Demon Girl by Penelope Fletcher (Completed)

Chapter 3

The storm broke at dawn. I slipped into the surge of Disciples heading into Sanctuary block as the first raindrops hit the ground. Pounding the concrete entrance stairs, I wheeled through the other bodies to get to the Hall before the bell rung. I skidded to a stop. Sanctuary Hall had cracked black marble floors and scuffed ivory walls. Electricity was hard to generate so the radiators stayed off until winter, and the temperature was on the cool side, but I liked it.

Draped across the clunky furniture, and each other, in erratic clusters the Disciples of the Sect wore two colors, black and green. Boys tended to leave their chests bare under the green blazers, and the girls rocked them shorn at the elbow or tied around the waist to show off their tattoos. Nearly all humans were marked now days; protective sigils coerced from defeated wiccans. I myself avoided it. The idea of someone so close made me sweat, no matter how pretty the ink.

I wondered what would happen if I shouted out "I'm a fairy and there's a vampire in my wardrobe." It would be very dramatic.

Reflexively, my gaze travelled across the bobbing heads. Alex sat alone at our bench. She noticed me and wiggled her fingers, animated by my arrival like I was something special. Rake thin and inked from head to toe, Alex confused people when they first saw her. She was too pretty to look at straight on and most slid looks her way to digest her beauty like jolts of lightening, rather than get a fist in the gut at the sight of her. Long blonde hair and sultry blue eyes contrasted startlingly with her deeply tanned skin, a few shades shy of rich chocolate.

She smiled, and the blue runes prettily decorating her cheekbones crinkled. "Hai," she said and chucked a can at me.

I caught it one handed and tipped my chin up as thanks. Popping the top, I took a few slurping gulps and grinned at her, breakfast done.

Alex's general attitude to life was, 'And what?' She didn't give a damn what people thought of her, or what she did. If the upper dwells gave her hell or looked down on her for coming from the slums, she'd punch them in the face then ask who was next. She took the same approach in her friendships. This was why she was my only friend. She didn't care I was a freak since she figured she was already one too.

Ambling over to our bench, I sat on the table surface and tucked a leg under my butt, left the other hanging.

Stuffing a bread roll into her mouth, Alex pretended to roll her eyes in the back of her head. "It's all bad, Rae. Real bad," she said around her mouthful. "I slept terrible, and there's a bad storm coming in. My hair be all static."

She made a big hair gesture with her hands.

Overly excited or emotional, Alex tended to slip deeper into her colloquial roots to twang like crazy. I used to have to concentrate on what she was saying when we first enrolled, her slum speak was one of the most broken and slow I'd ever heard, but after a year or so I understood her babble easy.

Relaying the horror of how a third grade had tried to ask her out, but puked, she paused to screw her eyes up. "S'up with you? You look all shiny and more frazzled than usual."

I should take up cards because my face didn't twitch. Keeping a neutral expression I shrugged. "Not that much."

Her eyebrow climbed. Maybe my face was a little too composed. "You gonna share or keep evading? Don't make me beat it out of you. I went to your room this morning to eat breakfast, but you weren't there. Where you go? I tore this place up looking." She leaned in, her voice hinting at naughtiness as she said, "You do something prohibited?"