Diabolical by Cynthia Leitich Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

leaving until dawn because Zach wants to talk to Freddy first.
    Meanwhile, Quince and I stop by Sanguini’s. We touch base with Nora. Then we hit my house so I can pack. I don’t have much cold-weather gear. No snow boots. No winter coat. I grab a couple of long-sleeved T-shirts. An extra pair of jeans.
    On my bedroom carpet, Quince plays tug-of-war — using a thick, knotted white rope — with the quickly growing German shepherd pups, Pecos and Concho.
    Nora will take care of the dogs while we’re gone.
    “Have you considered stretch denim?” Quince asks.
    I pat my flat stomach. “You trying to tell me something?”
    She laughs, and Pecos bounds up to lick her face. “News flash, Wolf man. You’re stretchy. Shape-change-y. For those shifts when you can’t start au naturel, it might be nice not to trash your whole outfit. Less painful and expensive, too.”
    I hold up a ski boot that fit back in sixth grade. Then I toss it back in the closet. My black cowboy boots will have to do. “You don’t find tattered shirts sexy?”
    “On you?” Quince replies, suddenly flirtatious. “Or off you?”
    Uh . . . “Which would you prefer?”
    We didn’t tell Zach. But yesterday my folks took Meghan with them to a destination wedding that Mom is working in Hawaii. They’ll be gone two and a half weeks. We’ll call. We’ll text. Quince and I will be back before they realize we’ve left. I hope.
    “I’ve never seen Zachary so freaked out,” she says, scratching Concho’s belly. “I get that he’s worried about Miranda’s friend, and any place associated with the devil is profoundly disturbing, but —”
    “It’s the ‘Miranda’ in that sentence that’s your answer,” I reply. “Love makes people crazy.” I pull Quince up and kiss the tip of her nose. “I should know.”
    Her half smile reminds me that we don’t leave until sunrise. Temptation tugs.
    Thank God that my family is off doing the hula.
    Thank God that her guardian angel has other plans.

AT 2:30 A.M. , Nora comes home and informs me that Quincie stopped by the restaurant with Kieren but didn’t stay to work. Quincie loves to work.
    When she doesn’t answer her phone, I jog to the Morales house and catch a glimpse of her silhouette intertwined with Kieren’s through the Wolf’s bedroom window. The world over, GAs are watching over assignments in more intimate clenches.
    But my being corporeal makes sticking around seem, at most, perverted and, at least, like I should get a life.
    At 3 A.M. , Freddy pours us each a cup of coffee and adds a shot of Baileys to his. “The devil himself, eh?”
    Freddy is firmly human, about forty with bleached hair and wire-rimmed glasses. Each night at the restaurant he plays Count Sanguini, leading dinner guests in a midnight toast.
    He was raised in the human servant community that caters to upper-echelon vamps. As an adult, Freddy made a life for himself on the fringes of that underworld. He stuck around only because his twin, Harrison — the same Harrison who’s keeping my girl company upstairs — was the personal assistant to the undead king. Freddy’s not the kind of guy who could just walk away. He couldn’t leave his own brother to the monsters, even if Harrison was staying by choice.
    “About your plan to rescue this Lucy,” Freddy begins again. “If this Scholomance Preparatory Academy doesn’t allow visitors or calls, how do you plan to contact her? Do you have an e-mail address? Are you connected on some social-networking site?”
    I open Quincie’s laptop. “I’m not a detail guy.” Or, for that matter, a Web guy.
    “Hmm.” He hands me a steaming mug. “Some years ago, I had the occasion to encounter an alumnus of the Scholomance’s Carpathian campus — a necromancer — at one of His Majesty’s galas.” Freddy slides into a kitchen chair. “He was coming on to an Old Blood aristocrat. You know how it is with eternals and necromancers.”
    I’m willing to take his word for