by Kat Cotton
“Fae,” Lucas whispered at me.
Lucas had an encyclopedic knowledge of all paranormal types but I’d guessed as much when I’d first seen her. Of course she wasn’t full blooded fae, none of us were full blooded anything, but we were tinged with enough paranormal genes to make us powerful hunters.
Well, most of us. One of us let the team down.
Me.
Crappiest hunter in the history of Edgewater Academy scholarship kids. My shadow hiding ability didn’t help much when it came to fighting.
Britney’s head perked up. “Yes, I’m part fae. Not many people guess that. They just think I’m Scandinavian. But the most Scandinavian thing about me is the Ikea bookcase in my bedroom.”
She smiled, a smile of sunshine and rainbows, and even with my lowly abilities, I picked up Lucas’ racing heartbeat.
“Lucas loves guessing what types we all are. The same way some people love guessing star signs.”
“I’m werewolf.” Lucas stared at his hands. I couldn’t see his face but his pink tinged ears said enough.
I jumped in, not sure if she’d been introduced. “Mark, the guy at the head of the table—”
“Don’t tell me, I’ll guess.” Britney peered at Mark. “He’s all muscles and fierceness. Some kind of warrior... demon, definitely demon.”
Mark gave us a flat handed wave.
“War demon.” Lucas mumbled without looking up. “Next to him, Seth... well you just have to take a close look at his ears.”
“Elf?” She smiled that smile again.
“Elf.” Lucas nodded in agreement, his heart hammering now.
“He looks like...” Britney didn’t need to finish for us to nod.
“Yep, watched Lord of the Rings one too many times.” I rolled my eyes. “You can be an elf without, you know, the hair and all that but he loves flaunting it. Of course, the human students notice the resemblance but would never think he had actual elf blood in a million years.”
Tarragon gave us a quick half-smile.
“And Tarragon is a witch.” Lucas now stared at the table as though those whorls in the fake wood were the most fascinating thing in the world.
“Werewolves are the coolest.” Britney smiled again.
Lucas’ ears turned from pink to glowing red. I didn’t need to see his face to know that his mouth twitched into a grin. But I’d have him at me for the rest of the night, talking about the awesomeness of Britney. Not that she didn’t seem awesome but when he crushed on girls, he never did anything but talk—to me, not them. I tried to tell him girls liked action, maybe a “hello, how you going?” as a start, but he rarely even got that far. He’d already been far more articulate with Britney than with most girls.
The shrimpy Lucas I’d known in first year had disappeared, almost overnight, but then he’d gone through an awkward stage. All gangly limbs and a mouth that looked too big for his face. Now he towered over me, and I wasn’t exactly short. His body had filled out, not to Mark’s crazy bulk but Lucas had broad shoulders and nice collar bones and floppy hair that girls seemed to like. I tried to tell him he’d turned into a hottie but his mind, and self-esteem, still hadn’t caught up. I just had to get him to see that girls would be interested in him.
We didn’t mention what I was and thankfully, Britney didn’t ask.
Since Mr. Norton hadn’t arrived, I grabbed my backpack and got out some chocolate. The polite thing would be to offer some to Lucas but then I’d have to include Britney and then the others. Politeness was okay in its place but I had a serious chocolate emergency. And Lucas didn’t even like sweet foods.
Lucas’ eyes bulged when I rammed the chocolate into my mouth. “I might be part wolf but you put me to shame.”
“PMS,” I mumbled through a mouthful of chocolate. PMS and a bad case of Ren Worthington.
Lucas understood. My PMS was bad, but his monthlies were so much worse. All that shifting and howling at the moon.
“How does that work?” Lucas screwed up his face, like he needed to know even though it killed him to ask, while waving his hand in the general direction of my uterus. Lucas’ latest theory, and the most stupid to date, was that I was part vampire.
As if.
The fact that I pretty much passed out at the sight of blood proved him so totally wrong. I hated sunlight, sure, but in a normal, human not wanting to go outside kind of way.
And seriously, asking about my period in relation to that... no, just no.
“Not going there, buddy.” Then I flashed my teeth at him to prove they were no sharper than anyone else’s. “And I’m not a vampire.”
Although I suspected my chocolate covered teeth gave a very bad impression.
Lucas winced.
“Cherry. Lucas.” Mark rolled his eyes at Tarragon. “The two of you need to grow up.”
He only said that to impress Britney.
“And you two need to get the sticks out of your butts.”
It might be harsh but since I had to play nice with the other students, I turned the full force of my snark on the other scholarship kids. Mostly Mark and Tarragon because they were jerks, although a far lesser grade on the jerk spectrum than say Ren Worthington.
“Hey,” I whispered to Lucas. “Do you think Ren Worthington is fully human?”
Even in this group, Lucas was the only one I felt safe voicing my suspicions to.
“Well, according to 99% of girls in this school, he’s a god. Why?”
