by Kat Cotton
“What’s in it for me?” I asked.
“Extra credit and a room on the upper floor.”
I sucked in my lips, considering. Even though my dorm room wasn’t luxurious, it suited me. It kept me out of harm’s way.
“Sweeten the pot.”
“An allowance.”
“How much?”
I reeled when he said the amount. That was no joke.
“Hell yeah. You name it, I’ll do it. Bring on the extra duties.”
One of the cafes in town was famed for its parfaits. Like they were considered the best parfaits in the world by the girls in this school who’d know about that kind of thing. Not once since I’d started here had I been able to scrape up the cash for one of those awesome parfaits. They cost almost as much as a secondhand car.
Now I could almost taste it, the ice cream mixing with the sweet syrup on my tongue. The fruits, the nuts, the little brownie poked on top. I’d peered in the window so many times and studied the menu so I knew exactly what I’d order.
I salivated just thinking about it. Well actually, I drooled, like a big, drooly dog. Finally, that parfait would be mine.
“All you have to do is tutor Ren Worthington.”
Bam.
My delicious dream disappeared, leaving a parfait-shaped hole in my heart. It’d been true love, a pure love. A sweet, sweet love. Now I had nothing.
“Nope. No way. Forget it.”
“Any girl in this school would give their right arm to get that close to him.”
“So ask them. You could have a whole room full of right arms. They’ll be happy, and I’ll be happy to stay well away from him.”
I got up from the desk and grabbed my bag. Conversation over.
“Not so fast, Cherry. You obviously have some kind of issue with Ren.”
He gave me one of those teacher smiles. The “you can trust me” smile. I stopped falling for that bullshit at eight-years-old. I’d tell him all my issues and he’d tell me that Ren wasn’t so bad and I should get to know him.
“Come on, why Ren? Why me? You know I’m not even that good a fighter. Get one of the guys to do it. Mark, he’d be fantastic.”
As much as Mark annoyed me, I couldn’t deny his fighting skills. He had the blood lust and the muscles. I had nothing really except the ability to hide myself. I’m not sure how that would help Ren.
Mr. Norton laughed. “You’ve been picked for a reason. What would people think if Mark started tutoring Ren? His marks are worse than Ren’s ever could be. You’re the only one in this group who’d make a believable tutor. And tutoring is the only way we can get a hunter close to Ren.”
“See, the whole “close to Ren” thing is what I have problems with. And I’m not the body guard type.”
Mr. Norton pursed his lips. “You wouldn’t be a body guard as such. You probably wouldn’t even need to fight. If there’s any real danger, we’d get the others to intervene.”
I shrugged my shoulders to adjust the weight of my backpack.
“Like a canary?”
“Canary?”
“The canaries they send down mines to test for gas. If the canary dies, it’s not safe.”
“You won’t die, if that’s what worries you. It’d be more like an early warning system.” Mr. Norton’s smiled in a way that was meant to soften the deal. “It’s only for a few weeks, and I know you need the cash.”
True facts. But I’d been poor all my life and I could be poor a while longer.
I crossed my arms. “That’s a few weeks too many. Ren is tied up in this and maybe he’s threatening himself to take the heat off.”
“He’s in danger.”
“Is he at more risk than any other student?”
“Cherry.” Mr. Norton moved closer to me. “Sometimes you can be naive about how the world works. Ren is an extremely valuable member of this school. We can’t have him harmed or missing.”
I pushed myself off the desk. My brain told me to shut up. Smile and nod. Stay under the radar. I didn’t have to agree but I could quietly refuse.
Sometimes my mouth didn’t listen to my brain.
“That’s bullshit. You’re saying Ren’s life is more valuable than anyone else’s? Ren is a worthless dirt bag. He’ll be first against the wall when the revolution comes. I’ll never protect Ren Worthington. Never. If someone comes for him, I’ll throw him under the bus myself.”
I walked to the door.
“Cherry, wait.”
