by Kat Cotton
He still hadn’t let go of Britney. She didn’t react. What was going on with her? She stared into the middle distance, her eyes vacant.
Meanwhile, Blake got to his feet. I might be able to fight but I couldn’t take on both of them. I needed Britney to run or fight, not just stand there.
The buzzing in my ears became so loud, I covered my head. Except it wasn’t just me. Oscar and Blake covered their ears too. The air around us turned black. Bees. A huge swarm of them.
I ducked covering my head, muttering curses under my breath. I’d die here, one way or the other. Stung to death by bees.
Blake screamed. Oscar threw himself on the ground. The bees went straight for them, leaving Britney and I alone.
She covered her mouth, giggling.
Then she grabbed her shopping bags and the two of us ran.
“Did you do that?” I asked when we reached the school.
She nodded. “I’ve got a trick or two. But you were pretty cool.”
She held her hand up and stared at it, not sure what she intended
“High five,” she said.
I’d never high fived before but it seemed an okay thing to do. I grinned at Britney. It seemed we’d become friends.
I RUSHED DOWN TO THE gym, hoping to get in an hour of training before dinner. Day off be screwed. I didn’t have time for rest, not with creeps like Oscar and Blake in this school.
On my second round of sprints, my phone beeped. I knew better to check messages while on the treadmill but I’d hoped Lucas would join me for at least part of work out.
Nothing from Lucas but a broadcast message from the school.
Farran has been found. Search called off.
I stopped running. The treadmill didn’t.
My legs flew out from under me. I grabbed the handrails, scrambling to get my footing. Hopefully no one had seen that.
Ren had bullied him into leaving. Obviously. And he’d get away with it. No consequences whatsoever.
What the hell had he done to Farran?
I guess it was better that Farran left. Maybe he’d be safe from Ren’s torment. But why had he left his ring behind?
I ran thought various theories as I finished my workout then showered. Nothing I could think of made sense.
When I got back to the dorm, a parcel sat on my bed. I eyed it suspiciously. There was no name attached, nothing to identify it.
I poked it and I shook it. It seemed harmless. I made a little hole in the paper and nothing happened. I picked the hole to make it larger.
Still safe.
It didn’t blow up or emit weird smells or seem volatile.
Finally, I opened the package enough to look inside.
The cherry dress.
I let it fall onto my bed.
No matter how cute that dress was, I could never wear it. Britney must’ve bought it for me when I’d told her not to.
I put the dress back in the packaging and stored it in the drawer under my bed. Next time I went to town, I’d return it to the store. No point having an expensive dress go to waste.
Chapter 8
The next morning, I planned to ask Lucas his thoughts on the dress thing. He might not be a girl but he had this whole human interaction thing down pat compared to me. Well, as long as it wasn’t human interaction with the opposite sex. When it came to that, we were both about as awkward as human beings could get.
I’d just grabbed a juice and croissant when Mr. Norton approached me.
“You need to come with me.”
“Can I finish my breakfast first?” My stomach rumbled as the waft of freshly toasted pastry hit it.
“No.”
Yikes. I wrapped the croissant in a napkin to eat on the way and gulped down my juice. This had better be important.
I trailed down the hallway behind him. My briskest pace couldn’t keep up with him and I had pretty long legs.
All the stuffy old people in the paintings on the walls seemed to glare with disapproval as I stuffed food in my mouth. They had a point. I left a trail of crumbs behind me, like a modern-day Gretel.
He kept walking past his office. Where the hell was this meeting?
As we hit the front part of the school, the carpet got nicer and the hallway warmer. Even the faces in the portraits seemed friendlier and the wood paneling looked richer. This was the part of the school visitors and parents saw.
“Ah, Mr. Norton, where are we going?”
“Principal’s office.”
I gulped, a lump of croissant sticking in my throat. Was I going to be expelled or something even worse? I should not have hit Oscar. That’d been a big mistake.
We walked down the grand staircase and across the ornate entrance hall. I’d finished eating but crumbs fell off me onto the checkerboard tiles.
I’d been to Principal Murphy’s office once before. The day I got offered my scholarship.
That had been the strangest day of my life. Someone arrived at my foster home, saying they were from child protection and they had to take me. I assumed they were moving me to another foster home.
Then I got outside with them, taken one look at their car and almost bolted. People who work for child protection don’t drive fancy new cars. They drive beat up old Toyotas with paperwork and old coffee cups littering the floor. That suit he wore was mighty expensive and well-fitting too now I thought about it.
“I don’t do this often but it’s an emergency,” he’d said.
I’d assumed he meant the fact that, while my mind screamed at me to run, my feet kept walking to his car. Back then, I’d thought he’d drugged me. Now I knew better. Mind control; it’s an extremely difficult skill to learn and difficult to maintain, but that’s what he’d used.
I wanted to throw up the entire time we were in his car. He drove though back roads and any identifying features seemed to get fuzzed up in my head as soon as I noticed them.
“Don’t worry. You’re perfectly safe,” he said. But then people would say that if you were being sold into something dodgy. “It’ll all be explained when you get there.”
