“Does everybody know what they are, or were they kept in the dark like me?”
Fletcher opened his mouth to answer before he was cut off.
“What are you two doing out here? Fifth period started ten minutes ago.”
Ms. Sampson, the meanest security guard in the school, towered over us, blocking the sun. I gulped. The woman was built like a Rottweiler that walked on its hind legs.
“Uh . . .” I began, but nothing would come out. “We were just finishing up an assignment. We’re going in now.”
Ms. Sampson glared at me and pulled her radio from its holster. “Finishing an assignment?” She gestured around the field. “This look like study hall to you?” She turned her attention to Fletcher. “Didn’t you learn your lesson from being suspended?”
Fletcher narrowed his eyes and looked up at her. “We’re doing something important. More important than school. Go away.”
I sighed. That was typical Fletcher—blunt and to the point—but Sampson wasn’t the one to pull that crap with.
“Office, now! Both of you!”
Throwing Fletcher a dirty look he didn’t notice, I grabbed my things and trudged behind Sampson to the main building. My heart pounded. I had never been in trouble at school before, ever. Mom was going to flip.
“Sit,” Sampson ordered, pointing to the row of chairs that lined the front wall of the main office. “Principal Sharpe will be right with you.”
“Ms. Sampson,” I pleaded, “do we really need to see the principal? We were just running a few minutes late to class. Can’t you just give us a detention?” Really. It did seem a bit much.
She rolled her eyes at me. “You weren’t just running late. You were being defiant and refusing to go to class, so to the principal’s office you go.”
Okay, so Fletcher had refused to go to class, but not me. I glanced at Fletcher, who was observing the fish tank, completely unbothered.
Ms. Sampson went to talk to the head receptionist, whose favorite pastime was hating all students. I elbowed Fletcher in his side.
“Ow!”
“What’s wrong with you? You got us in trouble.”
He shook his head. “We’re not going to be in trouble. Relax.”
Just then, Mary-Kate came from the back of the office carrying a stack of manila folders. She stopped at the head receptionist’s desk and handed her an envelope. “Hey, Mrs. Reid, Principal Sharpe wanted me to give you this.”
The student-hating receptionist smiled, which was something I had never seen her do before. What magic did Mary-Kate have that even Mrs. Reid liked her? “Thank you, dear. You’re always such a big help.”
Mary-Kate smiled back then caught sight of me and Fletcher. “Arden, what are you doing in here? Are you okay?”
I waited for Mrs. Reid to tell Mary-Kate to mind her own business, but she got busy with some filing.
My face warmed. Why was I embarrassed? Mary-Kate wasn’t my mom or a teacher or anything. She was a kid just like me, but for some reason I hated her seeing me in trouble.
“We’re waiting to see the principal,” Fletcher answered as if she had asked him.
Mary-Kate frowned. “Why?”
“We kind of didn’t hear the bell ring after lunch,” I lied, “and we were late to class.”
Mary-Kate gave me this disappointed-puppy look, and I just wanted her to leave. “How could you not hear the bell? When I was out sick last week, I heard it from my house, and I live one street over.”
For the love of God. Please stop.
“Don’t you have stuff to do?” Fletcher asked, but I was glad he’d said it.
Mary-Kate looked at him and rolled her eyes. Everyone was used to Fletcher, so no one took his words to heart. “Yes, I do. Just stay out of trouble, okay?” She took the stack of folders and hurried out of the office.
I sank into my seat feeling chastised. I liked Mary-Kate, but who did she think she was?
Almost twenty minutes later and after we’d missed most of our fifth period classes, Principal Sharpe called us into his office.
“Ms. Moss and Mr. Whitelock, have a seat please,” he said as we entered the room. I don’t know how he managed to know every student’s name, but he did. It was nice. Even though I was in trouble, the fact that he knew my name made me feel important.
“Mr. Whitelock, I see we haven’t yet learned our lesson, but Ms. Moss, I’m surprised to see you here.”
