Under a Spell uda-5 Page 3

  I blew out a sigh, grabbed a morning Fresca and my purse, and decided that my supermodel return to Mercy High School would have to happen another day.

  It’s not like there was anyone I was expecting to impress at an all-girls high school, right?

  “Whoa, love. You’re out of here like a Tasmanian devil.”

  I was chest to chest with Will Sherman, my floppy hair snapping his cheek with a wet smack. He wore his sandy hair just long enough to let a few strands flop over his forehead, making any red-blooded woman willing to sell her soul to push those few strands out of his hazel, gold-flecked eyes. He had the lean, muscular build of a soccer player and an accent that made panties drop, and he lived across the hall from me. Also, he was my Guardian—but not in an “until I’m eighteen” or 50 Shades of Grey kind of way; he simply was the man in charge of defending me against anyone who might seek to gut me, quarter me, burn me alive, or perform any other such unfortunate activity. And for all of this, all I had to do was house a supernatural vessel that held all of the human souls of the world that were stuck in a kind of limbo. It is—or I am—called the Vessel of Souls and it is an artifact that the angelic and evil planes desperately fight over—kind of like a Hatfields-and-McCoys kind of thing that could destroy the world and possibly enslave all humanity. And it was in me. No one is quite sure why, but my guess is some half-naked diaper-wearing cherub thought it would be a hoot to hide the most valuable thing in creation in the spirit of a San Francisco woman who would rather just say a few Hail Marys while eating a donut than spend her life dodging all manor of weaponry—even if it did come with a drool-worthy Guardian.

  I jumped back and blinked at Will, then blinked again. “You look fantastic. Like Professor Plum or something.”

  Will beamed, opening his arms to show off the crisp pale blue button-down he wore under his tweed jacket, and I took the opportunity to sweep my eyes over the nice way his chinos hung on his hips, the way his blazer did nothing to hide his broad, strong shoulders, the way that button-down clung to his taut, sinewy chest.

  “Wait!” He held up a silencing hand. “You haven’t seen the best part.” Will rifled through the battered leather briefcase he was carrying and slid on a pair of heavy, dark-rimmed glasses. With his usually bed-headed muss of sandy brown hair combed back from his forehead, he had a distinctly David Beckham-does-Harvard look, and I wanted to sit down and learn everything he had to tell me.

  “Sophie?”

  Will was leaning into me, and I felt a blush rush over my cheeks and made a mental note to pray for my overactive imaginary libido to dry up and stop turning me into a puddle of ooze every time Will shot me a grin or a view of one of his pecs.

  “No, right, you look terrific. Why?”

  “Work. Isn’t this what all the good professors are wearing?”

  “You’re working as a professor? That’s funny, because I’m going in to my old high school as a substitute—” I felt all the color drain from my face. “You’re my help.”

  Will fell into step beside me. “With all due respect, love, I’m not the help, I’m the Guardian.” He said it as though he was channeling Superman, but I was still flummoxed.

  “Sampson is sending you in to keep an eye on me, isn’t he? He doesn’t trust me!”

  Will scratched his head and pulled the downstairs door open for me. “Uh, no, I believe he doesn’t trust whatever wiggy it is that’s running around the high school, disappearing girls and carving them up.” He flashed a quick grin and waggled his car keys. “Shall we take Nigella?”

  I nodded dumbly and Will led me to Nigella, a thousand-year-old, half-rusted, half-funky maroon Porsche with Pepto-pink interior that he insisted was a classic.

  “We’re a team, you know.”

  “Hey, how come you get to be a professor and I’m just a substitute teacher?”

  Will sunk the key into the ignition and Nigella coughed to life. “It’s the accent, love. Makes Americans think we’re brilliant. So, what’s on your lesson plan?”

  “You have a lesson plan? Where’d you get a lesson plan?”

  “I made it.” He paused. “Let me guess—you assumed I was just born your Guardian.”

  “No.” Yes.

