Storykiller (9 page)

Tessa, Brand, and Micah lay prostrate on the floor of Bluebeard’s home in an exhausted shape that looked part triangle and part circle. They had been lying there, face down on the plush carpet, breathing quietly and not saying anything for maybe three full minutes. Brand, as always, was the first to speak.

Without lifting his head and talking directly into the thick carpet, he said, “So, are we going to talk about this…or what?” Tessa and Micah turned their faces toward the center of the triangle. Brand did the same. Tessa sighed and pushed herself up to a kneeling position.

“What’s there to say?” she asked, and then stood up.

“What’s there to say?! Well, for starters, Fictional characters are real—including Batman—which I just have to mention again, because, well, it’s awesome,” he paused and then pointed at Tessa. “You’re some kind of badass superhero and you can basically teleport. I mean, these are things that deserve to be discussed over pancakes.”

Brand and Micah were kneeling now too, looking up at Tessa, waiting for her to say something. Just as Tessa was about to speak, there was a crackle and pop of blue energy and Snow came stumbling through a gateway. She was cussing and spitting in a rage, her gown even more inappropriate here than it had been there. Tessa crossed her arms defiantly
.

“And just what are you doing here?” she asked, an unfriendly bite in her voice.

Snow spun around to see the trio staring at her and tried adjusting her totally unsuitable clothing. “It was decided that you needed an emissary.”

“And you got the short straw?” Tessa hazarded.

“I volunteered,” she said haughtily, straightening her wrinkled dress. “Honor and all that. I’m full of that honor crap.” Snow had the look of a wild animal trapped in a suburban house. Tessa raised an eyebrow. Snow clearly didn’t want to be here any more than Tessa wanted her here.

“Yeah. I vaguely remember The Snow Queen story, that’s who you are, right? The
villain
of the freaking story. Yeah, you’re just mad crazy with the honor,” Tessa said rolling her eyes.

Tessa gazed at Snow for a moment and then left the room. Everyone waited for her to return, but after a few moments they heard the front door slam and ran after her.

“Tessa, wait!” Micah called. But by the time they got to the porch she was gone, the woods dark and teeming all around them.

“You think her powers include super speed?” Micah asked Brand, looking around, wondering where she could have disappeared to in so little time.

“Or flight,” Brand said, looking up at the night sky and scanning it for some trace of her.

Snow sidled up behind Micah and Brand and cast a bored expression their way, “So, which one of you minions has a place for me to stay for the night?”

The two friends continued staring at the empty night sky and, in unison, said “Not it.”

Yesterday, Tessa had missed her first class since she’d also missed the bus. She was used to school and what passed for home being closer together, and she hadn’t timed things right. Now that she knew Trig was her track one first class for the rest of the year she foresaw a whole lot of poor timing. Today, however, she’d actually gotten up early because she had decided to skip the bus so that she could also skip Brand and Micah.

Tessa had decided on the super-effective plan of pretending.

She was going to pretend yesterday hadn’t happened at all. A full reset. It was all just a bad dream as far as she was concerned. Snow, Bluebeard, Story, and The Troll. Micah and Brand were the only real loss in the whole plan. But she figured they were way safer without her anywhere near their lives.

Well, and Bishop, of course. But Tessa wasn’t sure how to live with herself for getting him killed, so if she could pretend it hadn’t happened, then maybe she would stop feeling sick all the time.

So Tessa pretended really hard all morning. Pretended that she didn’t smash her alarm clock to smithereens with her stupid super-powered hand, pretended that she didn’t put a dent in the wall when she fell against it putting on her boot, pretended that she didn’t break the handle off of the fridge when she opened it to get juice, pretended that the house wasn’t still all messed up, and even pretended to ignore the book on the living room table, still open to the page with the Troll illustration. It was a lot to maintain, but Tessa was pretty good at pretending. She'd been pretending a lot in her life, she could do this.

But on the steps to the school, watching for her like two super nosy (but still relatively adorable) hawks, Tessa saw Micah and Brand and realized that they were going to make pretending nearly impossible. She steeled her shoulders and put on her bitchiest 'leave me alone' scowl in the hopes that it would scare away the only two people that, if not for her life being utterly jinxed, she would have been excited to see. She couldn’t let them get any deeper into whatever this was than they already were. If she liked them, the best way to keep them safe was to get rid of them. Brand came at her full of enthusiasm and devotion. Micah seemed to see Tessa's expression and approached cautiously, her brow furrowed, her hands fidgeting inside the front pocket of an oversized blue hoodie.

"Where did you go?" Brand shouted out as he walked toward her across the lawn, and then made what could only be interpreted as the international symbol for Superman flying and made a face that said "yes?!" Tessa didn't even bother to shake her head, instead she let her eyes glaze over dumbly, a technique she had learned when bouncing rapidly from school to school, and moved right past them as if they were made of mist. "Hey," Brand said, half-wounded, half-pissed. It was the wounded part that bothered Tessa,
but she tucked it inside and kept going.

Micah put a hand on Brand's arm as he moved to go after Tessa. "Brand. Leave it," she said, also sounding wounded but less so.

"Whattayoumeanleaveit?" he said, spinning on her. "We, like, went through stuff. Ran a freaking gauntlet together or something, and she's just going to what? Blow us off?"

"Yeah, I think that's exactly what she's going to do," Micah said, adjusting the messenger bag on her shoulder and heading for the entrance behind Tessa but at a pace that made it clear she wasn’t trying to catch up with her. Brand stared after her, confused. He threw his hands up in the air and called after Micah.

"What am I supposed to do then? I've got the goddamn Snow Queen bunking on my couch!"

Micah turned back to him from the steps and gestured for him to follow her. Brand sighed, his shoulders dropping deeply, and joined her.