I sat up and took a deep breath. Maybe since I was a first-time offender, he would go easy on me. “Please, don’t call my mom. If you have to call a parent, call my father.”
Principal Sharpe sat back in this chair and clasped his hands together. I wrinkled my nose, suddenly overcome with the scent of cinnamon and something else sweet.
I glanced at Fletcher, who nodded.
“You—you’re a Taker?” I asked, my voice shaking. It didn’t sound right when I said it aloud.
“A Satyr. Being what you are doesn’t give you the right to break the rules. School is still school.”
Satyrs. Half man, half goat, but I couldn’t remember what they did.
“I know,” I said. “It’s just that we were right in the middle of a super-important conversation, and . . .”
“I understand, but don’t let it happen again.” He looked at Fletcher. “I brought you back from your suspension early, but I won’t bend the rules for you anymore. Ms. Sampson will have a fit if I don’t give you two Saturday detention, so Saturday morning, be here at eight o’clock sharp.”
I threw Fletcher another dirty look, and he looked slightly guilty.
“No more mouthing off,” Principal Sharpe told Fletcher.
The bell rang for sixth period. “Off you go. No more tardiness.”
We left the office, and I felt that we got off easier than expected. “The principal’s a creature,” I whispered to Fletcher.
“Yep.”
Fletcher and I fell into the crowd of students making their way to their final classes of the day. “That wasn’t so bad.”
“I told you we weren’t going to get into much trouble. Principal Sharpe has much more important things on his mind than a couple of kids cutting class.”
I didn’t know what that meant, and I didn’t get the chance to ask.
Unfortunately, when someone earns Saturday detention, a phone call is made to their parents. Luckily, Mom didn’t flip out too much. I guessed once you knew your kid was turning into some kind of monster-creature that may one day eat you alive, Saturday detention was just a drop in the bucket.
Everyone knows that Saturday mornings were made for sleeping in, so having to get up at seven was brutal. Still, I got up, downed some beef jerky and bacon, and dragged myself to school.
Being in school on a Saturday was strange and eerie. There were a few cars in the parking lot, but mostly it was deserted. My mind drifted to what was going on under the school. Sometimes it was still hard for me to believe that there was a whole secret world down there.
I stepped into the empty hallway and hurried to the second floor, room 213, where detention was held. I had never been in there before, but I heard it was the coldest room in the school, and somehow they managed to make it even colder during the winter. Hopefully my newfound body warmth would keep me from getting frostbite.
Just as I hit the staircase, the click-clack of heels against linoleum drifted down the hallway. I turned to see Mary-Kate approaching. She had to be kidding me. She even came to school on Saturdays? At eight o’clock in the morning? Who came to school when they didn’t have to?
“Mary-Kate, hey.”
“Good morning, Arden. I see you’ve earned yourself a detention.”
I so did not want to talk about that. “What are you doing here? Even you need to take a day off, right?”
She grinned. “I’ll just be here for a little while. Next month we’ll be doing a coat drive, and I want to get a head start making posters and flyers. If I’m still here when your detention is over,
I’d love some help.”
My Saturday morning was already ruined, but I hadn’t planned on ruining my whole day by staying at school longer than I had to. Besides, Fletcher and I had some investigating to do. “Uh, I’d like to, but after detention, I have this thing—”
“It’s cool. Some other time. See ya.” She walked off, not seeming disappointed at all. I had the feeling she’d expected me to say no.
I sighed and pulled myself up the stairs. My legs felt as if they were weighed down with lead. I dreaded spending the next two hours staring at a desk.
I was surprised to find Room 213 full. I’m not sure why, but I had expected ten kids max. Had so many kids gotten into trouble that week? Even more surprising was Principal Sharpe sitting at the front desk. Normally the teachers took turns covering Saturday detention, but I’d never heard of Principal Sharpe doing it.
