The Demon Hunter (6 page)

Oliver looked back at Rodrigo, who was standing silently by the door. “It looks great,” he said.

Rodrigo looked up with a start. “Oh. Oh, thank you, sir.” Rodrigo did all of the grotesqua himself, changing it faithfully for each new school year and holiday. He nodded at Oliver with a wide grin, and Oliver wondered if he was the first kid to bother complimenting Rodrigo on his artistry.

He walked alone between groups of students who were milling in mellow clusters, saving the usual wall climbing and horseplay for later school nights. Oliver heard mutterings here and there about the jaguar killing.

When he entered his classroom, he found an alarming change. In the past, the boys would have been congregating on one wall of the candle-lit room and the girls on the other. But now, there was a mixed group of boys and girls in a circle on the ceiling, upside down on their knees, the girls giggling and the boys joking all loud.

Oliver saw Theo with Kym leaning on his shoulder. Suzyn, Maggots, and Theo's other friend Jesper were up there, too. Oliver had heard that Theo and Kym had started going out over the summer. Theo even left a warm fox's heart on Kym's sewer doorstep, which was pretty serious. As a result, all the other boys and girls were flirting to keep up. Just now, Maggots mumbled something and punched Suzyn, then pretended not to have done anything.

“Don't … touch me,” Suzyn muttered, scowling and rolling her eyes. Maggots tried to laugh in response, but once no one was looking, his face soured to a disappointed frown.

“There's Nocturne,” Oliver heard Theo murmur to Kym. The group grew quiet, leering down at him in unison. Oliver crossed the room, head down, as whispers rippled above.

“He's such a freak!” Theo suddenly blurted in his three-times-too-loud way. Others in the group snickered.

The other half of the class was scattered around the corners of the room, either alone or in pairs, all trying to look as if they were just fine with what they were doing, and yet every now and then glancing up at the ceiling crowd. Oliver passed Berthold Welch, who was making the world's smallest spray-paint grotesqua design on the wall in the corner.

“Hey, Berthold,” Oliver said. He didn't usually say “Hi” to Berthold, not because Berthold was kind of an outcast—really, he was probably much higher on the popularity ladder than Oliver these days—but just because Oliver didn't usually think to say “Hi” to most people.

“Hey, Oliver,” Berthold squeaked in reply, hunching his shoulders to block Oliver's view of his tiny art.

“Hi, Oliver,” whispered Carly, a lone girl by the windows, as he trudged by. She was looking wistfully out into the night, stroking a tiny white mouse with her thumb. As Oliver passed, he heard a crack and then a light sucking sound as Carly had her breakfast.

He slid into his chair and found Seth already seated beside him, listening to headphones. Oliver saw Seth glance up, and so he offered a little nod. Seth frowned, looked to the ceiling to see if they were being observed, then murmured, “What's up?”

Theo laughed loudly again. Oliver forced himself not to gaze at the ceiling group. He didn't even want to be up there! And yet, it was a struggle to keep from checking to see what they were doing.

“How was the rest of your summer?” Oliver asked Seth. He sort of thought of Seth as a friend. Seth's mom, Francyne, worked for Half-Light as the Central Council liaison, and so she and Phlox had become friends, although Oliver wasn't sure if they'd seen each other all summer. Francyne did have a new baby daughter, but that should have meant that Phlox visited more instead of less.

Seth rolled his eyes and pulled off one of his headphones. “Fine.”

Oliver noted Seth's tone. “Is it still not cool to talk to me?”

Seth's face contorted. “I don't know.” He lowered his voice. “Look, everyone just wants to know what's going on with you Nocturnes.”

“What's that mean?”

“I don't know, like, my mom was talking about how your dad screwed up some big prophecy thing …”

“Oh.” Oliver felt a burst of nerves. “You know about the prophecy?”

“Everybody knows now,” said Seth. “Well, not
them
.” His eyebrows indicated the ceiling. “But they never know anything.” He smiled for a moment, then it faded. “Everybody at Half-Light knows, though.”

“Right … Well, um,” Oliver began, “my dad tried, but in the end, things worked out with the Artifact—”

“Yeah, but then, like, your brother messed things up, too.”

