Demon in Town (Book 2)

Chapter 2

“There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.”- Charles Dickens

Chapter 2

-Karen-

“Please be polite to him, Beth.” I groaned. Beth was staring at Xavier like he was fresh meat.

“I’m being extra polite to him.” Then she whispered in my ear. “I bet he has eight-pack underneath his T-shirt.”

I groaned again. Beth was one of the most intelligent girls when it came to boys. She never ran after a handsome boy, never went on a date without double-checking the boy’s background and she never let the boyfriend troubles get into her studies. Here she was checking out the new kid with her drooling mouth which I had to shut with my hand from time to time.

“Umm…can we go on a date?” She asked him and my mouth dropped to the floor.

 Xavier gave her a sweet smile and raised his eyebrows. No one could raise one eyebrow as perfectly as Victor could.

Stop thinking about him, Karen. I scolded myself.

“Let’s know each other very well first.” He said. “Then maybe we can go on a successful date. Let’s be slow.”

“I hate slow.” Beth made a face that I would call a dangerously-sick-sexy face.

“Guys, I have to meet Jon before he forgets that he has a chemistry pop quiz today,” I said standing up from my chair.

“If he gets away from Maya White’s face, I think he can remember it himself.” Beth exhaled and then turned to Xavier. “Karen is crazy for her best friend.”

“That’s…nice.” Xavier hissed the word. “Does he love you back?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged.

That was the constant answer I could give whenever someone asked me about Jon’s feelings towards me. The whole school seemed to know this but Jon. I don’t know whether he was pretending not to know or he didn’t care. The Jon I knew always cared for me. He could never do this torturous thing to me.

“Better ask him, before it’s too late,” Xavier mumbled.

I looked at him. His brown eyes were distant and secretive. He talked mysteriously. I had to be careful of this new guy. We never knew if it was a tiger in the clothing of a sheep. Okay, I sound weird but I could trust nobody after coming back from the other dimension.

“I’ve to go,” I said hurrying towards the gym. It was usually the place where Jon hung out.

I saw him lifting some weights with his gym buddies. He was such a show-off when it came to lifting weights. He bragged this to all his friends and rivals. 

I grinned. I realised that I could also lift the impossible weights now that I was a witch. Maybe I could lift them with my powers without touching them. Jon would be so surprised. And scared. Period.

“How are you doin’, my girl?” He asked when I reached near.

Whenever he said my girl I could feel the heat rushing to my cheeks. I hoped that I wasn’t blushing.

“You have a pop quiz,” I said. “If you care,” I added.

“Maya and I are going to the birthday party of her friend.” He said instead. “You wanna come?”

When we were little we used to go everywhere together. To all the parties those friends threw, to swimming classes and mall, etc. Now childhood all gone, I couldn’t accompany him. Although I knew he was desperate to take me with him, I didn’t want to watch him with Maya. It burned my blood. Literally.

“I can’t,” I said. “I have got this assignment to complete.”

“You can never change, princess.” He smirked.

“That one freaking decision to go to Escoffier mansion has changed my life, Jon.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “How can you even forget it?”

“I haven’t, Karen and I never will. I know how worried I was when you weren’t coming back.” The humor drained from his face. “The time when you called me from Paris, I was crying and praying to every god that I know to bring you back to me.”

“I’m still not coming,” I said.

“You know, we go together everywhere.” He pleaded. “It’s like a tradition.”

“You don’t take me to your dates, Jon.” I could feel the control slipping. “Don’t play the guilt card on me.”

“What’s wrong with you?” He asked trying to hold my hand. I shoved my hands into the jacket. “I thought you would have fun after so many days of suffering in that hell. I wanted to take you to that party for no other reason.”

“Why don’t you understand, Jon?” I screamed.

I felt the gym becoming silent and eyes turning to look at us.

“Karen, calm down.” Jon caught my arm and we walked out of the gym as fast as we could. We hated to make a scene. “Tell me what’s going on. You can’t hide anything from me. I’m your best friend, Karen.”

“I hate it when I see you with Maya White,” I said slowly.

“Okay, do you want me to stop dating her?” He asked quickly.

“No, it’s not like that.” I stammered. “You have every reason to do anything with your life and I can’t stop you from doing it.”

“You’re really worrying me,” He raked a hand through his hair nervously. “You never talk like this. This has to be something serious.”

“Jon, I,” Tell him. “I love you.”

“I love you too, princess.” He smiled.

Before I could say anything else the alarms in the school rang and we heard the principal shouted through the intercom. I looked at Jon. His eyebrows were furrowed. We heard some kids shouting but I couldn’t make the words out.

“EVERYBODY PLEASE CALM DOWN. THE COPS WILL BE ARRIVING IN SOME MINUTES.” The speaker said through the intercom. “I REQUEST YOU TO MAINTAIN THE SILENCE.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Jon shook his head.

 Many kids passed us. Most of them were going out of the school building. I knew it wasn’t fire. If there was a fire, the intercom would have told us to run outside, not to maintain silence while we were inside the building.

I saw Beth and Xavier running towards us with their backpacks. Beth was terrified while Xavier was saying something to her. It was impossible to hear them in so much noise.

“What happened?” I asked Beth as soon as they reached us.

“Karen,” Beth was breathless. “A kid has been found dead on the school grounds.”

The sirens of the police cars deafened us. There were nearly ten cars at the death sight. Kids were crowding the scene. Beth, Jon, Xavier, and I were trying to peep through the crowd to see the dead body but all in vain. Nobody was budging from where they were standing.

“CLEAR OUT,” A cop said in the loudspeaker.

With the help of cops, the teachers made all of the kids get back into the school building. What the hell was going on? Who had died?

“Jake Winters is dead.” Our biology teacher said in the class. The class gasped.

