by Elise Noble
Another one down. What was behind door number two?
A painfully tidy office, it turned out. Everything on Professor Eastman’s desk was lined up precisely, perfectly parallel. Nothing was out of place. Even the potted plant on the windowsill had been pruned to within an inch of its life. I crouched behind the desk and started work on the socket, stifling a yawn as I tinkered. The late nights were catching up with me. Five more minutes, and I could go to bed.
At least, that was the plan.
I so, so nearly made it out of there. I’d attached the bug and screwed the front plate back on when the sound of footsteps in the hallway made my heart seize. Go past, go past, go past. The steps were soft but steady, no hesitation, and karma obviously had it in for me because they stopped right outside the door. The sound of scraping came from the lock, then I heard a quiet exclamation.
“Huh?”
The doorknob began to turn. Shit. All I could do was squash myself as far under the desk as I could get and pray whoever was out there didn’t come right into the room.
No such luck.
My heart was thumping so loudly that I thought it would give me away, but the visitor didn’t seem interested in the desk. Instead, he—and it was a “he” judging by the size of his feet—headed for the filing cabinets that lined the far wall. They were all locked. I’d checked. But that pesky inconvenience didn’t stop the guy. Did he have a set of lock picks too? He definitely had a torch. Every so often, the beam bounced in my direction.
“What’s happening?” Ryder asked. “Is everything okay?”
A drawer opened and papers rustled. Then the footsteps came towards me.
There was nowhere I could go. Nothing I could do except smile and… What the…?
“Fancy seeing you here,” I said.
I wasn’t sure who was more surprised—me, Asher, or possibly Ryder.
“What the hell are you doing down there?” Asher hissed.
“Uh…”
“Tell him it was a prank,” Ryder said. “A dare. One of the other girls dared you to break into the office.”
Sweat beaded on the back of my neck as I scrambled to my feet. “Uh, a bunch of us were playing truth or dare, and guess what my dare was?”
“To hide under the desk in Professor Eastman’s office?”
I went for sheepish. “I was meant to take a selfie sitting on his desk, but then I heard you coming.”
“How did you get in here? Wasn’t the door locked?”
Busted. “I thought it would be, but… Wait—what are you doing in here?” And what was that look in Asher’s eyes? Shame? He glanced downwards, and I followed his gaze to the thin booklet in his hand. “Is that a test paper? Is that Saturday’s test paper?”
Asher slumped into Professor Eastman’s swivel chair, eyes cast down at the floor. Guilty as charged. This was his strategy for getting his high school diploma? To cheat? I wasn’t sure whether to be sad or horrified or impressed.
“I’ll never pass otherwise,” he mumbled. “I can’t even read the questions in the time allowed, let alone write the answers too.”
“But what will you do in a year? After you graduate? You can’t steal the answers to life.”
“I’ll get a job where I don’t need to read papers all day. I want to work with cars, racing them or customising them, but I can’t even get an interview at an auto shop without my diploma.”
Plus if Asher graduated, he’d have his father’s money to fall back on. What was I meant to do? Cheating was wrong, but I wasn’t about to march into Ezra Rosenberg’s office and tell tales. Not only would it draw attention to what I’d been doing, but the Rosenbergs were a bunch of dishonest bastards who deserved to get a dose of their own medicine anyway.
“Is there anything I can do to persuade you not to report this?” Asher asked.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. “Now you’re offering to bribe me?”
My morals might have been questionable, but I took offence at that.
Asher sucked in a breath. “Uh, no?”
Ryder chuckled in my ear. “This was not how I saw tonight going.”
I needed a timeout to ask for advice, but unfortunately, that wasn’t an option. I’d have to handle this by myself. In truth, I was the last person who should be giving Asher a lecture on ethics—how could I when Rune helped me to cheat my ass off in every class?—but turning a blind eye didn’t feel right either.
“You have to study, Shortcut.”
“I did study this evening.”
“I mean more than once. Every day.”