“Well, yeah—”

“And then there's you and your
human
. I mean, it's like, if I had your destiny, I'd be—”

“Not screwing it up?” Oliver finished.

“Pretty much,” Seth agreed.

“Well, it's not that easy,” said Oliver. “I … I'm not
trying
to screw it up.” Oliver stopped there, though, because the truth was that he hadn't tried to screw it up
yet.

“My mom wants to know why another family wasn't chosen for it. I mean, it's an honor, you know.”

“Huh,” Oliver replied. An honor? That was how everyone saw what he thought of as a curse.

“Guh!” Suddenly Maggots crashed to the floor, breaking a desk in two.

“Don't,” Suzyn hissed from the ceiling, “ever try that again.”

The ceiling gang exploded into laughter.

Oliver reclined in his chair, preparing for the endless night, but as his knee scraped against the underside of his desk, he heard a sound like crinkling paper. He sat up and felt beneath the desk, checking in with his senses as he did so. There was a familiar scent, and now he found a note wedged into the bars underneath.

The paper was peach colored with green lines, folded carefully into a rectangle. A long diagonal fold stretched across its front, and a tiny point of paper stuck out from this, with the word “pull” written on it. Oliver did, and unfolded the page. On it was rounded writing in glittery red. Oliver immediately slid the note back beneath the shadow of his desktop, and read:

hey O—sooo bored … tree bark bored … first day back and it's math math math with a side of who cares … but guess what? I bet you already figured it out with your creepy nose—this is my seat this year! my classroom, my seat. well technically it was Melina's seat, but then Ms. Davis suddenly had the urge to switch her with me … I wonder why she had that thought? Tee … hee … w.b.s. super nose. and don't forget about Saturday night …—e

Oliver felt a burst of excitement, but tried to keep it off his face as he concentrated on folding the note carefully back into its rectangle shape before he stuffed it in his pocket. Emalie sat right here? And would every day? Which meant that he would find her scent lingering every night, and possibly a note, or a forgotten item … oh boy.

“Students,” Mr. VanWick barked as he strolled into the room. He glanced at the ceiling and frowned, seeming to immediately understand how his class had changed over the summer. “Untangle yourselves, please, and take your seats. I'll expect you to focus whatever brainpower you can spare on your studies.” The students groaned as they dropped to the floor.

“We have a new textbook for this fall,” Mr. VanWick continued. “Seth and Carly will pass them out.”

“Smelly minions,” Theo chided from his seat. One of the leather-bound textbooks darted across the room and smacked him in the face.

“You can have yours first, Theopolis,” Mr. VanWick commented dryly, to a chorus of hissing chuckles. “Now, books to chapter one, ‘Great Successes in Cannibalism,' and we'll begin.”

Oliver found, as Mr. VanWick began his gravel-toned lecture, that with the note from Emalie fresh in his mind, he had barely any brainpower left for class.

Chapter 4

A Familiar Customer

OLIVER TRUDGED HOME AFTER
school, exhausted, his now cruelly heavy backpack straining his shoulders. All he could imagine was a handful of gummified tapeworms and a few levels of Night of the Developer 3 to wash away the long school night.

“Oliver.”

He looked up to find Phlox striding down the sidewalk toward him, wrapped in a long black coat, hurrying like she did when there was a lot on her mind.

“Hey,” said Oliver.

Phlox stopped. “How was your first night?”

“Fine.”

“I'm on my way to Harvey's to pick up a few things for dinner.… Want to come?”

Oliver shrugged. “Not really.”

Phlox threw an arm around him anyway. “Come on, let Mom buy you a mocha or something.”

Oliver just wanted to go home, and almost wriggled free of his mom's arm. But a mocha sounded kinda good, and more importantly, this would give him a chance to ask Phlox something that had been on his mind all night. “All right,” he said.

They weaved through quiet neighborhood streets, asleep except for the cats and raccoons. The fact that Phlox was even taking the surface streets was new this summer. In the past, she'd have preferred the sewers, except on the coldest, dreariest nights, which she loved to walk in. Now, they used the streets almost everywhere they went.