Before I could tell him, Mr. Norton walked in. It wasn’t like him to be late. That wasn’t all, either. Mr. Norton’s hair got more unruly the more stressed he became. And right now, his hair stuck up at alarming angles.
“Sorry, I’m late. We’re got serious business to discuss.” His nostrils twitched. “A student disappeared on our watch. Do you know how that makes us look?”
That shut everyone up.
“Who?” Mark asked. “Can you tell us?”
“Farran Quiller. He went for a walk in the woods yesterday and didn’t come back.”
I jumped. He didn’t come back because Ren Worthington had done something bad.
Chapter 3
Mark started asking Mr. Norton questions before I could get my head around what I’d seen earlier.
“We don’t know many details, yet.” Mr. Norton shook his head. “The police are searching the woods. No one is allowed in there and if you see anyone trying to break that protocol, do what you can to stop them. Within reason, of course.”
“What do you think it was?” Mark asked.
I got the impression Mark thought Farran was no longer with us. Dead. Gone. No more. I had another theory. He’d run away because of Ren’s bullying. It all made sense, and it wouldn’t be the first time someone had left the school for that reason.
I shot my hand in the air, bouncing in my seat.
“Cherry, this is a meeting, not a classroom. You don’t need to raise your hand.”
I knew that. I just didn’t want a black mark for interrupting.
“What if Farran’s disappearance isn’t paranormal related?” My voice came out in a rush. In a group of guys, I’d learned to speak fast. “What if his disappearance is human-related instead?”
“That seems unlikely. The school is well guarded.”
That was true. Us scholarship kids were the last line of defense, or maybe second last, third last even. But this school had super tight security against predators of both the human and supernatural kinds.
None of those lines of defenses would even consider Ren Worthington as a predator, and that was a huge mistake.
“Not against internal threats.” I toyed with the foil on my chocolate. I still had one piece left. If Norton got distracted, I’d grab it. I need chocolate as brain food.
“You seem to know something, so spit it out,” Mark said.
I told them about the incident in the class room, leaving out non-essential details like what I’d written in my text book, and Britney’s future career as
a stripper, and being late for the meeting. When I mentioned Ren Worthington’s name, both Mark and Tarragon groaned.
“Wait, there was hard evidence.” I told them about the ring.
“Maybe he found it and planned on handing it in,” Mark said. “You can’t accuse Ren of wrongdoing just because of that.”
Yeah, right. He’d been flashing that ring around like a trophy. The more I thought about it, the fishier Ren seemed, and he’d been as fishy as a giant tuna to start with.
Britney started raising her hand then lowered it. “Who’s Ren?”
“Tall guy, a bit of a jerk.” How did I even start explaining Ren?
“Face of a god,” Mark added. Wow, I could add him to the Ren boy-crush list.
“Perfect skin, perfect teeth, perfect hair.” Okay, Seth too.
“Brown eyes like molten chocolate.” Of course Tarragon loved Ren. Everyone knew that. “Dreamy eyes. Bedroom eyes, the kind of eyes that would gently but firmly judge you as you slowly undressed in front of him.”
“Jeez, Tarragon, just shut up now. No one wants to know about your Ren fantasies.”
Were Lucas and I the only students in this whole school not in love with Ren Worthington?
“You forgot the lip curl.” Lucas slapped his hand on the table. “The lip curl is the most important, the most defining feature of Ren Worthington. It sets him apart from all the other good-looking guys in this school. It gives him his edge.”
“The eyes,” Tarragon repeated.
“Lip curl,” Seth said.
“Yes, lip curl,” Mark added.
I shook my head.
“Can we stop with this?” Mr. Norton gazed around the room, disgust on his face. Finally some sense. “It’s obviously the lip curl, end of discussion.”
I turned the full force of my betrayal on Lucas. “We hate Ren Worthington,” I hissed.
“Yeah, but you can’t deny the guy’s looks.”
We’d talk about this later. Meanwhile, I popped the last square of chocolate in my mouth without Mr. Norton noticing even though all this Ren talk had made my stomach turn.
“I saw him,” Britney said. “He has the Armani blazer?”
That didn’t help. Everyone at this school wore Armani blazers. They were part of the uniform. Well, everyone not in this room wore them. Scholarship kids didn’t get to wear blazers. Ren had spearheaded that campaign. “Poor kids shouldn’t be expected to buy designer clothes.” That’d been his reasoning. More like poor kids are easier to bully when they’re dressed differently. Ren Worthington knew how to be a shitty douchebag but come out of it smelling like roses.
“He has cold, dead fish eyes.” That was the defining feature.
Britney gave a sharp nod. “His friend with the shaggy hair is cuter.”
Lucas’ jaw clenched.
Oscar? Britney preferred Oscar? How did that work? If she’d heard his thoughts on her lap dancing she wouldn’t think that, but I could hardly tell her.
“Ren isn’t behind this,” Mr. Norton said. “I know that for a fact.”
“How do you know? Does he have an alibi? Because he’s really good at getting other people to do his dirty work for him.” I sighed.
