"Okay, okay, so let me make sure that I have this clear. You want us to pull off some kind of undercover mission of blackmail and humiliation against literally the scariest bitch in school, knowing that it's very likely she will kill us and sew our skin into her clothing if she ever catches us?" Ezekiel asked, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, Aur mimicking his posture on one shoulder.
The mall was fairly empty today, which was both surprising and pleasant, because they could actually sit and talk to each other without having to raise their voices over the dull surf-roar of chatter that flowed and ebbed outside of every shop door. It'd become a kind of weekend thing for them, going out to the mall. Jacob liked it; he'd never had any such friends or any kind of habit with them back in Anais with the people he'd grown up around his entire life. It was strange to think about, but it was becoming familiar.
"Yeah, that's it," Jacob replied with a smirk, poking at the bowl of ice cream he'd bought from the shop at the end of the food court. It was tiny place but damn, they had good ice cream. Laghu clung to his wrist, poking out a small tongue to snatch sprinkles, which was about all he could handle – trying to get ice cream out of fur was absolute hell.
"Oh, my God, I've made friends with a bunch of nutters. Totally bonkers, the entire sodding lot of you," the Australian boy sighed, brandishing his spoon and sending sticky droplets of melted ice cream flying.
"I like it," Flynn said, surprisingly, as he scraped his spoon around his bowl, licking every drip of sweetness from the dish. Koyi had fluffed out his glossy black feathers and was hopping back and forth with excitement, fluttering his wings.
Eve turned in her chair to look at him. "You do know that she's probably going to come after us now, too? Which means you might get the meat-locker surprise or the creepy doll of doom?" she reminded him, but it didn't sound like she was trying to deter him. More like she was impressed and wanted him to make sure he knew the consequences before he signed the devil's contract.
Flynn pushed his glasses up his nose and straightened up a little in his chair, raising his chin. "I've been pushed around my whole life by people like Lamia Aberforth, Eve. She's not gonna stop with us. She'll do this to anybody that pisses her off until somebody pushes back," he said firmly.
Grinning, she reached out and clapped him on the shoulder with one hand, almost knocking him sideways off his chair. It was hard to tell if a boar was smiling, but it was obvious that Paznic was, pawing at the scratched tile floors with his small, sharp hooves. Eve turned back towards Jacob, dropping one arm over her dæmon's back, patting his bristly flank. "So what's our plan of action, commander?"
He rolled his eyes but was smiling anyways. "First of all, we need to find someplace to go, definitely not here. Someplace that nobody else in school is gonna go, because the moment one freaking person hears us talking, everybody's gonna know," he replied.
Laghu stretched his wings imperiously. "I worry about the way information circulates in that school," he said loftily, and Mel snorted, rolling her dark eyes.
"Not to mention the fact that even if we don't find anything to use against her right away, we can always get back at her other ways, too. I mean…there's other fountains for her to trip and fall into, right?" Jacob added with a smirk, scraping his spoon around the edges of the plastic dish. The cold made the inside of his mouth hurt, but it was a pleasant kind of ache.
Cassandra, who'd remained silent thus far as she finished off her deluxe sundae, smiled and said, "I think I know a place."
The Final Draft Bookstore was one of those few artfully designed buildings that looked deceptively small from the outside but seemed enormous on the inside. Jacob liked to call it TARDIS architecture, no matter that Laghu called him a geek when he did. He inhaled through his nose as they walked in and smiled. This wasn't like the school library, which smelled like carpet and recycled air. This was a real bookstore. Jacob could always tell a real library or bookstore by the smell of it. A room full of books, shelf upon shelf of decaying verse, forgotten history, and disintegrating fiction, smelled like dessert, a rich confection of glue, vanilla, figs, ink, and cleverness, mingled with the perfume of lacquer and wood polish.
