Josie Griffin Is Not a Vampire (16 page)

“For the love of Jenny Greenteeth,” Tarren huffed. “Again, Johann? This is getting ridiculous. And you!” she yelled at Drey. “Haven’t I warned you not to mess with my friends?”

While Avis and I were trying to decide whether to help Johann or keep Tarren from zapping Drey, Kayla
draped herself over the moaning vampire. “Was that the same ankle you hurt the other night? You poor baby,” she cooed to him. “Do you think you can stand up?”

“No,” Johann winced, but it looked to me that he was faking. “I must have sprained something.”

“I’m gonna sprain your damn face for trying to jump me like that, fool!” Drey yelled. His buddies loomed up like shadows.

Avis reached out and held Tarren back. “Keep cool, baby,” he warned, but then Drey grabbed Kayla by the arm and pushed her away from Johann. Tarren was ready to pounce, though Kayla didn’t need her help. She punched Drey hard on the shoulder and yelled, “Get your hands off me!” Then she started cursing up a blue streak.

“Hey!” Tarren yelled. She wriggled between the three guys and our friends. “Everyone just dettle sown!”

Drey towered over tiny Tarren, yelling his own string of obscenities back at Kayla who hadn’t stopped hurling insults. Then Avis stepped in, his elbows back, chest puffed forward, and I could have sworn a line of red dreadlocks rose off his scalp like a rooster’s comb.

I watched the whole thing, frozen, unsure what to do to help until the guy to Drey’s left slipped something out of his back pocket. The sun glinted off the object. “A knife!” I screamed. “He’s got a knife behind his back!”

Tarren whipped around. As if in slo-mo, her lips worked, searching for the right words. Trying to find a way to force them into the air. She threw her arms toward the three guys and shouted, “Freak Sneeze!”

Drey’s head snapped back. The others followed suit. They sucked in air, “
Ah! Ah! Ah!”
as if gathering force.
“Ah! Ah! Ah!”
Instinctively I closed my eyes, threw my arm in front of my face, and turned away as all three guys exploded.
“CHEW-EW-EW-EW-EW!”
The sound of the enormous sneezes ricocheted across the basketball court, bounced off the school walls, and echoed into the trees and houses surrounding us. Their heads snapped back again. Drey convulsed in a series of quick relentless sneezes,
“Achooachooachooachoo!”
The guy with the shiny thing stumbled around sucking in air again,
“Ah! Ah! Ah!”
as the other guy tried to pick himself up off the ground where his epic sneeze had left him, but as soon as he got to his knees, he was thrown forward by another huge explosion of snot and spit.

That gave Kayla just enough time to grab Johann. She pulled him to his feet. He let out a cry of pain as he put weight on his ankle so Kayla crouched down in front of him and yelled, “Hop on!” Johann looked confused but then he took hold of her shoulders, jumped, and wrapped his legs around her waist. “Nothing can come between us!” he yelled. Kayla took off running across the grassy field with Johann bouncing on her back.

Another gigantic sneeze erupted from the three guys. Then another.

“Tarren!” I screamed. “They’re going to pop a head vein. Do something!”

“Snow knees! Snow knees!” she shouted.

The three guys all started shaking as their kneecaps
turned white and frosty and they continued sneezing up a storm.

“I mean, no sneeze!” Tarren added. “And no snow knees!” she shouted, flinging her arms their way.

All three of them collapsed to the ground, panting and moaning. Avis swooped down and grabbed the shiny object in the grass. He held it up and looked at me with bulging eyes.

“Oops!” I said when I saw the cell phone. “Guess I was wrong.”

“Go, go, go!” he yelled, pushing Tarren and me away. “Get the heck out of here.”

He threw the phone and we ran for the school. We ducked around the corner then Tarren yelled, “Wait! Wait.” She peeked around the side of the building and flung her arms toward the guys, shouting “Forget! Forget!” at the top of her lungs. We pressed our backs against the wall then all three of us poked our heads out to see Drey and his boys wobbling to their feet.

“What the!” Drey yelled. “What happened?” He clutched his forehead and rubbed his bright red knees and moaned.

