Inertia (Gravity Series, 3.5) (The Gravity Series) (4 page)

Standing up, she patted the cigarette in her pocket. If she kept up smoking, running would be a no-no. It wasn’t something she did often, just occasionally when the tension got to be too much. She brought it to her lips, then realized she had nothing to light it with. Stowing it away back in her pocket, she started jogging again.

The bright, garish display of the Hush Lake Road gas station appeared up ahead. A devil leered at her from the sign, swinging his metal tail. His toothy grin reminded her of her Southern stalker.

She saw a few cars in the parking lot, but none Ambrose would be caught dead in. She went in and a bell rang. It was bright— too bright—inside, the freezers humming. Untying her sweatshirt, she whipped it back on and rubbed her arms. Passing all the lame souvenirs—the whole Halloween thing had never revved her engine—she meandered around.

The man behind the counter was watching her over his magazine. She got the feeling that he thought he was being sly and smooth, but it was obvious even through his thick glasses. She wanted to discretely flip him off, but brushed off the idea.

She perused the stack of items and found a display of lighters. She picked out a red one and clicked the switch, watching it change colors.

“What do you need a lighter for?” the clerk asked when she brought it to him.

She didn’t really care to explain to him, but she did anyway in case he had a problem selling it a lighter to someone underage. “I’m going to a party. It’s for candles.”

He was just as slimy as the guy who had asked her if she was hitching, with heavy sideburns and beady eyes. She realized that the running had settled her bladder and she had to pee badly, especially since beer would no doubt be involved at this party.

“Does this place have a bathroom?”

He handed her one with a wooden key chain, reading
Hell
in fat orange paint. She rushed around the building to the dark, clean bathroom.

After she flushed, she fished the cigarette out of her pocket. A sudden attack of nerves hat hit her. The cigarette had been smashed and broken almost in half, leaving a pile of tobacco in her pocket. She tossed it in the toilet. Flicking the lighter, she watched the colors light up like a rainbow.
Oh well, at least it looks cool.

She dropped the keys back off with the spooky clerk, who had traded his tabloid for a Spiderman comic.

“Is that your party bus?” he asked, gesturing out the front window. A blue van had rolled up. Sure enough, Jenna’s phone vibrated.

Were here
, read Ambrose’s text.

She walked out of the gas station, listening to the bell ding. Some instinct made her turn around and look back at the clerk, as if she wanted to say something to him. Why was she so anxious?

The dark blue van was obviously old, with rust around the tires and a crack running along the windshield. Who were these friends of his, hippies? Getting closer, she was shocked to see the history teacher from school, Mr. Warwick, standing beside it.

Ambrose was sitting on the ledge of the open van door, hands between his knees, looking seasick. Warwick smirked like the Cheshire cat, wearing a polo shirt like he was trying to dress up like a bro.

“What is he doing here?” Jenna asked Ambrose.

“Wick knows where the place is. He’s going to buy us booze,” Ambrose said, his voice sounding strange and toneless. He moved backwards. “Sit next to me, okay? It’ll be all good. You’ll see.”

“You’ll have a lot of fun, Jenna,” Warwick said, smiling knowingly. “I have a hook up with a guy that provides a buffet of entertainment. Pills that’ll make you fly.”

She didn’t want to get into the musty old van, the dark opening looking so ominous. But Ambrose was there, waiting for her. And no one else knew where they were going.

She could be free.

3. WARWICK

MEAT. ALL SLABS
of meat, waiting to hang from the butcher’s hooks.
The thoughts raced across Warwick’s fevered mind, his only impression of his fellow teachers and students as he walked down Hawthorne’s hallowed main hall.

Warwick passed students—
the rotting carcasses, the
meat
,
his thoughts insisted—who smiled, a few waving as they saw him. He was one of the most popular teachers in school and he knew it. He vaguely remembered the confirmation and accomplished feeling of being accepted that he had sought his whole life.

Of course, then he’d started attending the meetings. All that had dissolved, in favor of the deep need that now ached inside him.

All they saw was smiling Mr. Warwick. Inside his brain, his thoughts churned. He had dabbled in acting until sheer boredom forced him out of community theater, and he’s always been able to fool those around him.

