Emily's Heart

Chapter 6: Emily P.O.V.

6  Gathering

Emily

Greta’s horn blared as I took a brush to my mass of hair. It was frizzed out and doing that not-quite-curly but not-quite-straight thing that it did when I hadn’t taken the time to blow it out.

Fine, ponytail it is. I grabbed my bag and took the stairs two by two. I ran down the hall to the kitchen to grab a hunk of bread I’d made while Greta’s horn blared. It sounded like she was laying on it.

“Dammit, Greta, I’m coming!” I screamed.

I knew she couldn’t hear me, but it felt good to scream at her anyway.

I twisted each lock, rushed out of the door, then locked each one back up before I jumped the stairs and ran to Greta’s car.

Even though it had been about a week since Greta and I decided to play nice, it still weirded me out to hitch a ride to school with her. The world had gone nuts in the past year, and each day when I woke up, I hoped that it had all been a horrible nightmare. Being with Greta made it feel even more like a long, strange dream.

“Hurry up, Adams,” she snarled at me.

“Calm your panties, Greta. I’m going as fast as I can.”

“Whatever. It’s not fast enough. Do you want to get taken?”

“I’d like to see someone try,” I said.

I should know better than to say things like that.

“So what, is arrogance like a prerequisite for someone to be a Priestess of Brighid?”

“Shut it, Greta.”

Greta drove like a homicidal maniac was chasing her. I looked behind us and half-expected to see a monster truck pursuing her. But there wasn’t anything but a line of the usual Fords, Chevys, Hondas and Volkswagens.

“Why are you driving like a bat out of hell?”

“I’m not.”

“Greta, you’re doing fifty in a thirty-five zone and taking corners like you don’t have a brake.”

“If you don’t like the way I drive, get out.”

Greta gunned it into the school parking lot and parked in the middle of a row, wedged between two other cars. She tried to be inconspicuous, but it wasn’t easy. She drove a brand new Volkswagen Jetta convertible, fully loaded. It wasn’t a luxury car, but it was one of the nicest things on wheels in our school’s parking lot.

And she was … well, Greta. Even with no makeup, her hair in a ponytail and wearing simple jeans and a T-shirt, she had that bright, glowing sort of look that caused heads to turn. While everyone else looked like something dredged from a sewer, Greta was anything but inconspicuous.

But I knew something about Greta that no one else did. I knew that she’d killed a man. When pushed, I knew that Greta had it in her to do what had to be done. And that may be the only reason I had accepted her offer to ride to school with her and join her little ‘Let’s fight the Darkness’ club.

Truth be told, I held my head a little higher than I had before Greta pounded on my door. It’s strange how another person’s energy can affect you so much, for better or worse.

We walked side by side through the parking lot and up the sidewalk. I felt heads turn to look. Mind you, I didn’t see it. I wasn’t brave enough to look back. And if I had, my guess is that most who turned their heads to look at us still kept their heads down, giving sideways glances more than full-on stares.