Abra Cadaver (11 page)

She made a move to take his hand, but he wrenched it away before she could grab it.

“Don’t. Okay? Don’t. Let’s go back to the way things were. I’ll stay out of your way while you stay out of mine, and we’ll wait. You’ll do something important, and I’ll be gone.”

It sounded so simple. Just as it had been with all his other saves. He was released from them, and he didn’t say good-bye. Most saves wanted him to leave, which was fine. He’d be compelled to the next save, and the process would continue. His life consisted of hopping from one save to the next and killing in the between times. He’d come to terms with that. Made the best of it. How could he bring a woman into his mess?

The answer was simple. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. Besides, if he gave what was left of his heart to Holly, what would happen when she eventually died and he couldn’t save her? He wouldn’t be able to live with that. Eternity would be crueler if he loved her and lost her.

Keane decided he just wouldn’t love her.

Chapter Twelve

Holly could hardly concentrate on what Mrs. Veraca, the school principal, was saying. Usually the first faculty meeting of the year charged her with an energy she was bursting to unleash on her new students. The smell of sharpened #2 pencils normally gave her such a high, but today she didn’t know what to expect. Was she supposed to do something important for one of her students? One of her colleagues? Education in general? Never had she experienced so much pressure to get it right so Keane could leave.

And it was clear he wanted to go. Since their kiss in the water at her parents’ beach house, he had kept his distance. Holly barely saw him. He stayed in his bedroom during the day. At night, he went to work or hunted and didn’t return until the sun hinted at its rising. He took care of the kills he made on the seventh nights himself so their paths never crossed. She grew to despise the sound of his motorcycle starting up at nightfall. Just once she wanted him to stay home and spend the night touching her, kissing her.

Making love to her.

Craziness.
She knew falling for him was stupid. He wasn’t a good choice. He was the reason her life was a jumble right now. The nightmares she had almost every night were his fault. The guy hunted demons, for God’s sake! A smart woman didn’t have white picket fence dreams about a man like Keane. He wasn’t even a man, was he?

And yet, she couldn’t erase those precious moments they’d shared in the water.

Holly wasn’t sure why he had made such a turnaround that night at the beach. She could have kissed him for hours, but as soon as the neighbor’s dog interrupted, he had morphed into someone else. His tone had a bite to it, and he’d made every effort to resist being near her. The drive back to her house had seemed like a million hours, not two.

The part that really scared her was she couldn’t purge the feeling of kissing him. The sensation had been tattooed on her lips, in her heart, and nothing could block it out. When she did catch a quick glimpse of him slipping out at night or in before morning came, all the things he’d awakened in her with his kiss clawed at her insides. Painful to remember. Painful not to remember.

“What a disaster,” Holly said.

“What’s a disaster, Miss Brimmer?” Mrs. Veraca asked. The entire staff had turned in their seats in the school’s cafeteria to look at Holly.

“Ah, nothing. Sorry.” She smiled weakly.
Idiot. Pull it together.
How was she ever going to shape young minds when her own mind was all over the place?

Shaking her head, she opened the folder she’d been handed when she came into the cafeteria this morning. Inside were the standard schedules, forms, and staff notes that were in there every year. She flipped through them only skimming to see if anything had changed. Nothing had aside from two new teachers being added to the faculty and a new policy on emergency procedures.

Holly pulled the emergency procedures packet out of the folder and paged through it. Routines for fire drills had been revised and new protocols for evacuations and lockdowns had been added. Every classroom would receive a safety backpack for recesses and field trips. All staff members would have roles whether it be supervising their class, standing at checkpoints, or communicating with emergency personnel.

As she read through the information, Holly wondered what had prompted this new safety effort. Her town was small and quiet, a mere speck on the Virginian map. The school only had about two hundred students and was surrounded mostly by farms. They’d never had any concern about emergency preparedness before.

“You’ll find a packet about our school’s emergency procedures in your folders.” Mrs. Veraca held up the stapled papers Holly already had out on the table. “We have many reasons for developing this plan; however,
this
is our number one reason.”

