“Hey, Nick.”
It took him a second to realize it was Caleb … Fingerman, not Malphas, who was walking up to him in the hallway.
“Hi, Caleb.”
“Feeling any better?”
He scowled at Caleb’s question. “Pardon?”
“I called to check on you, but your dad said you didn’t feel well. That you went to bed as soon as you got home, without saying a word to anyone.”
Yes, he had. After stumbling through the mansion and finding his room, he’d been hoping it was all a bad dream and that he’d wake up at home.
Bust on that thought.
“Yeah. I think it was just a bug.” Nick headed for his locker. As he tried to open it, the larger and snottier Madaug grabbed him and snatched him back.
“What are you doing, buttmunch? You trying to put a love letter in my locker or something?”
Nick shrugged his hold off. “I was going to my locker.”
Madaug shoved him across the hall. “Yours is over there, doof. How many paint chips did you eat for breakfast?”
Scowling, Nick met Caleb’s concerned gaze.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Nick returned his backpack to his shoulder. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Always.”
“I think I have amnesia.”
Caleb’s eyes widened. “From what?”
“Being slammed into lockers by dung-sniffing Neanderthals.” Nick passed an evil glare at Madaug as he walked past them. “I can’t seem to remember anything. Like, where’s my first class?”
“Did you tell your parents?”
Nick shook his head. “You know how my mom is. I don’t want to go to the Mayo Clinic for a hangnail. I feel fine. I just can’t remember anything.”
“That’s not fine, Nick. That’s a big problem.”
Yes, it was. But not for the reasons Caleb was thinking. “Please don’t tell anyone, Caleb.”
“All right. I’ll help, but if it doesn’t get better, you really need to have it checked out.”
“I will.”
Caleb showed him to his locker and then opened it after Nick couldn’t. “The combo is your dad’s jersey number, your mom’s birth year, and the year your dad’s team won the Super Bowl.”
He arched a brow at Caleb’s dissertation. “How do you know that?”
Caleb shrugged. “We’ve been best friends since birth. There’s nothing about you I don’t know.”
Yeah, right. He didn’t know that Nick didn’t belong here, and that in another life Caleb was a badass demigod demonspawn, and Nick was his half-breed demonkyn charge who was wanted by most anything not human-born.
Don’t think about it.…
Grabbing his chem book, Nick stood up, shut his locker, then clicked his heels together three times.
Caleb gave him a strange look. “What are you doing?”
Nick sighed heavily. “Seeing if what worked for Dorothy and witches worked for demonspawn, too.”
He scowled. “Dorothy? Demonspawn? What in the name of sanity are you talking about?”
“Nothing.” Nick scanned the hall as he tucked his book into his backpack. “So where’s Kody?”
“Kody who?”
“Kennedy. My girlfriend … sort of.” At least she was whenever she wasn’t trying to kill or confuse him.
“Did you forget that, too? Casey’s your girlfriend.”
So it’d seemed at the prom, but given Casey’s bipolar affaires de couer, Nick wasn’t eager to renew their “friendship.” Honestly, he wanted to stay away from her for a while.
Just to be safe.
“Yeah, but where’s Kody?”
Caleb continued to stare at him as if he’d grown another head. “Where does she go to school?”
Was he serious? “Here. With us.”
He shook his head. “We don’t have a Kody in this school, Nick.”
That sick, awful feeling returned to his stomach. No Kody? How was that possible? If she existed in his realm, wouldn’t she have to be here, too?
And if she was gone from here was that a good thing, or a really bad one?
“Hey, guys! Guess what I did?”
Nick cringed at the new incarnation of Acheron as he joined them. He still couldn’t get used to or accept this person as his friend. His Ash was not normal in any sense of the word. He was the Goth king, Acheron, towering over Nick and the rest of the world with his massive seven feet of augmented height. An eleven-thousand-year-old warrior, Acheron was the epitome of lethal, in-your-face badass.
And with that thought, Nick felt that familiar weird fissure of preternatural power emanating in the air between them.
It was definitely Acheron’s essence.
But as soon as he felt it, it was gone and he was back in this “normal” realm.
“Nick?” Ash put his hand on his shoulder to steady him. “You all right?”
No. His head swam viciously, and for a moment, he thought he might collapse. Everything around him was wobbling, like he was watching the world through water. Pain radiated through his entire being and settled hard in the pit of his stomach. He looked down at his hand that no longer appeared human at all. His skin bubbled then turned translucent.
Terrified of someone else seeing it, he clenched his fist tight and hid it under his shirttail. Great. All I need is to turn into a human jellyfish right in front of everyone.
That would not be a fun explanation to have to make. He’d rather back over his mom’s favorite houseplant.
And still that wobbling persisted. Something was seriously wrong with him, and he needed to find real help. Someone who could tell him what was going on and which reality was his.…
This world? Or the one he thought he knew?
What if everything in my life until now has been a dream? Or worse. What if it wasn’t?
Licking his lips, Nick met Ash’s befuddled stare. “I, um … feel sick. I … I need to head out. See that doctor you told me about.” He handed his backpack to Caleb then started for the door.
“You can’t leave campus!” Caleb hissed.
Nick snorted at Caleb’s panic. “Stop me.” He opened the door and went straight for the street. Yeah, he might get into trouble later, but right now he didn’t care. Forget this normal crap. He had to have answers.
From someone.
Sprinting over to Royal, he went to Bubba’s store, the Triple B. But instead of the computer and gun store Bubba owned, it was now a beauty salon.…
Everything in it was pink and white. Girly. Bubba would die to see this. His precious sanctum had been defiled by rollers and hand lotions. Hairpieces.
Celebrity gossip rags, instead of zombie survival classes.
There was no sign of the store where Nick had spent the last few years learning about computers, lunatic conspiracy theories, and pending government-sanctioned zombie attacks. How to protect himself from the undead, undesirables, and unknown. Strange, but he really missed that Bubba and Mark. Heck, he even missed the stench of Mark’s duck-urine zombie-deterrent deodorant.
Grief-stricken and disoriented, Nick headed down the street to where Liza’s doll store had been in business since long before his birth. Just like Bubba’s, it was gone. Instead of glass shelves filled with handmade porcelain and vinyl dolls—some that doubled as stabbing weapons—it was another ubiquitous antique store.
This isn’t right. He wanted to cry at the absence of the people he knew and cared about. Crazy and eccentric though they were, they were his family. He couldn’t stand the thought of not seeing them again.
What had happened to Ms. Liza?
His senses reeling, Nick made his way to Canal to grab a streetcar so that he could head over to Kyrian’s house in the Garden District. Bubba had said Nick had a job.
Maybe, just maybe, he still worked for Kyrian. Maybe this part of his life hadn’t changed. Please give me something to hold on to. Desperately, he clung to that hope. Something had to make sense. Something had to be the same.