  I was up to speed on Will’s involvement by the time we rolled into the Mercy High staff lot. Alex was up for the job, but having been out of organized education since slates trumped binder paper, both he and Sampson thought Will would be a smoother fit. According to Sampson, Will was there to investigate, to see what else he could turn up, but I couldn’t help but feel that his presence on campus was little more than a babysitter for an investigator that Sampson had no faith in.

  All eyes were on me the second Nigella sputtered to a stop. The faculty lot and the student lot were separated only by an elbow-high cyclone fence, a sea of shiny, new-model haves on one side, a mottled bay of slightly dented have-nots on the other.

  My heart slammed itself against my rib cage in what felt like a desperate attempt to escape as I snapped Nigella’s door shut, hitched my shoulder bag and my chin, and met Will on the sidewalk. I could already feel the heat pricking at my upper lip and my ears were already buzzing with the whispers I knew were coming: Special Sophie . . . the freak of Nineteenth Street. . . . Look at the freak. Look at the freak. Lookatthefreak.

  I reminded myself that I had come a long way, that I was the teacher now, that I was helping to solve a murder and possibly take down a wily coven of supernatural evil. A crime fighter couldn’t be a freak.

  I threw my shoulders back, and suddenly I didn’t feel like the blistering center of unwanted attention. There were no whispered hums, no more eyes. . .

  Because they were all on Will.

  At first Mercy students littered the grand lawn, making their leisurely way toward the main building. But just like that every girl stopped, sucked in a collected breath, and straightened, shoving out best assets—breasts, hips, taut teenage butts—and turning their heads toward Will.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I spat.

  Will didn’t need to say a word. The grin he tossed over his shoulder at me was flattered, smug, and dancing on my last nerve.

  “You just remember we’re here solving a crime, okay? We’re here to find a missing girl.”

  Will interlaced his fingers, outstretched his hands, and cracked his knuckles, the universal sign (in my dictionary) for sleazy old man leering at young girls.

  “Fine, man whore. If saving a poor little girl’s life doesn’t get you, just remember that statutory rape laws are strong in San Francisco.”

  Will just shook his head as though I had uttered an interesting anecdote about higher education or Pippa Middleton.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  Our exchange—my admonishment, his rebuttal—was interrupted by a trio of schoolgirls in their knife-pleated Mercy skirts, their chests straining against their crisp white shirts and sweaters, the high, round breasts of padded bras and youth. I felt myself snake my arms across my chest and curl into my A-cup.

  “Are you the new teacher?” the ringleader asked. She was dead center, smoked-sapphire blue eyes glued to Will, black hair Pantene perfect, heart-shaped face flawless.

  “We both are,” I said, trying to break the girl’s Spock-like mind control.

  “I’m Fallon,” the girl said. She grinned, blinding me with her blue-white teeth, a perfect line of Chiclets that would never dream of going buck or hanging on to a thread of spinach at a dinner party.

  “This is Finleigh and Kayleigh.” Fallon acknowledged each girl with a miniscule shake of the head before squirreling her way in between Will and I and threading her arm through his. “I can show you where the admin building is.”

  “That would be lovely, cheers.”

  The other two—Finleigh and Kayleigh, equally as uninterested in me as Fallon was—slapped perfectly manicured hands over their mouths and giggled.

  “OMG, cute!”

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nbsp; “English. Love!”

  I rolled my eyes and followed Will and his entourage to the front doors of Mercy High School. They walked in as though they weren’t walking through the gates of teenage hell, as though the memories of being bullied and harassed just for existing weren’t still fresh enough to make my stomach fold over itself.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said, stepping over the threshold.

  Spires of hell fire didn’t shoot up through the ultra-waxed linoleum. Scary circus clowns didn’t circle me and point, and nobody stopped to give me a body check or a disdainful once over. Maybe things would be different.

  I sniffed.

  Maybe not.

  It’s amazing how the smell of a high school hallway never changes. The janitors can try, they can swap out the district-issued lemony-fresh cleaning products for summer-rain-scented potpourri, but the underlying stench of scuffed linoleum, spiral notebooks, and teenage angst embeds itself in every loop of nondescript carpeting, in every inch of every number-two pencil, and in every rusted, dented corner of every locker of every high school in the world. Mercy was no different.