Oliver had once asked:
Why are we going this way?
and Phlox had replied:
The fresh air is good for our skin.
This was technically true, although the vampires kept their sewer tunnels warm and dry as well. But Oliver had accepted his mother's lame explanation because he knew the real reason that they weren't using the tunnels: Phlox was avoiding other vampires, and their judgment. Like what Seth had said. The Nocturnes didn't just have Oliver, the problem child, anymore. Now they were the problem
family.

“So,” said Phlox, “a new school year.”

“Pretty much,” Oliver grunted.

“Are the kids still making fun of you about your human friend?” Oliver felt a stab of frustration, noting how Phlox didn't use Emalie's name, even though she obviously knew it. But whatever, at least she wasn't angry about Emalie anymore, even if, like Sebastian, she didn't exactly sound happy about her either.

“A little,” Oliver replied.

“And have you seen Bane this evening?”

“Not in the twenty minutes since school.”

Phlox was quiet for a moment, and when she spoke again, Oliver understood why she'd wanted him to come along to Harvey's. “Has he seemed … okay to you lately?”

That was a funny question. When did Bane ever seem okay? But Oliver could tell that Phlox was worried. He wondered if she suspected Bane's involvement, or at least presence, at the zoo. “Not really,” Oliver answered honestly. “He's been more of a jerk than usual.”

Oliver expected a scolding word in response, but Phlox only sighed. “You'd tell us, wouldn't you, Ollie, if you knew that he was up to something dangerous? Even if he asked you to keep it to yourself?”

Oliver almost laughed. “Why would he ever tell me anything?”

Phlox smiled, yet it didn't douse the worry in her eyes. “Well, he's certainly been mute around us.” She left it at that.

Oliver thought again about the zoo murder. Should he mention something now? But what? He didn't really know anything about whether Bane had been involved, and the more time went by, the less likely it seemed. And anything he said would lead Phlox back to Bane, and Bane, along with his annoying fists, back to Oliver.

Besides, they were nearing Harvey's, and Oliver had
his
question to ask. It had been on his mind since he'd talked to Seth. “Mom …” He tried to remember back to how Emalie had helped him talk to his dad at Hades' Well. She'd found the right questions to ask, the right way to ask them. Oliver wished she were here now, but she wasn't so he just blurted it out: “Why us?”

“What's that?” Phlox replied, though Oliver was pretty sure that she'd heard him.

“Why us? Like, why do I have to be the prophecy kid? Or why did you and Dad have to be the parents of the prophecy kid? I mean, why not some other family?” Oliver had been going over this in his head all night. The prophecy said that a demonless vampire child would come along, but it didn't say when, or who. Half-Light had decided to take matters into their own hands and create one. So, why had Phlox and Sebastian been chosen by Half-Light?

Phlox didn't answer for a moment. Ahead, a possum lumbered across the street.

“Well,” she said finally, “we applied.”

“Applied?”

“Yes.” Phlox spoke slowly, like she was choosing her words carefully. “Half-Light asked for applicants from within their associate and senior staff. Sebastian was just barely high enough up the ladder. The procedure was special, and your father and I thought it might be our only shot at having a child.”

This was the first that Oliver had heard of any of this. “But you'd had Bane.”

“Oh, well …” Phlox said quietly, her eyes not meeting Oliver's. “Yes, of course, but this was after that. We wanted another child and we were having trouble.…” She trailed off, again seeming to think hard about what to say next. “Anyway, Half-Light picked us and we started the force treatments to prepare for siring you. And it worked.”

“Huh,” said Oliver. It sounded fairly normal, a little boring even.

Phlox shrugged. “There was no other way to have you, Oliver.” She reached over and rubbed his back. “I know you had no choice in the matter, but here you are, and the responsibilities of the prophecy are worth it, to me.”

“All right.” Oliver found that he kind of liked the thought of his parents trying so hard to have him.
Yeah, great, so they get to have their kid, only I have to destroy the world
. Still, it did help a little.

They emerged from sleepy houses and reached a busy intersection. In front of them was a gas station and convenience store called 24-7. Above the pumps, which were busy with cars, was a giant, glowing sign advertising the current, comically high gas prices, which had the humans in a panic. They were so silly sometimes. The vampires had stopped using oil and gas for energy decades ago.