“Not true!” Piper rebutted. “I just simply can’t deprive the world of my fantastic three-pointer!”

“Or your middle block,” I offered helpfully. “Besides, even the smiley faces you try to draw look evil.”

“Bleh!” Seth interrupted our giggling practically spitting out his last bite of food. “What is this?” he asked after forcing himself to swallow.

“That is mystery meat,” Tristan explained, sitting down across from me and squeezing my hand familiarly with his hand. “And Stella should have warned you not to even bother with that….” Tristan eyed Seth’s plate with the first form of sympathetic camaraderie I noticed from him and my heart swelled just a little with the hope of a future friendship between the two boys.

“I didn’t know he was going to take three helpings of it!” I defended myself, holding up my plate of French fries and offering them to Seth.

“The color of the gravy should have tipped me off,” Seth grumbled while Rigley and Lincoln joined us at the table next to Tristan. Our table had a very strict, unspoken rule and that was that boys sat on one side of the table and girls sat on the other. Seth was breaking the rule by sitting next to me, but being the rebel I was couldn’t make myself care. It was weird we still segregated ourselves….

“Do you have a thing for radioactive sauces?” Rigley asked, eyeing Seth’s plate with everyone else.

“Apparently,” Seth muttered. "Where are those chocolate chip pancakes when you need them?” He grabbed a fry off my plate, shooting me a grateful smile.

“Do not bring those up if you want me to share my fries,” I warned.

“Oh no,” Tristan gasped. “You didn’t eat her pancakes did you?”

“You ate her pancakes!” Piper chimed in, offering a horrified expression and a jingling hand over her heart.

“I didn’t know they were such a big deal!” Seth held up both hands in surrender, laughing.

“Which is why he was forgiven,” I conceded valiantly. “This time….”

“Careful Seth, once when I spent the night and Annabelle made them for us, I took one too many thinking it was perfectly fine to be, you know…. hungry,” Piper explained dramatically, “and Stella didn’t talk to me for a week. Not until I made my mom drive over to Annabelle’s and beg her to make a special batch for Stella just so she would stay my friend.” Piper waved her fork around while she told the story and her lips pursed together in an expression that promised she was serious.

“She’s lying to you Seth, don’t believe her,” I promised seriously and then added as a warning, “But seriously, don’t take my pancakes again.”

“Hello, Tristan,” a sickly sweet voice called from the other side of Piper. “Is this a new recruit for the basketball team?” Bree Henry asked innocently.

Ugh. Bree Henry. Not that I completely disliked her. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. My position on Earth required me to love all of humanity…. But if I had been allowed just one human to place outside of the love I had to unconditionally give to this planet, she would definitely be my first choice.

“Hey, Bree,” Tristan replied casually. “This is Seth. Seth this is Bree.” Tristan made an uninterested gesture between the two so they could be considered formally introduced and I swallowed my irritation.

“Hi Seth,” Bree cooed, flipping her highlighted hair over her shoulder. “So you are another one of Tristan’s recruits?”

Both Tristan and Seth laughed at that. “I’m not a recruit,” Seth explained shooting Tristan a sideways look. “I’m not even here to play basketball. I’m just a regular student.” He shot Bree his charming smile and I had to take a sip of my water to keep from making a face. If only we shared a telepathic communication…. I could have assured him, she wouldn’t take much effort to charm at all.

“I don’t think there’s anything regular about you,” she purred with that gross voice she was always talking to Tristan in.

Rigley snickered across the table and Piper and I held back our laughter. I wanted Seth to form his own opinions about Mead and make his own friends so that he didn’t always feel like he was tied to me, but I might have to warn him about the biggest flirt in school.

Like about not becoming her friend.

Seth shifted uncomfortably under Bree’s penetrating stare and gave me an uncertain glance. “So are you another one of Stella’s best friends?” he asked innocently.

Bree and I both let out a strangled laugh at the same time. She turned to stare at me for a second, malice thickening the air between us. I smoothed out my face and returned her glare with my sweetest smile, knowing I wasn’t taking the high road. She loathed when I was nice to her. She preferred outright honesty and the fact that she had made me her rival since the first day of kindergarten was not a secret. But, saving humanity and all, I was not really in a position to just come right out and say exactly how I felt about her.

“We’re, uh, friends,” I replied, shifting my gaze to Seth’s because I knew Bree’s reaction would be vile.

Tristan, Rigley and Lincoln burst into laughter at that and Piper, who had somehow not incited the same hatred in Bree as I did, shook her head like she knew better.

“If by friends you mean we go to the same school, happen to be in the same grade and unfortunately have to see each other daily….” Bree made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat and ripped open her lunch bag with extra force. “Then yeah, we’re friends.”

Yikes. So obviously not best friends.