“Dang, man, how did we get here?” The guy with the phone shook his head as if to clear it. “Did we smoke something?”

“Smoke!” the other one said, rubbing the sides of his nose. “We must have snorted some crazy thing.”

“And why are my knees killing me?” the other guy said.

“I’m gonna find whoever sold us whatever it was we took and kick his ass!” Drey said.

They staggered off in the opposite direction. Avis, Tarren, and I looked at each other and busted up.

“Oh my god!” I said. “What kind of spell was that?”

Tarren could barely catch her breath, she was giggling so much. She clutched her sides and said, “That’s not what I meant! I was trying to make him freeze. I thought he was sneaking out a knife. But my brain got all confused. Sneak? Freeze? Which was the right word? I couldn’t spit it out right. I got all jumbled and it came out freak sneeze and then instead of
no sneeze
, I yelled
snow knees
!”

Avis and I lost it again.

“I thought it was some kind of ancient faerie curse you were throwing at them,” I told her.

“The curse of the freak sneeze and snowy knees!” Tarren boomed in a deep, ominous voice then cracked up again. “Handed down for generations.”

“Dang, I thought their eyes were going to pop out of their heads,” Avis said. “I thought their noses were gonna fly off their faces and circle the moon. Those were some freaky sneezes all right.” Then he slung his arm around Tarren’s slim shoulders. “You’re something else, Tarren baby.” He kissed the top of her head. “But at least you saved us from that phone.” He looked at me. “What did you think he was going to do, Josie? Post a vid on YouTube of Johann getting his booty kicked? Call Big Ron to send some hookers over to beat us senseless with their tube tops?”

“Sorry.” I winced. “I thought it was a knife. I got a little carried away.”

“So did Johann,” Tarren said, and we all cracked up again. “Where do you think they’re off to?”

“Oh my god, I have to tell Helios this.” I pulled out my phone and started texting him about the piggyback ride and mixed-up hexes.

“Where is he anyway?” Tarren asked.

I shrugged. “Some family thing came up.” I caught a weird, worried look between Tarren and Avis. “What?” I asked, mid-text.

“Nothing,” Avis said. “His family can be…” he trailed off.

“Difficult,” Tarren finished.

“You think he’s okay?” I asked, my thumb hovering over the
SEND
button.

“Sure,” Avis said. “Our boy can take care of himself.” He paused and then added, “And if he can’t, we’ll just send Kayla in for him.” He snickered again. “That girl picked up Johann and slung him on her back like she was a mama gorilla running from a lion! And he’s all bouncing around yelling, ‘Nothing can separate us!’ like he was the one doing the rescuing.”

Tarren nodded her head and beamed. “Yeah, I told you my girl KK is all right.”

“Your girl?” I asked. “You didn’t even want to help her yesterday.”

Tarren shrugged. “That was before I knew her.”

“And now?” I asked.

She looked out over the grassy field where Kayla trotted off with Johann on her back. “Well, now, I guess, I sort of…”

I filled in the blank. “Want to help?”

She looked at me. “Not you, Josie,” she said. “I want to help
her
.”

o
n the way back to Tarren’s to find Johann and Kayla, we turned a corner and were across the street from HAG. Tarren grabbed Avis and me by the elbows and yanked us behind a big sycamore tree. “We need more information about that place,” she said.

“I tried Googling it…” I peeked around the tree at the nondescript cement block building.

“For spriggan’s sake,” Tarren said. “How many times do I have to tell you that the Internet is not a good source of information.”

“Are you out of your mind?!” I said. “Do you know how many websites are dedicated to stuff like this? My old boyfriend always went to this demon hunter site and—”

Avis cut me off. “The stuff you find online is not authentic, Josie. You can’t hunt a ghost with a phone app. You can’t build a demon-o-meter with a DustBuster and a satellite dish. Real paras keep as low a profile as
possible. You’re not going to find pix of the latest shape-shifter reunion at the Marriot posted on Facebook. We just don’t do it.”

“Well,” I said at a loss. “Then how do you propose we get more info then, the library?”

Tarren stared at me, waiting.

“I was joking about the library,” I muttered, but she kept on staring. “What?”

