Something about the weapon-maybe the fact that it was so weird, so old-fashi oned-made it scarier than a knife. Thea pictured the way even a safety razor could slice flesh.
Mr. Adkins was backing away, arms held out as if to protect the students be hind him. His eyes were frightened.
I have to stop this, Thea thought. The problem was that she had no idea how.
If it had been an animal, she could have stepped out and tried mind control . But she couldn"t control a person.
She started walking anyway, slowly, so as not to attract attention. She skir ted the edge of the crowd around the dance floor until she drew parallel wit h the masked guy.
Who by now had switched to a new question. "Have you seen her?" he said. He kept asking it as he walked, and people kept backing away. Vivienne and Selene drew to either side with their dates. The razor glittered.
Thea looked toward the opposite end of the dance floor, where Blaise was standing with Kevin Imamura.
With no Buck, no Duane to protect her. But Blaise didn"t look frightened.
That was one thing about Blaise-she had magnificent physical courage. Sh e was standing with one hand on her hip and Thea could tell that she knew exactly who was coming her way.
In between moving couples, Thea glimpsed something else. Eric was on the o ther side of the dance floor, holding two cups of punch in one hand and on e in the other. He was keeping pace with the masked guy, just as she was.
She tried to catch his eye, but the crowd was too thick.
"Have you seen her?" the masked guy asked a couple right in front of Blaise . "I want to knoooow. ..."
The couple split like bowling pins. Blaise stood exposed, tall and elegant in her black suit, lights shimmering off her midnight hair.
"Here I am, Randy," she said. "What is it you want to know?"
Randy Marik stopped, panting. His breath made a m.u.f.fled noise against the pl astic. The rest of the huge room was eerily silent.
Thea moved closer, walking silently. Eric was pulling in from the other side , and he saw her for the first time. He shook his head at her and mouthed, "
Stay away."
Yeah. And you"re going to tackle him armed with three party cups of punc h. She gave him a look and mouthed, "You stay away."
Randy"s hand was trembling, making the razor flash. His chest was heaving.
"What /$ it, Randy?" Blaise said. The toe of one high heeled shoe tapped the floor impatiently.
"I feel bad," Randy said. It was almost a moan. Suddenly his head didn"t see m well connected to his neck. "I miss you."
His voice made Thea"s flesh creep. He sounded like a person with the body o f an eighteen-year-old and the mind of a four-year-old.
"I cry all the time," he said.
With his left hand, he pulled off the Halloween mask. Kevin recoiled. Thea h erself felt a wave of horror.
He was crying blood. b.l.o.o.d.y streams ran down from each of his eyes, mingli ng with regular tears.
A spell? Thea wondered. Then she thought, no; he"s cut himself.
That was it. He"d made two crescent-shaped incisions under his eyes and t he blood was coming from them.
The rest of his face was ghastly, too. He was white as a corpse and there wa s fuzzy stubble on his chin. His eyes stared wildly. And his hair, which had always been strawberry blond and silky, stood up all over his head like ble ached hay.
"You came all the way from New Hampshire to tell me that?" Blaise said. Sh e rolled her eyes.
Randy let out a sobbing breath.
This seemed to make Kevin braver. "Look, man, I don"t know who you are-b ut you"d better keep away from her," he said. "Why don"t you go home and sober up?"
It was a mistake. The wild eyes above the bloodstained cheeks focused on h im.
"Who are you?" Randy said thickly, advancing a step. "Who . . . are . . . you ?".
"Kevin, move!" Thea said urgently.
It was too late. The hand with the razor flashed out, lightning quick. Blood spurted from Kevin"s face.
CHAPTER 6.
Kevin howled, clapping a hand to his cheek. "He cut me! This guy cut me!"
Blood ran between his fingers.
Randy lifted the razor again.
Thea reached out with her mind. Not reached. She leaped. It was completely i nstinctive; she was scared to death, and all she could think of was that he was going to kill Kevin, and maybe Blaise, too.
She caught-something. Pain and grief and fury that seemed to be bouncing ar ound like a baboon in a cage. She could hold it for only an instant, but in that instant Eric threw two cups of punch in Randy"s face. Randy yelled an d turned away from Kevin, toward Eric.
Thea felt a surge of pure terror. Randy slashed with the razor, but Eric wa s fast; he jumped back out of the way, circling to get behind Randy. Randy wheeled and slashed again. They were doing a macabre dance, going round and round.
Thea felt as if the fear was winding tighter inside her with each turn. But Eric kept out of the way of the flashing razor until a rush of movement on the dance floor caught her eye. It was Mr. Adkins and two other teachers.
They converged on Randy and there was a lot of confusion. When it was over, Randy was on the ground.
Sirens wailed outside, coming closer. Eric stepped away from the pile on the floor.
Breathing hard, he looked at Thea. She nodded that she was all right, then sh ut her eyes.
She felt limp and wrung out and awful. They were going to take Randy away now, and she didn"t think there was much help for him. He definitely seemed too far gone.
At that moment she was ashamed of being a witch.
