The rest of the students seemed to be heading for a large pair of doors at the other end of the lobby, so he followed them, and found himself at the mouth of an auditorium. There was some unspoken system, a natural order that everyone else seemed to understand. They filed toward their seats, and August hung back, trying not to interrupt the flow of traffic.
“What year?” asked a woman’s voice. He turned to find a teacher in a skirt holding a stack of folders.
“Junior,” he said.
She nodded. “You’re sitting down front, on the left.”
The auditorium was filling with bodies and noise as he found a seat, and the sheer quantity of both left him dizzy, dazed. All around him, hundreds of voices talked over and under and through one another, layering like music, but the cadence was all wrong, less like classical than jazz, and when he tried to pick the threads apart he wasn’t left with chords, just syllables and laughter and sounds that made no sense. And then, mercifully, it quieted, and he looked up to see a man in a crisp blue suit striding across the stage.
“Hello,” he said, tapping the mic on the podium. “I’m Mr. Dean, and I’m the Head of School here at Colton. I want to welcome our freshmen to a new school, and our returning students to a fresh year. You might not have noticed that we have several new students joining our ranks. And because Colton is a community, I’m going to ask them to stand when I call their names, so that you can make a point of making them feel welcome here.”
August’s stomach dropped.
“We have two new sophomores. Marjorie Tan . . .” A girl got to her feet a dozen rows behind him, blushing deeply under the collective gaze. She immediately started to sit down again but the headmaster waved his hand. “Please stay standing,” he insisted. “Now, Ellis Casterfeld?”
A lanky boy got to his feet, and waved at the room.
“Juniors, we have one student joining your ranks.” August’s heart pounded. “Mr. Frederick Gallagher.” August exhaled, relieved not to hear his name. And then he remembered that Frederick was his name. He swallowed, and stood. The juniors to every side shifted in their seats to get a better look at him. His face went hot, and for the first time August wished he could be less real. Maybe even disappear.
And then the headmaster said her name, and in a way he did.
“And finally, a new senior, Miss Katherine Harker.”
The auditorium went silent, everyone else was forgotten as, near the front, a girl rose to her feet. Every head in the room turned toward her.
Katherine Harker.
The only child of Callum Harker, the “governor” of North City, a man known for collecting monsters like weapons, and the reason August had been sent to Colton.
He thought back to the conversation he’d had with Henry and Leo.
“I don’t understand. You want me to . . . go to school? With her?” His nose crinkled at the thought. Harker was the enemy. A murderer. Katherine was a mystery, but if she was anything like her father . . . “And do what exactly?”
“Follow her,” said Leo.
“Colton’s too small. She’ll notice me.”
“You won’t be you,” said Leo. “And we want her to notice. We want you to get close.”
“Not too close,” cut in Henry. “We just want you to keep an eye on her. In case we need leverage. . . .”
“It’s the same reason her people are looking for you,” explained Leo. “When this truce breaks—”
“If the truce breaks—” said Henry.
“She might come in handy.”
“We don’t know anything about her,” said August.
“She’s Harker’s daughter. If he cares about anyone, it’s her.”
August stared at the girl in the front row. Katherine looked like her father: slim and sharp and full of angles. Her hair was different from the photo he’d seen. Still blond, but shoulder length, stock-straight, and parted so it covered half her face. Most of the Colton girls had opted for skirts with their polos, but she was wearing slim-cut slacks, her hands hooked casually in her pockets. All around August, people began to whisper. And then Katherine, who had been looking forward with a cool, empty gaze, turned and looked over her shoulder.
At him.
She didn’t know—couldn’t know—who he was, but her dark eyes tracked over him in a slow, appraising way, the very edge of a smile on her lips, before Headmaster Dean instructed them to take their seats. August sank into his chair, feeling like he’d just escaped a brush with death.
“Now,” continued the headmaster, “if you haven’t gotten your ID card yet, make sure to retrieve it by the end of the day. Not only can you use the card to pay for lunch and school supplies, but you’ll need it to access certain parts of the campus, including the theater, sports facilities, and soundproof music rooms.”
August’s head shot up. He didn’t care about the cafeteria, had little interest in drama or fitness, but a place where he could play in peace? That would be worth an ID.
“An attendant will be in the ID room during lunch and for half an hour after school . . .” The headmaster rambled on for several more minutes, but August had stopped listening.
When the assembly was over, the wave of students carried him out of the auditorium and into the lobby, where it took him roughly thirty seconds to realize he had no idea where he was supposed to go next. The hall was a tangle of uniformed bodies; he tried to get out of the way as he dug his schedule from his bag.
“Hey, Frederick.”
He looked up and saw Colin jostling through the crowd. He caught August by the sleeve and pulled him out of the current. “I’ve got you.” His gaze flicked down, and he saw August’s forearm where the sleeve had pushed up. Those expressive eyes went wide. “Oh, nice tattoos, dude. But don’t let Dean see them. He’s crazy strict. I wore a temporary one on my face one time—I think it was a bee, I don’t remember why—and he made me scrub it off. School policy.”
