We walked over to the long, brown table with the fake plastic on top that some bonehead made to look like wood.
John put his tray down and took a chance, sitting next to Tiff, her glaring hoodie, an intense neon purple, blinding the group.
"So, when are we checking out the dome world?" she asked casually and John spit out a little milk.
"What?" she asked innocently, slurping her milk through the straw, not a stick of gum in sight. Even Tiff had to eat sometime.
"Haven't you learned anything?" Sophie asked. "I mean... Graysheet-much," she said in a whisper.
Tiff glared at her. "I could be talking about anything, Sophie," she said like duh.
Jade put up a hand, the nail tips little spots of shimmering pink on the ends of her elegantly small hands. "Let's not fight about it. I'm up for the adventure if we have some safeties in place."
I parked my chin in my hand, my elbow braced against the side of my lunch tray. I couldn't wait to hear what Jade thought would be safe. Girls thought of so much safety shit that the whole thing wasn't fun in the end.
Jade arched a perfect black brow at me. "What? You don't think we need some contingency here?"
"Sure," I drawled out, distracted by her pinkness, then continued, "but it's not much of an adventure if there's so much safety we can't appreciate the random aspects."
Tiff snorted. "He's got a point!" she said and Jonesy nodded, saying, "Uh-huh, that's what I'm talking about."
Jade sighed and I put a hand on her swinging leg underneath the lunch table, she gasped a little at the contact. Even through her clothes now, she could feel me, the timbre of my emotional signature.
A fine pink washed her cheeks with color, the others checking out her reaction.
"Now that's interesting," Alex said, his perv-radar coming on line just as Randi walked up.
"Hey," she said and Alex swung his attention to her, smiling. She studied him for a second then looked at Jade and I.
"What?" she asked and Alex said, "Come here!" He grabbed her and she squealed as he plopped her down on his lap.
She thwacked him with her pulse reader, it bounced off harmlessly and he laughed. "You're going to have to do more than that... minx!"
Archer smiled through his sparkling water (I was pretty sure it set him back twenty bucks a bottle) and said, "Nice vocab..."
"Yeah, muscle head, you're just impressing the hell out of me," Jonesy said, his lunch devoured, his mood sour.
"What's your problem, Jonesy?" Sophie asked, then she brightened, an expression like an epiphany crossed her face and she snapped her fingers. "I got it! There hasn't been a natural," she looked at me for a pensive moment, "or unnatural event in what, a couple of weeks?"
I frowned. Unnatural? Huh.
Jonesy scowled and Terran laughed. "She has you there, Jones. We all know how grumpy you get when you don't have Sufficient Chaos."
"Yeah! And we have a perfect scenario for ourselves and you can't think of a plan to get on it?" he asked.
Mia walked up with her tray full of salad.
Disgusting.
She plopped down and said, "I think we want the adventure, Jonesy. We just don't want the maybe-we'll-die potential."
All eyes turned to me.
"Okay," I put up my hands. "The best I can do is hope for the dead to be around. But right now, I don't want anything to go wrong."
"Probation," John said in a flat voice.
"Yeah, they'll throw your ass in the slammer and chuck out the pulse pad, pal."
"So sensitive, Jones," Tiff guffawed.
Jonesy scowled and Jade frowned at him. "It's the truth. I'm not sugar coatin' the turd, princess. If he blows it, raises more dead, uses the dead," Jonesy looked at me and I shrugged my agreement, "it's," he made the guillotine gesture with his hands, my imagined head rolling, "no more Caleb."
"Much easier for the Graysheets as well," John added.
To get at me.
The group got silent.
Well, my group.
None of us had seen the group that had heard that last, important part. Later, I would know they'd heard more than I'd known.
*
A big, sneakered foot made a landing on the opposite side of Jade, a quarter meter of extra bench seating at the end of the cafeteria table, his foot balanced on it. She gave a little squeal of surprise and my hand unconsciously clenched her small thigh in response even as I rose.
The foot belonged to Howie, and behind him stood Brett.
That was enough to get my full attention. The Js stood as well and the noise of the cafeteria dropped by a whole level. The kids were like sharks, scenting the possible violence as it escalated.
Jade gave wide green eyes to Howie. He leaned forward until he was almost in her face and I felt my hands ball into fists, my heart racing. I could hear the Reactive Management instructor blaring inside my head:
Inner calm.
Uh-huh.
Howie's glacial eyes, so light a blue they were almost white, flicked to mine and he gave a satisfied smile.
The shithead knew I was on a short leash.
"Mom says you ride home with me from now on."
"Why?" Jade asked in a low whisper, her discomfort hitting me like a breeze before the storm.
"Ah... no. I've got this. She doesn't need a ride from you, Frazier," I said logically, still maintaining control.
He straightened. "You're not a part of this. We have control of Jade until she's of age." He gazed down on her, hiding nothing in his expression. I had never been so glad as I was now for that mondo pulse-lock I'd given her.
I didn't like what I saw in those eyes of his.
"Don't we?" he asked with soft menace and reached out to stroke a finger along her jawline.
Jade flinched away from the contact, made worse by what she was. Empath.
I didn't have to be an Empath to know she didn't want him touching her.
I was moving before I knew it and then Brett was there, his hand latched on to Howie's wrist like a manacle."Knock your shit off, Howie. You're scaring her," Brett said, his almost-black eyes held threat. Violence.
I knew he was good for it too.
"Why don't you fuck right off, Mason?" Howie queried casually.
Brett was standing there one minute and in the next, his fist was buried in Howie's mouth.
