Wolfsbane and Mistletoe (Charlaine Harris) (Kitty Norville 2.50)

This time.

The next afternoon I was at the store looking for a present for Tessa. I scowled at the Santa ringing the bell by the door. One more reminder . . . everywhere you looked. Skinny or with sagging beards and worn black boots or faded red pants. Fakes. It made the whole season fake.

But there were only two more days until Christmas Eve and I couldn't put off shopping anymore. I couldn't get Tessa what she really wanted, so I wandered up and down the doll aisle. It was amazing. They had dolls that walked and talked, crawled and cried, ate and pooped. Why would anyone want a toy that threw up on you while you changed its diaper? That was crazy. But Mom sent me out with a list and one of these nasty things was on it. I picked up the nearest one. It only talked and waved its arms, no puking involved. That was the one.

"Playing with dollies now," Jed purred from behind me. "Why not? You run like a goddamn girl. You might as well play like one, too. " His hand circled my arm above my elbow so hard it cut the blood off. I felt the tingle in my fingers.

Jed had been behind me in the woods yesterday afternoon, but he didn't know them like I did. He'd come closer than I'd have thought, though. He just didn't care. Pain was nothing to him. ping through blackberry bushes, sliding down ravines. He was one scratched, bruised mess now, and wasn't that too bad? I might try and stay out of trouble but there was no way I was sorry about that.

I ignored him, yanked my arm away, and took the dol

l to the checkout counter. He followed me every step of the way. "You can't run forever, Nicky," he whispered. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck ruffle in the god-awful stench of his breath. "No one's ever gotten away. And when I'm done with you and you hide like a little bitch every time you see me, I'll make your little sister sorry, too. Her and her dolly. "

And that was that.

I'd put it off. I'd tried to stay out of trouble. I'd tried not to piss off Mom and Dad. But you couldn't let the assholes win, even crazy ones like Jed. I sat in a plastic chair by the door, eyes on the floor, until Jed gave up and left. And I never said a word to him.

There were kids that hated Jed. Lots of kids. If I could get all of them to join together and stand up to him, Jed might not be as tough as he thought he was. I could give it a try, but the thing about being beaten down . . . it's hard to get back up. I'd been to four schools now, Dad's job kept us traveling, and each school had a bully. Sometimes the bully would get caught and punished, but half the time it didn't matter. In weeks he would go back to doing what he did. The kids wouldn't stand up for themselves and hardly any of them would tell. They just took the bullying, sure the teachers couldn't help them. They were right. If the principal kicked the bully out of school, then he'd simply wait outside it.

My dad said in life there were sheep and wolves, and most of the time they couldn't cross over.

I sighed. Jed damn sure seemed like he thought he was a wolf. He was nuts as they came. He'd keep coming after me, going after the others, start messing with Tess. I folded the top of the bag the doll was in and got up. Nope, it probably wouldn't work, no matter how many kids Jed had given reason to hate him, but I'd give it a shot. There had to be some that'd band together against Jed. Hell, it always worked in the movies.

Right?

Wrong.

Isaac peered through black bangs at me in disbelief. "The guy's not human, okay? When he stomps you, it's like he's never gonna stop. He could take on Frankenstein, the Mummy, and the Werewolf all at once and go out for pizza after. " Isaac was a huge fan of horror movies. He'd seen ones made before I was born, before my parents were born. The inside of his locker door was covered with pictures of monsters. Snarling, crouching, flying, sucking blood. They papered every square inch. I liked Isaac but he was a little weird.

"Come on. " I stood at his locker and snorted, "He's not all that. "

"Yeah, Nicky, he is all that. He caught me in the woods and he broke my arm, okay? And he said if I told anyone how it happened, he'd break the other one. I believed him because he meant it. " He slammed the locker shut. "No way. Leave me out of it. He's crazy, and if you had any sense, you'd be watching behind you every minute. " With that he hurried down the hall.

I gave up on Isaac and went on to Dog Boy . . . Sammy, I meant. Sammy. Five words out of my mouth and he was gone, fast as any of his dogs. It went that way all day. I'd expected it, but I'd hoped it'd be different.

Isaac had said Jed had caught him in the woods, the same ones Jed had chased me in. Jed didn't do his fighting on campus. That'd get him expelled and he knew it. Yeah, it would get him expelled - him, not me.

He didn't have the little in that I had with Principal Johnson. Good old Principal Johnson, not the brightest man to choke on chalk dust.

So I went to Plan B. That day when Jed, who was dependable as Cs in math, sat down opposite me in the cafeteria and took my slice of pizza, I picked up my tray, dumped the food off of it, and whacked him hard on the side of the head with it.

It knocked him sideways, almost off the seat, but he caught himself with one hand on the table. His eyes were ice, his teeth bared, and violence shivered under his skin. "Who's the bitch now?" I asked quietly. "You gonna roll over and take it? Or you gonna stand up and do something about it?" He'd been barely smart enough not to fight in school before, but this was a whole lot of different.

As plans went, it wasn't as idiotic as it seemed. There were teachers already moving toward us. They'd pull him off me before he got me too bad. And then out he'd go. Maybe it'd only be outside the school itself but that was something.

He shook with black anger, but as crazy as he was, he wasn't as stupid as I thought. I might not get expelled if there was a fight, but he knew he would. And I had a feeling his daddy would be a whole lot more disappointed than mine. I had a feeling Jed was a chip off the old block.

He stood and hissed, "Dead. You're dead. "

He left the cafeteria and I sighed. Another plan shot to hell. Glumly I sat back down and waited for a teacher to come drag me off to Principal Johnson for a few weeks of detention.

It was actually two months.

After a lot of clutching at his comb-over of black hair and warnings on how he couldn't cover up things like this - he simply couldn't - he did. Like I knew he would. I was going to have to call Mom to go fetch Tessa from the bus stop and she wasn't going to be happy at the reason why. Understanding maybe, but not happy.

The same day, after two hours of detention, as I slid through the woods, I heard Jed behind me. This time was the first time I actually heard him howling with fury as he chased me. I might've been chunky and short, but I was quick. I had hit that gym door running. Jed hadn't been as fast.

"You son of a bitch! You son of a bitch! Where are you?" All that was followed by screams of rage. Incoherent animal sounds. Isaac was right. Jed did sound like a monster . . . a movie monster anyway. I slid under a thick overhang of dead blackberry vines and thought how I definitely hadn't made things any better. Not to say whacking him with a tray hadn't felt good, but it hadn't gotten me out of the trouble I thought it would.