She waved her hands in front of her face. “What died in here?”
The Vice-Chancellor stood and walked around the table, laying a hand on the old woman’s shoulder. “Ms. Shirley, would you mind telling us what you see when you take a good whiff of Professor Helms over here?”
Ms. Shirley’s moon eyes stared vacantly around the room as the Vice-Chancellor guided her over to Helms’ chair. The golden wolf kept turning in circles and whining.
“Stay still, Dan,” the Chancellor commanded. “If you’re innocent, you have nothing to fear.”
Helms sank to his haunches, his whole body leaning away as Ms. Shirley pushed her wiggling nose toward him. She took a long, deep breath…
And vomited all over his paws.
Everyone groaned and gagged.
Ms. Shirley scrambled backwards, wrinkled hands clasped over her mouth. “Get this creature out of here!” she moaned through his fingers.
Snarling, the golden wolf leapt right over her head…
And crashed head first into Belhollow’s shaggy black bear chest.
Whoa, how did she shift that fast?!
She sank her yellow teeth into Helms’ furry shoulder and flung him back onto the table. He slid down the length of it, leaving a skid of blood all the way down to the suddenly-appeared white and black wolves’ waiting jaws.
The golden wolf came up on his three good legs and lunged for the black wolf’s throat. With a window-rattling roar, Dean Embry’s grizzly bear charged into the fray, with Belhollow right behind him.
Laith—whose chair had rolled back from the table with the force of Helms’ landing—lurched forward, even in his handcuffs, but Dean Mardone caught him by the back of his shirt and yanked him and me both from the Board Room. She slammed the doors behind us.
“You should have let me shift!” Laith shook out of her grip, nearly topping over in his unbalanced state.
She gave him a withering look. “In handcuffs? You’d have cut your paws off.
A nauseous shudder rolled through my body as a wolf shrieked behind the door.
Are they killing him?
Is he killing one of them?
“Ms. Shirley!” I suddenly realized. “They’ll trample—”
“Right here,” she chirped from just below my line of vision.
Laith dropped down on one knee in front of her, the handcuffs still clasping his hands together so that he looked like he was going to propose. “Ms. Shirley, I think you just saved my life. How can I ever repay you?”
She yawned. “If you could just carry me back down the stairs so I don’t break my neck, we’ll call it even.”
Laith looked from his handcuffs to Dean Mardone. She hurried into the Vice-Chancellor’s office and came out with a tiny key. She took Laith’s hands in one of her own, caressing his fingers as her other hand turned the lock. The cuffs popped open and Laith cast them aside, rubbing his reddened wrists.
“Is it safe for us down there?” Laith asked.
“Just don’t dawdle,” she said, glaring at him and then even harder at me. “The Gladwells sang all the angry little puppies a lullaby and they went back to their rooms.”
“What about the bears?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes. “They do whatever the dogs do. Now go. I need to get back in there. We’ll talk about how you defaced my office tomorrow.”
Laith caught my eye. Was he blushing? We would need to talk about that, too.
We did it for Victoria, I reminded myself.
“Ready, Ms. Shirley?” Laith asked.
“As I’ll ever be,” she said with a mischievous grin.
Laith scooped her up in his arms. As her face rose level with Dean Mardone’s, she wrinkled up her nose. “You don’t smell so fresh yourself, Lenore.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I can’t believe finding out Ms. Shirley sleeps in a dog bed under the book store stairs is not the most disturbing thing we discovered tonight,” I said with a shudder as Laith and I pushed through the double doors into the empty Great Hall.
Laith let out an exhausted-sounding chuckle. “Hey, sleeping shifted is totally a thing. You’ll have to try it now.”
A blush crept up my cheeks, and I was grateful that even after all the chaos, someone had remembered to dim the chandelier to its normal nighttime setting. Sleeping shifted sounded a lot like sleeping naked, and sleeping naked sounded a lot like something you might wind up doing with someone after a hardcore make-out session on a professor’s desk.
