Demon Girl by Penelope Fletcher Page A

been
trying to get rid of for a while. “Something happened to you this
morning?”
    I pressed my lips together. Ro was
perceptive, more than was usual for a boy his age. That or I looked
worse than I thought. I worked hard to keep most of the kooky crap
I did away from Alex. It would only worry her. The stuff from this
morning would probably give her grey hairs. Ro looked like he was
ready to buckle down and figure what was wrong with me. Maybe his
well timed words and snorts earlier were trying to accomplish more
than just derision. Maybe he was trying to cover up the fact I was
giggling like a banshee during what was supposed to be a serious
discussion. Whatever issues I had about how cooped up we were
behind the Wall or how purist the teachings of Sect had become, the
Temple was my home. Suggestions bound to get me into serious
trouble stayed locked firmly inside my mind, most of the time.
Disciples who’d voiced radical ideas like my own ended up failing
the final exam or kicked out of the Sect. Then there were the ones
who disappeared entirely. That was not going to happen to me. Ro
and I had had a few very brief discussions about this. Touched on
the subject more than once, how some things the Sect did and said
didn’t quite add up. How Disciples going missing, after they had
spoken up about the treatment of demons we captured, was just plain
wrong. Ro had always been keen to talk more, but I’d always pulled
back.
    “I went Outside,” I said and lifted my chin.
“I ran in the forest.”
    Alex groaned and plucked at the skin of her
throat as if it irritated her. She’d already known this and her
reaction was purely knee jerk.
    Ro didn’t look surprised, if anything mildly
impressed. “Did something happen?”
    I tilted my head, hearing something unspoken
in the words. “Why’d you think that?”
    “You on edge, and earlier you went pale like
you seen you a ghost. You got so shook up you forgot yourself and
walked right into Devlin. Rae, you always so careful and cautious
about touching, and you got so distracted you forgot?” He shook his
head. “I don’t think so, something big happened.”
    I swallowed before I answered, “I saw–” Was I
really going to tell him?
    “I’ll tell you something else,” Ro began,
speaking slowly and looking down at his hands looped in his jean
pockets. “Maybe on my way to class, I hear a Lord and Lady Cleric
talking about a problem with a demon Outside this morning. Maybe I
hear them talking about a Disciple who broke Doctrine and went
beyond the Wall. They say a Disciple disobeyed and even
struck out, gave the Lady Cleric a black eye.” He looked up at me
and lowered his voice an octave. “You need to be careful now, you
feel me? Think about the questions you ask in class and the way you
react to some words. Like…fairy, eh?”
    “What are you getting at?” I tried to pretend
the shrillness of my voice was natural.
    I couldn’t tell them what had happened, if
the Clerics were looking for me there was only a matter of time
before they found me. I was bound to slip up again. I had a bloody
vampire snoozing in my wardrobe for gods sake. I had decided the
best was to play this was to not confirm or deny anything else. Ro
would try to help me and his heart would be in the right place, but
I couldn’t risk it.
    As for Alex… “You do remember the Rupture?
What happened to people like you who wouldn’t get in line and act
right,” she said angrily.
    She was not happy and I could sense a long,
rambling speech coming on. With all the information I’d told her
and Ro’s speculations, she would have been able to piece together
quite a bit by now.
    Opening my mouth to tell her to shut the hell
up, I saw Tu enter the room talking to a thin woman. She was
dressed in a crimson blazer with a swollen eye and bandaged arm. A
Lady Cleric, the Lady Cleric from that morning.
     

Chapter Four
     
    I straightened and ordered my feet to freeze
mid step back. My heart