  The girls deposited Will and me at the administration offices, where we were greeted by Heddy Gaines, school secretary—her little carved wood veneer nameplate placed prominently on her desk.

  Heddy looked like every school secretary in every high school teen angst-slash-comedy ever made. She had a beige bouffant that was spun like cotton candy with perfectly rounded bangs that barely licked her forever-surprised red-brown brows. Her face was warm and matronly, as was the lacy Peter Pan collar on her dress, as she shoved a little cut-glass bowl of hard candies toward us. As I took a grape candy—and took her in—there was a tiny niggling at the back of my mind. Did I remember her? Her eyes flitted over mine, then went to Will. She offered us a practiced smile, her orange-red lips pressed tightly together.

  “May I help you two?”

  I stepped forward. “We’re the new teachers,” I hiss-whispered, and one of Heddy’s eyebrows went up even more than usual.

  “Teachers?” she hissed back.

  “Heddy, Heddy, I’ve got them.”

  The gentleman speaking strode over to us, his tie flopping on his chest. He jutted out a hand. “Principal Lowe,” he said, shaking my hand so heartily I thought it’d snap off at the wrist.

  For every inch that Heddy looked stereotypically secretarial, Principal Lowe looked atypically principal. He was tall, eye to eye with Will, with close-cropped salt and pepper hair and pale blue eyes that were kind, but rimmed with clear exhaustion. He was slender enough to make me suck in my gut, and his navy-blue suit—white button-down shirt, sans tie—gave him a cool but approachable edge. I vaguely wondered when Lowe had taken over, wondered if it was directly after the cranky old woman who had been the principal when I’d attended Mercy. Principal Stockman had lived up to her name as if it were an honor. She was built like a fireplug with a shock of fuzzy, blue-grey hair, turned-down eyes and a perma-scowl. Or, maybe the scowl was only for me. I shifted now in Principal Lowe’s visitors’ chairs, remembering the hundred or so times I had sat here, shrinking in Principal Stockman’s shadow as she told me that “girls will be girls” and that if I’d just ignore the mean girls’ comments, they would eventually forget about me and move on.

  In my freshman year that had seemed like sound advice. By senior year I knew it was a crock of shit.

  “I really appreciate you both coming out here,” Lowe said, his pale eyes moving from my face to Will’s. “And Ms. Lawson, I understand that you are a Mercy High, uh, alumna, is that correct?”

  I shook my head quickly, then cleared my throat. “That is correct, sir.”

  Lowe and Will both broke out into smiles. “You can call me Edward, Ms. Lawson. You’re not in any trouble here.”

  I felt a hot blush warm my cheeks and the smile dropped from Edward’s face.

  “Well, not in here. But out there”—his eyes flashed to the halls behind us and he shook his head—“I’m not so sure.”

  I suddenly snapped into information-gathering mode and pulled my notebook and pen from my shoulder bag. Every cop seemed to have his own black leather flip-open notebook—Alex kept his in his back pocket—and I knew professionally, I would need my own. I couldn’t exactly find the model the cops used, but found that my Target stand-in with the glittery, big-eyed unicorn on the front cover still got the job done.

  “Do you have any additional information you can give us, Edward? Anything at all about either of the missing students or any suspicions about your current class?”

  Edward blinked at me blankly and Will put a soft hand on my knee. “What she means is, is there anything we should know before going out there?”

  Edward shuffled some papers on his desk before handing one each to Will and me. “You’ll be teaching English Two, Ms. Lawson, and Mr. Sherman—”

  “Will, please.”

  “Will, thank you. You’ll be teaching American History.”

  I let out a yip that was half nerves, half amusement. “He’s teaching American History?” I jerked a thumb toward Will. “He’s English.”

  “With all due respect, love, we English have a pretty good working knowledge of what’s happened here in the States. We did own you and all.”

  Edward cleared his throat and we both snapped back to attention, caught bickering in the principal’s office.