Asher put his head in his hands, but then he peeped out from between his fingers. It was oddly cute. “With you?”
“With me.” At least for the next week. “And maybe with Vanessa too.”
If I could convince him to confide in her as well, perhaps she’d change her stance on him being a bum and help. We might have got off to a rocky start, but now that she’d thawed out, I saw she had a good heart.
“Okay.” He held out his little finger. “Pinky swear.”
What age was Asher? Sometimes he acted like a kid, and sometimes he seemed old beyond his years. Jaded. Weary, even. If he’d repeated a year of junior high and then sat out a year of high school, he had to be at least nineteen.
I sighed and linked my pinky with his. “Don’t make me regret this. What do you do, photograph the test papers?”
He nodded.
“Hurry up. I’ll hold the torch. The flashlight.”
“You’re my kind of girl, Chem. Gutsy and morally grey.”
“Don’t forget to take your selfie,” Ryder reminded me.
“Wait a second.” I sat on the desk and snapped a photo of myself, making a mental note to destroy the evidence later. “Okay, now hurry up.”
CHAPTER 29 - SKY
“SKY, CAN I borrow your highlighter?” Vanessa asked.
“Borrow anything of mine you want. What are roommates for?”
I’d spent the past three days settling into the new normal. Since I caught Asher on Wednesday night, he’d kept his word and studied with me and Vanessa before dinner each day, although he hadn’t let Vanessa in on his secret. I’d covered for him a little. Read the odd sentence out loud, leaned over and corrected a word or two when she wasn’t looking, that sort of thing. Yes, he’d cheated his way through the biology test yesterday, but so had I, just in a different way. Asher was trying.
He was easy to get along with too. The three of us had taken to studying in his apartment. I figured that with Vanessa there, the rumours wouldn’t start to fly, although one of Asher’s dorm buddies had made a crack about a threesome. Asher glared at him until he held his hands up, apologised, and backed away.
Those evenings were oddly pleasant. They made me realise what my teenage years should have been like if my father hadn’t been an abusive arsehole and I hadn’t been forced onto the streets to survive. But what was the point in dwelling on the past? I couldn’t change it. And now Emmy had given me a second chance. I was getting paid to glue jelly beans onto canvas and run around a sports field and learn about chemistry. Perhaps even more than one kind of chemistry.
If only I’d known that this was the calm before the storm.
The wind began whipping up the next day. Labor Day. Also known as a day off to celebrate work. How ironic. Half of my fellow students had gone to the mall to take advantage of the discounts, and the other half were lying around on the lawn, making the most of the bumper picnic the catering staff had prepared. At that point, the sun was still shining.
And we were still studying. The workload was getting heavier, and we had another test on Thursday. Chemistry this time. I’d spent the afternoon studying alcohol, but the boring kind you couldn’t drink. Vanessa was making little notecards for us all, hence needing the highlighter, but Asher had already looked alarmed when she waved one in his face and asked him what he thought. Yes, he’d praised her efforts, but I knew he wouldn’t use them. And after dinner, when he said
he needed a few hours to himself, I knew exactly what he planned to do.
“No,” I whispered, and Vanessa gave me a curious look.
“I need to.”
“Need to what?” Vanessa asked.
I was gonna go to hell for lying. “Asher sometimes has a sneaky beer in the evenings. He’s meant to be quitting.” I swivelled to face him, arms folded. “Aren’t you?”
“I’m cutting down.”
Vanessa’s hesitant smile was at odds with Asher’s glower. “You have beer here?”
“Sure, you want one?”
“No!” I said. “No beer for either of you.”
“Aw, Sky, don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud. I really need a beer today.”
“Why? What happened?”
Vanessa quickly back-pedalled. “Nothing. Forget I said a word.”
Asher tried too. “Vanessa, just tell us.”
“Honestly, it’s no big deal. Deandra elbowed me in the ribs, that’s all. It might even have been an accident.”
