Twisted Sister of Mine (Overworld Chronicles) Page 15

  I almost made a remark about how evil it was to deprive a little girl of her puppy, but held back. I felt so close to making a connection with her. Heck, maybe if I promised to take her to the zoo this moment, she'd rethink her position. If I could only insert a sliver of doubt—no matter how tiny—between her and the lies Daelissa burned into her impressionable little brain. I just had to figure out how. "Would you like to meet Nightliss and ask her questions?" I said. "If you do that, I'll talk to"—I almost gagged on the word—"Bigdaddy."

  Her eyes narrowed. "Are you trying to trick me? You know Nightliss will only capture and torture me."

  "I won't let her." I held up my hand palm out. "Promise."

  She mulled it over. "I don't know, Justin. How can I trust you?"

  "How about if I bring her to you someplace you'll be safe?"

  "Well—" her lips pursed. "Maybe that would work, but I wouldn't want Bigdaddy or the others to know, because they'd get really mad."

  My heart leapt, and I fought to keep from sounding too enthusiastic. "Sure, just tell me where."

  She mulled it over for a moment. "I don't know where."

  I couldn't help but notice how adorable Ivy looked when she was deep in thought. Or how much she reminded me of Mom. It was almost torturous to have her so close at hand and not be able to talk to her like a normal human being. The end of the world might be near, but I felt like I might do anything to have her trust me.

  "How about this," I said, resisting the urge to touch her shoulder the way a brother or even a friend might. "Let's forget all this end of the world stuff. Do you feel safe with me on campus?"

  A blonde eyebrow lifted as she regarded me. "I guess."

  "I saw a gelato shop down the hall from the cafeteria. Why don't we get some ice cream and just talk about normal stuff?"

  A grin broke on her lips. "Are you buying?"

  Her smile infected me, and I grinned back. "Of course."

  She looked around. "Well, I kind of sneaked away for some alone time. They're always telling me what I can and can't do, and I'm tired of it."

  "I know the feeling," I said. "So, is that a yes?"

  Her smile brightened. "Yes!" She giggled and clapped her hands.

  We wove through the crowded hallway. Students stopped what they were doing as we passed, some of them staring at Ivy as though she might blow them up with a look. She strode blithely past them, talking to me about her puppy, Jumpy.

  "I only had him for a couple of days," she said, lips pouting. "If they trust me with big things, why not little things?"

  I nodded in agreement. "Adults can be really stupid," I said.

  "Totes!" she said, eyes wide with sincerity.

  We entered the gelato shop. Ivy ordered a double scoop combo of Fairy Frost with Mango Unicorn, while I tried the potion master special flavor of the day, Gumper's Concoction Number 101. Even though I couldn't readily identify what it tasted like, it was delicious.

  "Where did you go to school before this?" I asked Ivy after we found a seat in the crowded shop.

  "The Ezzek Moore Arcane Academy for the Gifted," she said, somehow licking her gelato in between words without pausing. "I didn't know about, well"—she leaned close, a conspiratorial gleam in her eye—"about Mom being an angel." She straightened, licked a dribble of melted gelato from the side of the cone. "I just thought I was really talented."

  "I never had that problem," I said. I stopped myself before blurting out how terrible I was with magic. If I ever had to fight her, I didn't want her to know how easy she would have it.

  "You went to a nom school?" she asked, her blue eyes bright with curiosity.

  "Yeah." I sighed, thinking back to those simple days. "I was a chubby overweight nerd. I didn't know anything about Mom or Dad. I thought I was just a normal human."

  "Really?" she asked, ignoring a stream of melted gelato as it ran across her fingers. "What was it like being normal?"

  I shrugged. "Pretty normal, I guess."

  We shared a laugh.

  I told her about the live-action role-playing game, Kings and Castles. I told her about my crush on Katie Johnson, how I'd met Elyssa and Stacey.

  "You fell in love?" she asked, blue eyes brimming with curiosity. "Does it feel wonderful?"

  "It can be wonderful and scary all at the same time," I said, unsure how in-depth I really wanted to go about it.

  "It must be nice having another person who's gooey for you," she said and let out a little sigh before resuming the attack on her gelato.

