The Demon Inheritance

THREE

Enjoying myself is exactly what I plan to do tonight.

***

I was sitting down at the most desolate table in the lunchroom when reality came back to me. A half-eaten gravy-smothered steak was cut into bite-sized bits on my plastic plate, the mashed potatoes, also gravy-covered, had a decently sized hole in its side, and my fruit cup was untouched. My mouth swam with the flavors that I was just now tasting; falling out of my daydreams was like waking up from an actual dream. Across the table, Mary was staring at me with a pitiful look on her face.

I glared over at her, disliking how sad the look she was giving me was. "What is it? What's wrong with you?" With my fork, I picked up another bit of steak and pushed it into my mouth.

"You've just been zoning out a lot for the past few days," Oliver said from a few seats over, hunched over his food without eating. He was twirling his fork in the potatoes, looking down sadly at them. "You're like a zombie, Emma. Except you aren't eating people, you're just... dead."

I glanced back down at my plate, eating another mouthful so I didn't have to answer to them. I was not a cause they needed to be worried about. Whatever my wind and strange dreams were, I could get through them. And if I couldn't, I'd turn to my family for help. It wasn't that I distrusted my friends (yes, at this point in time, Oliver was my "friend", according to Mary), it was just that they couldn't do anything to help, except for maybe console a little, which wouldn't do anything.

"Is your mom's baby fine?" Mary asked, most likely wondering if I was upset over the sibling-to-be. "You seemed kind of upset when you gave me the news this morning, and then you went nonchalant..."

"The baby is fine," I mumbled. As if it weren't bad enough that the two of them were bugging me over something that couldn't be helped, a group came over to sit by me, namely Dillan Raking's group of friends.

The black-haired boy had a huge grin on his face as he sat beside me. Delta Waters took the seat between him and Oliver, and Fango Mills sat beside Mary. Their trays hit the table with a loud, obnoxious clank. I turned to glare at Dillan, eyes skipping over his face like a stone on water. A purple headband was strapped across his forehead, under his hair, except for a sliver that peeked out from under it and followed his nose. His eyes were also a matching shade of violet, as irregularly colored as mine. The kid straightened his back to sit up as tall as me, and smiled. "How you doing, Emma?"

"Fine." I narrowed my eyes, then glanced at his tray. "How's your wife down there doing?"

Dillan Raking, for whatever reason, had a fascination with tacos. Instead of a steak, he had his favorite food on his tray (and I wasn't sure at all where he got it; it looked school-made, and we hadn't had tacos for a while. Then again, he ate one every day). His shirt, as usual, depicted a taco along with the pun "Let's taco 'bout how awesome I am". Dillan laughed at the question. "I don't think it's legal for me to marry that taco. Between you and me, she's bad in bed, too."

Mary chuckled a bit.

I put down my fork as if his presence had made me lose my appetite. "What the hell do you want from me?" The guy hardly ever spoke to me. And if he dared to try to make the rest of this school year a "popular boy and outcast girl in love" scenario, he was going to end up missing a testicle. That was a game that boys seemed to play way too often.

"I'm throwing a party soon and you have to be there. If I don't find you there, I will kidnap you and bring you. Is that understood?" Dillan picked up his taco - his wife - and took a huge, gaping bit out of it. "And if you try to leave, I will chain you to the couch."

"How subtle. This doesn't sound threatening at all. Why should I go to your damn party?" Warning him off before he could say anything stupid, I picked up my fork and slammed it into the meat on my plate.