The Hunt (3 page)

‘You all good?’ Jess asked. ‘You’re not going to kapow, are you?’ Most of the time Jess could tell what was going on with Eve just by looking at her. Same way Eve could almost tell what Jess was thinking by the expression on Jess’s face. What BFFs couldn’t?

Eve shook her head, making her dark ringlets bounce. ‘No, I’m OK.’ She took another deep breath, trying to let go of the image of Kyle’s body ripped and ravaged. ‘What else did you hear?’

‘Not much. The receptionist made me and Vic leave when she realized we were listening. But on our way out I heard the chief say that Kyle had been drained of blood.’ Jess looked as if some of her blood had been drained too. Her face was pale, pale, pale.

‘There’s a cop car out front. I saw from the firstfloor windows when I was coming down here,’ Dave Perry called out from the row of lockers across the hall. ‘What’s the deal?’

‘You guys, the police are here,’ Megan Christie, Jess’s next-door neighbour, exclaimed as she hurried out of the bathroom. One of her eyelids had more shadow than the other. ‘Jenna just texted me.’ She glanced at her cellphone. ‘She says Kyle got murdered.’

‘Murdered?’ Dave burst out.

The bell rang. They all ignored it. Even the teachers standing in their classroom doorways didn’t start ordering kids in the way they usually would.

‘Not murdered. At least, not definitely,’ Jess corrected them. ‘I was in the office. Chief Grotte told Principal Allison that they found Kyle’s body in the woods.’

‘That’s not what I heard. Jenna told me that Victoria said—’ Megan began.

‘I was with Vic,’ Jess interrupted, smoothing her
blonde hair away from her face. ‘I heard the same thing she did, and they didn’t say it was murder.’

Shanna Poplin rounded the corner with the new girl, Briony, at her heels. ‘Did you guys hear about Kyle?’ Shanna asked. ‘Vic just texted me to say—’

Eve’s own iPhone buzzed, rattling against the metal shelf of her locker. That’s where it lived during classes, since cellphones weren’t allowed. She grabbed it and checked the screen. ‘She’s texting me now. I don’t know why she didn’t just do a mass one.’ Eve shrugged. ‘Would have been easier.’

‘I’ve got to call my mom. She’s going to be freaking if it’s on the news,’ Jess said. She plucked Eve’s cell from her hand, but it rang before she had a chance to use it. ‘Eve’s phone,’ Jess answered it. ‘She’s right next to me, Mr Evergold. She’s fine. We’re all fine. Except Kyle.’ Her voice broke on his name, and a sheen of tears appeared in her bright blue eyes. She gave the phone back to Eve.

‘I’m really, really fine, Dad. The police chief is here,’ Eve told her father.

‘Are they sending everybody home?’ her dad asked, his tone worried. ‘Do you want me to come get you?’

‘They haven’t said anything about us going home,’ Eve said. Jess plucked at her sleeve, her eyebrows
raised. Eve knew exactly what she wanted. ‘Dad, will you call Jess’s mom?’ she asked. ‘If you’re worried, the other parents probably are too.’

‘Well, when you hear about a classmate of your daughter found dead …’ Her dad’s voice trailed off for a moment. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘All the parents must be panicking. Not everyone is as level-headed as me.’ He was going for a joking tone, but Eve could tell he was freaked.

‘Sad but true,’ Eve said, smiling a little.

‘I’ll talk to Jess’s mother first. Your mom’s in the O.R. so I’ll wait to speak to her. You call me if you need anything.’

‘I will. Thanks, Daddy.’ Eve hung up. ‘He’s calling your mom first. He’s going to call my mom when she’s out of surgery. She won’t have heard about what happened yet,’ Eve told Jess. ‘She only listens to Johnny Cash when she’s operating.’

Why was she telling Jess that? Jess already knew about her mom’s Johnny Cash fetish.
Talking keeps me from thinking
, Eve realized. And the last thing she wanted to do was to think about Kyle lying in the woods, the earth soaked with his blood.

‘Listen to this, you guys,’ Shanna said, eyes on her BlackBerry. ‘
The Times
already has something up.
Probably because Kyle’s grandfather is a senator. It says that Kyle didn’t come home last night.’

‘They called me,’ Dave said. He blinked rapidly, distraught. ‘His parents were looking for him. I said I saw him leave practice and I was pretty sure he was heading home, then to Ola’s. That’s what he told me. I went to Ola’s later, didn’t see him around. I figured – I just thought – you know Kyle. I thought …’ Dave fell silent, staring into space.

‘Kyle’s Kyle,’ Jess said gently. Except he wasn’t. Not any more.

