A Crooked Mark, page 3
In a town as small as Mills Creek, most people must have known Mr. Winter, and the funeral pictures the Sweep provided showed a well-attended ceremony. Casseroles likely appeared on his family’s doorstep, and a neighbor might have stopped by with a lawn mower to take care of the grass. Even now, people probably watch over them more than usual.
I’ll have to be careful.
Fortunately, the new-kid angle works. I start school tomorrow, which will hopefully make me look more normal than a random teenager living in Mr. Garrett’s backyard. Classes actually began a few weeks ago, but the school still had openings. Dad showed them a copy of our rental agreement and explained I had been homeschooled since second grade, which is actually the truth, and that did it. A new ID card is already nestled in my wallet, declaring me a proud student of Mills Creek High School.
Rachel’s school. We’ll both be juniors, which means overlapping classes. Shared lunch periods.
A way to get close.
Something along the opposite curb catches my eye. Its edges are too distinct to be a simple tire scuff, and closer examination reveals an infinity symbol carefully drawn in dark blue paint. A cross stands on the middle of the curved lines, right at their point of intersection. The drawing can’t be more than a few inches tall, but a chill of recognition shivers down my back.
The Leviathan Cross. An old alchemical symbol for sulfur, and a sign of Lucifer.
But it can’t be intended for me. I look more closely, and relief descends as I realize I’m wrong. It needs another horizontal line to form the symbol’s double cross. No, this is something else, though its presence here feels too intentional to be coincidence. Maybe someone left it as a sign of grief, of the horror brought about by Malcolm Harrison’s choices that day. Maybe it’s just some kid messing around. I stare at it a minute longer, but the design offers no clues, either about its meaning or the person who put it there.
Hopefully, my next stop will bring more answers. I pull out my phone and snap a photo of the drawing before climbing back into my car. With a final glance at the curb, I check the road twice before rolling through the intersection.
Bet I’m not the only one who does that now.
The quiet streets that pass for Mills Creek’s downtown are only ten minutes away, and I park in front of a little bakery sandwiched between a vacuum repair shop and a used piano store. Wavy letters spell Charon’s Last Stop on the clean window, and a black bench carved in the shape of a boat sits beside the entrance. I open the door, and the sweet smell of freshly baked cake wafts out.
The silver-haired man at the register is busy with another customer, which gives me a chance to examine the large display case. Mrs. Polly would have loved this place, and part of me crumples since it’s my fault she’ll never see it. Now isn’t time for regret, however, especially when it will come at night, like always. I lean over to study a pomegranate cake labeled “Persephone’s Revenge,” and a girl’s voice stops me.
“Can I help you?”
I look up, and any thought of dessert evaporates. An article mentioned the part-time job, but I hadn’t been certain she would be here today, especially with the accident still fresh. Maybe she needed something to occupy her, a distraction from the grief that clings to her despite the smile she’s attempting. Her hair has grown longer than in the photo and her face wears a new sadness, but those are definitely Rachel Winter’s eyes watching me from behind the counter. I glance at the name tag pinned to her shirt: Rae.
Time to work.
“I hope so.” I offer a sheepish grin and gesture toward the case. “I want everything.”
She nods, her smile unchanged, though it looks as if it’s taking every bit of effort to keep it there. “It’s all really good. The ‘Damned If You Don’t’ cake is our bestseller, but my favorite is ‘Night in Tartarus.’ Brownies are popular too.”
The answer sounds mechanical, as if she’s repeated it countless times, and she probably has. Shadows pool under her eyes, but she waits patiently as I examine the Night in Tartarus cake. Its layers of chocolate would have been my first choice anyway, but it doesn’t matter now if it had been frosted with broccoli. That’s her favorite, so it’s mine too.
“Sold,” I tell her. “It looks delicious.”
“Good choice.” She slides the cake from the case. “Would you like to eat it here?”
