by Callie Rose
I stepped forward until we were virtually nose-to-nose. “Prove it. Bitch.”
Sonja settled into a solid fighting stance and was gearing up to do something, but I never saw what.
Before she could move, the hallway outside erupted in screams of terror.
Chapter Fourteen
Adrenaline surged through my body at the sound.
Our Combat class was usually pretty loud, punctuated by bangs, pops, shouts, and grunts. But there was something casual and safe about those noises. We were fighting, but it was all in good fun; no one was seriously angry or afraid.
The screams outside though?
Those were different. They were panicked, terrified.
Hannah and I exchanged a look and bolted toward the door, heading toward the source of the screaming. Sonja and her posse were right on our heels, and I could feel my guys coming up behind them. In the hallway, people were running and yelling, but I couldn’t make sense of anything. Something exploded down the hall.
“Look up!” Hannah gasped and pointed.
My head whipped up, my gaze following the direction of her finger, and my jaw dropped open.
“What. The fuck. Are those?!”
They looked like liquid fireworks from a distance—lime green, electric blue, lava red, and brilliant lavender. One of the blue ones darted to a spot just over my head and dove. As it came closer, I registered small, iridescent wings and a little smiling cherub face. The thing laughed and batted its eyes at me before launching an energy ball as big as itself at my face. I yelped and dove out of the way, but I was too slow and the ball was too powerful. It singed my hair with a sizzling sound.
“Sprites!” someone screamed. “Run!”
“Don’t run! Fight!”
Arguments and fires were breaking out all over. The entire hallway was crammed full of people, jostling and trampling each other. And above it all, the sprites darted overhead, launching energy balls like they were shooting fish in a barrel. It was utter chaos.
Fuck. Someone’s gonna get hurt.
Scratch that. Someone’s gonna get killed.
Beedle had emerged from the classroom and joined another teacher in trying to control the students while simultaneously fighting off the sprites’ attacks—but it wasn’t going well. He was too distracted.
I spotted Jayce in the crowd and ran in a zig-zag toward him, then grabbed his face and made him look at me.
“Hey. I need some juice.”
He looked panicked for a moment like he was going to argue with me, then it clicked what I was asking for. He kissed me, hard, and even in the midst of chaos and danger, my body responded in an instant, melting against his, rubbing against him so our entire bodies were pressed flush together. I could feel him responding too, already hard against my stomach, and I felt a little bad that we couldn’t actually take this further.
I let him devour me with a greedy kiss for another moment, pumping me full of as much power as he could give in our temporary embrace. When I finally pulled away, I felt like I could lift up a truck if I had to, and Jayce was a little glassy-eyed. Buzzing with the taste of his essence, I scrambled to the top of a statue in the hallway.
Persuasion. “Everybody shut up and listen to me! These little fucks are trying to kill us. Don’t run. Don’t panic. Get them!”
And just like that, the tides turned, at least in my immediate vicinity. I couldn’t do a whole lot for the people out of earshot, but as soon as the crowd around me started working as a controlled, concerted team, the effect spread. We were all locked in battle with the evil little sprites, and I had nothing but persuasion and shape-shifting on my side.
A red one dive-bombed me before I could get down off the statue. I fell to the solid floor and rolled under people’s feet—the vicious little creature had lit my tunic on fire.
That’s the second tunic I’ve ruined, dammit. The school’s gonna start charging me for these things.
Hannah was on her feet, returning the sprite attacks with double the force, launching energy balls of her own at them.
Everyone else was fighting one way or another—spewing fire at the ice sprites, throwing ice at the fire sprites, electrocuting bunches at a time. The students were talented, but most of us weren’t very well trained yet. So when a pair of demon mages combined their magic to create a massive energy ball, they didn’t watch out for the electric fingers of someone else’s lightning magic before tossing it.
The energy ball flew toward the bolts of lightning, and even before they collided, a threatening buzz pulsed in the hallway.
“Shit! Get down!”
It was like a bomb. The wall exploded in front of us, taking a lot of sprites with it. Stones and bricks flew wildly. As I ducked, I could hear the sickly thwack of rock chunks hitting flesh. Then everything was silent. We all stayed still as the statues lining the walls, waiting for another wave of sprites.
But all I heard instead was a rhythmic zap…zap…zap…coming from down the hallway.
Tentatively, I lifted my head to look. More teachers had arrived to belatedly save the day, armed with wands and color-coded jars. One by one, they zapped the remaining sprites into the containers.
“Just like high school all over again,” I remarked as lightly as I could. “One little thing goes wrong, and all of a sudden they have to call an assembly.”
Hannah smiled at me weakly. She had been next to a man who had taken a brick to the head. He was in the infirmary now and would probably be fine, but she had been a bit traumatized by the whole thing.
I elbowed her gently. “You fought like hell out there. You did great.”
“So did you,” she murmured. “Excellent call, using persuasion.”
“You work with what you got,” I said with a shrug.
We found seats in the big hall and watched the rest of the students file in. Everyone looked dirty and grim. A lot of faces were missing. I told myself they would be fine, and that nobody died that day. I couldn’t be sure if that was actually true, but I wanted to believe it. As the doors closed behind the last student, Toland took the podium.