“So who’s going to Lincoln’s after the game tomorrow night?” Rigley moved the conversation forward. Seth shot me an unsure glance and then went back to his radioactive lunch. Making high school enemies was so not on the list of acceptable Star-related activities….

“Oh I’ll be there,” Piper replied dryly, “with bells on.”

“Really?” Lincoln spoke up for the first time, his clear skin turning pink with the question.

“Yes, really,” Piper nodded enthusiastically, “with actual bells on.”

Lincoln looked back down at his sack lunch a little dejected, but didn’t offer a response to Piper’s sarcasm. I noticed the hint of disappointment in Lincoln’s demeanor and tried to salvage the situation.

“Are your parents out of town again, Lincoln?” I asked, investigating the reason behind a Friday night, after-game party. Weekend parties were not an uncommon affair in Mead, there wasn’t much else to do and most of the kids had older siblings more than willing to provide illegal-underage refreshments for a price. But a party in someone’s actual house was kind of uncommon. Usually, Friday night was spent with a circle of truck beds backed up around a bonfire. Those were easy to avoid. A house-party was a special occasion and not so easy to make excuses for.

“Yeah, Rigley refuses to waste an opportunity,” Lincoln replied, still staring at his lunch.

“So you girls going or what?” Rigley asked bluntly.

“I’m going!” Bree offered enthusiastically. “Liz and Kendall are too, as long as Kendall and Eli are still together…. Chances are they’ll break up before Friday night and then she won’t want to go. But there’s also a good chance they could break up and get back together before then too-“

“Anyway,” Piper cut her off before we could hear anymore scenarios that involved Kendall’s possible attendance. “Let’s just count them all in for the party until we hear differently, k?”

Bree rolled her eyes, but didn’t continue speculating anymore high school romances.

The table fell silent for a moment before Tristan added, “Not everyone is going to be drinking, and you can bring Seth.” Tristan nodded over to Seth who had somehow managed to eat most of the lunch on his plate. “It could be fun,” Tristan added softly to me.

“Maybe,” I conceded, wondering how Seth would react to a bunch of drunken teenagers pulling small town shenanigans like Tipsy-Cow-Tipping on a farm in the middle of nowhere.

“Depends on if we win or lose,” Piper decided.

“Which way?” Lincoln tried again and I had to hold back my smile at his obvious interest in Piper.

“That depends too, my friend,” Piper answered noncommittally and then got up to throw the remains of her lunch away.

Something moved across the ceiling…. something long, thin and black. A wisp of charcoal smoke moved with purpose; I saw the Shadow out of the corner of my eye, like a dark cloud in my peripheral. I whipped my head around to catch the demon in action, but it already disappeared before my eyes could find it. And then again, from the other side of the cafeteria, a puff of evil that slithered along the wall, a sadistic snake shape that slipped away to nothing before I could focus on my enemy.

“Are you Ok, Stel?” Tristan asked, as he watched me whip my head back and forth, my golden skin turning pale.

“Fine,” I turned to give him a reassuring smile and when I did the Shadow was back on the ceiling, paused and unmoving as if watching me.

I turned my head slower this time, sure I would miss the apparition, but there it stayed. The black tuft of smoke discolored the white tile and sent the faint smell of sulfur burning my nostrils. Goose bumps raised the hair on my forearms, and a sickening, nauseous feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. The Shadow didn’t move or flinch as I stared back, and although it did not have eyes per say, the head of the demon seemed to watch me intently, as if egging me on…. daring me to react.

I watched the Shadow for a second before turning to Seth to get his attention. He had already seen it though, and stared intently at it. I felt his knee bounce up and down furiously as he tried to restrain his Warrior instinct and go after it, his entire body tensed with the effort not to go to battle. I wondered if there was a sword or dagger hidden in his casual outfit, a school sized one for school sized incidents.

Eventually the Shadow faded away, into the ceiling and the room returned to normal. The behavior was strange though, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the night when Seth appeared in my life, when Sidra died, if the nature of this war hadn’t changed in some way…. some terribly epic way that even Jupiter wouldn’t be able to prepare me for.

Shadows were supposed to influence evil from a distance. They were called Shadows for a reason; they were never seen, only glimpsed at. And they were never out rightly threatening, only influential manipulators.

My gaze fell back to Seth who was watching me closely as though my life were in immediate danger. His brilliant eyes glowed with his supernatural power and the warmth of his skin had picked up hues of gold. I smiled at him reassuringly, hoping to remind him he was in a room filled with humans, but it only softened his intensity a little.

Something was going on. And we needed to figure out what.

Preferably before my game tomorrow night.

Chapter Eight

“Hey, great game!” Tristan stopped me on my way to the locker room. The varsity boys’ team waited against the gym wall to start warm-ups while the varsity girls’ team cleaned up the rest of our discarded water cups and towels and cleared the gym floor.