“We waited for him by your house, and then we followed him,” Mark said, as though it were as simple as that.
“I felt we needed to have a talk. A one-on-one,” Brad explained, “about the defacement of personal property.”
“We did give him a choice,” said Mark.
“Yes. We were very diplomatic.” Brad nodded.
“He surprised us,” Mark said, an almost appreciative note to his voice.
“Yeah, we’d thought for sure he’d pussy out and opt for us trashing his car.”
Mark shook his head. “But he didn’t.”
“Nope. He didn’t.”
“You’d have been proud of him, Iz.”
“Yeah,” Brad admitted, “we were impressed.”
Her throat tightened. “You’re lying.”
“Nope,” Brad said. “No, Iz, we’re not.” He leaned forward, blocking Pinfeathers from her view, looking her in the eye. He lowered his voice. “And don’t go off thinking this was about you, because it wasn’t. He deserved it, and you know what he did as well as I do.”
At these words, Isobel felt something hot inside of her rush up and snap, like an electric cable.
“Don’t you get it?” Before she could stop herself, she lashed out, flipping his Coke over. Ice clattered out of the tall blue cup, liquid splashed over the table. Alyssa screeched and slid away. Brad shot up from his seat as soda cascaded onto his lap. “He didn’t touch your car!” she shouted. “And I know you’re lying!” He was toying with her. They were just trying to get a rise. She’d seen Varen not twenty minutes ago. He’d been fine.
Or maybe, she realized, her thoughts jarring, maybe that’s why he’d sunk so slowly into his chair. Maybe that’s why he’d refused to remove his glasses. Maybe that’s why he’d avoided her.
“Does this look like I’m lying?” He moved out from the table to tower over her. Her eyes darted briefly to Pinfeathers, who watched unblinking. Lifting his pinky, Brad aimed it at a large blood blister on his upper lip that she hadn’t paid attention to until now. Brad was a running back, and she was used to seeing him with scrapes and bruises.
“Hey!” came Mr. Nott’s shout from the far end of the room, followed immediately by the hard, fast jangling of keys.
Brad bent low to speak into her ear. She felt powerless to do anything but listen. “He was a real sport about it. He only clipped me once, but by that time I was done, and I let it go,
’cause I said something I shouldn’t have. Somethin’ about you, Iz.”
Horrified, she recoiled, and Mr. Nott, coming to a jangling halt, stepped into the widening space between them, asking in his deep, authoritative voice the obligatory, “What’s going on here?”
“I spilled my Coke, sir,” Brad announced over the sudden quiet. A few titters ran through the table next to them. If the whole entire cafeteria hadn’t been watching before, they were now. “It was an accident, sir. Pregame jitters.”
Isobel returned her gaze to the table, where Pinfeathers watched her. His expression seemed darker now, his humor gone, and the fathomless black of his eyes now threatened to swallow her. “Don’t look so lost, cheerleader,” he said. “I’ve watched you watching him— us, I mean. I even tried to warn you. But you wouldn’t listen. You waited, and now it’s too late.
For you . . . for us.”
“Isobel, did you hear me?” Mr. Nott asked. “I said, go take your seat.”
Isobel didn’t move. She found her gaze unable to waver from Pinfeathers, from his face as it seemed to struggle and twist between several emotions, finally contorting into a grimace of malice and pain. Why did that make him suddenly so familiar?
“Miss Lanley, are you deaf today? I said, go take your seat.”
In one blinking movement, Pinfeathers lunged at her, jaw unhinging, the black hole in his face widening. Teeth bared, claws outstretched, he unleashed an ungodly sound, something between a woman’s death screech and a demon’s howl.
It happened too fast for her to form her own scream, too fast for her raised arms to do any good. His claws rained down.
Isobel fell back, knocking into the table behind her. A shrieking torrent of jet feathers engulfed the light. His form loosened into violet smoke, and like a demon sucked into hell, he vanished into the floor.
33