Scary Cool (The Spellspinners) (22 page)

I didn’t move. “You keep telling me that I
should
be part of it,” I said. “So tell me what this is about.”

He looked disgusted. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

I pointed at Amber. “Start there,” I suggested. “What’s she doing here?”

“Visiting,” he said curtly.
I told you
spellspinners
are converging on
Cherry Glen.

I just looked at him. Didn’t say a word.
You said they were interested in me.
I think
Amber’
s interested in you.

Amber, of course, couldn’t hear our thoughts. She rose up off the couch, tossing her magazine on the table
, and made
a big display of stretching and yawning—flaunting her body while doing it. “You kids sort it out,” she said. “I need another cup of coffee.”
She slinked off
to the kitchen with her mug, hips swaying provocatively.

Lance sighed. “That’s Amber,” he said. “Always over the top.”

“I’d be over the top too,” I said, in a barely-audible voice, “if I
believed
I was having your baby someday, and you were spending time with some other girl.”

His green, green eyes glinted down at me
in sly amusement
. “I bet you would.”
I can’t believe you’re defending Amber.

“She has a point.”
I raised an eyebrow. “
Come to think of it, she may have more than one point. A
re you leading me on
, like she said
? Because it seems pretty clear that you’re messing with one of us. Is it me? Or Amber?”

Lance’s amusement vanished. “
None of the above
,” he said
curtly. “You take a lot for granted, f
or a girl who won’t even let me touch her.
Why should you care what’s between me and Amber? Come on, Zara. It’s bad enough to have Amber doing a jealous-girlfriend routine without you
piling on
. Let’s go. We’ll be late.”

He was heading for the door.
Amazement
rooted me to the spot.
“Wait a minute.” But Lance kept moving,
which forced
me to follow him.
I caught up
with him on the sidewalk,
as he was opening the passenger door of a sleek black car that looked like something out of a movie
—nobody drive
s a car
like this in real life. But I had other things on my mind. “I’m not getting in until you talk to me.”

He was tall enough—and the car was low-slung enough—that he was able to lean against the roof, graceful as a panther. His eyes narrowed as they bored into mine.
His tension pulsed
in the air, striking me in waves. “It is what it is, Zara,” he said softly. “You don’t understand yet
—and I can’t explain it
because you
still
think like a stick.”

I s
till didn’t know what he meant.

Or maybe I didn’t want to know what he meant.

I reached into his mind, trying to find thoughts or images that would clue me in, but what I saw th
ere did not banish my confusion.
I picked up the weight of the Council pressing on Lance…his need to do their bidding. But I did not understand it.

“It’s survival, Zara,” he said wearily. “That’s pretty basic. Survival. It’s the Council’s job to keep
spellspinners
alive. We’re all loners, you know that. Independent. But what enables us to stay that way is obedience to the Council.
”

And I saw, in a flash, that he still intended to make a baby with Amber—as soon as the Council told him to.

And in his mind, that had nothing to do with me.

I actually reeled back a step, as if he’d struck me.
“What?!”

Lance’s beautiful mouth twisted wryly. “I told you
you
wouldn’t understand.”

I was starting to shake. I hugged myself, trying to get a grip on all the thoughts flying through my brain. For a moment, I couldn’t speak. Then I found my voi
ce. “You said you were
choosing me. You told Amber you were choosing me.”

“I did choose you.”
His anger licked out like a snake’s tongue. “If you knew how far out on a limb I already am, protecting you—“

“Well, go a little farther.” I was furious now. “
If you have to buck the Council, do it.
What’s the big deal?
You don’t have to take orders from them. You already told me—“

“I told you too much
.
That stops now.
” His voice
lashed me
li
ke a whip. “
I know what you think of me.
I’m arrogant.
I’m a rule-breaker.
I can’t be trusted. Guess what, cupcake? You got it backwards.
You’re so full of yourself you won’t listen to anybody.
You’re
the one who
thinks
the rules don’t apply to you.
You. Not me.
You’re the one who can’t be trusted
.”

I stared at him in utter shock. Lance leaned in toward me, green eyes glittering. “Anything I tell you, you tell Megan O’Shaughnessy. Do you think I don’t know?
You trust that stick way more than you trust me. And as long as that’s true, Zara, you’re dangerous. And none of us will tell you squat. Not even me.”

“That is such a load of—”

“You have to be all in, Zara.
All
in. You’re not even halfway there.”

His gorgeous face was tense with fury, and now it was going all blurry on me. Then I realized my eyes were full of
angry
tears. How humiliating. I dashed them away with one
shaking
hand, gritting my teeth to try to get a grip. “You know that’s not true. I don’t tell Meg everything. Not anymore. I actually wish I could, but I can’t. And as for being halfway in—” I choked on the words, so I sent it to him.
Wholesoul
. You skunk.
I’m all in because I can’t be anything else.
I wish I had
wholesoul
with anybody but you.

His spine straightened. His mouth turned down in a sneer. “Well, you don’t,” he said. “We’re stuck with each other. So do you want to be friends or enemies? We can make each other miserable if that’s what you want. We’d be really, really good at that.”