  I continued my story, telling her about the bullying from football players and how I'd finally discovered what I was.

  "Football?" she asked. "That's a game?"

  "Yeah, you carry a ball shaped like this"—I formed the oval shape with my fingers and thumbs—"and you have to get it into the other team's end zone."

  "Weird," she said, eyebrows rising in unison. "People make games out of anything."

  I chuckled. "Yeah."

  "It makes me really mad that the football players beat you up," she said, her eyes soft with sympathy. "I hate how big people think they can walk all over the little ones."

  Ivy looked little, but with her powers, she was anything but. "Yeah, it was rough," I said. "But even having super powers didn't solve everything."

  She quirked her lips into cute expression of agreement. "At my gifted school, the strong kids would bully the others. This one guy, Billy Vanderbilt, would make the little kids do everything he said. If they didn't, he'd do terrible things, like make them eat toads, or levitate them upside down, or even make their clothes vanish."

  My jaw tightened at the mention of his name. "I've seen him around. He's definitely a mean guy."

  Ivy nodded. "He and his group of bullies used to pick on us all the time. One day I got so mad, I cursed them."

  I got the impression she wasn't talking about swear words. "What did you do?"

  "I made them hungry for bugs. Every time they saw one, they'd get so hungry they had to eat it."

  I gagged. "Like spiders and cockroaches?"

  An impish grin spread across her face. "Yeah. I even spawned a nest of locusts in their dorm room." She giggled. "They got so sick."

  I couldn't help but laugh myself despite how insanely gross it sounded. "Did they know you did it?"

  Her expression sobered. "Yeah. I got in huge trouble with Bigdaddy and Bigmomma. Daelissa thought it was funny, but she told me not to do it again."

  "Yeah, when I finally beat up Nathan, I only got myself in more trouble." I told her how I'd been blackmailed into playing football and how horribly that had ended up, with the slaughter of all those people. Technically, it hadn't been my fault—it had been Brad Nichols, driven insane by the vampling curse, who'd killed those people.

  Ivy took it all in with wide eyes. "Even though we have magic, the noms sound a lot like us," she said and polished off the last bit of her cone.

  "We're all human," I agreed.

  Ivy giggled. "Not really."

  I snorted. "Yeah, sorry. I'm still new to this whole angel and demon thing."

  My sister reached a hand across to mine and touched it. "I like you, Justin."

  Moisture gathered behind my eyes at this simple statement. I put my other hand over hers. "I like you, Ivy. I like having a little sister."

  A tear gathered in the corner of her eye and trickled down. "Maybe we can have a talk like you said, and maybe you'll agree with us."

  "I want to have our family back together," I said. "Me, you, Mom, Dad—"

  Her hand abruptly jerked from mine. "No, not him."

  "Not Dad?"

  She shook her head, wiped the tear away. "He's a demon, Justin. You can't make him good."

  "But—" the next words died on my lips. If I tried to explain that we were both half and half, it might further alienate her. I didn't know what to say. It was hard enough getting her to accept me. Besides, Dad had more or less abandoned Mom to marry Kassallandra.

  Her
forehead wrinkled. "Besides, I don't think he's our real dad. He can't be." Her statement sounded like pure denial. Ivy checked the time on her arcphone. "I need to go. Bigdaddy will already be mad at me for sneaking off."

  I nodded. "Let's figure out a time and place to have our talks," I said. "I've really enjoyed spending time with you. Can we do it again soon?"

  The corners of her mouth curved up. "I'd like that."

  "Maybe we could go to a zoo one day."

  Her eyes brightened. "Oh, I'd love that so much." Her face fell. "But, I can't. Not until we figure things out." She offered an apologetic grin. "Okay?"

  I nodded. "Fair enough." I walked her back to the library.

  "I should go on by myself," she said when we reached the entrance. "Just in case, you know."

  "I understand," I said.

  She suddenly threw herself against me, squeezing me in a tight hug. I returned the hug and felt a surge of joy. There might be hope for her yet.

  Ivy let go, gave me a shy smile, and wandered away into the library, vanishing around a corner. I turned a moment later and nearly rammed into a man right behind me.

