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Jonathan hated his algebra teacher, old Miss. Jacobs, because she had it out for him. For every minor thing she would slap him with detention which wouldn’t be so bad but, like a mega-bitch, she kept him so long that he missed the late bus to get home. For the past two months, he had walked home more often than not and he didn’t exactly live close to school. He would have taken the city bus home but he couldn’t afford to keep doing with how often he was held late.
Today was just another day in a long list of days he had to walk home. It had rained a lot that morning and there were puddles left on the sidewalk so his cat daemon rode on his shoulders draped along his neck. Abigail, a long hair grey cat with teal eyes, tended to ride on his shoulders most of the time despite the fact that they had a range of seven feet. She was a bit clingy and affectionate though she tried to play it off as being lazy or disinterested.
The way her tail curled up around his neck and the purring against the back of neck kind of dispelled that image.
On the plus side, carrying Abigail around was the easiest way to make sure no one would accidentally touch her by tripping over her or something- not as likely as he feared since she was fast and agile, but he didn’t like to chances with such a thing. It also allowed her to act as second set of eyes on the back of his head which he needed these days.
Somehow, Jonathan had gotten himself a stalker.
It was a slip of a boy with a weird sense of style and a raven daemon that kind of dwarfed him. So far he hadn’t done anything really threatening than duck into alleys to avoid being ‘spotted’ and staring. Excessively.
Still, Jonathan figured it was better to be safe than sorry. Speak of the devil….
Abigail gently prodded Jonathan’s cheek with her paw, her claws carefully tucked away.
He pulled away the headphone closest to her away from his ear, knowing that was her way of getting his attention.
“Stalker-boy is here,” she drawled lazily, her tail twitching against Jonathan’s throat. “He’s pretty close this time, about twenty feet back. His raven is nesting on his silly hat,” Abigail added with amusement in her tone.
Jonathan could imagine what a sight that must be but he didn’t turn to look; instead, he put his headphone back in place, to make it seem like he hadn’t noticed anything off, and turned off his music so he could hear what was going on around him. There was always a chance that the weirdo would choose today as the day he finally approached Jonathan, so best be prepared just in case.
Three more blocks passed without his stalker doing anything different from usual, maintaining the distance between them by stopping when Jonathan stopped and ducking obviously behind things whenever Jonathan turned his head.
Perhaps foolishly, Jonathan allowed himself to relax a bit (though he refused to turn back on his music until he was safe inside his house). So, when he noticed one of his shoelaces was untied he thought nothing of stopping to tie it; he moved close to a post office box so Abigail could jump onto it and then kneeled down on the wet sidewalk. The shoelaces were gross and wet, but he ignored that and tied them quickly.
He glanced up in time to notice a certain corvid- the weirdo’s daemon- was now also perched on the edge of the mailbox behind Abigail. Obviously, she hadn’t noticed the other daemon and, before Jonathan could open his mouth to warn her, the raven nipped her tail with his beak.
She leaped straight into the air with a yowl.
Jonathan instantly threw himself forward to catch her and was rewarded by claws digging into any bit of flesh they could reach.
The raven laughed obnoxiously, bouncing in place playfully. From where he was half-hidden behind a wall, the stalker-boy smiled at him in a hopeful way. Like he was innocent in all this.
Unimpressed, Jonathan glared back and tried to smooth Abigail’s fur back from where it was standing on end. He was done. Just done with today and this little asshole following him. He flipped them, both guy and daemon, off and then stomped off without another word.
“Wait-!”
But Jonathan would not wait to hear what his stalker had to say. “Don’t follow me,” he shouted over his shoulder and broke out into a jog to put more distance between them. There wasn’t a sound of rapid footsteps following him but he didn’t look back to check; he ran the whole way home, only pausing for crosswalks, and then locked himself away into his house.
A peek out between the blinds revealed that his stalker was not standing across the street like he usually did when he followed Jonathan home. He allowed himself to be distracted by Abigail butting her head into his chin, hoping that was the last he’d seen of that weirdo and his raven.
But things were far from over.