  “You’ll each be teaching four classes a day with two free prep periods. You don’t start until after lunch today. The lessons are already prepared for you and left in each of your rooms. You have free rein of the building for your investigation.” Lowe pulled two keys from his top desk drawer and handed one to each of us. “But of course, you’ll keep your true intentions for being here from the student body. The girls were quite stirred up when the uniformed men were on campus. I don’t know what kind of CSI-type havoc they’d wreak if they knew two undercover FBI investigators were here as well.”

  Lowe grinned and I smiled back, impressed. FBI investigators, huh? I made a mental note to thank Sampson for giving us a decent cover; the last time I went to investigate some supernatural bumps at a house in the Marina, Sampson told the lady I was an exterminator and I wound up with a tetanus shot and a vague certainty that her demon spider had laid a dozen eggs in my left nostril.

  Lowe shrugged, his slim shoulders hugging his ears. “I wish I could give you some more information, some direction about the girls or the administration. Everyone here is like a family. I can’t imagine . . .”

  “So, I believe our—FBI boss, Pete Sampson—told you what we’re investigating?”

  “Of course.” Lowe nodded. “The possibility of a coven.”

  “Yes.” I nodded back, flipping over my notebook in a bid to look uber FBI-like. “Do you know which students are a part of it?”

  Edward swung his head and stiffened. “If there even is a coven. All the girls have been pretty tight lipped about their clubs and activities off campus. But I’ve heard the murmurs in the halls.”

  “We met three girls earlier. Kayleigh—”

  “Finleigh and Fallon,” Lowe finished. “They’re like the three Musketeers.”

  “Yes. Are they—is Fallon perhaps part of the murmuring? She seems sort of . . .” I let my words trail off, hopeful that Edward would get the message without me having to say that the pubescent bombshell seemed a bit witchy.

  “Fallon? No. She’s a star student here. Very friendly and helpful. Heads up the blood drive every year.”

  I shifted in my seat. Nina was in charge of the blood drive at the office, but it was less a good-citizen thing, more of a lunch-truck thing.

  I instinctively didn’t trust Fallon. And I swore to myself it had nothing to do with her perfect curves or the lascivious way she rolled her tongue over her bottom lip while hanging on Will’s every accented word.

  “Fallon helps out a lot of students—especially new ones. High school can be pretty intimidating—especially here.”
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br />   Didn’t I know it.

  Lowe turned us out into the hallway and my heart was thudding. Our footsteps echoed through the deserted corridor and I couldn’t help thinking about the green mile, a prisoner walking toward their death.

  “Brings back a lot of memories, huh?” Will said. “Bet you were rollicking around here with your pigtails and your high-heeled shoes.”

  I felt my upper lip curl. “I was going to high school, not a fantasy porn shoot. And my memories weren’t all good. I’m pretty sure if there’s witchcraft around here, it’s going to be right out in the open.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  I got a flash of my fifteen-year-old self, dwarfed by a backpack and a headgear, being Ping-Ponged between the popular girls as I tried to make my way to my locker.

  “Just a gut thought.”

  I pulled the file Sampson had given me from my shoulder bag as we walked the hall in silence.

  “Here,” I whispered. “This is Cathy Ledwith’s class schedule. These two are Alyssa Rand’s from the last two years. Anything significant?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. American teens are sadly behind in math. Look at this—juniors. Geometry One. A shame.”

  I glared at Will, but kept the fact that Geometry One and I had shared more than a few tearful years together a secret. “No. I meant any crossover classes or teachers.”

  He scanned the sheets. “They both took art with Mr. Fieldheart in 6B. Both third period last year, Alyssa second period this year. Both took Honors English in their junior year, both with the teacher you’re replacing.”

  “Okay, okay, that gives us something to go on.” Will handed me back the pages. “What, exactly, does it give us to go on?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet. Let’s go upstairs and check out room 6B.”

  We climbed the stairs and peered into classroom 6B, where a ring of girls sitting at easels turned to glare at us and no one adamantly jumped up and tried to turn us into toads.