“Hey, Warwick, help us settle this disagreement,” the journalism teacher, Mr. Brown, said. He and another teacher were standing casually against the wall. He didn’t want to get pulled into the conversation, but he couldn’t think up a quick escape.

“We were having a discussion about the Oxford comma,” Brown explained.

“Grammar isn’t really my thing,” Warwick said, grimacing.

“I know, but do us a favor and lend us your ear.”

The female teacher, whose name he couldn’t care to remember, wouldn’t stop yammering.
God, why won’t she shut up?
He stretched his fingers as his hand cramped. He needed to write. He needed to release the thoughts.

He pictured a furnace in an old cartoon reaching maximum pressure, the indicator leaping past the green, deep into the red. He was going to explode. And yet she kept nattering on about commas and participles.

“Sorry, guys, I have some papers I need to grade.” He dodged out of the conversation before they could protest, although he caught the woman frowning at him. Like she saw underneath for a second. But that was impossible. He was too good. At least, he tried to tell himself that.

Rushing back to his classroom, he slipped inside and locked the door, grateful that he had a free period. He even drew the blinds over the classroom window—better to discourage little faces from peering in—and flipped off the harsh light. He sat down at his desk to write and the cramp began to loosen as the letters began.

###

The rain was relentless, a leaking bag in the sky. Warwick sat in the idling blue van, waiting. The thing must not have been used for a while before its last journey. It was shuddering like mad and the gears beneath the hood ground noisily. It had been kept off to the side on the grounds of the orphanage under a tarp, so it wasn’t a huge surprise. He just hoped it didn’t take a shit on him at this most important of times.
One girl down, six to go.

The van stunk of bleach, making him roll down the window an inch. They’d gone overboard in scrubbing away all the evidence of the Reed girl.

The noises of the engine, grinding and howling like demons, made him nervous. They disturbed the odd but comforting thrum in his head. He popped a handful of aspirin, not counting how many, and chewed them up, swallowing them dry.

The wipers scraped the grimy windshield. On the sidewalk across the street, he watched as a little girl in a blue raincoat arrived, standing alone to wait for the bus.

Her mother is at work. No one is waiting for her. He knows all of this because her kidnapping has been preplanned, as scheduled as a meeting. He was glad he knew the ins and outs—it would make this first time alone easier. He wiped the sweat out of his mustache.

Alyssa shifted on the sidewalk. He drove the van up beside her and rolled down the window. Her eyes went wide. “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” said her small voice.

“Well, you can’t get any stranger than me,” he said, and yanked her into the van before she could scream.

###

On the drive back to the high school, he was suddenly thankful for the cacophony produced by the engine. The girl hadn’t stopped squealing until he’d made her drink a good swig of Benadryl.

Phillip was waiting over by one of the fire exits. Two of his goons stood beside him. Warwick parked the van, and they opened the back doors, transporting his now sleeping cargo out of the van and into the school. Warwick got out of the van, too, his trench coat buttoned up tightly, and watched the doors shut.

“Well done,” Phillip said. He smiled warmly and patted Warwick on the shoulder. “I knew I could count on you. Good to finally see some initiative.”

“What’s going to happen to her?” Warwick asked, still staring at the fire exit. The goons hadn’t come back out. “The same thing as the Reed girl?”

“More or less. The bloodfeeding is scheduled for”— Phillip checked his watch, as though he were talking about a dinner reservation —“Early in the morning, one am. Then this seal will be half active, and during the school dance later in the fall, we’ll complete the circuit. I’ll let you know what time to be here.”

Phillip moved to get back in his Lexus, but Warwick stopped him. He touched his shoulder this time, mimicking his earlier motions, and Phillip seemed to cringe that someone invaded his space for a change.

“We need to talk about what this means,” Warwick said. He had found a rare moment of clarity and was holding on to it for dear life.

Phillip’s face seemed innocently surprised. Warwick knew better; he knew how the machinations of Rhodes’ devious mind worked. “What
what
means?”

“Don’t play innocent with me. I’m not one of your patsies. You said that I could have an upper chair position.”

“Of course. All in due time.”