I wanted to gag immediately. The mixture of sweetness and rot stung my nostrils. I held my coat sleeve underneath my nose to keep myself from gagging.
I locked eyes with Fletcher from where he sat at the back of the room. He gave me a huge smile as if he was ecstatic to be there. The only seats left were in the very front row, so I didn’t have a choice but to take one. As soon as I settled in, the door swung open. Ms. Sampson shoved Claudio Reyes inside and slammed the door behind him.
Claudio just caught himself before falling and straightened out his sweater. “She can’t be throwing people around like that.”
“Have a seat, Mr. Reyes,” Principal Sharpe said, sounding completely unconcerned about Claudio’s rough handling.
As soon as Claudio took the seat beside me, Principal Sharpe stood, rounded the desk, and sat on top of it. “Now that we’re all here . . .”
I looked around the room and realized then that many of these kids didn’t belong. Ashley Wyatt had gotten best-behavior awards since we were in elementary school. Barry Hastings had the strictest parents I knew and wouldn’t have dared to get in trouble. A few other kids were in there whom I’d never seen get as much as a verbal reprimand. Then I realized something else. Every single one of these kids, with the exception of two or three, was on the list Fletcher and I had made the other day. Everyone in this room was a creature.
“I’m sorry about this,” Principal Sharpe continued. “I know there are many other things you’d rather be doing on a Saturday, but I had to find a way to get you all together that didn’t look suspicious.”
He had planned this, and Fletcher had known.
“You could have at least brought doughnuts and hot chocolate or something,” Claudio said.
Principal Sharpe gave him a look then continued. “We have a situation. As you all very well know, something has been killing people under the guise of a Wendigo. We have only one Wendigo or half Wendigo in these parts, but this particular creature hasn’t fully transformed yet. Something is killing us off. Something is threatening our truce.”
Everyone spoke at once, and I wished I wasn’t sitting at the front of the room, because it made it easier for people to stare at me. Their eyes burned into the back of my head. Principal Sharpe hadn’t mentioned my name, but did they know what I was? Probably.
Jackson, who sat a few seats behind me, told them what happened the night he, Fletcher, and I had gone out into the woods.
“Well, how do we know it’s not someone in this room?” Marshall demanded.
Claudio turned to him. “Because none of us change into things that could do that to those people. Huge claws and teeth? And a Giver would never do it.”
Everyone started talking all at once again. Principal Sharpe banged on the desk. “We all know that there are some beings who go unrecognized because they’ve managed to hide their scent. It can very well be one of them doing it. They could be right under our noses, and we wouldn’t even know it.”
“How do they do that?” I asked. “How come they can mask their smell but the rest of us can’t?”
“Sometimes it’s a born ability, like how some people are born to be great swimmers or great mathematicians, and with some it comes with their power. Some creatures just develop greater powers than others.”
“I think the bigger question is why are they doing this.” Leslie McNeil said. “They’re obviously trying to rile everybody up and turn us against each other, but why? Things have been nice and peaceful for a while. Why are they trying to mess that up?”
Michael McPhee piped up. “I think it has something to do with Dust.”
“Mr. McPhee,” Principal Sharpe chided.
“Sorry. I mean . . . Arden. They’re trying to make us want to kill her, but why? What’s so special about her?” The way he asked it sounded mean, but he hadn’t meant it that way. It was a good question. I knew the answer, but I wondered if the rest of them did.
“It’s no secret. We know she’s half Wendigo, but she’s also part Banshee,” Tracy Farris said. “At her full powers, she could kill us all just by thinking about it.”
The group murmured, and I gulped. I sounded like the most horrible thing in the world, but it was also empowering to know that I had this priceless ability bottled up inside of me. Something no one else had.
I looked to Principal Sharpe, who nodded. “If someone wants Arden dead, why not just kill her? Maybe that would be too easy for them. They want our two sides to turn against each other again, and they’re using her to do that. No one wants to be at war again.”