There was an illuminated fish tank set into the wall as large as a coffin, with a single lone gold koi swimming happily around its bubbler, long whiskers lending it a wise-old-man appearance. Jacob approached the tank and grinned when he saw that the bottom was not full of sand or pebbles but instead was covered in tiles, Scrabble tiles, thousands of them, all the same four letters – F I S H. Ten points. "Cool," he murmured, then turned his head at the sound of footsteps.
An older man came around the stacks with several books tucked beneath one arm. He was a tall, dapper fellow in a steel grey suit and bowtie, complete with a handkerchief folded artfully in the breast pocket of his jacket, bearing an austere countenance to match his carriage. For a split second, Jacob thought that his suit had a fur collar but then realised that it was actually the man's dæmon, a beautifully sleek ermine that almost blended into his silver-white hair, curled around his nape. Upon seeing them, the man heaved a sigh, his features arranging into an expression of mild annoyance. "Teenagers," he said with disgusted exasperation. "Don't you have a village to burn down?"
Cassandra didn't seem at all perturbed by the man's attitude, grinning broadly at him. "Hello, Mr. Jenkins. It's good to see you, too."
"Hm. And to what do I owe this…certainly dubious pleasure?" he asked, raking his gaze across each of them and their respective dæmons with a deeply calculating look, not judgmental but more like he was evaluating them individually, unusual from an adult.
Jacob had expected her to spout some lie about study group or whatever other reason that five teenagers would be sitting in a library on a weekend afternoon. But then again, maybe he should've remembered just who he was talking about. Cassandra gave the old man, Mr. Jenkins, a pearlescent smile and replied, "We're plotting revenge on a most heinous classmate of ours and needed a private place to scour her past for blackmail-worthy details so nobody tells her what we're up to and ruin the surprise."
"Fuck," Laghu whispered hoarsely in his ear. Flynn's eyes went comically wide, and Eve actually threw her hands up in the air. Jacob had never seen someone actually do that before, he found it an interesting sight. Ezekiel just gaped.
Jenkins' eyebrows hiked a little higher, and Jacob was certain the man's dæmon sniggered. "Is that so? And what has this classmate done to earn such a terrible surprise?" he asked, completely blasé, as if asking about the weather or a school project. Now they were all staring at Jenkins, for an entirely different reason.
"She filled Jacob's locker with hamburger, threatened to push me down the stairs, and left a creepy doll in my mailbox," Cassandra answered.
"I see," Jenkins said mildly, as if he'd seen it all before and was no longer surprised by anything they could've said. "Well, you know your way around, Ms. Cillian. There's a vending machine in the reading room. Plotting should never be done on an empty stomach, but the moment I find crumbs, privileges are revoked." And with that, the old man turned and walked back into the stacks to continue shelving books.
Ezekiel turned towards Cassandra with eyes wide and grasped her by the shoulders. "What the actual fuck, Cillian?" he demanded in an awed voice. "How is it that I get my sweet arse handed to me by every adult I come across and you find the one that lets you have snacks for nefarious scheming?"
Cassandra gave him a sly little smile and stroked Mel's ears with one hand, who grinned up at the Australian boy. "Guess I'm just prettier than you, Jones."
"Ain't that the truth," Laghu chortled in his ear; Jacob smiled.
She led them to a separate room in the back of the bookstore, opening a frosted-glass door with a sword detailed on it. There were two vending machines in the back corner and several enormous squashy beanbag chairs, armchairs, and small tables with chairs to sit in, a quiet reading room separate from the stacks. He could overhear his friends' voices through the open door: Flynn was excitedly examining the Final Draft's selection, Eve following along to interestedly look at a few titles herself; Ezekiel was following behind them, not looking at the books but instead suggesting different ways to get back at Lamia, most of which sounded like the plot of Mean Girls. Which Jacob had never seen. Nope. Never. He wasn't sure where Cassandra had gone; the girl could move like a ninja sometimes.
