Page 75 of Summoned
We order pizza. Hours slip by as we browse the internet for anything about the Black Joker, bouncing between Google and old occult blogs. By evening, we’ve exploredeverything remotely connected to Angelina. And stillnothing. It’s not as though we expected this would be easy.
The glow from the screen reflects in the glass of my cold coffee. Daria taps on the trackpad, brushes her fingers across her lips, then faces me. “You never did tell me… What does the Black Joker look like?”
Just thinking about his cold, hard face causes a stabbing pain in my gut. “What do you mean?”
“Well…” Daria leans back against the pillow. “You mentioned he seems about thirty, and nothing specific. His hair? Eyes? Am I supposed to picture some sexy version of Snape, or more like Julieta’s witcher, who was striking? Or maybe he’s got crooked teeth, a hunchback, and the brooding vibe of the Beast fromBeauty and the Beast?”
I exhale loudly, somewhere between a sigh and a scoff. “No hunchback. No crooked teeth. And nothing like the Beast.”
Daria raises an eyebrow.
I run my thumb along the rim of my coffee cup. “His skin is… pale, but not sickly. More like stone, but not cold. His eyes… sometimes they seem dark brown, other times pitch black. I don’t know if it’s a beautiful face or just so perfectly symmetrical your brain can’t decide whether to stare or run.”
“Wow,” Daria whispers. “That sounds disturbingly good.”
“Yeah, exactly. Him not looking like a monster? That’s the problem. It makes you lower your guard. And that… causes more issues.”
I shouldn’t have said that last part out loud. It’s bad enough that I keep ending up humiliated by Gaetano. No need to give him even more power by admitting hisphysique attracts me.
Daria fiddles with the ring around her index finger. It’s a thin gold band with a dark stone I’ve seen on her mother’s finger in the past. I conclude the conversation is over, but then she straightens in her chair, her focus on me once more. “More issues, Nicole? What’s that supposed to mean?”
A knot forms in my stomach. My first instinct is to ask her why the hell she’s sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. She’s only in my room because I let her stay. We’re not friends. We’re allies with a common enemy.
I hold back from snapping and pretend I didn’t hear. My attention drifts back to the screen, and the open article about Angelina—the last time she was spotted near her grandmother’s abandoned house. “Her grandmother died three years ago. Clearly,shewasn’t stupid enough to summon the Black Joker. Or maybe she did and outsmarted him?”
I scroll to the next article.“‘We had no idea she had any psychological issues,’ claims Angelina’s mother. ‘I swear, she was always incredibly responsible’…”
“Are you scared?”
I lift my head from the screen. “What?”
Daria shifts closer, her gaze unwavering. “Are you scared you might fail, Niki?”
If Boyana or one of the twins asked me that, I’d assume they were probing for weakness. Daria… she’s cut from a different, better cloth. That surreal feeling hits me again. I never thought I’d be in the same room with her again, let alone sharing things.
Suddenly, my defensive walls weaken. I close my eyes for just a second and admit, “I’m terrified.”
Daria stands up and moves closer, wrapping her fingersaround my arm. “I believe in you. I trust you’ll handle the rest of the trials with ease.”
Daria doesn’t know everything. That’s why she has so much faith in me.
“You’re still the girl who made life a nightmare for the girls who bullied us in school,” she adds with a faint smile. “Paying Dana’s boyfriend to take nude pictures of her and leak them online? Total evil mastermind move. And what did you stash in their backpacks before ratting them out to the principal? Was it weed?”
Memories from high school flood my mind. “Yeah. Weed…”
“Sophie got expelled. And Clementine? She developed bulimia after you started that rumor about her having an STD. No one wanted to be friends with her.”
“I didn’t know Clementine had bulimia.”
“Oh, yeah. We were in the same class in high school. She missed a lot of days because of it.”
With every word falling from her lips, my body tenses more and more. Those stories don’t sound nearly as triumphant now as they did when I replayed them in my head. “From what I remember, you always condemned my methods, calling them cruel. What’s with bringing them up as examples?”
She grimaces and throws her hands up. “I still don’t approve. My point is, you’ve got a talent for destroying your enemies.”
I’ve never felt guilty about what I did. Those girls deserved every bit of it. And yet, something twists in my chest when I think of Clementine.
It was a necessary evil. Part of my transformation from loser to the “Little Baroness.”
