Starling

by Lesley Livingston

  DEDICATION

  For librarians. Everywhere.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  Chapter XXXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXXIV

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Works

  Credits

  Copyright

  Back Ad

  About the Publisher

  I

  “C’mon, Mase! Where’s that killer instinct?”

  Calum Aristarchos bounced lightly on the balls of his feet, the tip of his fencing saber tracing tiny, taunting spirals in the air.

  “En garde …”

  Mason Starling’s gaze narrowed behind the wire mesh of her cage mask, and she sank lower into her stance, thigh muscles searing with fatigue. She shook her head sharply to clear her mind as the sweat dripped, blinding, into her eyes. Concentrate …

  The blade in her hand wavered, dipping as if in uncertainty.

  She retreated a half step....

  And Calum Aristarchos made his move. Feet crossing over each other in a blur, he ran at her and thrust for her heart, his left arm flung back, spine arching like a dancer’s, only slightly overextending himself....

  Mason dropped into a deep, leg-punishing lunge, scooped her blade back up and—

  “A hit!”

  “No!”

  Toby Fortier—fencing coach drill sergeant, and not someone to argue that kind of point with—snorted and marked the practice score sheet. “She tagged you good, Aristarchos. Which also means she wins, again. Whining about it just makes you look like a girl.” He glanced up at Mason as she pulled off her headgear and grinned. “A girl who can’t fight like Mason.”

  Calum took off his own mask and flipped his practice foil around in the air, catching it by the blade, just under the guard. He sauntered back over to where Mason stood, his green eyes flashing and a wry smile bending his mouth up at one corner. Mason noticed that his face still glowed with the remnants of a deep summer tan. Part of what made him look like a magazine model.

  “Okay,” Calum said, nudging her with his elbow. “I guess you found that killer instinct.”

  “Sure,” she agreed. “Or you just got cocky. That lunge left you wide-open.”

  “Not for everybody, Mase.” He winked and plucked the sword out of Mason’s hand. “Just for you.”

  Mason felt her heart flutter for an instant. “Does that mean you’re gonna help me prepare for the Nationals qualifiers?”

  “You bet.” Cal wrapped one arm loosely around Mason’s waist and whispered in her ear, “I always back a winner.”

  Mason’s cheeks grew warm as she blushed fiercely. Then she felt another kind of heat—like a laser beam focused on the back of her head—and she glanced over her shoulder to find Heather Palmerston staring at her from across the gym. The tall blonde turned away when Mason’s eyes met hers, and she slapped her fencing glove into the palm of one hand, the sound of the leather cracking like a whip. Mason was reasonably certain that Heather had only taken up fencing to stay close to Cal, even though the two of them had recently broken up.

  Heather was an indifferent fighter—not bad, just not committed—and she really didn’t seem to enjoy it all that much. Unlike Mason, for whom fencing wasn’t a pursuit so much as a passion. She was shooting for a spot on the national team. And after that? Maybe even the Olympics. Heather … not so much. Even less so after she and Cal had broken up. Mason wondered why Heather hadn’t dropped out of the fencing club then, but for Heather, everything was about appearances. And quitting would have made it look like she’d lost something. The thing she did seem to enjoy about it, though, was the way all the guys looked at her as she walked by dressed in her tight fencing whites.

  Like Rory Starling, the younger of Mason’s two older brothers, who was gawking at Heather that very moment. As she sashayed past where he was working out, punching the heavy bag in the far corner of the gym, Rory’s jaw went so slack he was almost drooling. Mason rolled her eyes.

  “She’d be a decent fighter if she gave a damn,” Toby rumbled from right beside her. Mason hadn’t realized he was standing there. “Couldn’t hold a candle to you, of course, but she’d certainly hold her own.” He grunted and ran a hand over his face, smoothing his finely trimmed goatee.

  “D’you want her on the competition’s team?” Mason asked. She’d meant the question to be a neutral one, but that wasn’t how it came out sounding. Across the gym, Heather said something that made Calum laugh … and Mason felt an envious twinge in her chest.

  Toby looked down at her and shook his head. “No, Mason,” he said. “And you know your spot on the team is locked up.”

  “That’s not what I meant—”

  “I know. Just understand that it’s not something you have to worry about. Not if you keep fighting the way you have been.” Toby’s gaze drifted back to where Heather stood shaking out her wheat-gold hair from its ponytail. It fell across her shoulders like spun honey. Lookswise, she was the exact opposite of Mason, with her black hair, winter-pale skin, and blue eyes. “Anyway,” Toby was saying, “Palmerston’s too high maintenance. I just hate wasted potential, that’s all.”

  Mason nodded silently as Toby wandered over to where a couple of boys from the wrestling club were seeing just how hard they could peg each other in the head with a volleyball. Mason fished her aluminum water bottle out of her gear bag and took a long swallow to quench her thirst brought on by the long practice. She was tired, but not exhausted, and that was a good sign. Cal was a tough opponent—the toughest, in fact. He was still better than her, in spite of what Toby had said, and Mason was inwardly thrilled that not only had she been able to hold her own against him, but he’d actually seemed to appreciate it. She liked the idea of being appreciated by Calum Aristarchos. A lot.