“You have to go in there, Josie,” she told me.

“Me? Why me? What am I going do?”

Tarren flittered around me like a sweaty bee. “You’re the only one who has access. Kayla can’t go back yet. She’d be in danger. You know that. And Avis can’t go waltzing in there. Helios has already been in. And Johann…?” She stopped and rolled her eyes.

“You do it, then,” I said. “Now that you’re Miss Helpy McHelpson. BFF with KK.”

Tarren sighed. She reached out and laid her small hand on my arm. “Josie,” she said sweetly. “Please don’t be jealous of my friendship with Kayla. She’s your friend, too. We all want to help, but obviously I have no legitimate reason to go inside. You, however, have the perfect excuse! And you’d be so good at it! You can ask questions, snoop a little, interview some of the other girls. Isn’t that what investigative reporting is all about?”

I leaned back against the rough bark of the tree and stared at her. “You’re reverse Josie-ing me.”

“I’m what?” she asked all innocent, but she wasn’t an idiot and neither was I.

“Giving me a dose of my own homeo-pathetic remedy,” I told her.

She dropped the fairy cheerleader act, crossed her arms, stuck one hip out, and leveled with me. “Okay, look, whatevs. You’re right. I’m trying to sweet-talk you, but only because it’s such a good idea, so why don’t you grow a pair and do it already?”

“What if Ms. Babineaux and Maron know I’m the one who sneaked Kayla out?” I whisper-whined.

Tarren rolled her eyes. “How would they know that? She was with Helios. They don’t know Helios. They don’t know that you know Helios. So you’re safe.”

“Okay, but what if there really is some kind of soul-sucking demon in there and I’m its lunch? Why can’t you send the paranormal police in there, or call up one of those Council members you’re always yammering about?”

“You know we can’t do that,” Tarren said as if that was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard. “And anyway if there’s something in there, it goes for vulnerable girls who’ve got no one watching out for them. They know you have a family to go home to and a court order to be there. If you go missing, people are going to ask questions. But those girls, Kayla and the others and whoever’s next…” She trailed off and shook her head. “Who’s looking out for them?”

I moaned. She had me. “Hoisted on my own petard,” I muttered.

“Who you calling a retard?” Avis asked.

“Never mind,” I said and I knew then that I was going to do it because she was right. I wouldn’t abandon those girls when they needed me. “Fine. But if I’m not back at your place in two hours, you have to call my cell and make sure I’m okay.”

“You got it,” Avis said.

“Really?” I asked. “Because I’m freaking out over here.”

He reached out and patted my shoulder. “We’ve got your back.”

I looked at Tarren. “Me, too,” she assured me. Then she thumped her fist against her chest and said, “Blood.”

“What are you doing here?” Maron snapped from behind the reception desk when I walked in through the front door.

Good question, what was I doing there? “I, um, can’t make my shift later this week,” I lied. “So I wanted to do a makeup now. Is that okay?”

She worked her tongue in her mouth like she had got something stuck between her teeth—flesh of girls, perhaps, but then she said, “Yeah, fine, what do I care?” That came as a relief. At least she didn’t clock me on the head with a tire iron and drag my body into a dungeon for some demon to consume my essence. At least not yet.

“What would you like me to do?” I asked.

“I’ve already got someone scrubbing the johns,” Maron said. “Why don’t you change the sheets?”

In the utility room, I looked around furtively. Washer. Dryer. Linens. Cleaning supplies. A mop. What was I looking for? It occurred to me that I had no idea. What did we think I’d find? A hidden door in the wall? Secret surveillance tapes? A dead body stuffed in the laundry shoot? Eeeeh. That gave me the shivers. I didn’t even want to find that. Plus I was inside a glorified cleaning closet so unless they were Lysoling the girls to death, I wasn’t going to find anything concrete to confirm my suspicions. Which meant Tarren was right; I was going to have to think like an investigative reporter.

On my way to the dorm room, I got a text from Helios and I’ll admit, my cheeks got warm and my heart sped up when I saw his name on my tiny screen. Ah, distraction! His text said,
I miss all the fun
.