An accident. Right. “Did she say anything?”
“Not a word. But I think maybe… Maybe it was a reminder that she hasn’t forgotten about the toilet incident. Was that you? She told people it was, but then Tiffany said Deandra didn’t see the person’s face, just said that they were really strong, so I guess it could’ve been a guy.”
I shrugged. “It’s a mystery.”
Beside her, Asher rolled his eyes, and I kicked him under the table. We’d finish discussing this later.
“Later” turned out to be just after ten. Past curfew, and definitely way too late for an argument over the wisdom of breaking into Dr. Merritt’s office. I caught Asher creeping up to the side door of the main building.
“Boo.”
“Fuck!” He clapped a hand over his chest. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“You should be more aware of your surroundings.”
Gah. Now I sounded like Rafael.
“Hey, it’s not as if I do this for a living.”
No, that was me.
“You’d be terrible at it.”
Emmy was on duty tonight, and she agreed with me. “Bloody hopeless.”
“Agreed,” Asher conceded. “But if you’ve come to stop me, then don’t bother.”
“I haven’t come to stop you from pilfering another bloody test paper. I’ve come to stop you from getting caught.”
Asher’s expression softened, and he brushed a stray lock of hair away from my face. That one touch made my skin tingle all over.
“That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me. But I’ll be fine.”
Maybe, maybe not. I didn’t like taking chances. And although I’d never admit it, I wanted that chemistry paper too. It was the one subject Rune couldn’t help me with in real time, and half of Vanessa’s notecards appeared to be written in Swahili.
“Dr. Merritt’s office is at the end of a hallway. You need a lookout.”
Asher tilted his head to one side. “How do you know that?”
Oops. “Mr. Rosenberg introduced us on my interview day. Get a move on—we can’t stand out here all night.”
I didn’t have to tell him twice. He swiped his pass card, and a quiet beep let us know the door was open. Mack had already investigated the locking system, and it was basic. Each entry and exit was recorded as an event, but user names weren’t registered. And the internal doors still used old-fashioned keys, the staff offices included. What else would we expect from a gang of thieves whose primary method of communication was the US Postal Service?
Asher caught my hand in his as we stole through the hallways. Enough lights were on that we didn’t trip, and we both knew the way in any case. Left, right, left, left, right. It didn’t take long for us to reach the door we needed, and Asher produced a slim leather wallet from his back pocket. Lock picks. Nice.
When he saw me looking, that brilliant smile came back. “Told you I was good with my hands.”
Just for a second, the twinkle in his eye turned to something altogether more intense, and I wondered what else those hands could do. Then I gave myself a mental slap. Wrong time, wrong place, Sky.
A quiet click, and the door swung open. Asher had managed that even faster than I would have. Nobody would ever beat Ravi, but nonetheless, I was impressed.
Although I was playing lookout, I needed a few seconds inside. Why? Because I had an ulterior motive. I hadn’t yet managed to bug Dr. Merritt’s office, so I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone. Using a mains-powered widget was out of the question, but Nate had supplied me with smaller ones too, tiny dots that I could attach anywhere. The batteries would only last a couple of weeks, but if this job took any longer than that, we’d have bigger problems than a lack of power. The number of staff Blackwood had committed to the operation wasn’t sustainable indefinitely.
While Asher headed to the filing cabinet, I took a quick look around, used a fingernail to activate the bug via its tiny switch, peeled the backing off the adhesive pad, and stuck the thing under the desk.
“I’ll wait at the end of the corridor,” I whispered.
“Five minutes.”
It turned out we only had two.
Footsteps sounded, the distinctive clip of leather-soled Oxfords on wood. I waited a moment, listening for the direction. Shit! Someone was heading towards us, a man, and one who belonged there. No hesitation in his steps. I scooted back to Asher.
“We have to go.”
“I need another minute.”
“We don’t have another minute. Somebody’s coming right now.”
“Just two more pages.”
“Sky, get out,” Emmy ordered.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave Asher.
