Demon Derby (27 page)

“Um …” She looked up at the scoreboard. “Well, the Hotsies are winning.”

“I can see that,” I replied. “How are the jammers?”

She looked blankly down at the floor, where they were setting up for a new jam.

“You know, I have no idea.” Then she laughed. “I expected to be tired, but this is ridiculous. It’s like I can’t even think.”

“There’s an empty room with a sofa one door past our locker room, if you want to take a nap. I’ll wake you up in a little while if you want.”

She considered. “You know, I might do that. Otherwise, I’m going to fall unconscious at the after-party, and who knows what pranks you lunatics would play on me.”

I held my hands up over my head in a mock halo, but she rolled her eyes. Evidently, she wasn’t buying it.

“It’s down the hallway to the right,” I said, pointing. “No one will bother you there.”

“Thanks,” she said, stifling a yawn. “I’ll see you in a little while.”

After she left, I watched some of the bout. I liked the idea that we could scope out the competition. The best junior league team got to play a charity match against the senior league, and I was determined to skate in that bout. Although, if we lost Ruthanasia to the forces of darkness, I wasn’t so sure about the team’s chances of winning.

Then she sat down next to me, like my thinking about her had miraculously summoned her. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“You okay?” she asked. She looked genuinely concerned, and I wondered if maybe she took acting lessons.

“Yeah,” I said shortly. “Just jumpy.”

I wanted to leap down her throat and ask her how she could work with the demons. I wondered what they’d promised her. Maybe it was Michael. She’d always seemed to have a crush on him, but there was no way I’d let her have him.

The Hotsies scored another grand slam.

“They’re pretty good,” she said.

I nodded.

“Last year, my sister Lauren and I got into Wicca,” she said. The statement seemed to come out of nowhere, and I was pretty startled and confused. Why would a demon confide in me? Was she trying to make me empathize with her so I’d be more vulnerable? I told myself not to fall for it but to listen carefully. Maybe she’d tell me something useful. “I thought it was harmless, but then Lauren’s boyfriend cheated on her over the summer, and she tried to call down this evil spirit to curse him and the other girl. It didn’t seem to do anything, so no big deal, right? But after that she was different. She started doing drugs, stealing, all kinds of stuff.

“One night she attacked me with a kitchen knife, and it was like something else was looking out of her eyes. She left home, and I was kind of relieved, because what was I supposed to do, press charges against my own sister? She’d hunt me down every once in a while, demanding money. The day you saw us in the parking lot, she was really bad. I tried to get her to come home, maybe go into treatment, and you saw how that idea went over. Two days later, they found her body on the street. Overdose.”

“Oh my God. I am so sorry.” The words felt inadequate. Even though I knew this all had to be a put-on, my heart still went out to her. I couldn’t help it.

She shrugged, a small, helpless movement. “Everybody blamed the drugs, but I just know that curse backfired. She let something out, and it got inside her and ate her up. When I
saw those guys in the bathroom, that’s the first thing I thought of. I knew they weren’t right, just like her.” She looked at me then for the first time since she’d started speaking. “I sound like a total nutcase, don’t I?”

“No.” The crowd erupted into cheers around us as someone on the floor did something interesting. I didn’t even care. “I’ve seen some pretty weird stuff recently too.”

“So what were those things?” Her voice stayed level, but I felt her shudder.

“Demons. People make deals with them. Can you believe that?”

“You’d have to be a total idiot to do that,” she said, and her face was completely serious. “I wouldn’t want to turn out like Lauren.” She stuffed her hand into her pocket and pulled something out. “I almost forgot. Here’s your necklace.”

I didn’t want to touch it. Maybe she’d put some kind of hex on it or something, because why else would the Relic have stopped working? Unless Michael had been wrong about her? I didn’t know what to think. “You keep it. Just in case.”

She nodded, her eyes back on the floor as the skaters went in circles.

