by K. F. Breene
Maybe this would be a little fun after all.
Chapter 17
“But how did you know?” Gregory insisted as we stepped up to the rundown portable housing off to the side of the mansion. The siding had come off in places and the screens on the windows had been torn away from the inside going out, which was less than comforting. The stairs leading up to the one door were barely twelve inches across and looked to be held up by chunks of rotting wood.
I’d won the bet, sure, but we were the losers no matter how you looked at it.
The best part of the whole situation? Not all the teams got shafted. Some of them did end up in the mansion in the lap of luxury, but not us. And that had chafed Ethan’s chaps like nothing else could have. All his friends got to stay in the mansion.
He was the only kid from the House of Wonder who had been shoved out here with the riffraff in one of the rundown portables. That was enough to make me grin.
Gregory danced in front of me, barely dodging my feet as I strode along. “How could you have possibly guessed? Even the necromancer thought there was no way you’d win that bet against a Helix.”
Speaking of…Ethan was way behind us, still arguing with one of the school officials—one who happened to be his father. I slowed enough that I could overhear them.
“Why you would bet any of your portion of the gold is beyond me. Especially up against a Shade—you know how devious they are.” Mr. Helix sighed heavily. “You can never trust the other houses, Ethan. This is a lesson for you, frustrating as it may be. One that would have come at some point or another.”
I fought the urge to turn around and glare at the older Helix. Instead I spoke just loud enough that everyone could hear me. “Mr. Helix says we each get a cut of the gold. Ethan was wrong about taking it all. How magnanimous of him.” There, let them chew on that big word.
Pete and Gregory did a fist bump, and Pete tried to follow it up with a chest bump that ended with him banging into Gregory in a rather awkward way. Gregory shook his head. “Beast shifters, seriously.”
Orin pushed the door open and we all stared into the space that would be our home for however long we lasted here. Three sets of bunkbeds stared back at us. Nothing fancy, they could have been pulled out of the barracks of any army. Thin blankets, thinner pillows, and bedsprings that looked like they’d been completely stretched out.
It was the table of food laid out in between them that had my attention.
“Oh. My. Holy. Cats.” Pete breathed out. “I knew I could smell roast beef.”
He shoved past us as a tingle of warning slid down my spine. I hurried after him as he stared down at the food, literally drooling. His hand shot out, faster than I’d ever seen him move, and he had a handful of roast beef lifting to his mouth when I smacked it down.
“What the hell, Wild?” He stared up at me like I’d just told him Santa wasn’t real. “I’m starving!”
“Just…wait a second.” I frowned at the food as if glaring at it could make it give up its secrets. The enticing smells warred with the tingle of warning that still ran up and down my back. How many times had I kept Rory and my brother from eating the wrong mushrooms?
Ethan shoved between us. “It’s a banquet, Johnson. I don’t suppose you, in your piss-poor hovel of a town, would have ever been to one. But this is it. Copious amounts of food that has been cooked to be eaten.”
He grabbed a tart and brought it to his mouth. I could have let him eat it.
But I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t kill him. I snapped a fist out and knocked it out of his hands.
“Something’s wrong with it,” I said. “Poison maybe.”
My explanation seemed to have come a smidge too late. Ethan jumped at me, his hand going for his wand. I sidestepped and stuck a foot out, tripping him easily. He might have magic on his side, but he was no fighter. He crashed to the floor, where he immediately turned toward me and pointed his wand at my head. “There is nothing wrong with it. You stupid, vile, ignorant—”
“Umm, guys?” Pete waved a hand between us. “Some of the food is burning through the table.”
We all whipped around to see the center section of tarts melting the plate and table below them. I backed up. “See? No bueno. No damn bueno.”
“See, he’s amazing! Wild knew. He knew this would kill us. Holy cats, you saved me. And…” Pete grimaced. “You saved Ethan? Why in the world would you do that?”
I didn’t look at Ethan. “What does it matter? He’s on our team. I don’t have to like him to know that we have to work together to get through this.” I stared at the food, stomach rumbling. Pete wasn’t the only one starving.
Orin whispered from the shadows in the corner of the room. “You think they’ll bring us more food? I’m getting awfully hungry.”
“Shut up, vampire!” Ethan shouted, and for just a second, I thought I saw a glimmer of tears in those baby blues. Fear. He really was afraid of the vampire.
I frowned. “What are you so worked up about anyway? We aren’t going to starve.”
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to be! I am a Helix!” he roared, and with that he stomped out of the portable, slamming the rickety door behind him.
“Think he’s going to get help?” Pete asked.
I nodded. “And complain. And somehow make it like we’re to blame and he’s the hero.”
Gregory laughed, though it was a bitter laugh. “So, the usual?”
I gave him a half grin and nodded. “Yeah, the usual.”
Using a couple of folding chairs as scrapers and a blanket as a catch all, we managed to get the food out of the portable and off to the side, away from our rickety stairs. The tarts were still smoking and something else was glowing a pale green in the dusky night.
“What if it was just the tarts that were bad?” Pete moaned, his stomach echoing him.
“You want to take that chance?” I asked.