“I mean, now that this is all over. Not right now,” Laith clarified so quickly that I had to wonder if his words had given him the same mental images.
Don’t, Remi. He only kissed you to cover his tracks and hopefully get Victoria out of Dean Mardone’s cross hairs. And that’s the only reason you kissed him.
My shoulders sagged. “I don’t think anything is over.”
“No,” he said slowly. “But at least you can shift again.”
I shook my head. “If I could shift, I would have shifted when…” I stopped. I was going to say when we kissed, but he definitely did not need to know that. “When Helms attacked.”
Laith smirked, a wildly inappropriate reaction to that statement, which made me think he knew exactly what I really meant. After all, he had admitted to feeling something strange when we touched.
But it could just as easily have been revulsion!
“And anyway,” I said, gesturing upward in the general direction of the Board Room. “For all we know, he’s up there getting inside all their heads. I mean, how do you even contain someone like that? Is there anything he couldn’t talk his way out of?”
“For all we know, he’s dead.” Laith shrugged. “But even if they didn’t tear him into the tiny pieces he deserves, his power is gone. For you, anyway.”
“I don’t think you understand,” I said, my voice cracking. “He did something to my head. For months. He… I can’t just snap my fingers and be over it.”
“Hey, whoa. I’m not saying that all,” Laith said gently. “I can’t even imagine what this must have been like for you, or what recovery looks like, but I…” He raked his fingers through his hair. “You remember the fail-safe mechanism? Manips can override it, yeah, but only as long as you don’t know what’s happening. Now that you do…”
“The spell is broken,” I murmured, and I was certain that all across the state of Alabama, Hickoree and half a dozen long-lost foster sisters were smiling in their sleep.
Laith took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “We’re only as powerful as our ability to keep our secret.”
I took several steps backward, and even with his eyes closed, he winced.
“What do you mean we?” I whispered. “You’re not… you can’t…”
He opened his eyes, and it felt like he’d fallen off a cliff into a pool of his own self-loathing. “It’s not something I’m proud of, but I am.” He lowered his head. “I understand if that means you need to keep your distance, but I’m telling you so you’ll know. I could never hurt you now.” He glanced up. “Not that I ever would.”
My mind reeled. My pulse thundered in my ears.
What kind of terrible taste in men do I have?
“Does Victoria know?” I asked, suddenly thinking of all the times he’d made their relationship sound like some kind of business arrangement, not an affair of the heart.
“Of course she knows.” He looked offended for a second, but shook it off. “Mardone, too. But no one else. And I… I need it to stay that way.”
I didn’t have to ask why. The wolves had been so anxious—almost excited—to blame it on him. If they found out now, or even a year from now, they might rethink everything that happened tonight. It might not matter what Ms. Shirley said. I drew in a sharp breath.
“I need to smell you.”
Laith’s eyebrows jumped. “Beg your pardon?”
“Just come here.” I beckoned him closer with both hands.
He obeyed, his b
row furrowing under his messy swoop of hair.
I laid my hands on either side of his chest, felt his lungs moving his solid muscles up and down, his heart pounding just beneath his ribs. And I breathed him in.
To be perfectly honest, he did smell pretty rank. Like an entire football team’s worth of sweat had been dumped over his head to celebrate his courtroom victory. There was the iron tang of blood, too, and I knew his tattered tuxedo was hiding more than a few wounds. There was also something like the sour smell a cat sometimes makes when you startle it, which I didn’t want to think about too much.
But there was nothing to be afraid of.
Except perhaps the images flicking in the back of my mind that were of a decidedly romantic nature. My heart sped up. The last time that happened, the images came true.
No, Remi!
I pushed away from him and made a big show out of sneezing. “Sorry, it’s just all that dander…”
But he didn’t fire back. His eyes were the size of saucers. Milk saucers? I giggled at my own stupid joke and probably looked crazy. The late hour was finally catching up to me.