I wanted to keep walking but I paused. “What? Nothing you say will convince me.”
“You hate Ren. I get that. But if you want to prove he’s guilty of whatever you think he’s done, the best way to do that is to get close to him.”
Sneaky. Very sneaky.
I considered it for a full minute then shook my head. I knew the system. Even if I cut Ren down, someone else would take his place. Oscar or Blake, maybe. Or some dark horse just waiting for the opportunity. The system never changed.
Whatever. I shrugged and left the room.
Chapter 5
I walked back to my dorm turning the weird events of the day over in my mind. I still had a ton of study to get through before dinner but I also wanted to talk to Lucas
“Hello.” Britney’s head popped over the side of the bunk above mine.
I jumped. No one ever slept on the top bunks if they could help it. These bunks were shoddy as hell.
Being the cheapest option in the school, our dorm room stayed half empty. Even though it was an eight-person dorm, it’d pretty much been just myself on this side of the room and Polly and Eri on the other. They spent most of their time in the common room so I rarely saw them.
“There’s a spare bottom bunk.” I pointed to the bed next to mine.
“I like it up here.” Britney swung off the bunk like an elite athlete.
“Ah, yeah, well it’s like this. I’m kind of uncomfortable with you sleeping above me. These bunks aren’t real sturdy and if you move in your sleep or something then...” rather than explain, I wriggled the pole nearest me making the entire bunk wobble and creak.
“Right,” Britney said. She grabbed her stuff and moved to the other bunk, staying on the top bed.
That meant she could see me when I slept, which freaked me out so much that I’d need to scrounge a blanket to make a curtain or I’d never get a wink of sleep. People watching me sleep freaked me out.
Still, I guess she had to sleep somewhere.
Britney hooked her arm through mine. “Let’s go.”
“Go?”
“Go meet people. Hang out, that kind of thing.”
She wanted to hang out with people? On purpose? That went against everything I stood for.
“I don’t hang out. My plans involve staying here, studying until dinner time, then coming back for more study.”
I didn’t want to tell her about meeting with Lucas because I didn’t know her well enough to start blurting out secrets.
“That sounds like no fun at all.” Britney pouted. “I’m not going to meet any cute guys here in the dorm. I’ll see you later.”
She actually flicked her hair before heading off to the common room. I thought of calling her back and warning her, but why put fear into her? She might make friends. She had the good looks and the perky personality to cut through their walls.
Not that I was ugly, well I didn’t think so, no matter how many times I’d been called it. People who called me ugly always had something to gain. Just that Britney had non-threatening good looks while I had a whole goth vibe going on. Unless I could be bothered tying it back, a curtain of black hair hung in my face and apparently, I snarled a lot.
Once she’d gone, I jumped up and headed to meet Lucas in the stairwell, our usual hangout spot. No one else bothered with the back stairs when there was an elevator and a grand staircase.
“I’m going to kill you.” Lucas leaned on the window sill, scowling at me. “Making me show Britney to the dorm.”
; “You needed a push.” I tried not to grin. “Don’t tell me. You couldn’t even say a word to her when you got her alone.”
Lucas blushed. I sat beside him and put my arm around him. “It’s not so hard, you know. Just talk to her like you talk to any other person instead of building things up in your mind.”
He shrugged and asked me what Norton wanted. Nice change of subject but I wouldn’t push it, not now anyway.
“He wants me to tutor Ren.” I didn’t mention the threats on Ren’s life part because I’m pretty sure that’s the bit he wanted on the down low. “Can you believe it?”
Lucas double over, chuckling. “You? You’d kill him.”
Yeah, I would. Or even worse, he’d kill me.
Before I could get into the details of my plan, alarms beeped on both our watches. We stared at each other. Those alarms only went off for an attack. A demon attack.
“It’s another drill, right?” I stared at the red blinking light.
“Even if it is, we’d better rush. It’s so like Norton to have a drill just before dinner, but then it could be for real this time.”