“I’ll take it with me. Thanks.” Several tables line the front of the shop, but this first contact with a project should be brief. Casual. I just need to spark a connection I can build upon later. “I’m new in town. This place is my best find so far. Is the high school around here?”
I already know the answer, but it’s an easy start to a conversation.
“Mills Creek High?” she asks, and I nod. “It’s only fifteen minutes away. I go there too. I’m Rae.” She gestures to her name tag. “But you probably figured that out.”
I did, but not the way she thinks. “I’m Matthew. Is it going to be awful? I’ve been homeschooled until now, so I’m kind of terrified.”
Her smile turns genuine, flashing a glimpse of the humor she must have worn closer to the surface before grief smothered it. “MCHS isn’t bad. The teachers are okay, as long as you don’t have Mr. McNally for math.” She catches the look on my face. “You’ve got McNally.”
“Second period.”
“Well, at least we can suffer through it together. I’m in there too.” She cuts a thick slice of cake and slides it into a white box. “What else do you have?”
I rattle off my schedule, which isn’t hard since I memorized it minutes after the smiling woman in the front office handed me the list. “First period is Spanish with Torres. Then McNally, English with O’Brien, and fourth period’s biology with Doherty. After lunch is history with Timmult, and then study hall since they figured I’ll need it to catch up.” I wince. “They’re probably right.”
Rae blinks. “Wow. I don’t think I knew my classes that well until the second week of school.”
“I’m a little nervous.” I give an embarrassed shrug, and the flutter in my stomach tells me I’m not completely acting right now. “I’m fairly certain I’ll get lost and end up in the wrong classroom.”
“You’ll be fine.” She seals the box with a sticker of a black boat identical to the bench outside and hands it to me. “I don’t know Timmult since she’s new, but Torres is nice. O’Brien’s hard, but she’s good. I’m in that one too. And you got lucky with Coach Doherty.”
“Coach?”
“Cross country. You run?”
“A little.” Five miles or more each morning, but I keep that to myself. The surprise can come in handy if things go wrong. “I’m not fast or anything.”
“That’s okay. No one gets cut. You should come out.” Rae glances over my shoulder to where a line is forming, and her shoulders sag a fraction before she pulls them straight, her smile back in place. “Mr. Yamamoto can ring you up. See you tomorrow?”
“Sure. See you.” I move to the register, and Rae greets the woman behind me. They chat while I pay, the woman clearly a regular as she asks about Rae’s family. Rae’s polite answers—we’re fine, doing better, everything is all right—make me want to shake the woman, because clearly it’s not all right and nothing is fine.
Rae just smiles and cuts another slice of cake.
She’s tough. I’ll give her that.
The bright sunlight stings my eyes as I step outside, cake in hand and the clock ticking. If I’m lucky, I’ll spend the next year in Mills Creek watching Rae Winter do nothing out of the ordinary. At least I’m off to a good start, since from our brief encounter, she certainly doesn’t seem Marked.
Then again, neither did Mrs. Polly. Not in the beginning.
A gentle breeze cools the heat pounding through me, and I check my watch, noting the time and surroundings for the entry in my project notebook. A mother perches on the bench, feeding a cookie to a toddler, and a man leans against a nearby tree, munching a brownie. His gaze meets mine, and a new thought nearly makes me drop my cake.
Dad called this project a test. How will the Sweep know I’m passing if they don’t watch me?
They won’t. Which means I’m not the only Sweeper in town.
Everyone around me is a stranger, but it’s not like the Sweep hands out the company directory when you sign up. Existing members identify new recruits, and if the leadership approves, an old-fashioned apprenticeship begins. There’s no secret school, no hidden camp, no annual company picnic. The Sweep is essentially a network of isolated dots, which makes sense since anyone who doesn’t know about Lucifer’s Mark will think we’re just going around setting people on fire. Secrecy is critical. Dad and his mentor are the only members I’ve ever met, which means I wouldn’t recognize another Sweeper if he or she were standing right in front of me.