He sighed. “No. But I’m starving. I’m going to fade away to nothing.”
I tapped my fingers on my chin, thinking. “This was a final challenge for us, because of the trial we went through, right?” I looked to Gregory.
The small goblin nodded. “It would seem that way. Poison is one of the assassin’s deadliest tools.”
“Right, so here’s the plan.” I drew them in close and gave them the rundown quickly, simply. The teams who’d gone through trials for the other houses would not have poison in their food, but they also likely wouldn’t share. Which meant we were going to have to work for our supper.
The next closest portable was nearly pushed against us, but no way were we robbing our neighbors. No, we needed to venture further out and put enough portables between our target and us that they couldn’t know who the culprit was.
“Orin, you think that you can take the lights out?” I directed as we jogged behind the row of portables.
“Yes, I’m adept at killing light sources.” He jogged too, but made it look like floating, which was both creepy and cool.
“Pete?”
“Yup, I’ve got them.” He held up two pillow cases, tossing one to me, and one to Gregory. As if we were going trick or treating. Only we weren’t going to ask nicely for the food. More of a trick than a treat for those in the portable.
Gregory shook his head as he caught the pillow case. “This place is not supposed to be fun. Why does this feel like fun?”
I grinned at him.
Pete pointed a finger. “It’s his fault. I don’t know how, but I know it’s because of Wild.”
Gregory didn’t want to like me. I’d known that from the first moment I’d picked him up off that alley floor. He didn’t want to like anyone. I’d known people like him growing up—the world treated them like dirt and they responded as though they didn’t care. Rory had been like that when we’d first met.
Gregory didn’t want to trust me, but I was winning him over.
I shrugged. “I’m hungry. You guys are hungry. What else is there? Let’s get some
grub.”
God, I sounded like Rory in that moment. He’d said something like that to me to convince me to steal from the general store. I’d been caught with a bunch of bananas in my shirt. Rory had escaped unscathed as usual.
The four of us took up our positions. We’d start by knocking the lights out. Orin was on the roof and pulled the lines, a pop of wires letting go the only sound.
The portable went dark and a volley of shouts went up inside.
Next came Pete’s job. He shifted into his honey badger shape and went crazy digging at the base of the portable, snarling and freaking out the entire time, his claws louder against the wood and metal than I would have thought possible. He sounded like a monster, and his efforts shook the portable. Gregory and I leaned in on the other side, shoving the building on its foundation. I glanced over to see him grinning from ear to ear. And I do mean ear to ear.
“Fun, right?” I whispered.
He snickered. “Way too much fun.”
The shouting inside intensified and from the rooftop came a loud snarl and the sound of tin being ripped off. Orin was adding a nice touch.
A split second later, the door busted open and the guys from inside piled out on top of one another, racing straight for the mansion without looking back.
“Hurry! They won’t take long to bring an official back,” I picked up the pillow case and ran for the door. Orin re-attached the wiring and the lights popped back on in a blinding flash. I held up my hand a moment and then took a look at the food. They’d barely touched it.
Better than that, there was no warning tingle. No intuition that the food was off.
“It’s good,” I said, and we started stacking containers in the pillow cases. Under a minute and we had them both full and were making our way out of the portable.
“Hurry, they’re coming back and they’ve got help!” Orin whisper-hissed as he dropped down from the roof. We bolted, heading toward the tree line that wrapped around the sides of the mansion. It would take us longer to get back to our own portable, but we’d have a better chance of keeping our food.
Pete caught up, still on four legs, still snarling and snapping. Gregory pulled a tart out and tossed it to him. “Shut your trap, Pete.”
Pete. The first time he’d used his name. Maybe I wasn’t the only one winning the goblin over.
We crouched in the shadows and watched as the five members of the group led someone toward the portable we’d just abandoned, and the official that followed was… “Oh, crap, that’s—”
“The Sandman,” Orin said ominously.
At least he wasn’t wearing his sunglasses at night. That would have just made me ridicule him harder.
He took a quick look at the portable. “The lights are on.”
“No, you don’t understand, we were under attack!” one of the guys said, his voice so high-pitched he could have fit into the girls’ dorms.
“Yeah, it was bad. Stuff was breaking, the lights went out, and I swear one of the beasts followed us out of the trial. I could hear it.”
I held out a fist and Pete shifted to two legs and fist bumped me back. Score for our team.
The group circled away from us to look at the far side of the portable, and I tipped my head. “Let’s go.”
We hurried along the edge of the trees, and only once did I look back, a tingle along my spine tipping me off. Sideburns stood outside of their portable, staring into the trees. His eyes swept over us, but they didn’t slow. But he knew. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew that he knew it was me.
I shuddered and hurried the guys along. Promises of food and a warm bed were all it took to make my feet move…until I remembered that I was covered in my own blood, sweat, and filth and could smell myself a mile off.
How was I going to shower with a room full of guys and not get caught?
Chapter 18
The food was gone faster than I’d thought possible, despite the healer’s warnings not to eat too fast. But that brought me to my more pressing issue of just how to get clean when I was sharing such a small space with four guys. “Who wants first shower?” I asked, noticing the large trunks to either side of each set of bunk beds.
