“This is Kali,” Skylar said. “Be nice.”
I finally lifted my eyes and met Elliot’s lighter-colored ones. He was tall, not Darryl-tall, but at least three or four inches taller than my five seven. His hair was a shade or two darker than Skylar’s, but cut so short that it still looked almost white. His skin was just tan enough to make me wonder why he’d been spending so much time in the sun, and his cheekbones were a thing of beauty.
Not that I was looking or anything.
“Elliot is one of those guys,” Skylar said. “You know, the ones who hang out with those girls, even though those girls are constantly stealing his sister’s tampons.”
All of the boys, Elliot included, winced, and I made a mental note that the word tampon was male kryptonite.
“Hey, I told them to lay off you. And they did.” Elliot turned Skylar around and searched her eyes. “They did lay off, right?”
Skylar nodded. “’Course, El. You don’t need to worry about me.”
Elliot glanced back at the table, and it was suddenly very clear that he thought Darryl, John Michael, and Genevieve were social mistakes on his sister’s part. The football legacy who chose not to play. The exchange student with a predilection for eyeliner. The quiet, intense girl who didn’t look very girly.
And then, there was me. Clearly, Mr. Judgmental did not approve.
“Hi, Kali. Nice to meet you. I promise I’m not the tool I might appear.” Skylar poked her brother in the side, encouraging him to parrot her words. “Go on. Say it.”
Elliot flicked her in the back of the neck with his thumb. “Shut up, squirt.”
“You’re in serious danger of being bumped down to fourth-favorite-brother status,” Skylar told him. “And Lord knows I’m not really feeling like promoting Reid, so behave.”
Elliot rolled his eyes, but then he looked back at mine, and for the first time, he smiled. “Hi, Kali. It is nice to meet you.”
I tried to make my mouth form words, but couldn’t quite get it to obey, and a split second later, my moment had passed. A girl who looked vaguely familiar sidled up to Elliot, pressing her body close to his. Her hair was red, almost as dark as the streaks in mine, and offset by skin so flawless it was practically luminescent. Her white tank top looked simple and sweet, until she turned sideways to place a proprietary hand on Elliot’s arm, and I realized that her top was nearly backless.
“C’mon, El,” she said as my eyes were drawn to what appeared to be a tattoo on her lower back. “Everyone’s waiting.”
Everyone, her tone said, who’s anyone.
I tried to work myself up to a good hair toss, but failed, because I couldn’t take my eyes off the tattoo, which looked an awful lot like a serpent eating its own tail. Which meant that there was a distinct possibility that it wasn’t a tattoo.
No. Couldn’t be.
The girl turned again, tugging at Elliot, and this time, he allowed himself to be led away.
“Sorry about that,” Skylar said. “My brothers are a little protective. Elliot doesn’t understand why I’m not trying to work my way back into the popular crowd, where he can keep an eye on me. And Bethany is afraid if he spends more than five seconds talking to me, her social status might suffer. It’s a girlfriend/boyfriend, brother/sister thing.”
I nodded to show that I was listening, but couldn’t bring myself to actually respond, because in that instant, I realized why the girl with Elliot had looked so familiar. Skylar’s brother was dating Bethany Davis. The same Bethany Davis whose father was my father’s new boss. The one I’d been sent to Heritage High to rub elbows with.
Staring after the golden couple, I spent a few seconds really, really hoping that Bethany Davis had a tattoo. Because if the symbol on the small of her back wasn’t a tattoo, things were going to get very ugly, very soon.
The kind of ugly that ended with someone buried six feet under.
As much as I didn’t want to consider the possibility, I had to. If the ouroboros on Bethany’s back was real, she’d be dead by the end of the day.
And in my current state, there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it.
4
During World War II, what was the main source of information used by the Allies to gather intelligence from inside the opposing camp?
(a) Human spies
(b) Advances in technological surveillance
(c) Chupacabra informants
(d) Postmortem interrogation
The world was mocking me. I was sure of it. The fact that I was sitting in Mr. McCormick’s fifth-period history class, taking a multiple-choice exam while Bethany Davis was out there with a death sentence inked into her flesh, would have been bad enough. That the first question on the test involved chupacabras pushed the scenario to downright ironic.
Somebody up there hates me.
Staring at the test until the question started to blur, I tried my hardest not to think about the c-word. Not about the legends that said chupacabras were the size of a large wolf, with spines decorating their backs, like some kind of mammoth porcupine or a miniature stegosaurus brought back to life. Not about the smaller, deadlier, and less fictional variety that every preternatural biologist in the world would have given their right arm to study.
Translated, chupacabra meant “goat-sucker.” I had a few other names for them, at least one of which rhymed with the latter half of the literal translation.
Don’t think about it, I told myself. There’s nothing you can do, anyway. Just answer the question.
I took a few calming breaths and purged my mind of the unwanted mental image of a fatally still Bethany Davis, her face pale, her veins empty.
Just concentrate on the question. Use the code.
It was easy to imagine Skylar’s voice in my mind, and to see Darryl’s eyes light up the way they had when we’d talked about his test-taking strategy. That helped.
A little.
First, identify the oddball.
That was easy enough. “Technological surveillance” had less than nothing to do with the other three. I pressed my pencil to the page and dragged it over choice (b). I was trying so hard to stay in control of the situation that it was a miracle I didn’t inadvertently snap my pencil in half.
Step two, identify the decoys.
An informant and a spy were pretty much the same thing, which meant that one of those answers was probably a decoy, and one of them was probably the correct choice. Unwittingly, my gaze flickered to choice (d), which, by default, had to be the second decoy.
Postmortem interrogation.