4. A Special Place

4

A Special Place

Morgana

A nd here I thought I lived in Hell everyday…

The dread I feel staring at the entrance of the sad red and white facade of Middlebury Valley High School is what I imagine mortals feel when they think of Hell. The only difference is that their average day-to-day existence is my personal hell. Losing my powers, being forced to live among mortals since my soul was changed, and now having to come here. I almost prefer to go to the dungeons as a damned soul; it would be less painful than this.

I sigh, taking in the steady stream of teenagers going into the building. Most of them are staring and whispering to their friends, likely about me since they won't stop pointing. I already feel the irritation boiling inside me at the thought of having to interact with these insects for the equivalent of two mortal years. But at least I'm not alone in my suffering.

The building's exterior looks as tired and defeated as I feel. The paint is peeling, and the once vibrant red and white have faded to a dull, lifeless hue. The front lawn is overgrown, and the sign bearing the school's name is missing letters. I can't help but feel a pang of contempt for this place and everything it represents. My heart pounds with a mix of anger and resignation, knowing that this is my new reality.

I look over my shoulder, and off to my right is my ever-faithful pet, Alistair. Now rid of his demonic features like me, though his was by choice. He looks strange, still just as tall and pale as before, but now he just looks like a healthy pale, tall mortal instead of the towering paper-white demon he actually is. Height and skin tone are not the only changes he modified. He hid his horns and changed his blood-red eyes for a startling amber. The dark mop of curls passing for his hair is still present, but the piercings and tattoos are all gone except for two sets of piercings on his earlobes, allowing him to blend in with the young humans.

Such a shame; I really liked how he looked with them, but he looks good disguised as a human as well. At least he still has two piercings left. Instead of his usual earrings, he swapped the remaining two for a pair of titanium studs that resemble the precious diamonds humans value so much. A value given to rocks that hold no real magical powers—I will never understand the reasoning.

Humans really are mindless insects. They're cowardly and pathetic, and I can't help resenting my father's decision to send me to this place. A decision I knew I couldn't change, though that didn't stop me from trying. When my father makes a decision, very little can persuade him to change his mind. Hence why the phrase ‘stubborn as the devil himself' came to be back home. A stubbornness I can't help but dislike at the moment since it got me into this situation.

I am not only expected to interact with the mortals but also to live the rest of my natural lifetime among them since I am no longer immortal. I discovered my healing abilities vanished shortly after waking up, and my immortality went with them. I found out by throwing a glass cup at my bedroom wall out of frustration when my father revealed his plan. After coming back from meeting with him, I served myself some wine from the bottle Alistair left on my bedroom desk, seeing as I can't conjure anymore. When I tasted the human blood, I recoiled at the fact I didn't like it anymore. My taste for blood has quite literally vanished. This fact, coupled with my argument with my father, had me infuriated. In a fit of rage, I threw the cup at the wall, shattering it. A glass fragment ricocheted and scratched my cheek, a dribble of blood lining the left side of my face.

I paid no mind to it, believing it would heal on its own but when a few minutes passed and it was still there I called for Alistair. He healed me with his own powers, not something I thought I would ever need but was glad I still had, for now at least. Later on, when I was getting ready to come to the mortal realm and live in Los Angeles as our cover story indicated, I asked why Alistair is going if he still is a demon. Clearly my father ordered him to do so, otherwise why else would be bother to be here. And as much as I'm opposed to the plan, I can't complain about Alistair being with me, even though I still don't truly understand it, for it means that I know someone and that he is here to attend to me just like always. In that regard, one thing remained the same.

Releasing a final sigh of frustration, I silently hand my book bag to Alistair to carry and start making my way toward the main entrance of the school. Once inside the main hall, I search for the administrative office among the sweaty, disgusting packs of human prepubescents. Locating my objective, I head there to acquire the necessary information for our first day at school, as instructed by my father, who knows far more about the way humans built their education systems in his millions of years watching them than I could ever hope to know at my measly 17 years of age. After obtaining the needed information, such as our schedule, classrooms, and locker numbers, we head to the main hall again to try and locate our lockers.

We take a wrong turn, not knowing which way to go to find the correct set of lockers since they are arranged in a strange manner. Instead of numerically, the lockers are organized with numbers and letters. This confuses me as I can't determine the direction in which the numbers run. While we search, I notice we walk past a group of girls huddled against some lockers, chatting. One spots us walking and signals to the rest, making them all quiet down as we pass by. They are all staring now, much like others, but these girls are dressed in cheerleading uniforms, blatantly making eye contact with me when I take one last glance at them.

Just as I am about to take a different hallway to continue our search, I feel Alistair tense beside me a second before I see someone fall into step with us to my left. It's one of the cheerleaders, a blonde with blue eyes, long eyelashes, and lips colored with a gloss that shines under the blinding neon school lights. She smiles at me, a smile that reminds me of a demon happy to go to work in the dungeons and play with their prey.