“You’re already good at it.”

“Zara—“
He lifted one hand as if to reach for me. My step backward was instinctive. And probably told him more than my words ever could.

“No
,” I said
.
“
You can’t have
wholesou
l
with me and
wholebody
with somebody else
.
No freaking way.”

And I
skatched
, blindly, back to my field. Grabbed my bike. Dragged it through the weeds and onto Chapman Road. Hopped on, and rode straight through the shield. It didn’t hurt me because I was going out, not coming in—but I felt it, like a shimmer of invisible fire. Even a stick can ride a bicycle through fire, going fast enough—but you definitely feel it.

I was going to be late to school. I didn’t care. I needed the motion and the wind in my face and the feeling of flying
. I needed to calm down, and I needed to think.

My thoughts weren’t pretty.

I felt my face burning from sheer agitation—and the horrid feeling that I’d been a fool. The problem was, I wasn’t sure if I’d been stupid to trust Lance…or if I was being stupid now,
not
to trust him. After all, I haven’t exactly been a model of consistency myself. Half the time I think I’m in love with him. Half the time I hate him. It probably wasn’t fair—okay, no ‘probably’ about it, it
wasn’t
fair—for me to keep him at a distance and, at the same time, demand unswerving loyalty.

How could I refuse to let him touch me, but at the same time, feel that Lance is mine and mine alone?

“I’ll tell you why,” I told
my handlebars. But the rest I couldn’t say aloud. I just thought it.
Because I don’t touch him—but I’m his. And I know it.

I frowned. “Disgusting,” I muttered. But it was true.

And it made me really, really mad.

I was so caught up in my thoughts that I didn’t even register the fact that
Tres
was driving toward me in his beat-up truck. If he hadn’t pulled up and honked, I wouldn’t have acknowledged him at all. But he did. I tried to wave and keep going, but he leaned out the window at me.

“Hey, Zara. How you doing? What’s up?”

I skidded to a reluctant halt. “School,” I said. “I’m running late.”

He was already out of the truck and heading toward me. “Toss it in the back. I’ll take you.”

“You sure?”

“Sure I’m sure.”

“Well, thanks.” I wasn’t going to argue
.
Nonny
wouldn’t care if he showed up
late
to work
, if he was late because he took me to school.
So he lifted the Schwinn into the
truck while I climbed into the cab
. He made a U-turn and we started
bumping and rattling toward town.

As soon as he shifted into second he asked me, “What’s wrong?”

Ouch. “Am I that obvious?”

A slight smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Yeah. You look pissed.”

I sighed and slid down farther in the seat. “Not at you. Let it go.”

“Okay.”

This is what I like about
Tres
. No drama.

He’s also quite the artist. There was a rosary—I think—hanging from his rear-view mirror and I could tell it was his work. Wooden beads, intricately carved. A cross that matched, dangling at one end. I touched it and noticed that all the little beads had animals carved into them; rabbits and mice and
chimps
. And the Jesus on the crucifix
looked like a Rhesus monkey
. “Pretty,” I told him. “But
isn’t
that sacri
legious
?”

The little smile flashed again. “Made it for
a friend who’s into PETA. They’re all
laboratory animals.”

“Are you into causes and stuff? I never knew.”

“My friend is giving me a hundred bucks for it.”

My eyebrows lifted
. “Impressive.”

He shrugged, looking embarrassed. Pleased, you know, but shy. “I did another one w
ith farm animals. Made a hit
, I guess.”

“Wow.” I thought about it. “
What
did you put on the cross?”

“I wanted to put a pig. They have a hard life, you know. Pigs.
And they’re really smart.
But it didn’t feel right.”

A pig as Jesus. No, I could see where a Catholic might have a problem with that.
“What
’d you end up with?”

“A lamb. That went over better. They call Jesus the Lamb of God.”

I nodded, thinking about the monkey. Decided not to ask.

We were almost to the school. There was a big banner pulled across the street: HOMECOMING
THIS SATURDAY
.
Tres
glanced up at it. “You going to homecoming?”

I
immediately thought of Lance and
felt my jaw tighten. I looked away. “No,” I said shortly.

W
e sl
owed to a crawl as h
e pulled into the parking lot in front of the school, but the truck still
threw us from side to side
as we entered the driveway, bump, bump. He wasn’t looking at me, he was looking at the pavement. But he said, “Do you want to?”

I wasn’t sure I heard him right. I looked at him in surprise. The tips of
Tres’s
ears were turning red.

“Do I want to what? Go to homecoming?”

“Yeah. The dance.” He shot a quick glance at me, then looked away again. Pulled the truck to a stop. Put it in park. Yanked on the parking brake. Looked at me again. “You could go with me. If you want.”

Lance
expected me to go to homecoming with him
—but
I hadn’t
really
given him an answer. And now, I realized bleakly, that idea was
history
.

I thought about Amber, and how she expected to claim Lance the instant one of the Council
kicked the bucket
. I thought about Cheryl
Sivic
, and how she expected to be homecoming queen. I thought about Meg and Alvin. And then I thought about sitting home on Saturday night while everybody else went to the homecoming dance.