Immortal Souls (The Immortal Souls: Magic & Chaos)

Book 2 - Chapter 23

Sam hurried to her regular table, the one in the corner of the cafeteria at the very back. She walked towards it, trying her best to pay no attention to the people who stared at her as she moved past. Well . . . they weren't really staring at her, but rather at the 'new kid' trailing along behind. She didn't need to turn around to know that he wasn't paying any attention to them. He was doing the same thing he'd been doing all day. Playing a game on his Nintendo.

Sam sat in her regular seat and slammed her bag down on the table in front of her. Jamie took the seat across from her. "Someone's in a bad mood," he stated without taking his attention away from his game.

Sam didn't dignify him with a response, instead she opened her bag, removed her notebook and her lunch, and ignored Jamie as he'd been ignoring her for most of the day so far.

Jamie leaned forward and looked down at her notebook. After a few seconds, he sighed and sat back in his chair. "You should rewrite it," he said.

Sam glared at him. "Why?"

He pointed to one of the words on her notebook, without even looking at what he was doing. "Irregardless is not a word, it's a double negative and it cancels itself out."

"You're not a word," Sam mumbled.

"Actually it is," he said with a smile. "And it has two variations."

Sam gave him an unimpressed look. "I will kick you," she warned. "Stop being annoying, and stop correcting my homework."

Jamie smiled. "I'm being helpful."

"No . . . you're being irritating, there's a difference."

"How many non-humans at this school?" Jamie asked, changing the subject, his eyes sifting past all of the tables slowly, assessing every person he could see.

"Why?"

"I'm trying to teach myself to sense the difference."

"If you were to guess?"

Jamie looked around the cafeteria. His eyes settling on the table closest to the door where Madison sat with her group of friends. "Well . . . at the very least there's the two of us."

"What's so special about that table?" Sam asked, following Jamie's line of sight.

"It's disturbing over there," he said, his eyes squinted in concentration.

"How?"

He shrugged, and with a sigh turned back around to face Sam. "It's just off somehow. I'm not sure who it's coming from though, it could be anyone there."

"Madison is a member of the Coven," Sam said. "So is Elle. Madison is half-Warlock, Elle is human but she thinks Magic is cool so she practices . . . well, she tries anyway."

"So it's Madison then?" Jamie asked, glancing at her over his shoulder.

"I'm not so sure. I've known Madison since I got here, the creepiness is new." Sam leaned across the table, so that she was closer to Jamie and no one would hear. "See that guy talking to Kami—"

"Who's Kami?" Jamie asked.

"The girl with the brown hair . . . the Asian girl."

"I don't know why you didn't start with Asian," Jamie muttered, looking briefly in the direction Sam had directed. "There are three brunettes at the table and only one of the group is an Asian girl. It's completely illogical to begin the description with hair colour."

Sam glared at Jamie for long enough that he smiled and sighed. Getting back to the point he said, "Okay, so that guy."

"That's Elliot," she said. "I have no idea what he is . . . but I get this weird vibe off him. Like, scary . . . creepy weird."