  Trying not to glance over to see if he was still chatting with Heather, Mason stuffed her water bottle back in her bag and gathered up the rest of her gear. As she did so, she became aware of a subtle shift in the quality of the light streaming in through the high, arched windows. Mason peered up through the construction scaffolding that had been erected all along the south wall of the hall that housed Gosforth Academy’s new athletic center, startled to see that the previously clear blue vault of the sky had descended like a dark, heavy blanket, blotting out the sun.

  Through the windows, Mason saw thick, bruise-black clouds boiling over one another, moving with a swiftness that was almost frightening. She glanced at her watch. It was only early evening—just before dinner—but it suddenly seemed much, much later. The light outside dimmed to an ominous purplish wash.

  If the sky was going to open up, Mason thought, at least it wasn’t anywhere near as far to get back to her dorm as it had been when the fencing club had had to use the Columbia University gym. That was a good six blocks away. Now
she just had to run the length of Gosforth’s quad in order to get home. It was one of the perks of the new facility. The building used to be the academy headmaster’s residence, but the old gothic structure had recently been gutted and redesigned, turning it into a multipurpose center to be used by the gymnastics club and for dance classes and wrestling and—most importantly, as far as Mason was concerned—the fencing team. The sprung wooden floors had been installed only the week before, and the whole place smelled of lumber, varnish, and paint.

  It was a gorgeous facility, with state-of-the-art equipment wrapped in the antique charm of the building’s gothic architecture. There was even a little raised stage at one end for dance recitals and presentations, and the old stone walls had been left exposed along one side. Midway down the long north wall, double doors set into a high glass partition led to a soaring vestibule. It was an oddly extravagant feature for an athletics facility, but it was triple-glazed safety glass and probably could have withstood even a hard-flung basketball. It was there to showcase the high stone arch that had once housed a plain leaded-pane window, which Mason’s father, as a benefactor to the school, had ordered replaced with a magnificent stained-glass masterpiece. Even on the dullest day the window caught the sun and shattered it into a million shards of rainbow-brilliant light, casting it across the dark wood-paneled foyer of the new gym, where glass cases stood displaying an abundance of sports championship trophies.

  Mason smiled as she stared up at the stained glass. She was proud of her father and his commitment to the school, but sometimes she wished he would choose slightly less ostentatious ways to commit.

  Outside, she saw that the shadows cast by the branches of the old oak tree in the school’s quad had begun to wave wildly in the gathering storm. The tree was enormous—it had been planted when the school’s original buildings had been constructed in the late 1700s on Manhattan’s Upper West Side—and the gusting wind sent showers of leaves, twigs, and acorns clattering against the window and the old slate roof. The overhead fluorescents hanging from the hall’s exposed beams flickered and dimmed. When they returned to their normal brightness, the gymnasium seemed to have taken on a slightly sepulchral air.

  “Whoa,” Mason heard Calum say.

  She turned to see him gazing up at the gathering storm, his eyes wide and forest green in the uncertain light that filtered down through the tall windows.

  “Hey, Toby?” he called. “Maybe we’d better head back to the dorms—that looks like some pretty serious weather rolling in.”

  “Sure,” Toby agreed. “We’ve done enough work today. And it’ll save you from getting your ass handed to you again by your partner.” His mouth quirked upward, and he slapped the folder with the scoring sheets inside closed. Then he picked up his travel mug—his constant companion; the guy was a total caffeine junkie—and turned, bawling to the other student athletes to pack it in. He barked at the fencing club members to hand in their gear to Mason so that she and Cal could check the weapons for loose hilts and burrs and then return them to their proper places in the storage cabinets.

  “Hey, Mouse, catch,” Rory said as he tossed an extra practice foil carelessly at her, and Mason had to dodge or risk getting the tip through one eye.

  Damn, he’s annoying, Mason thought. She hated it when he called her Mouse. He knew it, too.

  Heather, of course, just strolled right past Mason and handed her foil directly to Calum. They were still cordial, but since their breakup Cal had been pretty clear in his intentions to keep it that way—cordial. Not that Mason had made a point of noticing that or anything....

  “C’mon, Mase,” Cal said, smiling at her.

  He handed Heather’s foil to Mason, shrugged out of his fencing jacket, and threw it over onto the pile of his own gear. Underneath, he wore only a thin T-shirt with the school logo stenciled on the back. “We should hurry to beat the storm or we’re gonna get drenched on the way back to the Res,” he said to Mason over his shoulder.

  Calum in a wet T-shirt wasn’t such a bad idea as far as she was concerned, but he had a point. She hurried toward the storage cabinet at the far end of the gym, but it became suddenly apparent that they weren’t beating anything. Through the windows, she saw a blaze of lightning fork across the sky with a sizzling, ear-shattering crack that made her jump.

  Is it a bad sign when you can actually hear lightning? she wondered. But she didn’t really have time to ponder the physics of it because the sound was drowned out almost immediately by a cannon-roar boom of thunder so loud it felt as though it had come from inside her head. The air in the hall quivered with the shock wave, and the new gym floor felt as though it had actually heaved upward. Mason yelped and ran for the cabinet. Outside, the rain started to fall in fat, splattering drops and the wind moaned loudly.