Adam Winters was a junior. He was a very sport-loving kid. I felt Jon flinch beside me. Jon knew him so well. He was on the basketball team with Jon. I had met him once or twice and he was a nice guy. I still couldn’t believe what Mr. Whitmore said. He couldn’t have just died.

“How did he die?” Jon asked.

“The cops are investigating.” Mr. Whitmore murmured.

“It’s a murder.” A kid shouted from the back of the classroom. “We saw blood covering his T-shirt.”

“I’ve clicked a pic, Jon.” It was Maya White. “If you want to see it, here it is.”

She passed her phone to him and as Jon looked at the photo his eyes went wide.

‘Murder’ was all he mumbled.

I snatched the phone away from him and took a look at it. I almost lost my breakfast. Adam was lying on the ground with his eyes wide opened. His clothes were drained in red blood and the ground near him was covered with blood. His mouth was opened like he was about to scream for help. I returned the phone to Maya after Beth saw the picture.

“This is gruesome,” Beth said to me. “He was murdered in cold blood. You saw how the blood was flowing through his throat.”

“I can’t believe Adam is dead,” Jon whispered. I rubbed his shoulder.

Just then a cop entered the room with the principal.

“Did you find anything?” Mr. Whitmore jumped up from his chair.

“Some kind of animal killed him.” The cop answered. “There were bite marks on the neck and hands from where the blood rushed out.”

How could some animals get into the school grounds? This was a pure lie. Bite marks only pointed in one way to me.  Vampire. Was Adam killed by a vampire? Why would a vampire kill Adam? Were the vampires roaming loose from the other dimension without permission of Nate? Did he know what was going on here?

My head hurt with questions. I couldn’t talk to Jon about this right now. He was in shock and I needed to take care of him. There was no way I could tell him my theories about the murderer.

“Aren’t there any signs of struggling?” Mr. Whitmore asked.

“This is a case of an animal attack. Yes, the kid had tried to fight the creature but had failed as you can see.” The cop said. How could he be so cool about this? “The victim’s body was dropped here after being killed.”

“You mean he was killed somewhere else?” Xavier spoke.

“Yes, probably.” The cop replied. “If he had been killed here, anyone must have seen the animal. We think he was dragged into the wolf woods then his body was brought back here.”

The cops really thought an animal could do so much of planning to kill a person. Even if the wolf woods were near the school, they were wrong. I was sure this was done by a vampire. I was going to figure this out by myself. I had to ask Jon to be with me when I tried to find out the murderer of Adam.

“You think it is Victor or Nate who killed Adam,” Jon stated deadpanned.

“There are other vampires in the world where we live, Jon,” I said walking fast with him. “Nate just happens to be their prince.”

“How does this explain the murder of Adam?”

“He must be killed by any vampire.” I shrugged. “We don’t know if it was Victor.”

“You know you’re defending Nate.” Jon stopped walking.

“Jon, if you’re jealous. I get it.” I frowned. It suddenly felt so nice. “But Nate is…”

“Wait,” He said. “You think I’m jealous of him?”

“You act like a jerk when I take his name.”

“Why would I be jealous?” He asked confused. “I know no one becomes your best friend in just some freaking dimensional months.”

“Best friend?” I felt disheartened. “I thought you said that you love me back there.”

I knew I was terrible for a best friend right now. Jon was still dealing with the death of one of his friends and here I was making him sadder.

“Of course I do love you, Karen.” He said smiling slightly but then his eyebrow twitched together. He moved his jaw and ran a hand through his hair. “I love you as my best friend. Tell me you aren’t taking this in a wrong way.”

My heart skipped a beat. He didn’t mean it in the way I wanted him to. I was expecting him to like me as I had always liked him. It was as if I loved a person who would never know what I felt for him. Or was he just ignoring the fact?

“No, I am not.” I smiled. “You’re my best friend forever.”

“That’s cool because you know when that kind of love comes in-between best friendship, it starts ruining everything. It eats up the whole cute relationship and begins the relation of hatred and frustration after a short while.” He explained but I was only looking at him. “You’re like a sister I never had.”

Kill me now.

“Okay,” I smiled again. I had to fight down the tears of embarrassment to get a straight face.

I didn’t say anything to him on our way home. I couldn’t. Beth was right. It was a sick crush. I should have taken the hint when he started dating so many girls even when he had me as his best friend. He never said that he liked me but I was the one who was pining after him. Now I felt gross because he had called me the sister he never had.

“Mom I’m home,” I said to my mom.

My mom was very calm a person. She had the same hair I had and the same brown eyes. My height went after my dad but other features were certainly what mom gave to me as heredity. Being a witch was from my mom’s side too. Maybe.

“I heard what happen today at your school.” Mom said. “Did you see the kid?”

“I saw the picture of his dead body. It was gruesome.” The flashes of the picture came before my eyes. “Do you really think there are wolves in the wolf woods?”

“Aren’t the woods named after wolves?” Mom wiggled her eyebrow.

“Then why is the mansion named Escoffier mansion when the real people lived there were actually Devries?” I asked.

“How do you know that?” Mom suddenly became serious.

“Umm…read somewhere in a book in the…library.” I made that up.

“You read a lot.” Mom said simply. “You should have some fun in your life. For example, on your birthday you just stayed home reading a novel. Who does that?”

“Me,” I rolled my eyes. Jon and mom had the same brain waves. “I’ll just go to my room and do the homework that I got today.”

“Fine by me,” Mom sighed. “Shoo.”

When I went into my room it was pitch dark inside. The windows were closed and the lights were off. Darkness didn’t really scare me much but this was kinda spooky. Brushing off the weird feeling, I walked in to switch on the lights.

I felt the presence of somebody behind me.