August tugged his sleeve back down, and Colin stole a glance at the sheet in his hand. “Oh, perfect. We have English together. I thought I saw your name on the roster. I check all the rosters ahead of time, just to see who I’m up against, you know?” August did not know, and he couldn’t tell if it was his influence making Colin so chatty, or if the boy was just naturally that way, but he suspected the latter. “Anyway, come on,” Colin tugged him toward a stairwell door. “I know a shortcut.”
“To where?”
“To English, obviously. We could take the hall but there are too many damned freshmen!” he bellowed. Several smaller students glanced wide-eyed at him, and the teacher in the skirt shot Colin a dark look. “Get to class, Mr. Stevenson.”
Colin only winked at her and stepped into the stairwell, holding the door for August, who wasn’t sure if he was being helped or abducted. But he didn’t want to be late for the first class of his life, so he followed anyway. Just before the door banged shut, he thought he saw Katherine Harker walk past, the students around her parting like a sea.
When people talked about the first day of school, they used terms like “fresh start,” and “new beginning,” and always made a point of saying it was a chance to define—or redefine—yourself.
In Kate’s eyes, the first day was an opportunity, one she’d taken advantage of it at each of her previous institutions, and those first days felt like an education unto themselves, leading up to this. Her first day at Colton was a chance to set the tone. A chance to make an impression. She had the added advantage of being on home turf; people here might not know her, but they all knew of her, and that was better. It was a foundation, something to be built upon. By the end of the week, Colton would be hers. After all, if she couldn’t rule a school, she didn’t deserve to run a city.
Kate didn’t actually care that much about running a school or a city. She just didn’t want Harker to look at her and see weak, see helpless, see a girl who shared nothing but a few lines of his face, a shade of blond. She wanted him to look at her and see someone who
deserved to be there. Because she’d be damned if she’d let him send her away, not this time.
She’d fought her way here, and she’d fight to stay.
I am my father’s daughter, she thought as she walked down the hall, arms at her side and head up, medallion and metallic nails glinting beneath the lights (she thought of the monstrous teeth shining in the footage, and it gave her strength). Eyes followed her through the halls. Lips moved behind cupped fingers. To every side, the students swarmed and parted, rushed forward and drew back like a wave, a flock of starlings. All together. All apart.
“You have to break them early,” her father once said. Of course, he’d been talking about monsters, not teenagers, but they had a lot in common. Both had hive minds; they thought—and acted—in groups. Cities and schools were both microcosms of life, and small schools came with their own delicate ecosystem.
St. Agnes had been the smallest of the bunch, with only a hundred girls, while Fischer, her first private school, weighed in at a considerable six hundred and fifty. Colton Academy was four hundred strong, which was small enough to feel intimate but large enough to guarantee at least a modicum of resistance.
It was natural—there were always those who wanted to challenge the ruling power, to stake their own claim to authority or popularity or whatever it was they were after, and Kate could usually pick them out within the first few days. They were a disruption to the hive mind, those few, and she knew she’d have to deal with them as soon as possible.
All she needed was an opportunity to establish herself.
And to her surprise, one presented itself almost immediately.
She’d known there would be whispers about her. Rumors. They weren’t inherently bad. In fact, some of them were practically propagandistic. As she moved through the halls between classes, she cocked her head, catching the loudest ones.
“I heard she burned her last school down.”
“I heard she’s been to jail.”
“I heard she drinks blood like a Malchai.”
“Did you know she axed a student?”
“Psychopath.”
“Killer.”
And then, as she stepped into her next class, she heard it.
“I heard her mother went crazy.”
Kate’s steps slowed.
“Yeah,” continued the girl, loud enough for her to hear. “She went crazy, tried to drive them off a bridge.” Kate set her bag down on a desk, and ruffled through it absently, turning her good ear toward the girl. “I heard Harker sent her away because he couldn’t stand to look at her. She reminded him of his dead wife.”
“Charlotte,” whispered another girl. “Shut up.”
Yes, Charlotte, thought Kate. Shut up.
But Charlotte didn’t. “Maybe he sent her away because she was crazy, too.”
Not crazy, Kate wanted to say. No, he thought she was young, thought she was weak like her mother. But he was wrong.
She dug her nails savagely into her palms, and took her seat, eyes on the board. She sat like that all through class, head high, but she wasn’t listening, wasn’t taking notes. She didn’t hear a word the teacher said, didn’t care. She sat still and waited for the bell to ring, and when it did, she followed Charlotte out, and down the hall. Whatever class she had next wasn’t as important as this.
When the girl detoured into the nearest bathroom, Kate followed, throwing the bolt behind her.
Charlotte, pretty in such a boring way, was standing at the sink, retouching her makeup. Kate came up beside her, and began rinsing the crescents of blood from her palms. Then she tucked her hair behind her ear, showing the scar that traced her face from temple to jaw. The other girl looked up, found Kate’s gaze in the mirror, and had the audacity to smirk. “Can I help you?”
“What’s your name?” asked Kate.
The girl raised a bleached brow, and dried her hands. “Charlotte,” she said, already turning to go.