Tessa looked at her first classroom door and her stomach flip-flopped. “Jesus,” she said to herself. “What kind of masochist can do Trig at eight a.m.?”

Tessa pulled open the door and surveyed the students while her new teacher, a Ms. Hatch, studied the piece of paper with her name on it. “Tessa?” she said, looking up from the schedule bleary-eyed.

“Yeah,” Tessa said, taking the slip back from Hatch as she wrote something in a bright red book.

Tessa looked at the sea of faces staring back at her for the first time. She’d been through this a few times yesterday so it wasn’t unexpected, though it wouldn’t have shaken her anyway. She’d gotten used to new schools (although the last six had been all-girls schools, so the male faces looking back at her was an interesting change at least).

They looked the same as almost any other school at this time of morning.

Tired and bored.

Hatch handed Tessa a textbook and directed her to the only empty seat. Tessa plunked down, already dissatisfied with her schedule. She suspected it was her father’s idea to make her do Trig first thing in the morning. Probably something about alertness divided by the exhaustion of a day times a coefficient of some kind or another. The teacher had begun talking and already it sounded like a boring hum of noises that Tessa could not force herself to care about given everything that was happening to her. The guy next to her leaned over and whispered out a “Hey.”

Tessa didn’t look up, just opened her textbook and her notebook and grunted a hey back at him. But then a big athletic hand was thrust into her view, and she pivoted to look at the boy speaking to her. Giant, flawless blue eyes blinked at her, and Tessa had to forcibly stop herself from getting a bit lost in them. When she finally got past the eyes she saw short dark hair, and perfect chiseled features, the kind of movie star good looks that would make other kids want to worship you in high school (while secretly wanting to kill you). In truth, he wasn’t actually Tessa’s type at all, conventionally handsome and disgustingly clean cut, too conservative. Then again, there was ‘regular conventionally handsome’ and the level of conventionally handsome that this guy had going on. This was like
Olympic
levels
of conventionally handsome. The hand made a little gesture as if to alert her that it was still waiting for its handshake and Tessa slid her hand into his.

“Nash,” he said, shaking her hand with just the right amount of pressure.

“Tessa Battle,” she said, hooding her eyes with a practiced expression of boredom and releasing his big warm hand. So he was the most attractive person she’d ever seen up close. So what? She was a damn superhero or something.

“So you’re new, huh?” he said, flicking his eyes back at the teacher briefly and then back to Tessa.

“What tipped you off?” Tessa shot back, getting her bearings back with every second that passed.

“And she comes back swinging,” he said with a low whistle. “Well. Welcome to Lore.”

“Back,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Welcome
back
to Lore,” Tessa corrected. “I lived here before. Until I was nine.”

“Huh,” he said, cocking his head, amused. “Then maybe you should show
me
around. I’ve only been here about three years which means you’ve got seniority on me.”

Tessa arched her eyebrow and tried to focus on the blindingly boring Trig problem on the board. “And why is anyone showing anyone around?”

“It’s the neighborly thing to do,” he said, looking straight ahead. Tessa turned to look at him, his profile like that of a Greek god, his toned shoulders barely contained beneath the fabric of his t-shirt.

“You play sports?” she asked.

“Y
eah—some—why?” he asked, not looking her way and instead throwing a winning smile at the teacher who was looking at them, annoyed.

“I just don’t date athletes,” Tessa said simply, swinging back around to face front and making sure to look incredibly interested in the board. Nash cocked an eyebrow.

“Who asked you out?”

“You were about to.”

“Oh really?”

“Mmmmhmmm,” Tessa said and then pointed her pencil at the blackboard and looked at him coyly. “You should pay attention,” she said trying not to smile.

“And why don’t you date athletes?”

“That hive mentality isn’t good for boys your age,” she chided.

“Is that so?” Nash said with a smirk. “Well, I don’t play a lot of team sports. I prefer to be on my own—swimming, track, crew.”

“
That’s
a team sport,” Tess said pointing her pencil in his direction when he mentioned crew. Nash leaned toward her, his smile deepening.

“I’ll quit then.”

Tessa turned to face his hypnotic eyes again and could feel the edges of her mouth drawing up into a smile despite how hard she fought it.

She had missed boys. Boys were good. So was being totally normal and not having to fight weird creatures on her lawn and decapitate serial killers. If she could get rid of those last bits maybe she could build some kind of not horrible life here.

Hatch glared at them both.

“Don’t make me rearrange the seating chart, Battle. I hate doing that.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Tessa said, nodding and digging into her book as Nash did the same next to her. The whole thing was definitely worth the reprimand though.

Tessa joined the crowd headed to second period, making sure not to look back at Handsome Nash as she left. She was very proud of herself. It had been exceptionally difficult to not look back.

Tessa’s search for her next class was not going well, the halls were mostly empty when the numbers finally told her she was getting close. But as she turned a corner she saw Micah at a locker down the hallway and paused. She was about to turn around and go back the way she came when she saw a group of four boys walking toward Micah.

They had that look.

The look of trouble.

The look of mean.

Tessa narrowed her eyes and waited, watching, hoping she was wrong. As the group passed Micah, one elbowed hard into her back, causing her to drop everything she was holding.

“Watch out, double half-breed,” he said. Tessa involuntary clenched her shoulders. Micah looked as if she wished she could disappear inside her locker. As Micah knelt to pick up her books, Tessa strode forward into the hall without even realizing she was doing it. As she passed the group they stared her down, like the douche bags and bullies that they were. Tessa ignored them, but when she reached the one that elbowed Micah, Tessa shot out her arm, smashing his head into a locker door. He left a little dent in it and slid to the floor in a slump. By the time his pals had turned around, he was out cold in a little pile. Micah looked up at Tessa wide-eyed.