"All right, people," Mr. Adkins was saying. "Let"s move out of here. Let"s get this place cleared." He looked at Blaise, who was bending over a seated Kevin, holding a napkin to his cheek. "You two can stay." Then he put a ha nd on Blaise"s shoulder. "Are you okay here?"
Blaise looked up with wide, tragic gray eyes. "I think so," she said bravely.
Mr. Adkins swallowed. His hand on Blaise"s shoulder squeezed. Thea heard him mutter something like, "Poor kid."
Oh, give me a break, Thea thought. But a small, selfish part of her was relie ved. Blaise wasn"t going to get in trouble over this one; neither of them was going to get expelled. Grandma wasn"t going to be disgraced in front of the Inner Circle.
And Blaise did seem worried about Kevin. She was bending over him again so licitously. As if she really cared.
Thea slipped past a teacher"s outstretched arm. "Are you okay?" she whisper ed to Blaise.
Blaise looked up enigmatically. That was when Thea saw that she had a tiny v ial concealed in the napkin. It was full of blood.
"You . . ." Thea couldn"t find the words.
Blaise made a slight grimace that meant: I know. But it was just too good a chance to miss.
Thea backed up and ran into Eric. He put a steadying arm around her.
"Is she all right?"
"She"s fine. I have to get out of here."
Eric looked into her face. He was rumpled: his hair mussed, his eyes dark. Al l he said was, "Let"s go."
They pa.s.sed Vivienne and Selene on the way out. Thea had to give them cre dit; they both looked shocked and unhappy. The question was, would it las t?
Dani was in the parking lot with John Finkelstein. "I"m going home," she sai d significantly to Thea, and tossed something into a clump of bitterbrush.
It was an empty vial.
Thea felt a tiny uncoiling of relief. She touched Dani"s arm lightly. "Thanks.
Dani looked back at the cafeteria. "I wonder what it was he wanted to kno w?" she murmured.
And just then a howl came from the lighted doorway, as if answering her ques tion. It didn"t sound like a person; it sounded like an animal in anguish.
"Whyyyyyy?"
Thea turned blindly and almost ran for Eric"s jeep.
When they were driving on darkened streets, Eric said quietly, "I"m presuming he was an old boyfriend?"
"Last month"s."
Eric glanced at her. "He was pretty messed up, poor guy."
And that, Thea thought, summed it up nicely. He was pretty messed up forev er. Poor guy.
"It"s Blaise," she said. She hadn"t meant to talk to him about this, but the words were so crowded in her throat that she thought she"d burst if she didn"
t let them out. "She does this and does this, and I can"t stop her. She picks guys up everywhere, and they fall in love with her, and then she dumps them."
"Love? Hm," Eric said.
Thea looked at him, astonished. He was looking straight ahead, his long, sup ple fingers steady on the wheel.
Well. And I thought you were so naive. Maybe you see more than I realized.
"It"s a kind of love," she said. "It"s like-do you know, in ancient Greece they worshiped the G.o.ddess Aphrodite. She was the G.o.ddess of love-and the thing about her was that she was absolutely merciless." Thea shook her he ad. "I saw this play once about a queen named Phaedra. And Aphrodite made her fall in love with her own stepson, and by the end of the play just abo ut everybody was dead on the stage. But Aphrodite just kept smiling. Because she was just doing what a G.o.ddess does-the same way that a tornado rips houses apart or a fire bur ns down a forest."
She stopped. Her chest was aching and she didn"t have any breath left. But in a way she felt better, as if some pressure had been relieved.
"And you think Blaise is like that."
"Yes. Sort of a natural force that can"t help itself. Does that sound complete ly crazy?"
"Actually, no." Eric gave a wry smile. "Nature"s rough. Hawks grab rabbits. Ma le lions kill cubs. It"s a jungle out there."
"But that doesn"t make it right. Maybe for G.o.ddesses and animals, but not w hen it gets to the level of humans." It was a moment before she realized wh at she"d said. She was using "humans" to mean "people."
"Well, humans aren"t very far from animals, after all," Eric said softly.
Thea sagged back against the seat. She was still confused and unhappy, but w hat scared her most was that she felt a strong urge to keep talking to Eric about it. He seemed to understand so well . . . better than anybody else eve r had. And not only to understand, but to care.
"I know what you need," Eric said suddenly, brightening. "I was going to sug gest we go to the late buffet at Harrah"s, but I know something better."
Thea glanced at the clock, saw that it was almost eleven: "What?"
"Puppy therapy.""What?"
He just grinned and turned the jeep south. They pulled up at a modest gray bu ilding with a sign that read sun city animal hospital.
"This is where you work."
"Yup. We can let Pilar off early," Eric said, getting out and unlocking the f ront door of the building. "Come on."
A pretty girl with shoulder-length brown hair looked up from behind the off ice counter. Thea recognized her as Pilar Osorio from school. A quiet girl who looked like a good student.
"How was the dance?" she said. Thea thought her eyes lingered on Eric wistfu lly as she said it.
Eric shrugged. "Pretty awful, to tell the truth. There was a fight and we left.
" Thea noticed he didn"t mention his part in stopping the fight.