Not bad for a mundane, I thought with satisfaction.
"Stop him!" Jade screamed.
"Yeah... stop him," Jonesy said in a droll voice, not moving a muscle.
All us guys stood there and let Brett whale on Howie. But then the tide shifted and Diego and Carson came. Jade stood, looking like she'd interfere with Brett's excellent attitude adjustment delivery, and I scooped her in against my body. "No," I whispered against her ear as I wrapped my arms around her.
Jade had zero self-preservation instinct. It kinda terrified me.
"Hey! Brett, dipshit... you're gonna get a vacation!" Carson started to pull Brett off and Howie took a cheap shot at his jaw, glancing him pretty good. Brett's head snapped back and Howie jumped to his feet, his fists curled into hammers of punishment.
"Why do you give a rat's ass about her?" he asked, spitting a loogie filled with blood on the quartz floor, as teachers came into the cafeteria, trying to move kids aside, breaching the circle of teens that had gathered around us.
Brett moved his jaw from side to side, glaring at Howie. "I don't know, but I can feel her fear... right here." Brett put his fist above his heart. "And I'm not gonna have your dumb ass terrorizing her. She's had enough of that bullshit."
Howie glared at Brett for a second longer then turned his attention to Jade. "They won't always be around, your boy heroes." His icy eyes turned to mine. "Your dead shit's on hold or you're in the slammer, Hart." He shifted his gaze to Brett. "And I know what happens in your house. You got those hands of yours full. You can't be her savior full time." He nodded, a smug smile overtaking his face, making it ugly. "Yeah, I know about the 'death connection'," his small smile becoming a grin. "Hell, I bet you guys are tag-teaming her, she's a nice piece of tail, I'll admit... I'm gonna try for her myself."
*
It was Alex that dragged me off of him. I lost time. When those shitty words exploded inside my eardrums something shifted inside my body and I was lost to it.
My rage.
Inner calm be damned.
When I looked up and my vision cleared from a crimson wash of pulsing anger to something resembling normal, the Js were sweating, their chests heaving, Alex's arms were around mine, bolting them to my sides.
When my eyes swept my surroundings, I found Howie, covering his nose with both hands, blood pouring out of it, red marks on mostly all the skin I could see.
A promise stood in those frozen eyes.
Retribution.
*
Chen sighed, her spiked black heel swinging back and forth, back and forth. "I would love to give you some leeway, Mr. Hart. But you have proven, without a shadow of doubt, that your reaction to confrontational situations is one of two things." She held up a perfectly manicured hand and ticked off the points, "One," she touched her left pointer finger to the right index finger, "violence. Your personal favorite, I believe." Her eyebrows jacked down in a straight, black line of frustration over her eyes, so deep a brown they were almost black. "Two, you call for backup and it is the type that we cannot abide here in Kent Paranormal High. That I will not abide."
"I understand, Miss Chen..." I began.
"Ms."
God, whatever!
"Ms. Chen," I said through gritted teeth. "Did ya hear what he said about Jade?" I asked in a low voice, fueled by emotion. Anger pumping through the tone of my voice. Her eyes flicked to mine and she shifted her weight nervously.
Finally, after a few heartbeats of silence she answered, "Yes. I heard your rendition of it."
I opened my mouth to protest but she held up her hand, her gaze locking with mine. "Howard Frazier has an exemplary record here at KPH."
The implication was that I did not. Yeah... gotcha.
I was really hating Randi's mom right about now.
Another AP guy. Wonderful. I didn't like that ability much. Just call me anxious on that one. No small memory loss on the old judo instructor that tried to rape and kill Jade, Sophie too. Yeah, APs, not my fave.
I know it was probably not a rational fear. But I wasn't really known for being rational. Then there were those little flashes of Precog/Intuitive I would have from time to time. I was always sorry when I didn't trust those.
I had started listening all the time now.
My alarm bells were going off and like Pavlov's dogs, I was salivating at the potential threat that was closing in around the group.
Howie Frazier.
I should have been feeling pretty good, Jade's birthday was less than a month away, on the cusp of her freedom from the grip of the Frazier Fam.
I wasn't. I was feeling like there was a bubble of impeding doom, hanging around, ready to burst, like one of Tiff's crazy-ass gum bombs; dying to pop, the mess in our faces.
"If you don't believe me, ask Randi. She'll tell ya what he said, how he started things..." I said, beginning to stand, my palms spread away from my body.
She stood also, saying, "Merranda is compromised now. You know that, Mr. Hart... Caleb. She wouldn't go against someone in her group, she'd cover for them..." She gave a frustrated sigh. "She is with that Body boy..."
"Alex," I supplied, feeling kinda pissed.
We stood there semi-glaring at each other for a frozen moment then she blew me away. But, I should've known it was coming.
She nodded. "You're facing expulsion, Caleb."
I could feel the heat in my body again. Every dead thing within a three mile radius hiccuped in response to my anger, their energy swelling over the surface of where they lay and I sucked in a calming breath. I used the techniques taught to me in that lame-ass class.
They mostly worked.
Sort of.
Chen gave me a sharp look. "Are you okay? Do you need...?"
I shook my head. Nah, she didn't need to Null-out all over my ass.
"I'm okay."
She gave a curt nod. "Good." Her eyes met mine again. "You're excused."
"How long?" I asked.
"That depends on you, Mr. Hart."
I gave a frustrated exhale. "Jade is unprotected without me, Miss Chen."
She stared at me.
I stared back.
Finally, she responded, "Why don't you let us handle security for Miss LeClerc."