Even though that dude dressed like a rich businessman, a few times when the arm of his jacket pulled back, I saw tattoos on his wrists. Tattoos that seemed like they’d go all the way up his arms. Not even regular tattoos but the kind of thing you see in movies about demons and Satan worshippers.
When we’d driven up to Edgewater Academy, I tried to scramble out of my seat, out of the moving car. That place looked like a haunted mental asylum from some kind of creepy movie. The kind of place where I’d be strapped to a bed and probed.
At least I had control of my body again but even if I jumped out, we’d driven for hours and I had no idea where I was. It hit me then that no matter what happened to me, no one would care. No one would even know. Mrs. Potter assumed I’d gone back into the care system and if she kept getting her payments, she’d happily keep her mouth shut and accept them. If child protection noticed, they’d assume I’d ran away. They didn’t have the time to track down every street kid. I had no close friends, not a single person in this world who’d miss me or alert the people who should be alerted.
“You’ve made a mistake.” My head throbbed with panic. “I don’t belong here.”
As we’d walked into the entrance hall, I rethought the mental asylum thing. This was no place for the poor. Random thoughts raced through my head. What did these people want with me? To be a guinea pig in weird experiments? To harness my internal organs? To sell me as a sex slave?
The pounding in my head became shriller.
Then two girls dressed in fancy uniforms walked by. A school? Only then I noticed the banner with Edgewater Academy written across it.
But why had that guy lied and then drugged me and forced me to come here?
“Any funny business and I’ll bust your balls.” I’d followed him down the hallway, not having many other options.
The man laughed. “You are being offered a scholarship.”
That made no sense to me. People didn’t kidnap you to give a scholarship to a fancy school. Surely you had to apply first then jump through a bunch of hoops. And seriously, he couldn’t have told me that in the car?
“That sounds fishy as hell.”
“It’s complicated.”
We’d gone into Principal Murphy’s office and I got made the offer.
My life had changed that day. No matter how difficult Edgewater Academy could be, it was a vast improvement over what had gone before. As a student here, if I studied and kept my nose clean, I had a future.
My stomach clenched to think that future could end today.
Mr. Norton knocked on the principal’s door, then entered without waiting for an answer. I brushed the pastry flakes from my sweatshirt and plastered on a smile.
That smile soon dropped when I entered.
Principal Murphy sat behind his desk. He seemed to aim for a welcoming smile but it seemed slightly off. He sat behind a giant desk surrounded by bookcases. Ugly knickknacks covered his desk, award plaques, sports trophies and those things of things that probably impress rich parents. One particular ugly trophy took pride of place in the center of the desk, probably solid silver but all pointy and weird.
The only comforting thing about this room was the bookish smell.
An older man sat in a visitor’s chair, waves of richness wafting off him. He ignored me and kept reading his newspaper. Something about the way he sat and the expensive suit screamed he was no regular rich dude. He was the kind of rich dude who owned entire countries, and exploited the people for his own amusement, and that he could kill you without anyone blinking an eye. Evil rich, the worst kind.
He folded his paper and looked up.
When I saw his face, I wanted to flee. This guy was beyond evil rich. He had the cold, dead eyes of Ren Worthington.
No matter what happened today, I was screwed.
Chapter 9
“I’m not tutoring Ren Worthington.” I spun to face the rich dude. “Sorry, don’t want to bad mouth your son or anything but I’m just really busy.”
That dude had eyes like lasers and he wasn’t used to people saying no but, from the time I’d walked into this office, my blood boiled. They’d assumed I’d jump at the chance to get some one-on-time with Ren and a bit of extra cash. Like Oscar had said, us scholarship kids would do anything for cash. That’s how they thought of us.
It didn’t take a lot to work out where Ren got his bullying attitude from. The guy didn’t say anything, barely glanced at me even, but he didn’t need to. Principal Murphy did all his dirty work for him.
“You don’t seem to understand, Cherry.” Principal Murphy got up from behind his desk. “You don’t have a choice. You assaulted another student. Normally, you’d be asked to leave the academy.”
They’d pulled out the last weapon in their arsenal. Tutor Ren and I’d be let off for punching Oscar, otherwise I’d be out on my butt.
“He and his buddy assaulted us.” I jumped up and slammed my hand on the desk. “Are you going to do anything about that? Sexual assault should never be taken lightly.”
The principal stood awkwardly, his arms out as though he was going to touch me, maybe force me back in my seat, but then he thought better of it.
“Come now, I think you’re getting a little bit overexcited.” He sat on the side of his desk as though that’s what he’d intended all along. “Oscar is a good student. You probably misunderstood his intentions or it was flirting gone too far. I’m not even sure why you and Britney came in that way instead of sticking to the main road but boys will be boys.”
No.
No way.
He did not say that.
I gulped. I gulped hard, doing that thing where your mouth moves but you are so incredibly angry that the words get stuck in your throat and you only make a gurgling noise.
The black vision and the pounding in my ears returned, as the thin veneer of nice student slid away. The voice in my head, the one that talked sense, told me to settle down. Every time I’d ignored that voice in the past, things got bad. Still, I ignored it.