“Or the Gemini Curse,” someone called from the back of the room.
“We have to do something,” Claudio said. “We just can’t let that thing keep killing people.”
“Agreed,” Principal Sharpe said. “As I’ve been saying, keep your eyes, ears, and noses open. If you hear or see anything strange, come to me immediately.”
I only wore a coat because it was twenty degrees out and it would have seemed strange if I hadn’t. People would talk, and everything was hard enough for Mom as it was. With the coat on, I was hot and starting to sweat. “I don’t get cold anymore.”
“I’m cold all the time,” Fletcher said from the left of me, where he walked matching my steps.
Fletcher paused and stared into the window of the Hallmark store. Like the rest of downtown Everson, the place was decked out for Christmas from top to bottom. I didn’t mind stopping. Christmas was my favorite time of year.
Fletcher’s face held a wide-eyed, childlike wonderment I had never seen before. I couldn’t help but smile.
“I love Christmas,” he said, focused on something inside.
“I do too. It’s my favorite holiday.”
His smile faded a little. “My parents used to celebrate it.”
Fletcher had never mentioned Christmas since I’d known him. His family went to Alaska to visit his grandparents, and he never said anything else about it.
“Used to. Why’d they stop?”
“They had to. They died.”
I tore myself away from the window to look at Fletcher. “Wait . . . what?”
He locked eyes with me for a second and then turned back to the window. “The Whitelocks aren’t my real parents.”
I couldn’t believe what he was telling me or that he was saying it so casually. That was a huge deal. “Fletcher, how could you not tell me something like this?”
He shrugged, and the smile returned to his face. “I thought I had. Besides, you met them. You should have been able to tell from the smell.”
I wanted to know, no, I had to know what had happened to his real parents, but obviously whatever it was, it was something awful. I couldn’t bring myself to ask him about it while he looked so happy. I’d ask another time.
“Maybe if you asked, the Whitelocks would celebrate it. Is it against their religion or something?”
Fletcher pursed his lips. “No. It’s a Human holiday. We don’t celebrate those. Mom and Dad hate them, actually.” I wished Fletcher could come and celebrate with my family, but after what went down the last time he was over, that would never be
an option.
Now that I thought about it, Fletcher was right. He never celebrated anything, never dressed up for Halloween, nothing. I was happy my family wasn’t that way. Holidays gave me something to look forward to. Then I wondered why his real parents had celebrated Christmas when that wasn’t something creatures did.
Fletcher pressed his hands against the glass. “Maybe if I got just a small ornament, I could hide it in my room, and they’d never know.”
I took his hand and pulled him toward the entrance of the store. “That’s a great idea. I’ll help you pick one out.”
An hour later, we left the store with an adorable penguin sticking out of a Christmas stocking. It had taken Fletcher forever to decide on something, and he had run around the store amazed at everything like a five-year-old. People stared but he didn’t care. Honestly, I hadn’t either.
On the walk home I had to ask. “What happened to your parents?”
“They were killed. I don’t know by who or what, but they were.”
That matched Hollis’s story. “Hollis told me that a bunch of Takers were killed during some kind of massacre. Was it then?”
“It happened at the same time.”
When Hollis had told me the story, I thought the victims had only been Takers. Hollis thought the Givers had been responsible. “What would attack Givers and Takers?”
Fletcher shrugged. “Hell if I know. Some people thought Humans had found out about us and that they were responsible, but there wasn’t any proof of that.”
I couldn’t picture any Humans killing all those creatures in one night, but something had. Maybe it was the same something that was killing people again.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Everson High’s Annual Winter Masquerade Ball fell in the middle of January. Fletcher had talked me into going with him since we were supposed to be keeping an eye on things. The last time a bunch of kids got together at night, the Wendigo had attacked. Plenty of police cars patrolled the neighborhood since we would be out past curfew.
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