“So if the trail killer has been caught and everything is fine…why are you patrolling at night?” Nikki asked.
Ed was the first to speak. “They’ve arrested Mr. Walters, but we aren’t so convinced he’s the trail killer.”
“Yeah, something just doesn’t feel right about that. Have you actually ever seen Mr. Walters?” Erik chimed in. “He doesn’t even look like the serial killer type, if you know what I mean. He’s all sweaters and loafers. He works in the library.” The emphasis he placed on the library made it perfectly clear that he didn’t think anyone who was a killer would dare work in such a place. It was all I could do not to remind him of our dear Spriteblood who was a librarian at this very school.
“Yeah, but those are the types who are the serial killers. They are always the ones you least suspect,” Nikki told him.
“Still, something just doesn’t feel right. It’s not something we can explain. It’s a gut feeling. We walk through the forest and something just feels wrong. It’s as if there is evil lurking there…waiting.” Ed whispered.
“Speaking of evil lurking,” Tommy lifted his chin toward the far corner of the cafeteria where Tiffany sat alone.
When Nikki caught the dark look aimed at her, her gaze dropped to the table. I reached over and squeezed her hand to let her know we were there for her.
The room went quiet as Tiffany got up, her chair scraping against the floor. She glared at us one more time, then stomped out of the room.
Nikki grabbed her water bottle and took a big drink, then sat it down, her hand shaking. I still held her other hand and it trembled in mine. I laced my fingers with hers, hoping to give her some of my strength.
Everyone at our table was watching her. They’d all gone quiet and I hadn’t realized Nikki was picking up on all of their thoughts until she yelped.
“Whoa! Everybody stop.”
More heads in the room turned to watch her at that, and she cringed, shrinking back into her chair.
“Would everyone please stop thinking so loudly? I’m fine,” she hissed, her cheeks turning pink with embarrassment.
Several whispers of apology came from across the table and after another moment, everyone else in the room’s attention left us.
Nikki let out a breath she’d been holding and managed to give me a small smile.
“Do you need me to sit in the bleachers and watch out for you at practice?” I offered. “With the way she looked at you, I wouldn’t put anything past her.”
“No, you have class, too. They’re not going to let you skip just so you can ogle the girls’ cheerleading team. I appreciate the concern, though,” she said.
“I can get out of it,” I replied. “I think I may have pulled a muscle. You can’t work out if you’re hurt.” I made a face and rubbed my shoulder.
She laughed. “There’s no way you’ll ever be able to manage that. No one will ever believe you.”
It took some major acting on my part, but I managed it. The coach still didn’t look one hundred percent convinced when I told him that my shoulder was bothering me. He tried to send me to the nurse’s station, but I finally talked him into just letting me sit in the bottom bleachers.
When Nikki came in, she lifted an eyebrow and smiled as she walked to the girls’ side of the gym.
On our side, a basketball game had begun, and this time, the coach had done something interesting. He’d split the Res guys up with everyone else. With Erik and Ed playing against Tommy and Michael, it would be the fairest basketball game that had ever been played. But I kept my attention on the cheerleaders.
The teacher strode out onto the hardwood floor. Just from the grim expression on her face, I knew something was going to happen and, thankfully, to my wolf’s keen sense of hearing, I had no problem making out her words between the thumps and yells coming from the game just at my side.
“Everyone quiet now, please,” she said, calling the girls to order. “I’m sure you have all seen the school paper today. Per the suggestions made by the principal, we have come to a decision. This year, for the first time, we will be putting the position of captain up for a vote.”
Excitement rippled down the line of girls and my eyes locked onto Nikki, who was looking the least excited of them all. If anything, she looked ready to make herself invisible.
Hang in there. It’s going to be all right, I promised.
“Quiet please,” the teacher said again. “I am going to give you each one slip of paper. Write the name of the person you think should be captain on it. Only one name, and then fold it, and give it back to me. Whoever has the most votes will be the new captain should they choose to accept the position.”
