Tales from Gulinger High: Tale Seven E-Book

Julie Steimle

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

The boys are taking bets again over the new kid come to Gulinger High--a cute sophomore by the name of Megan Dalaine. But the bets are off when Rick Deacon identifies her as a witch from his home town. Megan is on a quest to find the heir of Deacon Enterprises, and she is not going to let anyone, mafi or ghoulie, stand in her way. Will Matthew Calamori and company be able to protect Rick from ending up witch-snatched? Or will Rick have to try something desperate to lose the trail of the witches of Middleton Village?

Leseprobe

Julie Steimle

Tales from Gulinger High: Tale Seven

The Changeling

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

How to Become a Changeling

"Alright. You taking bets? Ghoulie or mafi?” Troy Meecham peered at the newcomer, a girl dressed in the latest fashion with a pixie haircut, standing spacey at the end of the hall. He rubbed his neck where it was bandaged, adjusting his turtleneck higher just in case she was vampiric.

Randon Spade, his best buddy and what people said was his twin brother separated at birth, patted his shoulder to let him know he was safe. Both dark haired boys watched her carefully.

“That’s a no-brainer. Totally ghoulie,” Tom Brown said. The platinum blonde fifteen-year-old peered at her through the dark sunglasses that masked his orange eyes.

Matthew Calamori looked and blinked. He was your average run of the mill Italian boy—mostly. “How can you tell?”

With a turn, Tom winked at his brown-haired pal. “No imps. She’s either really naughty, or she’s a changeling.”

“Same diff,” Troy said, tucking his money back into his pocket. “They’ll cure her then send her home when they’re sure it won’t happen again.”

“What’s up,” Rick Deacon strolled over. The group often lingered in the school’s main hall whenever something new or exciting was happening. Rick’s wolf-gray eyes barely glanced down the hall. He liked to hear their take on events first. They were older than him by two years, and they went about things in a fun way. Few people were foolish enough to challenge Matthew’s group of friends anyway.

“Newbie,” Troy said, gesturing over at the girl. “Tom says she’s a ghoulie.”

Rick lifted his head, brushed some of his rusty brown hair out of his eyes, and peered at her. As his eyes fixed on her face they grew wide. Backing up, he nearly tripped over himself. “That’s no ghoulie. That’s a witch! She’s from my hometown!”

He immediately ducked behind them.

The girl did not stir though, still staring straight ahead as though nothing would bother her.

“Are you sure?” Troy asked, glancing over at the girl once more. “We’ve never gotten a witch in here before.”

“That’s because my father would never have let one in!” Rick broke into a sweat, looking left then right for a way to escape. He then peered through them back at her. “Did she see me?”

“She’s not looking.” Troy stared down on Rick tiredly.

Matt shook his head then stood more largely to block her view of Rick. “She can’t see anything, I don’t think. If Tom’s right, she’s a changeling. And that means she is out to lunch.”

“A what?” Rick peeked up through his hands, still ducking low.

“A changeling,” Matt said again with a dry chuckle. “Someone who messed around with faerie property or did too many séance, usually the latter. They occasionally are sent to this school to be cured. Most of the time they are teens that are already up to no good. Juvie material, you know. Sometimes they dabble with those games at parties like Bloody Mary and the Candy Man, flipping out, or Hard as a Board Light as a Feather and they never come out of it. Most kids like these are sent to hospitals and lunatic asylums, but occasionally a doctor who knows about Gulinger sends them here, and the nurse here cures them.”

“A cure?” Rick shuddered, peeking over at her. “You mean she’ll wake from it and attend our school?”

The boys blinked at him.

“Not long,” Tom murmured, thinking it was the first time Rick had ever chosen not to associate with another classmate. “Eventually they go home since they aren’t mafis and they really aren’t ghoulies. But some of them end up back here again.”

“Repeat offenders,” Troy murmured, also agreeing Rick was acting weird.

Randon walked up, gesturing over to the girl. “Let me guess. The newbie’s a changeling.” He then looked down at Rick. “What’s wrong with you?”

Rick grabbed Randon’s arm, jerking him down. “She’s a witch.”