WE RUSHED TO THE SCHOLARSHIP room, to the designated meeting spot. The others stood around waiting, so it was a drill.
“This is not a drill,” Mr. Norton said, but then he always said that. “I mean it this time. The school is being attacked. Are you ready to fight?”
Mark whooped and punched his fist in the air. I hung at the back, hoping no one would notice me. It wasn’t that I hated drills... well, yeah, it was. Drills involved a lot of things I hated — physical activity, getting dirty and pain. I really hated pain.
“Stick with me,” Lucas said.
Even though Lucas’ powers were strongest on the full moon, he could shift at any time. Yeah, I’d stick with him. Having a wolf beside me made this a whole heap less scary.
“We’re heading out to the woods,” Mr. Norton said. “We’re not sure exactly what’s out there but we think it’s vampires.”
Great. Adding the threat of having my blood drained to the other risks didn’t make this any more enticing. Even though I knew hunting was the entire reason for me being at this school, I wasn’t the killer type.
Mr. Norton went through tactics. Mark and Tarragon to lead the attack, Seth to keep to the treetops with wood tipped arrows, Lucas and I at the rear.
“Britney? Where’s Britney?” His head spun looking for her.
She ran along the hallway, her hair flying around her like a halo and her feet barely touching the floor. “Sorry I’m late. I got chatting and I forgot what this watch alarm meant. Nothing serious, I hope.”
“That’s fine.”
What? Mr. Norton said that? If it’d been me, I’d have black marks and a lecture. Sure, it was Britney’s first day, but to let her off that lightly seemed out of character.
His talkie-walkie buzzed and he spoke into it. All coded stuff like Charlie foxtrot over and out.
“The student body has been contained,” he said. “Time to head out.”
He handed us weapons; stakes and knives. The sorts of things we couldn’t just carry on us during the normal school day. I shoved the stake in the waist band of my skirt and then yelped.
“The stake hurt you?” Lucas looked at me expectantly.
“Splinter. Right in my soft belly flesh.”
Then I gave him my “not a vampire” glare.
Mark, Tarragon and Seth pulled up the mat in the middle of the room. A cleverly disguised trap door lead to passages under and through the school. You could get to the woods without being seen that way.
I never used those passages if I could help it. Full of spiders’ webs and darkness and dripping water.
Britney glanced from us to the trap door.
“We’ll go the normal way,” I explained.
Britney gave a regretful grin then took off after the others through the trap door.
When we got to the woods, I grabbed Lucas’ hand. He’d pull away if he wanted to shift but until then, I needed the reassurance. I hated the woods at the best of times. I hated outdoors, except maybe a nice park where I could curl up and read, with a gentle breeze blowing and an ice cream truck nearby. That kind of outdoors worked for me, not dark woods with tree roots to trip on and horrible spider-filled branches and vampires.
“It’s okay,” Lucas said. “Nothing is going to harm you.”
“Yeah, tell that to Farran. Maybe vampires got him. Maybe he became a vamp buffet. Or maybe he got turned and he’s the one out there.”
Ahead of us, Mark crashed through the undergrowth. We knew it was Mark without needing to see him. Stealth wasn’t Mark’s strong point. He loved brute force, the bruter, the better.
I didn’t mind. The vampires would know we were coming and maybe run away way before we reached them.
As the distance between us increased, his crashing faded. I could no longer hear anyone but Lucas beside me, his heartbeat slow and steady. And some owls hooting and the wind blowing through the leaves.
“What’s our plan?” Lucas asked.
“Hang back and let Mark and Tarragon get the glory.” He needed to ask?
Disappointment flickered over Lucas’ face. Was this enough for him, always hanging back with me? There had to be a part that wanted to run free and hunt. The wolf part.
The rustling of the leaves around us got louder. I reached for Lucas, holding tight to his arm. He clung to me just as hard.
“Shift,” I whispered.