Pom-poms fell to the floor as the papers were taken and an ink pen was passed down the line. The only other person who looked unhappier than Nikki, was Tiffany, who stood over by herself, her mouth open in shock, as if she was having trouble processing what exactly was going on.
Nikki, on the other hand, looked as if she was praying that all of those slips of paper held anyone else’s name but her own.
As the teacher collected the papers and began tallying up each vote, one pile of papers rose up higher than all of the others.
Once she was finished, the teacher said, “Your new captain is…Ronnie Stevenson.”
As Ronnie threw her hands over her mouth in surprise and began jumping up and down, Nikki visibly relaxed. When she looked up, her eyes met mine and I smiled at her.
See? I told you everything was going to be fine.
Then I noticed Tiffany looking at her. The former cheerleading captain was livid, though she hadn’t spoken a word. Her face was red, but no one was paying her any attention.
As the cheerleading practice continued, I kept my watch, and while nothing unusual happened, I found myself wondering what kind of revenge Tiffany would try to enact. Though she hadn’t done anything today, something made me wonder if she wouldn’t try something later on.
Chapter 10
The following day was a replica of the previous one, with us keeping an eye on Nikki throughout the first part of the day. By English, nothing had happened, so it seemed everyone had moved on and everything in the school paper had become old news. I didn’t see Nikki again until lunch.
“Turkey nipple soup!” Erik exclaimed in a voice that was just a bit too happy as Nikki sat down next to me.
“Huh?” she asked, perplexed. “What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t notice that the line you went through over there is like, nonexistent?”
“Yeah. So? I thought it would be quicker.”
“Quicker, yes. Better, no. You’ll see.” Erik pointed at her tray, and then at his in comparison.
“Here, Nikki. Take mine,” I said, trying to hand my plate over to her. Mine held a cheeseburger, which actually looked like a cheeseburger. Hers looked like congealed goop with a slice of mystery meat floating on the surface.
“No, it’s okay,” she said, refusing my offer as she looked down at the gross stuff on her tray. She crinkled her nose.
Before she could object, I cleanly switched her tray with my own. “Seriously. Eat mine. I’ve had enough and you shouldn’t be subjected to that. If I’d known you were going through that line, I would have warned you.”
“It seemed like a better choice at the time,” she tried to explain. “I went the long way around school to avoid Tiffany. I don’t like her and she knows it.”
I smiled. She was a lot stronger than I had been giving her credit for.
“That shouldn’t be news to Tiffany. Nobody likes her,” Erik mumbled through his own burger.
“So where are you headed after lunch?” I asked, spying the corner of an excuse tucked into one of her textbooks.
“The library. I’ve got to do research on the history of Bland for an essay and since I’m new, Mr. Blake gave me a pass to look up some books.”
“I can help with that, after school, if you’d like,” I offered.
�
��I bet,” Erik teased. “I should place bets on how much homework is going to be done tonight. History. Sure.”
I grinned at him. “You’re lucky I can’t reach you right this second.”
“I can,” Nikki said, elbowing him between his ribs.
Air whooshed out and Erik’s face went gray. “Not cool, Nikki. Definitely not cool.”
I laughed at him. “You’ll live. Although if you don’t watch your mouth around Nikki, you may not live much longer.”
Erik rubber his ribs and shook his head. “You hit hard for a girl. Don’t teach Penny that stuff.”
“Teach Penny what?” Penny asked as she arrived at the table.
“Here, take my seat,” Nikki said, getting up. “I’m going to head to the library.”
My eyes locked with hers before she left. “See you after school.”
“Okay,” she smiled, and then headed out of the cafeteria, leaving me to explain to Penny what had happened in her absence.
This, naturally, caused Erik to get whacked in the ribs by Penny.
I was in anatomy class when the feeling struck again. This time, it wasn’t a “I need to go and see Nikki” feeling. It was another one of those “bear!” feelings. I felt panic and fear so strong that I sprang up from my chair, not caring when Mr. Whittle ordered me to sit down.