"I have never seen you two before. You must be new. I'm Annabelle, captain of the cheer squad and student body representative. And you are?"

I stop walking and turn to look her in the eye, making sure my face is completely reflecting how bored I am of this conversation already. "Morgana, and this is Alistair. We just transferred here from San Francisco. It's our first day." My tone is as dead as I feel having to talk to this mortal.

"Oh, Alistair. What a nice name, never met someone with that name before. Well, it's nice to meet you both." This time the smile turns to a more sincere one as she looks behind my shoulder to make eye contact with Alistair, all while looking at him lustfully.

Alistair blinks at her in his typically stoic demeanour. "Hi." The cold and short reply was not what she was expecting and the way her smile is slowly slipping off her perfect complexion is evidence of that, and it took a lot more effort than I expected not to crack a smile at her expression.

She's confused at the lack of reaction from the opposite sex. She must be used to human males falling over each other at a mere flick of her long blonde hair. Well, she will need more than that to rile up a demon . Despite Alistair's other half, he's much better behaved than most. Annabelle shakes off her confusion and in a matter of seconds she composes herself, her bright smile is directed at him once more. "Not much for talking, are you? That's alright. There are better ways of getting to know each other." She winks at him, words dripping in sexual innuendo but Alistair doesn't react, he just stares at her blankly. I was expecting as much, he is not the type to get flustered easily – I've seen disengage with adolescent succubi, a mortal isn't going to persuade him with a wink . I took the awkward silence as an opportunity to intervene in the staring contest.

"Yeah…nice to meet you, I guess. Well, we better get going. We have to find our lockers before class starts." I say, while starting to walk forward again. But unfortunately, she has other ideas.

"I'll help you find them. I'm the representative after all. Can't have the new kids getting lost on the first day, now can we?" She claims before ripping the printout with the information out of my hand without permission. Before I could say anything about it, she took off walking waving for us to follow. I see the rest of her cheerleaders following her before sighing and following the group as well with Alistair close behind me.

This place really is hell…

We take a different hallway and stop at the lockers Annabelle points to and I thank her as dryly as possible, so she gets the hint and leaves already. It doesn't work, she stands next to Alistair as he sets down both bags on the floor, opening both our lockers which were side by side and starts taking out books. In the bags, he left the ones for the first period only and stored the unneeded books for later, doing so for both of us. This is a normal sight for me and I think nothing of it until I see all the cheerleaders stopping to stare at him in confusion.

"I'm sorry, am I missing something here? Are you two dating?" Annabelle asks Alistair who in turn stops what he was doing to stare down at her since he's almost a good two heads taller than her.

"No, we're just family friends," he replies coldly before going back to his task.

"Oh, then you two have an odd relationship if you're carrying around her backpack and organizing the books for her," she states, sounding skeptical. Not that either of us care. I start to say something, an excuse of some sort but before I can utter a sentence she is talking over me. "But since you say you aren't dating anyone, we can get to know each other." She bats her eyelashes at him again but Alistair doesn't glance in her direction. He simply finishes putting the books away before closing both bags and lockers, then finally turning to me in wait. I smile internally at his actions as it causes Annabelle to go from confidently flirtatious to stunned for a second time at his rejection in less than ten minutes.

Smiling smugly at her I reply in his stead, "Sorry, he's shy with strangers. But yeah, we're very close. He doesn't mind helping me."

"Hm, where did you say you guys where from again?" She asks cautiously and in a far worse mood than before.

"San Francisco, we just moved to Los Angeles recently to live with relatives." I explain our practiced cover story. Annabelle stares intently at me as if she's trying to discern if I'm telling the truth. Just as the warning bell rings, signaling that classes will commence soon.

"Well, we better get going. We don't want to be late," I exclaim sarcastically before turning on my heels and walking towards our classroom, which was easier than the lockers to locate since these were just in numerical order.

As annoyed as I was at her flirting with Alistair, I couldn't pinpoint the reason as to why that annoyed me. I'm glad Alistair ignored her, otherwise I would have had to step in and that would make things worse. I scowl at the memory of her disgusting flirting, taking deep breaths before calming down by remembering there is a special place in Hell for cheerleaders.

We reach the classroom and sit down next to each other in the only two empty seats at the back of the classroom as we wait for the rest of the sweaty and loud humans to trickle in.

"I still don't understand why father wants me to endure this. It's like he's punishing me." I mutter toward Alistair. I can tell he wants to say something. "Spit it out, you're the one that suggested to keep up appearances, you can't wait for permission to speak all the time."

He turns to me, whispering, "I don't think he wants to punish you, he just knows that as a mortal you'll have to adapt, learning about them is the best way to do that." I could gag.

Soon enough the teacher begins and thus, my first experience in a human class commenced.

The dungeons really don't look like a bad alternative after all…