“I’m sorry about Lauren,” I blurted out, although I didn’t know if I believed her. I was second-guessing everything and everybody now. But it seemed like the right thing to say, if you were talking to someone who wasn’t a demon in disguise. And I had to keep up that façade, whether I liked it or not.

“Me too.”

The after-party was at Bobbles, one of the many hole-in-the-wall sports bars around town that I’d never set foot in. The place wasn’t very big, for starters. When you cram four teams’ worth of derby girls into a small, narrow bar along with twenty assorted support staff and a couple hundred fans, it gets crowded pretty quick. Darcy drove me, since Michael still hadn’t returned, and there was already a long line outside the door when we pulled into the parking lot.

At least the line moved fast, although I wasn’t sure where they were putting all the people. I followed Darcy through the door, only to be stopped by a pair of fans in Hotsie hoodies who’d clearly been waiting to pounce on me. Darcy continued on, pointing toward the bathrooms.

“Oh, you’re that new Apocalypsie jammer, aren’t you?”
shrieked one of the girls at the top of her lungs, despite the fact that I was standing only about a foot and a half away.

“Yep. That’s me.” I craned my neck, looking around for Ruthanasia, but she was nowhere to be seen.

“Can we get a picture with you?” asked the second. She had orange hair that clashed with her hoodie.

“Sure.” I posed for the pic and turned to leave, but the orange-haired girl grabbed my arm.

“We want to be derby girls so bad,” she said, tugging me off into a corner. I could have resisted, but it seemed kind of rude. They were fans, after all. The fact that I had fans was pretty flattering when I stopped to think about it. “I want my name to be Orange Crush.”

“And I’m going to be Anita Mann,” added the other girl proudly.

“That’s great,” I said, putting my back to the wall and attempting to relax. “So how long have you been skating?”

“Oh, I haven’t gotten my skates yet,” said Anita. “But I’ll do that soon.”

“Me either. But I got some of the best tights ever from Too Fast. They’ve got daggers and roses printed on them, and …”

Orange Crush proceeded to give me a complete rundown of every kind of derby-appropriate clothing she’d ever purchased, and clearly she’d been at it for a while. I couldn’t help but tune her out, although I kept nodding and making encouraging noises every time she paused for breath, which admittedly wasn’t very often.

I scanned the crowd but couldn’t see anyone I knew who
might come to my rescue. I assumed Darcy was still in the bathroom, and I couldn’t see any of the other Apocalypsies from where I was standing.

“I like fishnets.” Orange Crush kept prattling. “But it’s so hard to find them in colors other than black, don’t you agree?”

I nodded again, looking past her flushed and smiling face to the shelves behind her. That’s when I finally realized why they’d called the place Bobbles—the walls were lined with glassed-in shelves full of bobbleheads. It was still hard for me to think of these silly little figures as instruments of torture. I wanted a closer look. The shelf nearest to our table held three random basketball players, a Carolina Bulldog, and Yoda.

My eyes were automatically drawn to the Yoda. He had a huge green head, ears longer than his legs, and a light saber that clashed with his complexion. It was strange, because his little bobbly head was rocking slowly back and forth, despite the fact that he was encased in glass.

Yoda blinked.

I jumped a little.

“Are you okay?” Anita asked me.

“Yeah,” I replied. “Fine. Just got a chill.”

That was enough for Orange Crush. She had to know that I wasn’t listening, but she didn’t seem to care. She kept talking.

That left me free to look at the Yoda a little more closely. Its beady little eyes darted from side to side. The movement was barely discernible, but I knew I wasn’t imagining it.

I took a few calming breaths, the way I’d practiced so many times, and looked at it again. My eyes blurred as I tried
to see past the physical and into the spiritual realm. I wasn’t so surprised to see the cloud of black that hung around it. The whole place was choking with the stuff; I suddenly found it very difficult to breathe, even though I knew the pollution wasn’t physical. And inside the Yoda’s bouncing, cartoonish head, I could see the faint flicker of white light, bound in ropes of thick black fire.