“I’m trying,” Lucas hissed back.
Lucas had an issue. In training, he shifted just fine but, under pressure, he sometimes got stuck. The more he tried to force it, the more flustered he became and the harder it become for him to fully wolf up.
His face elongated and his ears turned fluffy.
“Nice work. Keep going.”
The rustling around us got louder. Then something dropped from the trees.
I screamed and ran. No freaky tree monster would get me today.
Footsteps pounded down the path behind me. I pushed my legs faster and pumped my arms. My lungs burned and I was pretty sure I would throw up very soon.
A good hunter would stay and fight. I wasn’t a good hunter.
I glanced over my shoulder, wanting to know what chased me.
The ground smashed into my face as pain shot up my leg. Damn it, I’d tripped.
Something landed on me, hot breath on my neck. I screamed, sure I’d die.
“Drill’s over.” Mark climbed off me.
“Jerk.” I punched him in the chest. “Bollocky jerk.”
Lucas caught up with us, in human form but still with furry ears.
“Trust Mr. Norton to have us running around the woods until after dinner. All the good food will be gone now. We’ll just have the dried-out meatloaf ends.” Lucas walked with me back to the scholarship room.
“I kind of like dried-out meatloaf ends.” We got to the room as the others arrived. “Hey, Mr. Norton, a fast debriefing is a good debriefing.”
My rumbling stomach reinforced my words.
I didn’t like the look on Mr. Norton’s face when he turned to me. “You’re the weakest link here, Cherry. You ran.”
“I thought I was going to get killed.”
“You need intensive training.”
Hell no, I didn’t. “It’s not my fault I’m crap at this kind of thing.”
He walked over and put his hands on my shoulders. “It’s not just the paranormal thing. Your physical skills are appalling. You couldn’t even run away properly.”
I half expected him to tell me to drop and give him fifty but he moved on to talk to the others. I thought that’d be the end of it, until he handed me a training schedule for the next week. A schedule that would see me dead.
“Can human beings actually train every day?” I asked him. “I heard you need a recovery day in between.”
“You have Saturday off. That’s your rest day. You don’t seem to understand. Your sch
olarship here relies on you having specific skills. Skills that help the school. You get five black marks for this. And Lucas, you need to work on shifting. That wasn’t anywhere near adequate.”
“I hate him,” I muttered to Lucas as we walked off. “He’s doing this because I refused to tutor Ren.”
It’d take more than an intensive training schedule to make spending time with Ren appealing. Much more.
Chapter 6
I’d planned to have a Saturday sleep in. It’d been a grueling week of training, like on those weight loss reality show boot camps. One of my foster mothers loved those shows. She’d eat two boxes of donuts while yelling at the contestants to work harder. I didn’t judge her for that, I just wished she’d shared the donuts.
Already, I’d improved. I moved fast and fought harder. But I’d only become a better human fighter. No latent paranormal skills revealed themselves.
A whole day off. I had to catch up on study and do boring stuff like laundry but, right now, I wanted to rest my weary body to the limits of my resting ability.
Until Britney ripped the curtains open. I screamed as sunlight flooded the room. If Lucas heard that, it’d add fuel to his vampire theory.
I put my arm over my eyes. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Rise and shine,” Britney chirped. She sat on my bed. “I need to go shopping today and I thought you’d like to come along.”
I turned to face the wall and groaned. “I don’t shop.”
I didn’t do girlie friend bonding either and right now, I didn’t do awake.
“You need new clothes.”
“I can’t afford new clothes.”
Surely Britney understood that. She was on a scholarship, too. Of course, even the other scholarship students weren’t as poor as me. Most of them had families who sent them an allowance. They might shop at chain stores instead of the high-end boutiques but they could afford new clothes.
“But you live in that ratty old hoodie with the chewed sleeves.”
“Hey, that’s my favorite hoodie.”
Britney sighed. “And I need to go to Maximus cafe. I just found out about their parfaits.”