Dave nodded. ‘But I should have—’

‘You shouldn’t have anything,’ Eve interrupted.

‘How could you know? Kyle didn’t always stick to his plans.’

‘He followed the fun,’ Dave agreed. He turned away from the group, pretending he urgently needed something in his locker. Eve thought he might be crying.

Shanna was, but it didn’t stop her giving them more information from the article. ‘The police say it was a wild-animal attack, but the medical examiner hasn’t yet determined what kind of animal. The animal would have to be really …’ Her words trailed off.

‘Really what?’ Jess asked. Her voice sounded way
too loud. Eve realized it was because the hallway had gone silent. Not just their group. Everyone had stopped talking almost at once.

It took Eve only a second to figure out why. Helena was coming down the hall. She had a little smile on her face and her long blonde hair looked freshly brushed. Her lipstick looked fresh too.
Oh, God. She hasn’t heard
, Eve thought.
We’re going to have to tell her
.

Jess took a few steps towards Helena. Helena wasn’t part of their super-tight group of friends, but she and Jess were on the cheerleading squad together. Or at least they had been until Helena got dropped because of her grades.

‘Helena …’ Jess swallowed hard. ‘Something’s happened. Something bad. Kyle—’

‘I know,’ Helena interrupted. ‘They found his body in the woods. I was just in the principal’s office. Ms Allison and the police chief told me.’ It sounded like she was passing on a regular bit of Deepdene High gossip. Almost matter-of-fact.

She blinked a few times. ‘They just told me,’ she repeated, her voice beginning to quaver. ‘He’s dead. Kyle’s dead.’ She pressed both hands over her mouth as if she could push the horrible words back in.

Delayed reaction
, Eve realized.
It only just hit her
.

‘Helena!’ Ms Allison’s high heels clicked on the floor as she hurried over. ‘Helena, I meant for you to stay in the office. I’ve called your father. He’s coming to pick you up.’

‘Kyle.’ That’s all she managed to say before she broke into loud wrenching sobs. Not the pretty crying girls do in movies. The horrible out-of-control crying where your face gets all blotchy and your nose runs and you feel like you’ll never, ever be able to stop.

Ms Allison wrapped her arm around Helena’s shoulders and walked her back down the hall towards the office. There was absolute silence – except for Helena’s ragged crying – until they had rounded the corner.

Dave cursed under his breath.

‘Poor Helena. She showed up at school thinking it was another regular day, then – bam!’ Shanna said.

‘I can’t even imagine how she must feel,’ Jess added. ‘She has to be devastated. And so soon after her mom …’

‘I can’t believe I actually forgot about that,’ Eve admitted as they started for the main exit. Helena’s mother had died the previous month, right after the
demon Malphas had begun taking the souls of people in Deepdene.

He hadn’t had anything to do with Mrs Groshart’s death. She’d had a heart attack. Eve had been so caught up trying to figure out what her new powers were and how they could be used to stop the demon that she’d hardly registered the passing of Helena’s mother.

‘Um, can I ask something?’ Briony said.

‘Sure,’ Eve answered. Briony’s eyes had widened as she’d watched everyone talking and crying.

‘Are there really wild animals around here?’ Briony asked. She’d only been at their school for a week. She didn’t know anything about Deepdene yet.

‘Not really,’ Eve assured her. ‘I mean, there are foxes. Other than that, there are just some squirrels and raccoons, and the brown bunnies in the scrub brush down near the beach. And deer, but obviously they’re not dangerous.’

‘Once in a while summer people abandon their dogs when they go back to New York City for the winter,’ Jess said. ‘It’s so horrible. They treat them like toys. The poor dogs are used to someone feeding them and taking care of them, then nothing. They can go kind of wild.’

‘What an introduction to Deepdene,’ Megan said. ‘Our sweet little town, population two thousand seven hundred and something, where nothing ever happens.’

‘Yeah,’ Briony agreed sadly.

This isn’t the worst our little town has to offer
, Eve thought. But she wasn’t about to tell the new girl about the demonic happenings in this village in the Hamptons. Most people thought of the area as a swanky vacation spot three hours east of Manhattan, with beautiful beaches, lovely woods and hills and fabulous mansions and famous residents. Nobody expected demon attacks and wild animals in Deepdene.

A chilling thought hit Eve. There really weren’t the kind of wild animals in the Hamptons that could have killed Kyle. Were they dealing with something else here? Something unearthly?

Luke jogged up to the cluster of people. ‘Hey, guys. I just heard that Principal Allison is going to send everybody home,’ he announced.

