Trapped between a Demon and a Dragon

Chapter 27

I should have just let Alistar pretend to be me today.

As she got ready this morning, Harper was a little excited about returning to work. True, the kids tend to drive her crazy, but it was a normal, expected, and occasionally controlled chaos. Even though her plans frequently get derailed or even scrapped altogether, the situations she faces are not new, so backup plans are always ready to be deployed. After everything she's faced these past couple of days, Harper was certain that she'd be able to handle whatever unruliness the students were going to throw at her.

She was wrong.

"When did they start bringing Febreeze to school," she grumbles as she tosses the confiscated bottle of fabric freshener onto her counter. One of the freshmen boys made it his mission to pace the hallway and douse everyone he could with the spray. After finally cornering the boy and flagging over an admin, all the student could say in his defense was "I was tired of them stinking up the halls." It took all her self control to not slam her head against a locker when all the assistant principal did was shrug and say "the halls do smell better now."

Needless to say, it is not just the children who are annoying her today. To be fair though, people outside of the school are also being frustrating as well.

Misha messaged her twice this morning, but Harper swiped the notification closed and left him unread for the moment. Right now she is not sure how much she can trust her ex, so it is better to save the messages for when she's back at home and can have some other perspectives to bounce ideas off of when she starts to over analyze his words.

Speaking of over analyzing, instead of reading over the sub note and glancing over the work from yesterday, Harper spent the time before classes started texting back and forth with Kye and Lily trying to make sense of Alistar and Aeron.

Ever since she was attacked by Dave, Alistar has been weirdly approachable and personable. Before that, he was always cold, distant, hardly spoke a word, and loathed spending time on Earth. But now he actually voluntarily comes to her house and spends time with not just Aeron but the rest of their family. Naturally Kye accused the demon of having ulterior motives, while Lily jokes about Alistar having a crush on Harper and finally deciding to take his shot.

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"Lily!" Harper is grateful that she has the phone on speaker instead of right next to her ear as Kye's shriek overpowers the ghost's giggling fit. "Why would you suggest such a terrifying idea? One demonic entity lusting after my sister is enough!"

"But it'd--it'd make sense." Lily gasps out between giggles. "Why else---would he--have Harper-- suck on his chest when she didn't---have to?"

"He did what?!"

"Guys!" Harper snaps into the speaker as she brings up her hands to massage her forehead, praying that the pressure behind her eyes was a migraine and not an aneurysm. "I think we have bigger problems like finding out how people are invading my dreams, locating and stopping who is trying to kill me, and, oh yeah, figuring out who is stalking and threatening me. Let's solve those issues first, and then we can theorize all the different ways we can make my love life messier than a K-drama."

The line falls silent for a moment before Kye lets out a deep sigh. " Sorry Har. We weren't trying to make light of your situation or anything. It's just ... been a lot and sometimes it is easier to focus on the least important issue than try to tackle the most important one. "

"Yeah, I understand. I'd much rather worry about grading these exams instead of my pending doom. "

"Hey, we're going to figure this all out," her brother says softly. " We've got a lot of people on it. The demon bros are looking into the bounty, those of us here are going to do some research into dream walking, and Talon is going to update us on his investigation into the stalker letters tonight at dinner.".