“You’re like Ms. Shirley,” he whispered. “Well, you know, except hot.”
“Don’t,” I said, ignoring the fluttering, flapping storm of butterflies his words had caused in my stomach. “Ms. Shirley could have been a total babe.”
“A thousand years ago.”
I slugged him on the shoulder, and he grinned. The way I wished he wouldn’t.
“You can’t tell anyone,” I said quickly. “It’s… maybe not so good for me.”
He crossed an X over his heart.
I crossed one over mine for his secret too.
He started to smile, but it faded before it got very far. He cocked his head and squinted at the air over my head. “You hear that?”
I mimicked his posture. There was a faint sound filtering through the building’s thick walls, a sort of choppy buzzing like when the groundskeepers mowed the sprawling lawns, but the grass had turned yellow weeks ago. Also, it was the dead of night.
There was a commotion beyond the front door. Incoherent voices muffled by the heavy wood. The buzzing noise grew to a dull roar. Laith’s eyes widened and he darted for the nearest window overlooking the front lawn. I lifted my skirt and ran after him, pressing my face against the glass just as an enormous beam of light swept across the circular driveway. Dust billowed out of the yellow grass and plumes of mist rose from the fountain.
My first sleep-deprived thought was: Oh, no! Now aliens are real too!
Laith swore. “That can’t be good.”
The window rattled against our noses as the shiny black helicopter dropped straight down from the sky onto the lawn. Two pairs of black-clad figures leaped out and raced toward the entrance. One pair carried a stretcher, the other a steel cage.
“Definitely not good,” I agreed.
A few moments later, we heard the distant echo of feet clattering up the faculty stairwell, and then, in what seemed an impossibly fast eye blink, they came clattering back down. The black-clad figures hurried back toward the chopper, slower now with the weight of their loads—a golden wolf in the cage, a black wolf on the stretcher.
Laith swore again. “That’s the Chancellor.”
My fingers curled like claws against the window. The Chancellor had been a serious ass during that whole ordeal, but who knew how much of that had been Helms trying to steer things where he wanted them? Either way, I didn’t like seeing him limp under that white sheet.
At least it’s not pulled over his head.
The Vice-Chancellor followed in human form. After both wolves were loaded, one of the dark figures helped her into the chopper, and almost immediately, it lifted off the lawn and disappeared into the black sky.
Laith and I turned away, both of us leaning against the window. One of the front doors creaked open, and the three Deans crept inside. Belhollow and Embry wore robes, since turning into a bear can really do a number on your evening wear. Mardone’s bright red gown bore dark brown splotches of blood.
“Dean Mardone.” Laith trotted toward her, and she met him halfway, throwing her arms around him. I bristled.
For Victoria’s sake, obviously.
Laith pushed her away, far more gently than she deserved, but I realized now that keeping his secret safe with her might not be free. He gaped down at her dress. “Are you alright?”
She waved a hand through the air like it was nothing. “It’s the Chancellor’s, not mine.”
“Is he okay?” I asked, coming up behind Laith.
Mardone immediately glared at me. “He’s probably lost an eye.”
Guilt coursed through my veins. If only I hadn’t accepted that dance. If only I hadn’t kept quiet about how Helms ‘helped’ me on the first day. If only I hadn’t let Ms. Shirley’s warning freak me out to the point that I started shifting. If only I hadn’t been so stubborn all those nights in the woods when the wolves called to me and I refused to listen. I could have been here at the beginning of the summer, I could have…
“This is all my fault,” I groaned.
Belhollow marched briskly over to us and took my face firmly in her hands. “None of that, baby girl. You’re the hero of this story. Do you hear me?” She gently shook my head. “A Manip that powerful… he would have been in charge by the end of the year. But your clever thinking…” She gathered me into the human version of a bear hug. “You saved the whole Academy tonight, honey.”
