Demon Hunters: Book 1 Faith [editing]

Chapter 9

"How can you eat that like everyday?" Dominic asked the girl sitting next to him at the table where Zoe was setting Riley's backpack down. She remembered seeing him from the classroom earlier, but was uncertain who the girl was. Her physical features suggested that her parents were of Asian (probably the mother) and European descent, that she was athletic, and that she had been born in the United States.

The girl held up a potato chip and waved it at him. "Jealous, aren't you?" She crunched it deliberately and closed her eyes to savor each bite. Then she licked her lips and stuck her tongue out at him.

Dominic grinned. "I find that incredibly sexy," he said. "You can eat my chips anytime."

Riley said, "Get a room."

"I wish," Dominic replied, while the girls laughed.

"Zoe, these are my crazy friends. That's Lin, and he's Dominic."

"Hi," Lin said and smiled.

"It's her first day. So I'm going to show her the ropes."

"That's cool," Dominic said. "Get the pizza. It's always a classic."

"Don't listen to him. Food sucks here." Lin held up her bag of potato chips and a can of soda. "Breakfast of champions."

Zoe smiled. She liked Lin, despite the nutritional value of her meal.

The food court consisted of a series of round tables placed in a large open area on the second floor of the school. Windows offered a view of the football stadium on one side and the highway on the other side. In the back of the room, food was served in three different lines. Three cash registers had been setup for students to pay for their meals.

"It totally sucks that its not open campus," Riley said. "I mean, I think they should at least let upperclassmen get out of here." She sighed. They grabbed trays from one of the stacks. "I'm going to go for the salad. It's the only thing they serve that I trust enough to eat here. That's because they don't actually have to cook it if you get what I mean."

She followed Riley into the line and mimicked her behaviors on acquiring the food, getting nearly the same meal and paying at the register. However, when Zoe pulled out a hundred dollar bill the cashier gawked. "Don't think I can always changed bills like this. This is a school cafeteria, not a bank."

"Oh, sorry,"Zoe replied, realizing that all she had was a stack of hundred dollar bills. Zacharias hadn't bothered with the details of how much cash she should carry.

"You are lucky today." The woman handed her mostly fives.

Riley watched over the transaction with amusement. "Did you have a birthday or something?"

"What?"

"You know? Birthday money?"

"Oh. Yeah." Zoe didn't know when her actual birthday was. In the Heavenly Spaces time doesn't work the same as on the earth plane. She did know that she came into existence about the time that Milton wrote Paradise Lost in 1667. The angelic conversation about the work continued for years afterward, and she remembered the way that angels scoffed at the portrayal of Lucifer as some freedom fighter. They returned to the table.

"Mrs. Shetler's pop quiz in Trig today surprised everyone. She had never done something like that before," Diego said to another boy. They had just settled into their chairs, each with their own tray.

"It won't surprise me," Dominic said. "Mason, my buddy here, is going to tell me everything that was on it." He squeezed Mason into a tight bear hug.

Riley pointed to the empty space next to Diego, and Zoe placed her tray there. That's when Diego finally noticed her. On the other hand, Zoe had monitored his presence the moment he entered the food court. "You?"