Randon yelped, dropping to the ground behind the others now. “Are you serious?”

“Don’t you think that’s a little, you know, prejudiced?” Matt asked, casting her another glance. She looked harmless.

Both Randon and Rick stared up at him with complete astonishment.

“Are you forgetting what witches did to me?” Randon snapped.

Rick nodded. “They used to follow me around school pulling hairs off my head. I’d still be back in Middleton if it weren’t for them.”

Tom jerked back, sneaking glances at her. “Because of that innocent-looking, cute, kinda sexy girl?”

“She was not the only one!” Rick snapped. He was shaking. “And how they look doesn’t matter!”

“His town is full of witches, the Bermuda Triangle of Massachusetts,” Randon said, slipping between them like a cat would. “They are the most dangerous ones. Besides, witches use pieces of werewolf in potions. And Rick is a rare one besides, so they’d really want to hunt him down. There are very few brown werewolves out there. Most of them are gray, just like your old man, right?” He looked to Rick, sweating with a glance over at the girl.

Rick nodded. “Yeah. I think so.”

“But she’s just one girl,” Matt said, gesturing back to her.

She hardly moved, though by then the nurse led her out of the main hall down to her office where the nurse was going to administer the cure. The girl shuffled her feet like an automaton. Her body was there, but that appeared to be all.

Watching her go, Rick rose onto his feet. “One. Yeah. But with the witches of Middleton, they’d send one ahead to scout out. I bet they sent her to look for me.”

“You egotistical—” Tom rolled his eyes.

“No!” Rick punched him in the arm. “You don’t know what it’s like to be hunted. No matter what you think, I don’t think I’m the center of the universe. But the since the last full moon I’ve been really creeped out. Ok? Losing Lewis….” He shook his head stiffly. “Tom, I’m scared. Ok? Those witches are scary.”

Rick turned and stalked out the hall, breathing hard as if he would run.

Randon turned also. “Tom, you go too far sometimes. He’s your roommate.”

Troy and Matt just stood there, glancing at Tom with wonder at why they hadn’t been shouted at also. Neither of them had taken Rick seriously either. Watching Randon, they realized they had tread on ground they ought not have.

Tom lowered his eyes. “But Rick is always so….”

“Popular?” Matt finished, tilting his head to the side to gaze at his friend with a sigh.

“You’re begrudging his popularity among the mafis?” Troy asked, himself feeling a certain degree of envy. Rick was the most easily forgiven ghoulie on campus. “You want to take him down a notch? You know it is his personality that draws people to him.”

“Animal magnetism,” Tom muttered, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

“Don’t quote Selena,” Troy moaned.

Tom rolled his eyes anyway, looking to the ceiling.

Matt slung his arm around Tom’s shoulders. “Tom. You know Rick doesn’t go around thinking he’s better than you.”

“Is that what he’s thinking?” Tom turned to him, growing increasingly subdued.

Nodding, Matt grinned. “Yeah. He just wants to be everybody’s friend.”

“He doesn’t look down at me and my mom…” Tom mumbled, peering at the ground. His hands dug deeper into his pockets. “…My dad?”

Troy moaned, scratching the back of his neck.

“Are you kidding? Your mom writes you from prison,” Matt said. “Don’t you see how he looks over your shoulder when you get them? He eats up all the things she says to you with envy. He thinks his mom’s rejected him. And he rarely sees his dad.”

“And your dad has visited, hasn’t he?” Troy added, nudging Tom with his elbow.

Tom snorted. “That one time? Oi. That one time was enough. I can’t exactly toss a football with him or go eat out.”

“Yeah,” Troy retorted. “But you don’t have to catch and kill a rabbit for dinner when you do eat out.”

Tom broke into a snicker. That last peek at Rick’s bloody hunt on the last full moon was enough to sate his curiosity for eons.

“We need to protect Rick,” Matt said, looking back at where the girl had gone.

“Again?” Tom rolled his eyes, exhaling loudly as they walked down the hall.

“It’s only the second time,” Troy said, going with them.

Tom just shrugged.