Mardone sniffed. “That seems a little dramatic—”
“Nobody asked you, Lenore,” Belhollow snapped, letting me go. “And unhand that boy!” She pointed to where Mardone had linked her arm through Laith’s elbow. “I swear on the moon, as long as I’m in charge, we’re going to have much stricter guidelines on appropriate student-teacher behavior.”
Mardone untangled herself from Laith, who I could tell was biting the insides of his cheeks not to smile. “I’m going to bed,” she huffed and began walking away. “And so should all of you.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and gave me one last death stare. “Your own beds.”
Looks like Operation Save Victoria may have been an immediate success.
As soon as the door to the faculty apartments slammed shut, Belhollow shook her head. “I’m sorry, Laith. I see how she is. If it were up to me, she would have been on that chopper out of here too.”
Laith shrugged. “Thank you, ma’am. But I can handle her.”
Belhollow tsked. “Even so. That’s not something a student should ever have to do.” She turned back to me and smoothed my hair. “You come to my office tomorrow, Remi. We’ll get you any help you need to recover from this.”
Dean Embry shuffled forward, bowing his head. “I owe you an apology, St. James. You can consider your mid-term grades erased.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, because I refused to utter the phrase ‘It’s okay’ to anyone who had made me feel as badly as he’d made me feel about myself for the last eight weeks.
He nodded, and without another word headed toward the faculty door.
“Is the Chancellor going to be okay?” I asked, when it was just me and Laith and Belhollow.
She offered a tight smile. “He should make a full recovery, with or without the eye.”
I shuddered at the thought of Helms’ fangs sinking into the Chancellor’s face.
Belhollow patted my shoulder. “Get some rest. Tomorrow, we’ll start fresh.”
And then she was gone, too.
Laith and I looked at each other, and somehow I knew that he wasn’t any more ready to be alone in his room than I was. So we ambled onto the dance floor, keeping a good two feet of space between us. My gown trailed limply alongside my bare feet; I didn’t have the energy to hold it up anymore.
And who even knows what became of my shoes…
Laith stuffed his hands into his pants pockets, his shoulders hunching under his black cape. “So…”
I laughed nervously. �
�So…”
We weaved around each other in unsteady circles, as though we were just two normal kids walking back to our normal dorm rooms, completely exhausted and maybe the tiniest bit buzzed after a perfectly normal Halloween party.
“What do we tell Victoria?” he asked.
My heart cracked—not broke, that would be way too dramatic for Remi St. James—but I knew what I had to say. “We tell her the truth before Mardone does it for us. We tell her we didn’t know how else to explain the mess we’d made, so…” I swallowed hard, steeling my voice to sound like it meant this. “So we kissed, and it was super weird and we… we didn’t like it at all.”
His forehead crinkled. “We didn’t?”
Ugh, there’s the arrogant Laith Brighton I know and hate. Of course his ego expects a gold star for a fake kiss shared under extreme duress.
I shot him a disgusted glare.
Even though, technically, he did deserve a gold star in the department.
But he never needed to know that. I hardened my glare.
“I mean, right.” He shook his head and set his jaw. “We didn’t. It was exactly as sloppy as I would have ever expected from kissing a dog.”
“Really?” I shot back. “Because for me, the problem was that your tongue felt exactly like your stubble.”
He scowled. “Yeah, well, at least my breath doesn’t smell like a little rubber Wall Street Journal, Miss… Dandy Dinmont.”
I laughed, the embarrassing kind that sounds more like an obnoxiously loud hiccup. “That’s not even a real dog.”
“It’s a terrier. Look it up.”
“You know,” I said, turning in a delirious circle around him, “I’ve never met another cat who knew so much about dog breeds.”
“Keep your friends close.” His hand caught mine and lifted it over my head, turning my lazy circle into a twirl that ended with us inches apart. He flashed a sleepy, devious grin. “And your enemies closer.”
“If you strangle a man together, can you really call yourselves enemies?”
He cocked his head, a little smile playing on his lips. “Friends then?”
Academy of Shifters: Werewolves 101 Page 16