  Mason juggled her armload of whip-thin aluminum blades, trying to open the metal door without actually having to stop and put anything down. She was surprised when Heather appeared at her elbow and pulled the door open for her.

  “Thanks,” Mason gasped, struggling to untangle herself from the forest of swords.

  “Hold still,” Heather said. “You’re gonna stab one of us.” Together, the two girls struggled to disengage the weapons and stow them on the rack on the cabinet wall.

  “Be careful with that épée!” Mason warned. “You’re gonna snap the tip!”

  “Yeah, yeah. Let go, Starling. I’ve got it.”

  By the time they got everything stowed, the sky had turned to shades of deepest midnight and lightning lashed the underbellies of black clouds. The lights flickered again, and Mason felt the breath stop in her throat for an instant.

  “Jeezus.” Cal snorted. “Who ordered the apocalypse?”

  As if on cue, another magnesium-bright flash of lightning blazed, and the lights in the hall flickered and died. The entire gymnasium went suddenly, completely, dark. Mason sucked in a sharp breath, and her heart started to rabbit in her chest. She quickly grabbed her gear bag and hurried toward the door.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

  She thrust through the double glass doors into the foyer and leaned on the main door’s push bar—and nothing happened. She shoved it again, harder, but the heavy carved-wood door remained shut.

  “What’s wrong?” Heather asked from behind her.

  “It’s jammed or something,” Mason said, and tried again.

  “Let me try.” Calum nudged her over to one side. He used both hands to push against the bar. He kicked the door’s brass footplate and tried shouldering it open, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Hang on, Cal,” Toby called. They could hear him walking across the gym floor toward them. His worn, heavy combat boots made a steady thump-thump in the darkness. His bulky form suddenly loomed up in front of them, and he jiggled the door bar and pushed sharply on it a couple of times. Then he stepped toward an alcove at the side of the door. “Hunh,” he grunted. “Weird.”

  “What’s going on?” Rory asked, showing up with his gym bag slung over one shoulder.

  “I think the power outage screwed up these new electronic locks,” Toby answered. “The control panel’s dead.”

  “Shouldn’t there be a backup system or something?” Calum asked.

  “Yeah.” Toby punched at the panel and jiggled the door bar again. “But there should also be emergency lighting, and I don’t see that it’s come on, either. Could be that they just haven’t got the bugs worked out yet....”

  Outside, it sounded like the world was coming apart. Mason could hear the old Gosforth oak creaking in protest at the punishing winds.

  “I’m gonna go check out the fire exit door,” Toby said. “Sit tight until I get back. Don’t wander—there’s still construction equipment lying stacked near the walls and I don’t want any of you accidentally kicking a circ saw and amputating a toe.”

  Even in that pitch dark, it didn’t take the fencing master long to travel from one end of the gym to the other and back again. And Mason
knew, just from the sounds of his measured tread, that they weren’t leaving anytime soon.

  “We might as well make ourselves comfortable until the juice comes back on,” Toby said, confirming her suspicions, and Mason heard him swishing around the dregs of whatever was left in his travel mug. “Fire door’s sealed tight, too.”

  “That’s not supposed to happen, is it?”

  “No, Mason. It isn’t.” Toby sighed heavily. “And damned if I’m not out of coffee. That’s not supposed to happen, either.”

  Look, Mason told herself sternly, it’s not as if you’re in a small space or anything … you’re not trapped. There’s plenty of room.

  She could feel the airiness of the vaulting hall all around her, even if she couldn’t actually make out the ceiling, but it wasn’t that. It was more just the thought of being locked in with absolutely no avenue of escape that bothered her. That, and the darkness. It was so complete. So absolute. Shouldn’t there have at least been some light spill from surrounding buildings or the street? The school was in the middle of freaking Manhattan, for crying out loud....

  “Toby,” Mason said quietly.

  He didn’t seem to hear her. Probably because her throat was so dry her voice had barely come out as a whisper.

  “Toby.” She tried again.

  “What’s wrong, Mason?”

  What was wrong? She was going to lose it any second—that’s what was wrong. She was going to blow a mental gasket right in front of the hottest guy in school and his ice-queen ex and her stupid selfish brother and by the time first period rolled around tomorrow, everyone at the Gosforth Academy would know she was a claustrophobic freak. “Toby? I …”

  “What is it?” he asked again. “Mason, we’re stuck here until the power comes back on, so we might as well all just relax.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Aw, hell,” Rory muttered. “Here we go.”

  “Shut up, Ror,” Mason said tightly.

  “Mason, what do you mean?” Toby asked.

  “I mean … I … I’m not exactly good with confined spaces.” Mason could hear the panicky rasp in her voice. “I’m not good with being locked in.” She knew that Toby had shifted forward, and that he was probably peering at her, trying to make out if she was kidding or not. Or if she was, in fact, on the verge of losing it. But she couldn’t see his face. Zero ambient light filtered in through the windows. It was starting to feel like being trapped down a well or sealed in a coffin.