Eve felt herself relax the second she heard his voice. She hadn’t even realized she’d been looking for him until he arrived. Luke was a guy you wanted around when things got bad – smart, loyal, brave. And things were bad now.

‘Deepdene
is
usually a quiet town, Briony. Really,’ Shanna assured her.

Everyone still believed that – except for Eve, Jess and Luke. They’d faced down the demons together. Jess wrapped her arms around Eve and gave her a hard hug. Eve knew she was thinking about the demons too. They did that a lot, thinking the same thing at the same time, and called it being ‘telefriendic’. The way Luke was looking at them both right now, his green eyes steady and serious, gave Eve the feeling he was having a telefriendic moment of his own.

‘So we’re just supposed to leave?’ Briony asked.

‘There’ll be an official announcement in a minute,’ Luke told her. ‘I’m just the early warning system.’

‘It feels weird to go home after something like this,’ Briony said.

‘No one’s going home,’ Luke answered. ‘Everyone will spend the day of mourning shopping and eating ice cream at Ola’s. If they aren’t having coffee at Java Nation.’ He turned and started off down the hallway. ‘More people to inform,’ he added over his shoulder.

Briony stared after him, mouth agape.

‘Luke has a strange sense of humour sometimes,’

Eve said, right before Ms Allison’s voice came over the loudspeakers, notifying the students and faculty that school would be closed for the day out of respect for Kyle’s death.

‘So people aren’t really going to eat ice cream and stuff?’ Briony asked as the group began to disperse.

‘Actually they probably will,’ Jess admitted. ‘But not in a bad way. Not like, “Yee-haw, we have a day off.” More like people will want to be together because it’s so horrible, and Main Street is where people go to get together.’

Briony nodded slowly. ‘OK. Well … maybe I’ll see you over there later.’ She wandered away.

‘I’m definitely heading over to Ola’s after I go home to show my mom I’m alive.’ Shanna clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh no! That sounded hideous.’

Eve waved her comment off. ‘We knew what you meant. Don’t worry.’

‘Thanks. I guess I’ll stop by my locker first.’ Shanna looked a little dazed as she headed off.

‘Let’s get out of here too,’ Jess suggested. ‘I could use some air.’

Eve put her books in her locker and closed it gently. No homework that night.

She and Jess walked down the hall towards Jess’s
locker. ‘I wonder if Luke blew it with Briony with his
unusual
sense of humour,’ Jess said.

‘You think he’s interested in her?’ Eve asked.

‘She’s new. And she’s cute. And our Luke is a player. So … yes,’ Jess said. She let out a groan. ‘I can’t believe I’m even talking about that. How can I be thinking about anything but Kyle?’

‘Thinking about Kyle is too awful. My mind keeps jerking away from it. I think about him for one or two seconds, and I start seeing all that blood – there had to be so much – and then … Then it’s like my brain hits the circuit-breaker.’ Eve lowered her voice. There were still lots of people milling around. ‘At least it’s helping me keep my powers under control. When you first told me—’

‘I saw that locker slam,’ Jess said. ‘But don’t worry, no one else noticed. Too much else going on.’ She opened her own locker and stowed her history book and binder. ‘So Briony and Luke? Since we’re trying not to think about Kyle too much.’

Eve didn’t really want to think about Briony and Luke either. Not that Luke was anything but a friend to her. They definitely weren’t boyfriend-girlfriend; not like …

‘Do you think Helena knew …?’ Eve waited until
she and Jess had stepped outside to finish the question. ‘Do you think she knew that Kyle wasn’t exactly devoted? I don’t know if it’s better or worse if she did.’

‘She never said anything to me,’ Jess answered. ‘But it’s not like Kyle was exactly subtle.’

‘Yeah. He asked me out for coffee about a million times, and he didn’t seem to care who heard it. I started to wonder if he thought I didn’t realize he was going out with Helena.’

‘But that’s crazy. Everybody knows everything at our school. There just aren’t enough of us to hide anything,’ Jess said. ‘So Helena either knew, or she kind of knew but decided to pretend she didn’t know. You know?’

Eve stopped abruptly.

‘What?’ Jess asked.

‘Kyle asked me out yesterday during bio lab. That was the last time I talked to him.’ Eve grabbed her friend’s arm. ‘And I was so horrible. I really snapped at him. I just thought it was so disrespectful of him when he was supposed to be Helena’s boyfriend.’ Tears stung her eyes. ‘I wish that hadn’t been our last conversation. He was kind of a jerk with all the flirting. But he was also funny and, basically, in other ways, just a good guy.’