"So you must be the intrepid Mr. Stone, the mastermind behind this grand plot," said Jenkins as he came to stand over the table where Jacob was busily filling a notebook with notes. There were half a dozen books stacked next to his elbow on architecture and design in Portland, ones he'd never read; it'd be a good project to have, something to keep him from going completely crazy at home. Laghu crawled between books, muttering as he marked the pages.
"Yessir, I am," Jacob answered without looking up from his notebook.
"Sir? There's no reason to call me sir, Mr. Stone."
"If you say so, sir," he said. It was a response too long ingrained him to ever ignore. "Thank you for letting us use the library for our…nefarious scheming." The corner of his mouth quirked up upon repeating Ezekiel's words.
"Obvious reasons aside, why is it that you are so bent on teaching this classmate a lesson? Surely there are other avenues to take?" Jenkins asked, not moving away but not sitting down, either.
Jacob paused now, sticking his pen into his notebook to mark his place as he looked up at the man. Being seated, Jenkins looked even taller than he was, hands clasped in front of him. With his silvered hair and ascetic expression, he reminded Jacob vaguely of his grandfather, Mama's father. He'd been a stubborn old cuss that smoked cigars 'til the day he died and never got along with Pop, but he wasn't an unkind man, just stern. He didn't think that Mr. Jenkins was the smoking type, but he seemed like a decent guy. "I ain't a fan of bullies, Mr. Jenkins," he said. "Never have been."
There'd been a kid back in Anais, punk-ass by the name of John Morris. He'd been held back a grade and was by default bigger than everybody else and had no problem using that to his advantage, stealing other boys' lunch money and yanking girls' pigtails. In fifth grade, Morris had tried to take the new baseball bat and glove that Jacob had gotten for his birthday, and Jacob had broken his nose with one punch and given him a good kick in the slats once he went down, too. Morris was still a punk-ass, but other kids weren't nearly as scared of him afterwards, once they'd seen him go down. Standing up to the bully didn't magically make them stop being a bully, but it took away their power, some of it, anyways. Lamia was no different than Morris. Just because she didn't steal lunch money didn't make her any less than him; however, if they stood up to her, they'd take away her power and maybe make everybody else realise that she wasn't invincible, wasn't untouchable. Just another punk that could be taken down a peg.
Jenkins eyed him for a long moment, another of those searching gazes that felt like the older man was trying to see through him somehow. "An eye for an eye leaves us both blind, Mr. Stone," he said at last. "'Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.'"
"Martin Luther King, Jr.," Jacob mused, reaching out to run his fingertip down Laghu's back, feeling toothpick bones move under silky fur. "But let me ask you this, Mr. Jenkins. 'Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?'"
"Nietzsche. Impressive. However, I believe it may just be teenage melodrama to call this girl a monster."
Jacob shrugged. "Maybe. Or maybe she's just a monster waiting to happen. Don't worry, Mr. Jenkins, we're not planning a kidnap/murder scenario. We're gonna give her a taste of her own medicine, make her realise that she can't treat people like shit and expect to get away with it just because her parents have their name on a school building. One less self-entitled bitch to worry about, is that so bad?" he asked.
The corner of the old man's mouth twitched upwards, and unless Jacob misheard, the man's dæmon snickered quietly, still curled imperiously around the nape of his neck. "Whilst I agree with the sentiment, I must warn you to tread carefully, Mr. Stone. I'm old enough to know that sometimes these things turn out badly for all of the involved."
Staring up at the miles-tall figure of the man, Jacob understood that even if he was a crotchety fellow, he wasn't that bad. And it was a refreshing relief to meet an adult that didn't automatically try to tell them to talk out their feelings and hold hands and sing Kumbaya. "Thank you, Mr. Jenkins," he said at last. "We're gonna be okay, though. If we need any help, we can always ask you, right?"
Jenkins made a noise of disgust. "Oh, God, absolutely not. I'm not a babysitter, and I have absolutely no patience for teenagers. I'm glad I never was one," he said as he turned and walked away, Jacob staring at his back in puzzled bemusement.