Reapers -- The First Familiar (Reapers Chronicles Book II)

3 - Visitor

My school locker looked like it hadn’t been used for a century. Spider webs filled the corners, dust mounted up the books which I had last seen before I became a familiar. It was a miracle how I even got a C plus average. It was only a month before graduation but my attendance record wasn’t getting any better.

A bell rang, signalling the end of second period. I was late, yet again. Randomly, I pulled out two books and slammed the locker shut before students started crowding the hallway. I didn’t think I could ever get used to being in the midst of a lot of people, so I hurried to my next class, which happened to be Advanced Spanish.

I had no love for the subject, just to be clear. The Guidance Counsellor thought it would be fun torturing me when I couldn’t decide what to fill my required units with.

“Aramis!” Lindsay caught up with me, half-running with her broad shoulders hunched. Another totally failed low-key attempt. She was much too tall to ignore. “I was waiting for you yesterday. What happened?”

I kept walking with my head down, not making eye contact with anyone, stopping only when we reached a quiet corner at the foot of the stairs to the second floor. A couple of senior girls passed by, throwing mean stares at me when they thought I couldn’t see them.

In five months, I had transformed from invisible to official school weirdo. I guessed the vacant position Vincent left needed to be filled. Who better to replace him than his personal assistant? Although, I doubted anyone could even remember that Vincent Sinclair ever set foot on this school. To these people, the Sinclairs didn’t exist.

It was a mystery, still unsolved. Not that I cared much about Vincent’s popularity rating.

“Weren’t you going to tell me something important?” I changed the topic before she could go on fussing about my absences.

It was bad enough that I had to explain to Dad why I wasn’t at home so early last morning. More so, why I was dog-tired and beat up when I got home. I needed a break from everything that reminded me how stupid my ideas were. To think that I almost got possessed. Would normal stuff ever going to happen to me anymore? Suddenly, having a bad hair day didn’t sound so bad now.

“Don’t you ever watch news?” she muttered, apprehensive as she drew a tablet PC from her gray Jansport backpack. She began tapping on the screen, scrolling down until she found a video from a local TV station. “Look at this.”

She handed me the tablet, playing the news about a nineteen year-old boy from Fountain Springs who killed his fourteen year-old sister by smothering her in her sleep. The strange rise in the number of homicides, deaths and other crimes, not only in Pennsylvania, but all over the world was being speculated upon by psychology experts. They blamed it on cyclic depression or something.

Just recently, several reports of gruesome suicides in the Arctic had been televised. I didn’t even know people lived there. But I was sure of something—it wasn’t all just a coincidence.

Lindsay paused the video just as the boy’s face was flashed on the screen. His face was familiar. Brown, slightly reddish hair, freckly longish face, deep-set eyes, short, slight build.

“He’s in our year,” I mumbled thoughtfully, a bit surprised that I hadn’t heard the news in school. But then, I wasn’t in school much and whenever I was, I never talked to virtually everyone.

“Jim Lowry,” Lindsay pointed out with worry in her shaky voice. “Marching band flutist. I remember talking to him once or twice back when I was still in Glee Club. But he doesn’t seem like someone who could kill anyone.”

I breathed out warily. “I still don’t see how this has to do with me. Besides, you never can tell what people can do these days.”

“That’s not what I was worried about,” she whispered as though she was afraid someone was hearing us.