The principal held up a wanted poster with a blond-haired male pictured in the center of it. He had a mustache and scraggly beard, which surrounded a set of thin lips. Small, dark eyes stared out at the faculty, and a jagged scar sliced through his left eyebrow. A tingle crept along Holly’s spine. If creepy had a face, this would be the one.

“This is Alan Hendrick. He is wanted for sexual assault on children.” Mrs. Veraca paused as the faculty gasped simultaneously. “It is disturbing, I agree, but we must be level-headed about this. We are in charge of the safety of two hundred twenty-one students Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. In those hours, every single student needs to feel safe in this learning environment.”

“Where was this jerk last seen?” the physical education teacher, Mr. Jarmon, asked.

“Unfortunately, not far from our school grounds.” Another gasp resounded from the faculty and staff. “We are lucky to have the police station down the street from our location, but we need to be aware and alert. The doors of the building will be locked at all times. You will receive a key from the office today so you can get in and out, but during school hours, we’re locked tight, people.”

Mrs. Veraca spoke calmly, but Holly caught the slight shake of the principal’s hand as she held the wanted poster. “If you have recess duty, keep a sharp eye for any adult that does not belong on the premises. Report any strange activity to the office immediately.” She picked up a walkie-talkie from the cafeteria table. “When you go outside, take one of these so you can contact the office. Also take the red backpack you will find in your classroom. It has band-aids, ice packs, class lists, emergency numbers, and the like.” She set the walkie-talkie down.

“Should we do a program or something with the kids about stranger danger?” one of the lower grade teachers asked.

Mrs. Veraca nodded. “Already organized. The police are sending two officers with education training to speak to the children. Parents have also been notified that this scum could be lurking around the neighborhood.”

The principal lowered the wanted poster, and a silence settled over the faculty and staff. Holly could hear the dripping faucet in the kitchen behind her, but other than that, the cafeteria was as quiet as a tomb. The teacher sitting next to her shuddered.

“I know this is a terrible topic to start our school year together, but we have to be informed so we can protect the children and ourselves. We won’t, however, let it get in our way of having a wonderful one hundred eighty days with our students. Right?” Mrs. Veraca raised worried brown eyes to the group.

Leora Pinni, the music teacher, whom Holly had gone to several concerts with last year, stood. “No, Mrs. V, we won’t.” She turned to the rest of the teachers and staff. “Tomorrow, we’ll greet the little ones with smiles on our faces, and everything will be fine.” She caught Holly’s eye as if to say
Are you with me or what?

Leora had called her over the summer extending invitations for lunch or another concert, but Holly had let the answering machine take the messages. She never called back. She’d put her life on hold this summer with Keane around. Seeing Leora now, however, she wanted to fix that friendship.

“I’m with you, Leora,” she said as she stood. “We can be careful and still have a great year.”

“Rockin’. A
rockin’
year,” Leora added with a grin.

Slowly, the rest of the faculty and staff stood to pledge their support. The unity hit Holly square in the chest, and she was happy to have such wonderful colleagues. At least some people wanted to be around her. Not like Keane who apparently had decided she was a leper.

After the faculty meeting, the teachers were allowed to go to their classrooms to prepare for the children coming the next day. Holly set up bulletin boards, organized the classroom library, unpacked her writing and math centers, and cleaned a summer’s worth of cobwebs from the window ledge. She positioned and repositioned desks until she had achieved the epitome of Feng Shui in a learning environment. All she needed now was some pre-adolescent bodies squirming in the seats.

“Holly?” Leora stood in the doorway of the classroom.

“Hey,” Holly said. “C’mon in.”

Leora crossed the threshold and sat atop a student desk. Her long, purple, gypsy skirt hung over the edge of the desk and above her silver flip-flops. A shimmery silver scarf was braided into Leora’s thick, black hair, and monstrous silver hoops clung to her earlobes. Metal bangles clanged around on her wrists while a peace sign charm dangled from a leather cord around her neck. The sleeveless purple and silver tie-dyed top she wore completed the Woodstock-esque, traveling caravan, hey-I-can-play-the-guitar look Leora always had going.

