghan had given them because I could make out the frown on Nathan's face. He was probably wondering why I was sitting with my real friends as opposed to him and his gang. While he and I weren't exactly friends—and I could never see myself trusting a bully like him—he probably expected me to change colors and go from nerd to jock. Wasn't going to happen.
"What do you think of the hoodie crew?" I asked Elyssa.
"Obviously, they're wearing hoodies." She shrugged. "I don't understand why anyone would want to go back to high school unless they're a masochist."
Because they're recruiting teenagers who think vampires glitter and drive Volvos, I almost said. But I didn't want Katie more involved than she already was.
"If they're you-know-whats, shouldn't we be able to sense them?"
She turned to me. "Remember how you learned to mask your presence from vampires when we rescued your dad?"
I nodded.
"They can do the same thing. Predators use camouflage to their advantage."
The bell rang. Ash and Nyte hurried off to class while the rest of us took our time, waiting for the hoodie crew to head for class so we could take a closer look.
"Aside from fangs, how can we tell what they are?" I asked Elyssa.
"Red eyes and a pale complexion are two indicators, but vampires can use compulsion to make people see what they want them to see."
"Why the hoodies, then?"
"Because they can't use compulsion on so many people at the same time or they'd pass out from exhaustion. Older vamps wouldn't need hoodies. I've seen those who could push compulsions on crowds all day and never break a sweat."
"Well these losers look like the Mark Zuckerberg fan club."
She chuckled.
Our people of interest finally moved out. By this time our group and theirs were the last ones in the gym and I felt very conspicuous loitering about. We headed out the doors and took up a position across the hall so we could see them as they emerged.
"What do you think you're doing?" said a familiar voice from behind us.
We turned to see the vice principal, Ted Barnes, glaring at us. "Get your butts to class."
I stifled a few choice curses but moved out along with the others and headed for homeroom. I walked Elyssa to hers which turned out to be Katie's as well.
"We'll have to hunt them down," Katie said. "Maybe corner one of them in the bathroom or something."
"I'm not trapping anyone in a bathroom, much less following them in there," Elyssa replied with a grimace.
"Yeah, no need to go Homeland Security on them," I said.
I pecked Elyssa on the cheek and made my way to homeroom, my mind consumed with what to do if the hoodie crew were Maximus's people. As if worrying about vamps wasn't enough, I also had to figure out how to quit football without Coach Burgundy wreaking havoc on the academic careers of my friends, namely Ash and Nyte. So far, I'd failed to come up with a way to solve the dilemma other than lifting the coach's fat butt off the ground and slamming him against a brick wall. Unfortunately, even a violent beat down wouldn't serve as a final solution since Sheriff Skinner and Police Chief Amerson were also in cahoots with him. Underborn's information about their good-old-boys' club filled me with apprehension. Killing the entire rotten bunch of them was out of the question. Just because I could do it with ease didn't make it right. I'd never killed anyone before. There had to be another way.
"Look who decided to show up for school." Jenny Matthews pointed me out to Annie Holmes as I entered the room and took my seat in front of them. The two girls were close friends with Katie though I didn't understand how anyone could put up with them. I had no doubt they'd both grow into bitter old shrews and make whoever they married miserable. For all I knew, they were certified members of the Overworld, classification: wicked witches.
"Brad's been looking for you," Annie said.
Jenny smiled. "Ooh, I think he wants payback."
"Brad Nichols?" I asked. I'd hardly given the guy a second thought since our big fight when he'd humiliated me in front of the entire school, although I'd somehow managed to knock him out. Thoughts of him dredged up bitter memories and a hard knot of anger lodged itself in my stomach. Katie had been dating Brad at the time but I'd kissed her while we were studying one night. The next day, he'd punched me in the stomach when I arrived at school.