“No,” said Kate slowly. “Your full name.”
Charlotte stopped, suspicious. “Charlotte Chapel.”
Kate gave a small, silent laugh.
“What’s so funny?” snapped the girl.
Kate shrugged. “I burned down a chapel once.”
Charlotte’s face crinkled with disgust. “Freak,” she muttered, walking away.
She didn’t make it very far.
In an instant, Kate had her up against the wall, five metal-tipped fingers wrapped around her throat. With her free hand, Kate drew the lighter from her pocket. She pressed a notch on the side, and a silver switchblade slid out with a muted snick.
Charlotte’s eyes went wide. “You’re even crazier than I thought,” she gasped.
For a moment, Kate thought about hurting her. Seriously hurting her. Not because it would serve some purpose, just because it would feel really, really good. But getting expelled would negate everything she’d done to get here.
He’ll ship you out of Verity. One way. For good.
“When the headmaster hears about this—”
“He won’t,” said Kate, resting the knife against Charlotte’s cheek. “Because you’re not going to tell him.” She said it in the same way she said everything: with a quiet, even voice.
She’d seen a documentary once, on cult leaders, and the traits that made them so effective. One of the most important features was a commanding presence. Too many people thought that meant being loud, but in truth, it meant someone who didn’t need to be loud. Someone who could command an audience without ever raising their voice. Kate’s father was like that. She’d studied him, in the slivers of time they’d had together, and Callum Harker never shouted.
So neither did Kate.
She loosened her fingers on Charlotte’s throat, just a little, and brought the knife to the medallion hanging against the girl’s uniform shirt, tapping the engraved V casually with her blade. “I want you to remember something, Charlotte Chapel.” She leaned in. “That pendant may protect you from the monsters, but it won’t protect you from me.”
The bell rang, and Kate pulled back, flashing her best smile. The knife disappeared into the lighter and her hand fell away from the girl’s throat. “Run along now,” she said icily. “You wouldn’t want to be late.”
Charlotte clutched her bruised throat and scrambled out of the bathroom.
Kate didn’t follow. She went to the sink, washed her hands again, and smoothed her hair. For an instant, she met her reflection’s gaze, and saw another version of herself behind the stormy blue, one who belonged to a different life, a softer world. But that Kate had no place here.
She took a long breath, rolled her neck, and went to class, confident she’d made a solid first impression.
August was supposed to be in gym.
Or at least, every other junior was supposed to be in gym, and probably was, but thanks to a health condition—asthma, according to his file—he’d been granted a study hall instead.
August did not have asthma. What he did have were four hundred and eighteen uniform lines running the length of one arm and starting to wrap around his back and chest, and Henry was worried that they would draw attention.
So instead, August was in study hall. Or at least, he had been. He imagined a study hall might come in handy, but it being the first day of school, he had nothing to study, so he’d asked the monitor if he could go to the bathroom, and never came back.
Now he was standing outside the ID office.
On the way there, he’d tried to think up an excuse for not wanting his photo taken—he’d read once about a tribe that believed being photographed would steal their soul—but in the end he didn’t need an out.
The office was empty. The lights were on, and when he tried the handle, the door was unlocked. August looked around nervously, then stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind him. The ID form was still up on the computer screen, and he typed in his details: Frederick Gallagher, 16, junior, 5’ 10”, black hair, gray eyes.
An empty rec
tangle sat waiting to the right of the information. August knew what it was for. He swallowed and hit the delayed action photo button, then stepped in front of the pale backdrop, just like he’d seen the other students do. He looked straight into the camera lens and the flash went off. August blinked the light from his eyes and held his breath as he rounded the counter, but his heart sank when he saw the photo on the screen. His expression was a little too vacant, but his face had almost all the right components—jawline, mouth, nose, cheekbones, hair. An ordinary boy . . . except his eyes. Where August’s eyes should be, there was only a smudge of black. As if someone had drawn his face in charcoal and then smeared it.
Sunai, Sunai, eyes like coal, sang a voice in his head. His stomach twisted.
Retake? prompted the computer.
He clicked yes. This time he didn’t look straight at the camera, but just above it. No luck. The same dark smudge still obscured his gaze. August tried again and again and again, each time cheating his eyes a fraction to the left or the right, high or low, the smudge of black shifting, sometimes thinning, but always there. His vision filled with dots of light, a dozen flashes every time he blinked. The last take stared back at him from the screen, his eyes obscured by the same black streak, but a small, frustrated crease visible in his brow. He shouldn’t have bothered, should have known it wouldn’t work, but he’d hoped . . . for what?
A chance to play at being human? chided his brother’s voice.
Sing you a song and steal your soul.
He shook his head.
Bang.
Too many voices.
Retake? prompted the computer.
August’s finger hovered over no, but after a moment, he clicked yes. One more time. He stepped in front of the screen, took a deep breath, and readied himself for the inevitable flash, the disappointment of a final failed attempt. But the flash never came. He heard the digital click of the camera, but the light must have glitched. He crossed to the screen, heart thumping, and looked.
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