He was silent for a long moment. So was everybody else. It was eerie to listen to so many people just… breathe.
“You all know how serious this was, so I’m not going to waste a lot of time telling you. Many students were injured. An outer wall was compromised. Our defenses are compromised.” His voice had grown louder and angrier with each word he spoke, and he paused to compose himself. From where I sat, I could see the muscle in his jaw working.
“Someone in this school is responsible. Someone in this school released the sprites. This was a premeditated attack on our students, faculty, and the school itself. This is not a transgression we can ignore.”
He paused again to take a deep breath, bending at the waist and leaning on the podium for support. He looked broken, but the fire in his eyes told me he was merely folding under the weight of his fury.
“Each of you will be subjected to questioning over the mid-year break. We must find the person responsible. Am I clear?"
A mumble of yes, sirs rippled through the crowd.
“I said, am I clear?”
“Yes, sir!” the entire room barked in unison.
“Be prepared to come immediately when you are called.” He cast one final look over the assembled crowd, as if he could somehow pick out the culprit right now. Then he jerked his chin toward the back of the room. “Dismissed.”
Classes were cancelled for the rest of the day. Students and staff alike seemed to be trapped under a somber cloud, walking through the halls or languishing in the library, not sure what to do with themselves. The main hall was a mess, but had been cordoned off by the time the assembly let out. Everybody reacted a little differently. Some isolated themselves, and I envied those.
That’s how I would have handled situations like this before. Isolate, disassociate from reality for a while, just withdraw and sooth myself. But it didn’t work that way anymore. M
y distress, no more apparent than anyone else’s, was like a beacon to my four. My guys stayed nearby—even Kai, though he would have denied it. Jayce stuck firmly at my side, his body in some form of contact with mine all the time. Kingston walked beside me, out of reach but close enough for eye contact. I felt Xero behind me at all times, and Kai on the very edges of my consciousness.
Hannah stayed with me too. I almost appreciated her presence more, because I knew there was no magical reason for it. The six of us ended up in the library after a lot of mindless wandering, tucked away in a comfortable little corner full of couches and a few solitary chairs. For a moment, I thought that Kai had split off from the group, but when I reached out with my feelings, I found him on the other side of a big bookcase.
Jayce tucked into the corner of a couch and I lay against his shoulder with my feet on the cushions in front of me. Hannah wriggled in under my knees and leaned into me. Kingston perched on the arm of the couch by my feet, and Xero sat on the floor with his back to me. I absently ran my fingers over his close-shaved black hair. He didn’t pull away. I called it a win.
I’m not sure when we all fell asleep, but a cold sun was dawning when I opened my eyes. I carefully slid out from between Jayce and Hannah and stepped over Xero, feeling nimble and alive like I’d just slept for a decade and had a belly full of coffee. It was incredible.
“Well, shit. That’s what I’ve been missing all my life,” I murmured to myself contentedly as I stretched the kinks out of my spine. “An overcrowded couch in a public place.”
Then I looked over and saw the reality of it. With Jayce beneath me, Xero on one side, and Kingston draped over the back of the couch on my other side, I’d essentially spent the night in a charging port. I was buzzing with power. More than that, I was happier than I could remember being for a very, very long time.
Which would have been great if it had lasted. But after everybody woke up and we made our way toward the dining hall for breakfast, I started to sense that something was very wrong. People were glancing at my group surreptitiously. Some with fear, some with curiosity, others with seething hatred. I tried to shrug it off, but I couldn’t. This whole succubus thing had given me a sense of empathy I never wanted and didn’t know how to filter.
I stopped just outside the cafeteria, holding up a hand so my group would pull up as well. Someone was talking, and the frantic flutter in my chest told me they were talking about me.
“But then why would she have done that? She jumped up on that statue and got everyone working together!”
“To be the hero.”
“Haven’t you seen her with those guys? She can’t stand not being the center of attention. She probably did it just so she could be the hero.”
I recognized those voices. The questioner was Mia, the caramel-colored chick who routinely kicked my ass in Combat. The first to answer her question was the morose girl, Jen, who liked to hang out with Sonja. The second to answer was Sonja’s blonde sidekick, Kimi.
“I don’t know… I saw her in Combat. She was fighting with Hannah, they were putting on a huge show.”
“More distraction,” Kimi insisted. “She got the guys to do it for her. You’ve seen how they hang on her. It was probably that surfer dude, Jayce. She’s got him wrapped allll the way around her finger.”
“It had to be them,” Jen said in a rather convincing monotone. “Who else would want to?”
Jayce put a hand on my shoulder. I looked up at him. His blue eyes were distraught, and that made me furious.
Motherfucker.
A surprising wave of protectiveness and vindictive anger rose up in me. It was one thing for Sonja or anyone else in this school to talk shit about me. Another thing entirely for them to fuck with my men.
“Come on,” I said firmly. “Let’s go see how far this has spread.”
We marched into the cafeteria as a cohesive unit—except for Kai, who was about twenty paces behind us and pretending he wasn’t aware of my existence—past the cluster of gossiping girls, and made our way toward the buffet table. Silence fell in front of us. Frantic whispers buzzed behind us.