  "Excuse me," I said and tried to walk around him.

  He blocked my way, a leer on his face. "Well, well, if it ain't my old buddy, Justin," he said in a cockney accent.

  It was Bigglesworth.

  Chapter 20

  I shuddered, backed away from the creature that had tried to kill me hours before. Bigglesworth sported a sky blue polyester suit and wide-collared shirt imprinted with the photo-realistic image of a forest on it. I choked back my initial desire to snarl and cuss him out, instead, somehow finding the will to keep my mouth shut.

  "Cat got your tongue, mate?" He grinned.

  "You smell slightly burnt," I said, making a show of sniffing. "Flark."

  A shocked look flicked across his face. "I'd like to know how you found out what I am," he said.

  I tapped my temple. "I have my resources." Changing subjects, I said, "What did you want with that man you were torturing?"

  "A matter for my mistress. Nothing you need concern yourself with." He stepped closer.

  I took an involuntary step back as my body flinched at the memory of how painful his touch had been. "Why are you helping Daelissa?"

  He tilted his head slightly. "If you knew anything about Flarks, perhaps you'd know the answer to that question."

  "You could just tell me."

  He chuckled. "Why ruin the fun, mate?" He stepped closer.

  I didn't back away this time.

  Bigglesworth lowered his voice. "And it's gonna be so much fun killing a ruddy wanker like you."

  "Justin, it is nice to see you."

  Bigglesworth and I looked toward the source of the voice.

  Cinder attempted a grin, instead managing a leer that teetered somewhere between maniacal and psychotic. "I am researching."

  "What the bloody—" Bigglesworth tilted his head to the side. "You've gotta be kidding me." His eyes drifted to me, the orbs shifting to an unsettling shiny black color. "Methuselah. Makes sense now."

  I almost asked him who the heck he was talking about, when Cinder went stock still, his eyes locked onto Bigglesworth. "Are you in danger, Justin?"

  "That remains to be seen," I replied.

  His gaze flicked to me. "Shall I battle the creature for you?"

  I shook my head. "We were just having a nice talk." I turned to Bigglesworth. "So, Methuselah surprised you, didn't he?"

  The shifter's black eyes resumed normal coloring. "He only cares about balance. Don't think you've won anything, mate." Bigglesworth tipped his bowler. "Until we meet again."

  Cinder stared after the Flark for a moment and turned to me. "I am sorry, Justin. If I had known this was the shifter you'd told us about, I would not have—" He broke off, going absolutely still for a moment. "—opened my wide mouth."

  "Big mouth," I said.

  "Ah. I do not understand the exact difference but—"

  "Do you recognize the name Methuselah?"

  "It seems to have triggered a memory in me." He tilted his head. "I believe some entities referred to my creator as Methuselah."

  "In other words, Mr. Gray," I said.

  "And Bigglesworth believes my creator is interfering by sending me when, in fact, I am here for completely different reasons." He blinked. "How interesting. Perhaps—"

  I waved off his next words. "Look, let's worry about this later. Bigger issues have come up, and we need to brainstorm."

  Cinder stared at me with a blank unblinking expression.

  I sighed. "It's an idiom that means we need to think hard about how to solve a problem. So let's get out of here before Bigglesworth has a chance to set up an ambush outside."

  He raised a hand and snapped his fingers in a robotic motion. "Twenty-three skidoo."

  I blinked at him a couple of times before deciding I didn't want to know what the heck a skidoo was. "Um, come on."

  We left the library the same way I'd entered while Cinder talked my ear off about his study of golems and the latest innovative designs.

  "Nothing current comes close to my own design," he said as a simple statement of fact.

  "The robot golem that attacked me and Shelton seemed pretty smart."

  "It was merely given a spark with specific attributes. My spark is more flexible, adaptive." His gray eyes scanned the hallway ahead. "I took the liberty of retrieving pertinent parts of the golem and studied them, thinking perhaps they were built by my creator."

  I stopped and considered the hallway before us, unsure which way to go. "Do you know how to get out of here and back to the transports?"

  "Of course." Cinder led me at a brisk walk until we were outside the huge castle.