“You can go, if you want,” Pete said, rolling into one of the bottom bunks. After his bellyaching about heights, it wasn’t a surprising choice.
“Nah.” I knelt beside one of the trunks, slipped the open padlock out of the metal hook, and flipped up the clasp. “I need a minute to let my food settle. You can go.”
“I’m first.” Ethan pushed open a trunk on the other side of the room before extracting plain gray sweats and a plain white T-shirt.
“Of course, you are,” Pete mumbled as Gregory and Orin checked the trunks near their chosen beds.
What had just become my trunk held the same items as Ethan’s, and shockingly, the pants went all the way to my ankles even though I was the tallest in the room. Had I gotten lucky with my trunk choice, or did these sweats somehow alter to fit the wearer? More magic, that was the only answer.
A feeling of vertigo washed over me. I braced against the wall. “This magic stuff is blowing my mind,” I said as Ethan pulled off his shirt, revealing a toned chest that under other circumstances would have had me staring. “Magic is supposed to be made up. It isn’t supposed to be real. Vampires, goblins, shifters, wands…” I rubbed my temples. “This can’t be real life.”
Ethan stalled at the bathroom door. “Looks like a communal shower.” He turned back with a hard stare. “Four shower heads does not mean four people need to be crowding in. I don’t need your hairy asses that close.”
Pete groaned. “Could this place get any worse?”
“At least there’s a door on the toilet,” Orin said, peering in behind Ethan.
Ethan rolled his shoulders and flared his elbows. “Dude. Back your creepiness off.”
Orin’s blank stare took Ethan’s measure before he slowly took one step back. “I wax.”
“That’s—” Ethan blew out a breath through his nose and shook his head, confusion and disgust radiating from him.
“What the hell have I gotten stuck with…” He continued into the bathroom.
“Don’t your parents have magic? I mean, I assume one of them is a Shade,” Pete asked me, scooting to the edge of his mattress so he could see me.
I pulled out a shirt and a pair of tighty-whities. “I honestly have no idea.” I draped them over the bar of the bunk above Pete. Orin slipped into the bathroom. “But now that I’m here, some of the things my mother said throughout my childhood make me think she knew about all this. She must’ve, right?”
“Unless her parents excused her from the academy for some reason,” Pete said. A squeak preceded the sound of running water from the bathroom. He must’ve read the confusion in my expression. “You can request to be pardoned from the Culling Trials, which then means you don’t go to the academy. You’d go to normal school and live your life like someone without magic.” He shivered. “I have no idea why someone would want that for their kid. It’s no life, not when you could have this.”
I snorted. This. Like the Culling Trials were some great opportunity?
Like the academy where Tommy had died was an even better place to be?
I fingered the hem of my sweats, my mind whirling. That was the life we’d lived on the farm. No magic. No talk of magic. Why would my parents willingly choose that for themselves and their kids if it was lesser in the magical society’s mindset? Why would they hide all of this from us? It didn’t make sense. I was missing something, I had to be.
I hated that she had to give it up because of a rumor about that curse.
My father had said that, muttered to himself after too much moonshine.
“What about your dad?” Gregory asked, cutting through my thoughts.
I shook my head slowly as Ethan’s voice drifted out of the bathroom. “Dude, back off. I’m not going to tell you again.” Apparently, Orin was taking his Ethan watching to a higher
level.
“Dad never said anything. Until Sideburns showed up, he never once mentioned magic to me. But…” I thought back to what he’d said about Tommy coming here. About wanting to live through his son. I shook my head again. I didn’t want to admit that he’d been a null. I didn’t want the chance that they’d turn their noses up at my dad.
“Maybe they got kicked out of the Culling Trials,” Gregory said as the water in the bathroom turned off.
I just grunted, thinking about what my dad had said. Wondering if it was true. Had my mom known Tommy’s life would be in more jeopardy than the other students?
“That’s why they have people like the Sandman,” Pete said. “Well…not him specifically, but people that visit the worried parents. The recruiters almost always talk the parents around. It’s really not that dangerous here.”
“Dude. People died today,” I said as Ethan emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his hips. Steam billowed around him and I had to rip my eyes away from the droplets of water clinging to his muscular chest. Yup, not looking, not looking at all.
“Yeah, but that hardly ever happens.” Pete shrugged.
“Wild is right,” Ethan said at his trunk. He pulled off his towel and I jumped, jerking my gaze to the metal bed frame in front of my face. Things were getting awkward. “Today’s challenges had a record high death rate. Someone is going to get fired for that. I can guarantee it.”
Pete rolled out of his bed and grabbed some sweats before hugging them to his chest and heading for the bathroom. Hopefully that meant stripping down in front of everyone and drying your balls wasn’t common practice among men bunking together. At least not for everyone. Thank God, since I had no balls to dry.
“You coming?” Pete asked.
I jerked my head at Gregory, who was staring at me. “You go. I want to look and see if there are any boxers in here. I’d rather…freeball it.”
“Spoken like a guy who’s never played any sports,” Ethan said, stepping into his underwear.
Now would’ve been a great time to take up smoking and excuse myself outside.