Holly, on the other hand, had on a flowered sheath dress with black flats and a crocheted, short-sleeved sweater. Small diamond studs were the only jewelry she’d worn. She’d tamed her wild red mane into a loose ponytail that spilled curls down her back.

Leora’s persona screamed, “Be creative!

Holly’s whispered, “Be organized.” And yet, the two had bonded last year over common music interests and tales of woe concerning maintaining loads of unruly hair.

“You ready for tomorrow?” Leora asked.

“Yep. You?”

Leora nodded. “Still looking for the gun and bulletproof vest I think should be in the red safety backpacks, but I guess the school department doesn’t have enough funds for that.”

“That whole thing is freaking me out a little.” Holly leaned a knee on one of the student chairs.

“No doubt. I think we should have around-the-clock police protection of the tall and handsome variety.”

Why did the words
tall
and
handsome
make Keane pop into Holly’s head? And hadn’t he mentioned he’d been a security guard as one of his many inconspicuous nighttime jobs? She got a wonderful image of him standing outside her classroom door, arms folded across his chest, eyes searching for shady characters. Would he protect her?

“Either that or we’ll have to start taking kickboxing classes or something,” Holly said. “So we can kick some ass if we have to.”

Leora shrugged. “Anyway, I have your class second period. Thought I’d start with a Native American drum circle activity.”

“That sounds like fun.” Holly placed homework assignment pads on each of the student desks.

“Went to one this summer. Wound up talking to the guy running it. He gave me a few tips for conducting one with children. Figure fifth graders might be able to handle it. We’ll see.”

“It’s all an experiment, isn’t it? You never know what they’re going to like.” Holly circulated with pencils now, but she could feel Leora’s gaze on her.

“You got my messages, right?” Leora picked at a string on her skirt.

“I did, but I was super busy this summer. I didn’t have a minute to spare, and I was up at my parents’ beach house, too.” Suddenly, Holly needed a drink. Her mouth was sandpapery. She hated lying to someone who she could see herself calling a friend.

“I thought maybe you were mad at me,” Leora said.

“No, of course not. Just busy. I’m sorry you got the wrong idea.” Holly dropped the last pencil on the desk beside Leora.

“So we could make some plans?” Leora slid off the desk. “I’ve got tickets to this hot band I checked out in July. You’re going to love them. Firecracker is their name. All males. Cute males that can wail on guitars and drums as if they were born to do so. I grew up with the drummer. We used to put on shows for our neighborhood as kids. You’ll come, right?”

“Umm…” Holly stalled while her mind shuffled through plausible excuses for not going.

“You don’t want to go? See, you are mad at me. How come? What did I do? I thought we were having fun hanging out.” Leora’s dark eyes showed how hurt she was.

“You didn’t do anything, Leora, and I want to go. When?”

Leora’s face brightened. “Really? You’re not just saying you’ll go to shut me up, are you?”

“Of course I am.” Holly managed a laugh. “I can’t take how pathetic you are right now, so I’ll go if it’ll return your dignity.”

“Shut up, Brimmer.” Leora gave her a little shove. “You’ll thank me when you see how gorgeous these band guys are.” She rubbed her hands together and opened her eyes wide. “The concert is next week. Want me to pick you up?”

“No,” Holly said too quickly. “Umm, I’ll meet you there. You don’t want to drive all the way out to my farmhouse.” She wrinkled up her nose as if that option was so inconvenient.

“I don’t mind. Got a new car this summer too, which you would know if you hadn’t completely ignored my existence.” She pointed a finger at Holly as if she were scolding her.

Holly wondered if Leora knew what it was like to be completely ignored. Leora appeared to have a pretty active social life. She went out, saw people, did things. Living with Keane this summer—these past two weeks in particular—gave Holly got a first-rate education in being ignored. It sucked.

Especially after that damn kiss.

Chapter Thirteen

Another demon body rested at Keane’s feet in Holly’s backyard. A seventh night and the killing had been easy yet again. A drug-dealing kingpin demon this time. Single jab with a dagger to the chest, and the rogue was no more. One less supernatural jerk to dirty the streets. One more cadaver’s energy to keep Holly alive.