Wrapping my hand around the ugly trophy on the desk, I sucked in my breath.
“What are you doing?” Principal Murphy backed away.
I didn’t know myself. All I knew was that he kept talking and I wanted him to stop. I wanted this all to stop.
Then Mr. Norton grabbed me, pinning my arms to my sides.
“I’ll talk to her alone,” he said, dragging me from the principal’s office.
The whole time old Mr. Worthington hadn’t moved, hadn’t flinched, hadn’t said a word.
When we got out the door, Mr. Norton dropped his hold on me. “Cherry, what the hell were you doing in there?”
I took a few deep breaths. I’d screwed up, I’d really screwed up. Two years of staying under the radar and I’d flipped out in the principal’s office. No matter how much Principal Murphy deserved to be skewered on that trophy, I had to act nice.
“If you’d thrown that trophy, you know what would’ve happened.”
I knew. I’d already taken five hundred points off myself for my stupid lack of self-control but that didn’t help matters any.
I paced the corridor. Sunlight flooded through the huge windows overlooking the car park. Easy to pick out the Worthington car. Who knew they made cars that big?
“He’s a butthole. A big, fat, hairy butthole. With hemorrhoids.” I kicked the wall. That felt good so I kicked it again. “Oscar and Blake attacked us. I had no choice.”
“I believe you but you have to understand, whether you’re right or wrong, they’re using this as leverage.”
I stopped pacing and stared out the window. “It’s not fair.”
“It’s not.”
I inhaled. I hadn’t expected him to agree with me. I assumed he’d argue and try to make me out to be wrong.
“Cherry, you know life isn’t fair. You might despise Ren Worthington but you have to play the long game. You’re a smart girl. Get the free education and all the advantages while you can because otherwise, you’ll be back in foster care and fighting just to hold on. Use them to get what you want. You can be a victim or you can be a hero, but heroes need to make sacrifices and, right now, this is the sacrifice you need to make.”
Mr. Norton might be talking a heap of crap designed to get me to play right into their hands but he wasn’t wrong. It’d be nothing to them to chuck me out on the street right now. And I’d be literally on the street because no way would I go back into the foster system.
I’d be homeless, jobless and struggling to live through each day.
But I had my pride and going back in there would be like saying they were right, that Oscar and Blake had done nothing wrong.
I needed a sign. And instantly I got one. A freaky as all hell sign.
Warmth spread over my body, like a comforting hug. A familiar sensation but one I couldn’t place. I had no experience of comforting hugs.
I ran my hand over my hip. That warmth came from the mark I had there. It’d never done that before.
I tested it out.
Don’t agree, leave the school, I thought with all my might. The mark turned cold, so cold I shivered.
Agree to bodyguard Ren. The mark became warm and comforting again.
Don’t agree. Cold.
Agree. Warm.
I couldn’t let a birthmark make major life decisions for me but there was no doubt that mark was trying to tell me something.
“That allowance still applies, right? They aren’t going to stiff me on that.”
“It does. I’m sure the money isn’t even a drop in the ocean for the Worthingtons. And you’ll get a private room. You’ll need to stay close to him.”
I didn’t want the private room. The elite floor was not a place where I’d stay under the radar. And Britney had really started to grow on me over the past few days. I’d miss her, even if she did do that sunlight thing.
&nb
sp; I wasn’t sure what this bodyguarding entailed. It seemed something I’d be crap at. Really crap.
“That rich dude doesn’t care too much about his son.” I laughed even though I was the punchline in the joke. “I mean, he obviously knows we have powers or he wouldn’t be asking, but does he know I have the worst powers in the history of paranormalling?”
“He’s gone out of his way to make sure you take on this job.”
Why me? I didn’t understand. I’m sure he had more important things to do than trying to make my life a living hell.
“That’s what I mean. If I wanted my son protected, and money was no object, I’d get any of the others on the case. Even Seth. Mark would be brilliant at it. Or Lucas, he has those wolf senses. What am I going to do? Send out a bat signal if Ren gets attacked? Big whoop. He could get a phone app to do that.”
Mr. Norton rubbed my arm. “Don’t underestimate yourself. Some people just take longer to grow into their powers.”
The warmth of the mark throbbed against my hip, as though saying stop piss farting around and agree to the deal already. My heart sunk. As soon as this had started, I knew how it’d end. You never win against people like the Worthingtons.
“Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll sell my soul to them. I’ll hate every minute of it but I’ll do it.”
“You won’t hate the pudding they have up there.”
“Wait... what? They get fancy puddings?”
Fancy puddings might not be adequate compensation for the hell my life would become, but they’d help ease the pain.
Mr. Norton flashed a smile then quickly ducked back in the office, so I wasn’t sure if he was kidding.
I walked meekly back into the office and apologized but I crossed my fingers behind my back so the lie didn’t count. Throwing that trophy would’ve much more satisfying but Mr. Norton had been right.
Principal Murphy opened his drawer and got out a heap of papers.
“What’s this?” I eyed them warily.
“Contracts. Non-disclosure agreement. You’ll have access to Ren’s bedroom and we can’t have you telling tales.”