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so hostile.” Kyle took a swig of beer, then shrugged and joined Dex out on the walkway.
    “ I’ll go, too,” Tamila said, stepping out the door after them.
    “ Are you sure?” Cassidy asked.
    “ Yeah.” Tamila tilted her head at the boys. “I feel like she needs a girl with her.”
    Reese, lying limp and half-conscious in Dex’s arms, let out a small moan.
    “Okay, true.  That’s really nice of you, Tami.” Especially considering how nasty Reese was to you , Cassidy thought.
    “ You’re going to be all right by yourself tonight?” Tamila rubbed Cassidy’s arms and glanced back toward the bedroom.
    “ Barb’s still here,” Cassidy said.
    “ Yeah, I’ll keep her company.” Barb stepped up and stood at Cassidy’s side.  Tamila glanced back and forth between them, then nodded once, as if she’d made some kind of decision.
    “ You do that, Barb,” Tamila said. “You take good care of Cassidy for me.”
    “ I will.” Barb put an arm around Cassidy’s waist.
    Cassidy watched the four of them depart, and then she closed the door.
    Tamila called later from the hospital.  She was distant, almost businesslike, as she reported that Reese had scattered first-degree burns on her body and had lost her eye.  Tamila, a bright girl with a future to protect, had concocted a story that would hopefully stave off any police investigation.
    Tamila had claimed that Reese was high on drugs and ranting about demons, which fit very well with the fact that Reese had begun screaming about demons when she’d reached the hospital, then attacked the hospital staff when they clearly didn’t believe her.  Tamila had told the doctors that Reese’s wound was self-inflicted.  They had sedated Reese, who later claimed to remember nothing.
    That was it.  Cassidy and Tamila hardly spoke at all for the rest of high school, their lives moving in very distant directions from each other.  Cassidy would spend her adolescence focused on boys, drugs, and her part-time job at the art supply store by the mall, barely squeaking through her classes (except art and literature, where she made A’s).  Tamila graduated as class valedictorian with a pile of full-ride scholarship offers from top schools around the country.
    Reese wore a black eyepatch for the rest of high school, earning her a number of pirate-themed nicknames she obviously despised.  She was never seen again at any parties, and she also dropped out of the Drama Club, where she’d often played lead roles in school plays.  She turned her focus to school and began attending a church, where she spent most of her time.  She shed her trademark nose ring and skimpy slutwear, trading them for conservative dresses and full-length pants.  Reese transformed herself from one of the school’s leading juvenile delinquents, and certainly its flashiest, into a very quiet religious girl in a plain brown wrapper.
    Cassidy assumed that Reese’s turn to religion was an understandable response to her apparent demonic possession.  She couldn’t know for sure, because Reese ignored her and refused to speak with her.  That was exactly how Reese treated most people at school after the night of the party, the night of Nibhaz.  Cassidy later heard she’d gone off to some obscure religious college in Kentucky or Oklahoma after graduation.
    As for Barb—Barb stuck with Cassidy, and they only grew closer over the years, through an adolescence filled with drugs, boys, parties, concerts, sneaking out, and getting picked up by the police more than once.  They barely limped across the finish line of high school together, but they were young, and they felt ready to move out and face the world together.
     

     

Chapter Two
     
    Big Ted wanted an “evil-looking cat with a pirate patch” on his right arm, just above the elbow, between the fanged moon wearing sunglasses and the flaming clock.  If there was some overall theme or pattern to Big Ted’s tattoos, Cassidy had not yet discovered