I ran out the door and down the hallway, following the sounds of her heartbeat. At least, I was fairly sure it was hers, but mine was beating so fast, I couldn’t be certain. As I rounded one corner, I caught the scent of her blood and adrenaline coursed through me, a dozen different scenarios came running through my mind of what could have happened.
At the next corner, Nikki appeared and smacked into me.
“Whoa. Easy, now,” I said, more for myself, than for her. “I could hear your heart hammering all the way on the other side of the school. What happened?”
She looked up at me and I saw her busted lip.
“Your lip is bleeding.” Carefully, I tilted her chin back with my fingertips. “Nikki, tell me what’s going on.”
“What is Mrs. Graham?” she demanded, completely ignoring the blood that oozed down her chin and onto my fingers.
In all of the scenarios that had run the gamut through my head, I hadn’t considered the Spriteblood as being the reason for feeling her panic. All of my assumptions had been firmly on the former cheerleading captain, Tiffany. I hadn’t for an instant considered the school librarian as the cause.
“Mrs. Graham did this to you?”
What did you do to make the Spriteblood angry? I wondered.
“Huh?” she asked, perplexed, as she picked up on my thought. She moved back, wiping at the blood on her chin with the tissue that was clutched in her hand. “Oh. No, that was Tiffany. But I got her worse.” She lifted her other hand that held several silky strands of blonde hair.
Relieved, I grinned. “Well, that’s worth detention, I guess.”
“Who’s in detention?”
“Me, more than likely, for jumping up and leaving anatomy class without permission so I could come and check on you. That is, unless Ed has thought up some kind of excuse to get me out of it,” I said, looking over her shoulder to the place where Ed had appeared around an opposite corner.
“You had a stomach ache since lunch and had to run to the restroom. No doubt from eating Nikki’s soup for her. They’ve sent me to check on you,” Ed said. He eyed Nikki’s blonde trophy. “The next time you decide to scalp someone, Nikki, ask me the correct way to do it. You can keep the individual strands together much easier if it’s still attached to skin.”
“Eww!” she exclaimed, her nose crinkling. Then she noticed that though he appeared serious, Ed was only joking with her.
“What were you trying to ask me about Mrs. Graham?” I prodded, taking the tissue away from her to wipe a bloody smear off her face that she’d missed.
“What is she?” she asked again.
Ed and I both went quiet. She hadn’t asked who the librarian was. She’d asked what.
“Not here,” Ed mumbled from behind my shoulder.
I nodded and took Nikki’s hand, ducking into a small room at our right that held extra equipment. I turned on a small fan to make low, steady noise and Ed closed the door behind us.
“She shouldn’t be able to hear over that,” Ed nodded his approval.
“Okay. Start at the beginning. Tell me what you saw,” I said, pulling out a plastic seat from under a desk to sit across from Nikki.
“Well, Mrs. Graham came over to break Tiffany and me apart. Then she went to give me a tissue for my lip and I accidentally touched her. She ended up being something else. Something tall with blue hair.”
“She’s a Spriteblood,” I whispered. “And not one that you should ever make angry. Not that you should ever make any of them angry.”
Ed, ever the teacher, rolled his eyes and cut in, “Spriteblood aren’t your typical fairies that you have in myths and legends is what Adam is trying to say, Nikki. Unlike what you might be thinking, they aren’t like cartoon Sprites, all cute and cuddly. Spritebloods are the nighttime stories that are told to children to scare them into making them behave. You know, do what you are supposed to do or the scary, mythical creatures will come and eat you.”
“I’ve not eaten a child in many a-years,” a sad voice broke said, “and I’ve tried hard not to for such a very long time.”
We all jumped at the sound of Wynter’s musical voice. Somehow, the Spriteblood had managed to come into the room without any of us noticing her arrival.
“Although,” she continued,” sometimes I do miss the taste of them so.” The fairy’s red lips stretched back to show her sharp, pointed teeth. Her liquid, blue eyes flashed.