  It occurred to me I hadn't heard anything from Shelton. In fact, between my encounters with Ivy and Bigglesworth, I'd completely forgotten to see if he was okay. I pulled out my phone and texted him. Are you still alive?

  "Hold on, Cinder." I said, stopping.

  He turned, hands out at the ready to grasp something.

  "That's another idiom," I said before he asked me. "It means wait."

  He lowered his hands and nodded. "I will file it away for future reference. I have found the students here use a number of idioms which do not logically correlate to the meanings behind them. One referred to another student's freeze spell as 'sick' even though the spell did not induce sickness."

  I held up a hand. "One problem at a time, please." Shelton still hadn't replied, and I felt a cold weight lodge in my gut. Something felt wrong. I remembered the linkup Shelton had performed with my phone earlier and opened the tracking app. The blip indicating Shelton's position wasn't anywhere in the castle. It appeared to be in the forest behind the school.

  I ran toward the direction, but my legs didn't want to cooperate with super speed, instead limiting me to a strictly non-supernatural pace. Even though Healer Hutchins's pill made me feel better, it hadn't done anything to feed my incubus tummy. Oddly, I wasn't starving like I should have been, and I wondered if her pill also muted the clawing agony of starvation.

  Shelton still hadn't responded. For all I knew, he lay dead in the forest. Jeremiah Conroy could have killed him and dumped the body. Or he might be dying and running out of time. I cursed.

  "W-w-will you go to the dance with me, Belinda?" a nearby student stammered.

  I looked at the source of the voice. A short, plump student with thick spectacles was literally quaking in his boots as he looked hopefully at an attractive blonde girl flanked by her two pretty friends. He reminded me a lot of my pre-incubus self, though I had to admit he had bigger nuggets than I'd had back then to ask out such a daunting target.

  A tall, good-looking guy stood next to the nerd, nudging him with an elbow.

  The girl sniffed. "Oh, please." She looked at the handsome guy. "Is this your idea of a joke, Kevin?"

  The tall guy burst into laughter. The sad nerd drooped.

  I
glanced at Shelton's blip again and gritted my teeth.

  "What is the matter, Justin?" Cinder asked.

  "Shelton might be in big trouble." Shelton's blip moved in an erratic pattern. I had to get to him fast, but an empty incubus tank wasn't going to do the trick. I looked at the students again and groaned. I needed fueling fast. Doing so might incite unpleasant side effects in my victim. I flicked on my incubus senses, and the glowing auras of the females flared to life.

  "You are a hopeless, creepy nerd," Belinda said to her crushed suitor. Her friends burst into laughter.

  I suddenly didn't care what my feeding did to these people. Three tendrils of essence shot from me, each one latching into the halo of a female. The girls stiffened in shock as I opened myself completely to them. Their eyes locked onto mine, desire and lust burning within. I extended the tendrils from them into the hapless nerd. Their attentions flicked from me to him. Before he could say "Twenty-three skidoo" the girls lunged at him, smothering him in kisses.

  "Oh, Godwin!" Belinda cried out as she ran kisses up his earlobe.

  Kevin's jaw dropped, and I could've sworn I saw a blood vessel pop in his head.

  Energy flooded into me as the nerd steadily lost the fight to keep his clothes on. My skin flushed with heat. I wasn't sure how full I was, but had no more time to waste. Withdrawing from my targets as carefully as possible so as not to damage their psyches, I released them.

  By now, the nerd lay on the ground beneath a heap of panting girls. Kevin—the handsome bastard—looked nauseated, his face a sickly shade of green.

  I gripped Cinder's arm. "Let's jet." Figuring he'd get the gist of my words, I blurred away toward the forest.

  Chapter 21

  Cinder and I plunged through thick trees. Underbrush snagged at my clothes, tearing my fashionably charred shirt, slowing my pace. The dense canopy dimmed the surroundings to a creepy twilight. Stopping to consult my phone for Shelton's location, I saw he shouldn't be too far—

  A brilliant bolt of blue energy splintered a tree some twenty yards away.

  "Get your ass out here, you lying bastard!" a very angry man shouted.