Hannah Jayne: Under a Spell

“You want me to do what?”

In all my years as the only breathing employee at the Underworld Detection Agency, I’ve been asked to do a lot of things—hobgoblin slobbery, life-or-death, blood-and-flesh kind of things. But this? This took the cake.

Pete Sampson leaned back in his leather chair, and though I usually beamed with pride when he did that—as I had been instrumental in getting him back into head of the UDA position—this time, I couldn’t. My stomach was a firm, black knot and heat surged through every inch of my body as he looked up at me expectantly.

“I really thought you would be excited to visit your old stomping grounds.”

My knees went Jell-O wobbly then and I thumped back into Sampson’s visitor’s chair. I yanked a strand of hair out of my already-messy ponytail and wrapped it around my finger until the tip turned white.

“Excited? To return to the source of my deepest angst, my inner-turmoil—to the brick walls that can only be described as a fiery, brimstony hell?”

Sampson cocked an eyebrow. “It’s just high school, Sophie.”

“Exactly.”

Most people would say that high school is the most traumatic time in their lives—myself included. And since in the last few years I’d been shot at, stabbed, hung by my ankles, almost eaten, and sexually harassed by an odoriferous troll, most traumatic took on a whole new significance.

“Isn’t there anything else we can do? Anything I can do? And I’m talking human sacrifice, demon sacrifice, total surrender of my Baskin Robbins punch card.”

“Sophie,” Sampson started.

“Wait.” I held up a hand. “Are we sure we have to go in at all? And why me, specifically? I mean”—I rifled through my purse and pulled out a wrinkled business card—“it’s been a while since you’ve been back at the Agency, Sampson. See?” I slid the card across the desk to him. “It says right there: Sophie Lawson, Fallen Angels Division. ” I stabbed at my name on the card as though that would somehow give my title more emphasis. “Does this case have anything to do with fallen angels? Because if not, I’m sure there are other UDA employees who would be excellent in this investigation. And then I would be able to really focus on my current position.”

Granted, my position more often than not found me pinning a big baddie to a corkboard or locked in a public restroom san clothes, but still.

Sampson stacked my business card on top of a manila file folder and pressed the whole package toward me.

“You should go in because you know the high school.”

“I’ll draw you a map.” I narrowed my eyes, challenging.

“And because everyone else around here—” Sampson gestured to the open office, and I refused to look, knowing that I would be staring into the cold, flat eyes of the undead—and the occasional unhelpful centaur. “Well, everyone else would have trouble passing. Besides, it’s not like you’re going in alone.”

“I’m not worried about that. And hey, I’m flattered, but there really is no way I’m going to pass as a student.”

Though I’m only five-five (if I fudge it, stand on a phone book, and stretch), often wear my fire-engine red hair in two sloppy braids, and have, much to my best friend’s chagrin, been known to wear SpongeBob SquarePants pajama bottoms out to walk the dog, it had been a long time since anyone had mistaken me for anything more than a fashionably misguided adult.

“You’re not going in as a student. You’re going in as a teacher. A substitute.”

I felt as though all the blood in my body had drained out onto the brand-new industrial-grade carpet. Because the only thing worse than being a high school student is being a high school substitute teacher.

My left eye started to twitch. “A substitute teacher?”

My mind flooded with thumbtacks on desk chairs and Saran Wrap over the toilets in the teacher’s lounge. Suddenly, I longed for my cozy Underworld Detection Agency job, where no one touched my wedged-between-two-blood-bags bologna sandwich and a bitchy band of ill-tempered pixies roamed the halls.

“A substitute teacher,” I repeated, “who saves the world?”

Sampson’s shrug was one of those “Hey, pal, take one for the team” kind of shrugs and I felt anger simmering in my gut.

“You can ‘teach’”—he made air quotes that made me nauseous—“any class you’d like. Provided it’s in the approved curriculum. And not already assigned.”

I felt my lip curl into an annoyed snarl when Sampson shot me a sparkly-eyed smile as if being given the choice between teaching freshman algebra or senior anatomy was a tremendous perk.

“If this high school isn’t about to slide into the depths of hell or in the process of being overrun by an army of undead mean girls, I’m going to need a raise. A significant one,” I said, my voice low. “And a vacation.”

Sampson nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“So,” I said, my eyebrows raised, “why is this so dire?”

“Do you remember last year when a body was found on the Mercy High campus?” Sampson asked.

My tongue went heavy in my mouth. Though I was well-used to the walking undead and the newly staked, the death of a young kid—a breather who would stay dead—made my skin prick painfully. I nodded.

“That’s what this is about?

Sampson didn’t answer me.

“Her name was Cathy Ledwith, right?”

It had been all over the papers—a local student mysteriously vanishing from an exclusive—and, before that day, safe—high school campus. A week later, her body was discovered dumped near Fort Cronkhite, an old military installation on the Marin side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Though the story was told and retold—in the Chronicle , the Guardian —and the Mercy High School campus was overrun with reporters for the better part of a semester, there weren’t a lot of details in the case. Or at least not a lot were leaked to the press.

“That murder was never solved,” Sampson said, as he slid the file folder over to me.

“Didn’t someone confess? Some guy in jail? He was a tweaker, said something about trying to sacrifice her.” The thought shot white-hot fire down my spine, but I tried my best to push past it. “I still don’t see what this has to do with the high school. Or with me having to go into it. I followed the case pretty closely”—I was somewhat of a Court TV or pretty much anything-TV junkie—“and I don’t remember any tie-back. I mean, the girl was found in Marin.”

“She was dumped in one of the tunnels at Battery Townsley.”

I shuddered. “People go through there all the time.”

“It was a hiker that found her. Her killer obviously wasn’t concerned about keeping Cathy’s body a secret.”

I winced at the mention of Cathy’s “body.”

“I still don’t understand what this has to do with us—with the Underworld. Everything about it screams human. Cathy was human—someone even recognized a van, right? Very few of our clients drive vans.”

Sampson gestured to the folders and I swallowed slowly, then looked down at them. Directly in front of me was a black and white photo of a smiling teenager—all perfect teeth and glossy hair—and it made my stomach roil even more. My high school picture was braces doing their darnedest to hold back a mouthful of Chiclet teeth and hair that shot straight out, prompting my classmates to announce that my styling tools were a fork and an electrical socket. I yanked my hand back when I realized I was subconsciously patting my semi-smoothed adult hair.