Maybe one is.
Suddenly, the sidewalk holds too many eyes: the man eating the brownie, an elderly couple out for a walk, a teenager sauntering past with headphones blaring into his ears. Even the line in Charon’s is no longer filled with customers trying to satisfy a sweet tooth but people who observed my entire interaction with the project.
As casually as I can, I head toward my car. A quick glance back shows the door to Charon’s opening again, and the woman who had been speaking with Rae appears, box in hand. She makes it only halfway through the exit before the door swings closed, smacking her from behind with enough force that she stumbles forward and drops her cake. My feet freeze midstep.
Maybe Rae didn’t like her questions after all.
The next moments reveal nothing more. Someone retrieves the box and hands it to the woman, who lifts the lid to peer inside. She must make a joke, because the people around her laugh, and she carries her cake away as another customer leaves Charon’s, the door closing smoothly behind him.
It could mean nothing.
Or, I can almost hear Dad saying, it could mean quite a lot.
The bustle of the sidewalk returns, and I climb into my car and drive away. No one stares after me, but it doesn’t matter either way. Any Sweeper watching would call my morning a success. Not only did I connect with the project and see a possible hint of a Mark, but I even laid the foundation for our next meeting.
After all, we’re going to be classmates.
CHAPTER
6
Mills Creek High School is built like a fortress. Four beige buildings surround an inner quad, and a metal gate encircles the entire campus. I almost relax as I pull into the parking lot in back, since the Sweep can’t watch me inside these walls.
Unless they’re already here.
New students, teachers, custodians . . . any one of them could be a Sweeper. I scan each face as I head for my first class, but the gymnastics routine my stomach launches into when I enter the room has nothing to do with the Sweep or even the project. I hadn’t lied when I told Rae school terrified me. It’s one thing to read about crammed hallways, banging lockers, and rowdy cafeterias, and another entirely when it explodes around me: too much noise, too many people, too little space to maneuver without hitting someone with my backpack.
Dad might have trained me to handle the Mark, but he sure didn’t prepare me for high school.
It doesn’t help that sleep still fogs my brain since I stayed up late last night, writing the first project entry in my new red notebook. I asked Dad once why we didn’t write the notes on our laptops like we do our reports, especially since those can be protected by passwords so no one can just flip one open and start reading. He pointed out that it’s not hard to keep a notebook safe, and computers are difficult to use during surveillance. A notebook is far easier to carry, and you can jot a quick observation without having to sit and type. Also, paper doesn’t cast a glow on your face when you’re trying to scribble something in the dark, which can draw unwanted attention when you’re right outside a project’s window. We usually take our messy notes and refine them for our typed reports to the Sweep, paring everything down to the essential details.
This time is different, however.
“Keep your notebook neat,” Dad had ordered. “Date it, and be thorough. Someone from the Sweep may want to look at it.”
His warning kept me at that old plastic table in Mr. Garrett’s shack until midnight, detailing both my conversation with Rae and the customer’s unfortunate encounter with the door. I couldn’t help adding a line about how the woman simply might not have opened it wide enough, and every sentence took twice as long as it should have since my mind kept wandering to the sorrow on Rae’s face and the moment I made her smile turn real.
Conversations with other projects—other people—aren’t new, but they’ve rarely been with anyone my age. Dad and I don’t keep in touch with neighbors when we leave, and we move so often I haven’t made many friends.
No friends at all, in fact.
Mills Creek won’t change that—I’m here for the Mark, not my social life—but getting to know Rae Winter might be fun. It could make the ending harder, but I don’t need to worry about that.
Not yet.
I muddle through Spanish class, understanding Señora Torres’s cheerful “¡Hola, Mateo!” and nothing else, and the hard chair beneath me offers little comfort as McNally marches through another torturous math problem. Rae sits two seats over, her head bent low as she takes notes, and I do my best to pay attention. When the clock’s creeping hands finally signal release, I grab my backpack and follow her out the door.