“Hurry up!”
Time seemed to slow, and every tick of the clock squeezed a metal band around my chest tighter, tighter, tighter as Asher stuffed the test paper back into the filing cabinet and eased the drawer shut. We made it out of the office and got the door closed, but it was too late. Whoever was coming, they were right there. Five more steps and they’d walk around the corner.
My brain went into overdrive. We needed an excuse. An excuse for being where we shouldn’t have been, doing things we shouldn’t have been doing. Hmm… Things we shouldn’t have been doing… It was worth a shot. Truth be told, we didn’t have much choice.
“Kiss me,” I hissed.
“What?” Asher’s eyes saucered.
I didn’t bother to explain, just flung an arm around his neck and stood on tiptoes. A lightbulb pinged on as he finally understood, and the scoundrel actually had the presence of mind to squeeze my ass. He’d pay for that later. But for now, his gaze met mine, then his lips, and as Ezra Rosenberg appeared, Asher’s tongue joined the party. I might have sighed if I hadn’t been holding my breath.
“What’s going on here?”
The overhead light flickered on, and I blinked a few times, but otherwise my body was frozen. Asher and I both slowly turned our heads, but he didn’t let go of me. If anything, the arm around my waist tightened. I didn’t have to fake my trepidation. Emmy started laughing, the bitch.
“What are you doing in here?” Ezra asked.
“What does it look like?” Asher countered.
“This area is off limits, and so are the other students. We spoke about this. And you, Sky… I’m disappointed. This isn’t how we behave at Shadow Falls Academy.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, relief flooding through me that he seemed to have bought our act.
“Go back to your rooms, both of you. We’ll deal with this in the morning.”
CHAPTER 30 - ALARIC
“IS THIS WHAT it’s like to be a parent?” Beth asked Alaric. “Feeling sick while you wait to get called into the principal’s office?”
An admin assistant had left them waiting on two hard wooden chairs in an anteroom. Neither of them had seen Sky yet, but she’d explained what happened over the phone. Give the kid points for quick think
ing.
“Guess I’ve been lucky so far. Rune never gets into trouble. The one time I got called into the headmistress’s office, she spent half an hour talking to me about the benefits of their advanced math program over coffee and then ran her foot up my leg.”
Beth spluttered out a laugh. “And what did you do?”
“Pretended I didn’t notice and moved my chair back.”
“Do you think it was an accident?”
Absolutely not. The woman had kicked her shoe off, and her toes had practically been in his crotch.
“Rune said Mrs. Penlington never normally wears perfume, lipstick, and mascara all on the same day.”
“Gosh. I bet that made the next parents’ evening awkward.”
“For Mrs. Penlington, not me. I took Ravi along and introduced him as my fiancé. She was speechless for a good twenty seconds. Of course, at that point I didn’t think I was actually going to get married, so explaining your presence in my life might be interesting.”
“Perhaps she’ll be speechless for thirty seconds this time?”
Alaric loved that about Beth. The way she took all the little difficulties in her stride. The big ones too. For the first few weeks after the Devane episode, she’d insisted on sleeping with a light on, but she could cope with the dark now. Her ankle was fully healed, and last week, she’d got behind the wheel of a car again. They’d only driven around the Riverley estate, but it was progress. Plus she’d been surprisingly understanding when she found out Alaric really did have a fling with Ravi.
He hadn’t asked Beth to marry him yet, but he would. Soon.
In one week, four days, and ten hours.
He was tempted to lean over and kiss her, but he heard voices outside the door, and one of them belonged to Ezra Rosenberg. The man had a way of sounding both authoritative and whiny at the same time.
Maybe Alaric should have gone for an inappropriate smooch. Like father, like daughter.
“Mr. and Mrs. Milburn.” Rosenberg shook both of their hands. “Perhaps you’d like to take a seat in my office? Thank you for coming at such short notice.”
“What else would we do? You said there was a problem with our daughter?”