In a blink, the sour librarian replaced the Spriteblood. The pinched looking old woman snapped off the fan and glared at us. “I do believe you are all expected in class…unless there are other questions you wish to ask of me?”
“No, ma’am,” Ed and I said in unison, each of us tugging at Nikki to get her to follow us.
“Why do you pretend to be something you’re not?” Nikki asked, obviously not finished with her questions.
Mrs. Graham looked surprised for a second, then a slight smile twisted her lips. “Because I’m not who I want to be.”
She held out a book to Nikki. “I think you may need this.”
Nikki took it and looked down at the cover. Then she looked up and smiled. “Tha—” she began, but I gave her a quick, hard shove through the door before she could finish her word.
Do not say anything else! I warned her as I pulled her down the hallway and around the corner as fast as I could.
“Never say ‘thank you’ to a fae of any kind,” I said, trying to both warn her and explain why I was trying to get her away from the Spriteblood. I squeezed her hand in mine. “They think that you will be implying you are grateful to them and that you will owe them a favor in turn one day. Their favors never tend to be small, either. So never owe them anything. Understand?”
“Sure,” she managed, as I left her at the door of her next class.
“We’ve got to go,” Ed whispered his warning, nodding to the bald head of Mr. Whittle who stood at the end of the hall, his hands on his hips.
I leaned down and gave her a quick kiss before I followed Ed back to class.
Safe in the completely unmagical confines of Nikki’s Jeep after school, I explained more about the Spriteblood. “As far as I know, her real name is Wynter. She’s old. Really old. Hundreds of years, at least, although no one knows how many. Like we said before, her race is Spriteblood, and normally you would never run into one anywhere during your entire lifetime. Generally, they hate humankind, unless, of course, they get a taste of human flesh and want more. My people have stories of entire tribes who have been wiped out by a single Spriteblood. Wynter’s different, though, and likes humans. She even envies us, I think. That’s why she takes on the form she does—to try to fit into our world.�
��
“Mrs. Graham,” Nikki said weakly. “She’s married?”
I laughed, realizing what she was thinking. “Was married, and no, she didn’t eat him. Her last husband died of old age. She’s been married several times. When she falls in love, the man sees her how she is, in her true form, not the grouchy old woman. They say she was heartbroken over her first husband when he died, so much that the next few after him, she tried to change into Spriteblood so that they wouldn’t die too. It never worked and they ended up dying long, excruciating deaths. Mortified by the pain she had caused, she gave up trying and now she just lets them go when their time comes.”
“So that’s why she seems so sad,” Nikki murmured. “I wonder why she works at the school, then. Seeing people grow up and get older must be hard for her to do.”
“She loves history and books. That’s why she works in the school. And, like I said, there’s something that she likes in humans. You know, you could always ask her for some books on Spritebloods the next time you’re in there. I doubt there is such a thing, but the school has an awesome library. You should check it out one day when you aren’t out trying to scalp people, my fearless war squaw,” I traced the line of her swollen lip with my thumb and then leaned forward and kissed her cheek.
“Fearless war squaw,” she said with a laugh. “I like it.”
Several days passed and nothing happened. At least…that was what I had thought. Nikki had seemed to fall into the role as our Seer without any problems, but that was only because I was stupid and didn’t see them. As easily as she could read our thoughts, I couldn’t read hers, and I didn’t realize she was having problems with her new-found magic until I tracked her to the outside bleachers one afternoon.
She was as far away as she could get from us, I realized, sitting in the far corner of the field, head buried in her hands.
“It’s too much,” she whispered. “There’s just too much, all of the time.” Though she hid her face, I could hear the tears in her voice, so I sat down, gathered her into my arms and held her close. I patted her hair, rubbed her back and concentrated on a waterfall deep in the forest, too far for any human to venture. A place where there were no words spoken or thought, and only nature made herself known.
The Keeper Saga: Wynter's War, Charmed, and The One (The Boxed Set Book 2) Page 30