That was somebody’s soul. And it was watching me.

Once I realized that, I got mega-creeped-out. I needed to leave that building right away. I interrupted Orange Crush in the middle of an in-depth description of a do-it-yourself tattoo kit she’d gotten for her birthday.

“Hey,” I interjected, “it’s been great talking to you, but I’m late meeting up with my boyfriend. Maybe I’ll see you later?”

“Oh!” She blinked. “Um … sure. See ya.”

I smiled and ran for it. Once I was out in the comparatively quiet parking lot, I dialed Michael. It went straight to voice mail.

“Damn it!” I swore, nearly throwing the phone on the ground in frustration.

“What’s wrong?”

Ruthanasia stood behind me with a bobblehead in her hand. I couldn’t decide which one to stare down, so I settled for looking back and forth between them in complete paranoia. I didn’t even realize I was backing up until my butt hit a car bumper.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, looking around wildly. “More of those things?”

“No.” I tried to get ahold of myself. “What’s that?”

She shook the bobblehead. And now that I knew about the soul jars, I imagined I could hear it screaming wordlessly in panic or pain, trying desperately to get the attention of people who would never realize they were looking at an instrument of torture. The worst part? I wasn’t entirely sure I was imagining it.

“Limited-edition derby bobblehead. They were giving them out at the bar. Didn’t you get one?”

She thrust it toward me, and I backed up. “No!” Now she was looking at me very cautiously, and I realized I’d better tone it down. If she figured out that I suspected she was a demon, she’d have no reason to continue the charade of normalcy. And from the way Michael had reacted, defeating her wouldn’t be as easy as defeating 693. If you’d call that easy. “You’re losing it,” she said.

“Uh … yeah. Maybe a little.” I forced a laugh, leaning against the car as casually as possible. “Can you blame me?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Actually, I’m going nuts here. Will you please tell me what the heck is going on? I’ll buy you pancakes. I think better while I’m eating.”

The rest of the Apocalypsies came out the door then, buying me a little time to figure out how to handle this. They were laughing and shoving each other over some joke that was apparently both very funny and very offensive. And every one of them had a derby bobblehead in her hands.

“No fighting.” Ragnarocker charged over and clapped beefy arms around each of our necks. “You two need to kiss and make up.”

“No kissing,” Ruthanasia said.

“Definitely not,” I echoed. “But things are cool.”

“Good.” Ragnarocker smelled like the inside of a brewery; either someone had spilled a drink on her or she had a fake ID. Her bobblehead was about two inches from my face. And this close, there was no denying the fact that there was a soul in there. The plastic figure looked ready to cry any second now. If I didn’t get away from it, I might join in.

I wiggled out from under her arm. “So … uh. Do you have a ride home, Rock?”

She nodded and jerked a thumb toward Hoosya Mama. “She’s taking me. She owes me one after she elbowed my face.”

“I did not!” Mama yelled, grinning.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

They staggered off down the row of cars, arguing amicably the entire way. We watched them until the red taillights of Mama’s car left the parking lot.

People spilled out of the bar, until the lot was more crowded than the bar had been earlier. A few people got into their cars, but most hung around outside the doors, chatting and smoking and being generally obnoxious. Apparently the party was over. The rest of the girls clustered around, organizing rides and making plans for an after-after-party.

I was surrounded by bobbleheads. Within seconds, breathing became a struggle. It felt like I was walking into a tiny, windowless room full of chain-smokers with particularly stinky cigars. The stench wasn’t physical, but that didn’t make it any less real. I started coughing and couldn’t stop.

Barbageddon pounded me on the back. “You okay?” I nodded, rubbing my watery eyes. At least the coughing gave me an excuse for being teary. “This after-party is lame. Everyone’s invited to my place,” she said. “You want to come?”