“It’s… everybody,” Jayce spoke in a low voice, glancing around the large hall. His shoulders slumped with defeat. “They all think we did it?”
I shook my head, grabbing his hand and threading my fingers through his, offering as much energy as I was taking this time. “That’s not how rumors work. Everybody’s going to bite at the interesting thing for a minute. Soon people will start relying on their own brain power. When that happens, they’ll split into factions. Eventually, everybody will have something else to think about.”
Unless something else happens to implicate us. But I wasn’t going to speak that thought out loud. He already looked a little bit more cheerful, and I loved when Jayce was happy. I didn’t want to mess that up for him.
Hannah, however, shot me a look that said you know that’s a damn lie, and I raised my brows in acknowledgment. She and I both knew how the mean girl crowd worked. Sonja was top bitch around here, and she could obviously hold a grudge forever. These rumors weren’t going to die off anytime soon.
But by the end of breakfast, we were beginning to get sympathetic looks from some of the less impressionable students, so I didn’t give it much thought. The people around here were generally forgiving; it kind of came with the territory of reluctant monsterhood. I ignored the whispers and returned the smiles and pretty much forgot all about the whole thing.
“What do you want to do today?” Hannah picked at her breakfast, clearly more affected by the rumors than I was.
“We could explore the grounds,” Jayce suggested with a shrug. “I think I’ve been just about everywhere inside the place.”
“Oh, but it’s freezing out there.” Hannah shivered.
“Hm… I don’t know if you’ve been everywhere in the castle.” I grinned at Hannah.
Her eyes lit up, but her expression faded into a frown almost immediately. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
“If what’s a good idea?” Jayce asked.
“Why not? It’s not like we’ll get in trouble. Besides, it’s quiet. And private.”
Hannah chewed her lip. “But wouldn’t you disappearing with everybody for hours—or however long—wouldn’t that give them more to talk about?”
My cheeks puffed as I blew out a frustrated breath. She was right, but I didn’t care. People were going to talk regardless, and I didn’t feel like spending the entire day dodging glares and whispers from all sides. I knew she’d spent a lot of time cultivating relationships with other students since we’d gotten here, and I knew it was the only kind of distraction that would keep her from missing her sister and grandmother too much. I didn’t want to ruin that for her if I could possibly avoid it. Besides, the tower was her discovery. That kind of gave her the right to decide who got to go up there and when, as far as I was concerned.
“All right,” I said finally. “What would you like to do?”
Before she could answer, there was a bit of commotion by the cafeteria door. One of Toland’s assistants was calling the room to attention.
“When you hear your name, follow me,” she said once the room was quiet. “Beatrice Aaron. Adam Ackles. Arnold Alvarez.”
The three students slowly rose from their seats. Beatrice rushed toward the teacher with her face hidden behind her hair. One of the men grinned back at his friends and said something that made them laugh, while the other simply glowered at the world at large.
Good, it’s started.
Now they’ll get to the bottom of it and Sonja will have to find some other reason to be a bitch.
Chapter Fifteen
Everywhere we went for the rest of the day, the same thing happened. The assistant would come in, say three names in alphabetical order, and leave again. The clusters of names didn’t seem to be in any kind of order at all, strangely enough. She bounced around from A to R and back to D with no apparent rhyme or reason.
I got the strangest feeling of being circled, like they were spiraling around to my name and making it look random.
My group had slowly scattered throughout the day as we tried to find ways to entertain ourselves. Honestly, I didn’t see the reasoning behind a mid-year break if we couldn’t even visit home. Sure, the media and art rooms were open, and the cafeteria was running all day now. Plus the library, of course, and the gym downstairs in the basement. Hannah and I wasted a solid few hours sparring, but my heart wasn’t in it.
We all gathered together again at dinner.
“Any of you guys get called in for questioning?” I asked.
Xero, Kingston, and Jayce all shook their heads. Kai wasn’t in earshot. He’d gone back to being utterly avoidant, but that was fine. Well, it wasn’t, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.
I bit my lip as a spark of anxiety curdled my gut.
“What’s wrong?” Jayce asked. I wasn’t sure if it was because he and I had gotten physically closer than I had with the others or what, but he was so in tune with my emotional state it was like he knew what I was feeling before I did sometimes.
“I just want to get it over with.” I sighed and shook my head.
“Can’t wait to tell all your lies?”
Just what I needed. I turned around to find Sonja sneering at me.
“Hi, Sonja, do me a quick favor, would you?” I smiled sweetly, enjoying her confused expression.
“Um… what?”
“Get a fucking life.” I turned back around. My spine tingled as my body braced like she was going to hit me, but I deliberately relaxed. Let her. I could use a good brawl to work out this case of nerves I’d developed.
She walked away instead.
More power to her, but damn I would have loved to make a fool out of her in front of everybody.
Over the next week, as more people were brought in for questioning and released in various stages of disgruntlement, the atmosphere in the school grew more and more hostile. Whispers turned into loud conversations, with accusatory stares going in all directions. They came my way more often than I would have liked, but I took solace in the fact that I wasn’t the only one.