“Enough with the runaround,” Warwick erupted, causing Phillip to take a step back. His perfectly pressed suit and heavy black coat were getting spotted with the rain that was starting to fall again. “I’m original blood, related to one of the first. How can you deny me?”

Warwick was salivating and breathing heavily. He realized a line of spittle had run out of the corner of his mouth and he wiped it away.

“Get a hold of yourself, man,” Phillip said darkly. “Good things come to those who wait. My God, I not only let you grab the Reed girl, but I let you cut her as well. That was very important to the Society, perhaps even
most
important, because so many things could have gone wrong. We didn’t even know if it would work. And I placed that trust in you.”

Warwick scrubbed his hands through his dirty hair. “I feel like I’m losing my mind,” he confessed. “Like the world is spinning wrong, and I’ve been having the strangest thoughts that I can’t control. I’m obsessing about death and I don’t know how to stop it.”

“Just your nerves,” Phillip reassured him, sliding into the Lexus. “Talk to your doctor about it. That’s what I do.”

He shut the door and zoomed out of the parking lot, leaving Warwick alone in the rain.

###

The trio was sitting around the gritty, scuffed wooden table that Warwick usually reserved for poker night. There was a knock at the door, and Principal McPherson slid inside. Warwick’s first thought was that he would make a terrible spy—all shifty eyes and nervous twitching. His coat was bunched up on his shoulders like the Headless Horseman. If his goal was to bring more attention to himself, he would have succeeded spectacularly.

The three at the table—Warwick, the English teacher Ms. Fellows, and the math teacher Mr. Vanderlip—kept their voice low. McPherson, the dolt, was too thick in the meninges to think to speak low.

“Were you followed?” Warwick asked. He didn’t want Phillip or any of his spies there.

“No. I made sure,” McPherson said. His only involvement in the rituals so far had been standing to the side, and Warwick could sense that he was itching like the rest of them to get a bigger role.

Warwick’s eyes flicked to the space underneath the door. Even in the dim light, when he squinted he thought he saw shadows moving outside. His fingers twitched and he rested them on a glass ashtray, ready to throw it at the door. He waited.

“I’m not an idiot,” McPherson growled. But he looked like one, his face red and his expression devoid of intelligence. The way the light hit his glasses turned the lenses into shining circles, totally masking his eyes. Warwick wondered what it would be like to poke his thumbs into McPherson’s eye sockets until the man screamed. He gripped the ashtray tighter.

“That’s up for debate,” Ms. Fellows piped up from next to him, barely able to squash her fat, placid butt in the chair. Warwick almost laughed. “Do we still have clearance?”

She meant being able to do whatever they liked at the dance. It wouldn’t be easy to do what they wanted unnoticed, not nearly as easy as the bus stop. And the papers mentioned something about a possible witness…

“As much as I can manage,” McPherson said.

“That’s not good enough,” Warwick barked. “It has to be absolutely clean. No tracks.” The shadows hadn’t moved again. He let go of the ashtray.

“It will be,” McPherson insisted. His nervousness betrayed him. Warwick could practically smell him from three feet away. “No one will know. No one knew before, did they?”

“Make sure that’s the case this time. Go now.” Vanderlip said.

McPherson glared at all of them for a minute before departing. Warwick was surprised he didn’t have a harder time being talked down to by his subordinates, but it just proved McPherson’s inferiority complex.

Phillip had told the teachers that he wanted them to handle the kidnapping of Susan Briggs. But it was going to be dangerous—they would be in the middle of school, and despite their costumes, could easily be seen and recognized. They had to slip her out when no one was looking.

The teachers had formed a sort of side group. Phillip wouldn’t want to know about the lower ranks organizing.

After Warwick had kicked the others out for the night and cleaned up as best as he cared to, he pulled out his notebook and sat on the floor. It took him a second to grip the pen with the horrible cramping in his hand. He began to write, and relief washed over him as the cramp eased.

He would need another notebook soon.

###

His normal face was slipping, slipping. He was sitting in the Donovan’s house, a place he’d been welcomed as family many times before. Trying to laugh with Hugh. But feeling like every move that he made, every odd utterance, gave him away. He was completely paranoid. Once they got through dinner, he just kept shoving nuts into his mouth and laughing nervously to avoid real conversation.