How You Handle a Changeling

Curing the girl from a changeling took very little time. All one had to do was boil a bunch of empty egg shells in front of the victim, and the victim went back to normal—if normal was what she was. Megan Delaine from Middleton Village, Massachusetts blinked her eyes and stared around the nurse’s office like all other changelings that had come to the school before her, then swore like most of them did, asking where she was.

“Does it matter?” the nurse said, turning off the heat to the hotplate, removing the boiling water and eggshells. “You got sent here for recuperation. You’ve been dabbling, young lady, into things you ought not.”

Megan scrunched up her nose then snorted with disgust. “Don’t give me that! I’ve been kidnapped!”

“Nope, sorry.” The nurse then handed her an envelope. “This one here is for you. We have the family members write letters of proof, though I don’t see why they didn’t administer a cure themselves. They seemed to know a thing or two about unusual phenomena.”

“What the—” Megan cursed again, “—are you talking about?”

Gazing with a posture of self-control, the nurse grinned. “You were possessed. A changeling. And you were lucky it was only that.”

Blinking, Megan sat back. “What?”

*                       

“Everyone is talking about it,” a girl in Rick’s class whispered to another. “We’re getting a new classmate.”

“I heard it was a changeling. I hate those,” the other girl hissed back.

Rick turned around in his seat towards her. “Are they really that bad?”

Both girls nodded at him.

One said, “They’re mean. And that’s all there is to it. The only good thing about them being here is that some of the ghoulies like Trouble gang up on the particularly nasty ones and scare them to death. Then they change.”

“Tom would do that?” Rick sat up in his seat.

“Class, come to order!” Their teacher banged her marker against the white board.

“With the new headmaster in charge?” the girl shrugged, whispering. “I don’t know if he’ll allow it.”

“I said,” the teacher stuck her head near Rick’s face. “Come to order.”

Both the girls and Rick straightened up.

Lee peered over at him and narrowed his eyes.

 *

Rick skipped the next hour of class, jogging into Tom’s classroom, whispering to him. Tom listened with a great deal more patience than usual, nodding slowly until a smirk cracked onto on his face then grew. It spread until he was grinning from ear to ear. He nodded to Rick then winked. Rick Deacon returned to his class in the next hour, his classmates asking where he had gone.

“Medical emergency,” Rick said.

Lee snorted. “Yeah, right.”

Robert from Louisiana glanced to their other ghoulie classmate and whispered, “I kinda wish Matt were here. He’d tell us what Rick was really thinkin’.”

“I don’t think he would,” Stan from Seattle replied. “I think Matt would lie for Deacon.”

 *

Rick spoke with was Selena next.

Setting her hand on her hip, Selena (who was part Mediterranean Siren part New York Debutante) cocked her head, moistening her lips. “So, you’re saying you want me to run interference for you? And what do I get in return?” She grinned at him, looking Rick up and down with pleasurable flickers in her sea green eyes.

Rolling his eyes, as she was not one of his favorite people to deal with, Rick said, “Look, what do you want from me? You’re three years older than me. I’m not smarter than you, so I can’t do your homework, and my dad actually keeps me on a short allowance. If it’s money you want—”

“I don’t want your money.” She disdainfully rolled her eyes. “My family is really rich too, you know. In fact, I’d say we’re richer than your family. The point is I have to go to a debutant ball later this month. My grandparents are going to set me up with some hotshot snob from Scarsdale if I don’t get a date for myself first. And since I don’t want some guy hitting on me the entire night, and you are Howard Richard Deacon the third, I think you’ll satisfy the criteria quite nicely.”

He pulled back, making a face. “They won’t care that I’m three years younger than you?”

“They’ll think in terms of dollars, and that is the only sense they will care about.” Selena grinned at him. “Is it a deal?”

Sticking out his hand to shake on it, Rick nodded. “As long as it is not during the full moon, deal.”

She took his hand, jerked him in and kissed him on his forehead. When she let go, he tipped back in a daze, wondering what just happened.

Selena sauntered off.

Helping him onto his feet, the boys nearby slapped him on the back, yet Rick still peered after her like she was some lunatic creature out of some pink-and-purple fairy-dusted lagoon.