“Hi.” I fall into step beside her. “Is math always like that?”
“Yup. Welcome to MCHS.” She weaves through the cramped hallway and I bump along after her, though it’s like swimming upstream in an overcrowded creek. “Look on the bright side,” she says over her shoulder. “You survived your first class with McNally.”
“True. Nice guy.” The short, balding man had basically flung a textbook in my direction and then ignored me, barking numbers and formulas as he paced the aisles with a sharpened pencil behind his ear. “Had no idea what he was talking about, though.”
“Functions?”
“Yeah.” Dad taught them to me last year, but I add a frantic edge to my voice. “Please tell me he was joking about a test.”
She shakes her head as we stop at her locker, and I realize I’m not actually supposed to haul all my books around the entire day.
“Next week.” She pulls out the English book I’ve been carrying for the last two hours. “It’s not that hard. McNally has office hours in the morning if you want to go.”
I grimace. “Yes, because I’m crazy like that. I’ll figure it out.”
Her smile feels like a victory.
“I can help if you want,” she says.
“Really?” Perfect. “That would be awesome.”
We cross the grassy courtyard to English, which ends with half of Toni Morrison’s Beloved to read before the weekend since I’m behind the rest of the class. Rae has art next, but she hands me off to a tall, lanky boy named Moose so I don’t get lost on my way to biology. His freckles and reddish-orange hair remind me more of a carrot than an antlered animal, but an easy smile lights his face.
“Mills Creek scores another!” he says cheerfully as Rae disappears in the opposite direction. “What made you move here?”
I almost feel bad lying to him. “Dad got tired of the big city. This is his chance to give me the small-town life he never had.”
“That’s pretty high hopes for this place.” Moose points me toward the science building. “What’d your mom say?”
His question catches me off guard, but the truth works. “My mom’s dead.”
“Oh.” He flushes. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. Happened a long time ago.” I change the subject. “What’s Mills Creek like?”
“It’s all right.” He steers me down another crowded hall. “The movie theater gives discounts with your student ID. Pit Stop has the best burgers, and the Wallflower’s good for coffee. Let’s see . . . most teachers are okay, but watch out for McNally. He’s Dean of Students, and he’s always patrolling for victims. Steer clear.”
“He’s my math teacher.”
Moose pats my back. “My condolences. You’d think he’d be busy enough with all the dean stuff, but he decided he missed teaching so they gave him a class too. Lucky for you.”
Room 104 is unlike any classroom I’ve seen. Big foam cubes form a large circle in its center, and tables covered with bright mounds of clay line the perimeter. A tall, thin man claps his hands, and the few of us still standing scuttle for empty cubes.
“That’s Coach Doherty,” Moose whispers as we sink into the foam. “He doesn’t believe in ‘traditional’ classrooms. Still likes homework, though.”
“All right, people! We’ve added someone new to our ranks.” Coach gestures at me like I’m a celebrity. “Do you go by Matthew or Matt?”
Dad used to call me Mattie, but that was long ago. I’ve been Matthew since I was seven. Yet my name sticks in my mouth as all eyes turn my way, and “Matt” pops out, as if my tongue made the decision on its own. It’s a good one, though, because Matt Watts sounds like a fun guy—someone who makes friends and cracks jokes and fits in without drawing a second glance.
Someone just right for this project.
We spend the hour shaping clay models of cells, though Moose seems more interested in building a superhero army than mitochondria. Still, the work provides an opportunity to talk, and between his chatter about movies and comics, he tells me I’m one of four new students in the junior class. I don’t know how many people my age are part of the Sweep, but it’s worth checking out.
“Matt, here’s everything we’ve read so far,” Coach says, interrupting Moose’s recap of the latest zombie movie to stack several packets on the table beside me. “Come ask if you’ve got any questions. I’m here in the morning and at lunch, but I coach after school. Any chance you’re a runner?”