“I can’t go into the details.”
“But he had Farran’s ring.” I tried not to raise my voice. “That is clear evidence.”
“Like Mark said, there might be a bunch of logical reasons why. We can’t start pointing fingers.”
I rolled my eyes. I’d point my finger since I was the only one here not blinded by Ren love.
“I believe you,” Lucas whispered.
I smiled my forgiveness.
Mr. Norton went through a bunch of stuff about tightening security.
“Things have become lax over the past few years, and I’m partly to blame for that. We can never let our guards down.”
I expected him to tell me to take on extra duties in the girls’ dorms but he assigned that to Britney. I sighed. Ever since I’d screwed up the training drill last year, he didn’t trust me.
I’d probably be assigned to the private rooms on the upper floor. That’s where the super elite hung out. Except they had such high security up there, I couldn’t even get in. Until I started at this school, I never knew the rich came in so many shades. Old money meant more than new money and how you got your money made a world of difference. Angela Blackstone’s parents got rich with an IT security company which made her better in some way than Penny Smythe with her famous soccer player dad. And the Worthingtons were top of the heap because they’d had their money for literally centuries.
Personally, I’d be happy with old or new money. Any money was fine by me. So long as it was honestly come by, I didn’t need anything else.
I eyed the crumbs remaining in my chocolate foil. If I picked at them, would Mr. Norton notice? I’d been spoken to before about eating in meetings but technically that would be picking, not eating.
“Cherry, can you stay behind after the meeting?” Mr. Norton shook me out of my thoughts.
I could just imagine. This would be about my poor hunting performance.
To be honest, before Farran’s disappearance, I’d never really believed what they told us about paranormals preying on the rich kids. I mean, I believed it, I just didn’t think we’d need to protect them.
But that’d been the deal offered to me, and everyone else in the room: get a free ride to this prestigious academy, meals included, and in return use our “special” skills to hunt the monsters.
Demons and all sorts of paranormal creatures liked to prey on rich kids. Your garden variety demons, they were fine with just munching on any kind of human flesh, rich or poor, but the more advanced creatures, vampires especially, wanted better than a quick meal. You don’t get far in this world without cash. I knew that more than anyone, and an easy way to get that cash was from the rich.
Being confronted by a monsters straight out of their nightmares would have the kids at this academy wetting their pants and in therapy for life. But, even worse from Edgewater’s point of view, they’d drop out of school and there’d be whispers, rumors. Not of demons or vampires or other creatures, just that the school wasn’t right.
That’s what they told each of us before we signed our name on that dotted line. The number one priority during our years at the school was to protect the school’s reputation.
Apparently, going back generations, the school scouted potential hunters to protect the rich kids. Students who’d blend right in. Students like us. And it’d been an easy ride so far.
In first year, we’d battled a few minor demons. Back then, I’d had no training.
“Just stay on the edges and observe,” Mr. Norton had told me. “You’ll have your chance to fight later.”
I’d observed enough to hope that chance never turned up.
It wasn’t coming face-to-face with demons that scared me, it wasn’t the risks of hunting. What had really freaked me out had been all that energy buzzing around me. I became like an overloaded power socket, ready to fry. Pressure filled my head, starting in my eyes but then expanding and growing tighter and tighter. It became like a tight band of metal, wrapping around my skull. I thought my head would burst like a watermelon and all I wanted to do was run and hide.
Edgewater Academy had wasted their money on me.
Luckily, since then, it’d been just training and drills. They gave us fancy watches when we started and any time of the day or not, an alarm could sound. When it did, we had to jump into action.
“Okay, that’s all for today.” Mr. Norton shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and turned to me.
“Meeting dismissed.” Mark clapped his hands together. He liked to do stuff like that to make himself look like our leader. He most definitely wasn’t our leader.
I’d stood up to leave with everyone else but Mr. Norton stopped me.
“Can someone show Britney to her dorm? Since Cherry can’t take her.”
“Lucas will d
o it.” I pushed him forward before he could protest then gave him a cheeky wink.
He’d thank me for that. One day.
Chapter 4
“We have to keep this on the down low.” Mr. Norton loved vaguely military sounding phrases.
He had us learning military hand signals to use in our drills too but everyone messed them up. It didn’t matter anyway. We all had a link, not really telepathy or anything that sophisticated, just a second sense for knowing what the others would do.
“Well, who am I going to tell? I don’t exactly have many friends around here.”
“True, true. Don’t tell Lucas.”
“No problem.” Yeah, right. The first thing I’d do after this meeting was tell Lucas.
He gave me a pointed look. “Don’t tell anyone other than Lucas.”
This might take a while so I leaned back on the edge of the table. It wobbled under my butt but I thought it would hold. Mr. Norton paced the floor with his hands behind his back.
“We’ve discussed this—”
“Who exactly is ‘we’?” I narrowed my eyes, hoping he’d spill the beans.
Some of the others teachers knew about our powers but which teachers, no one ever told us. We could only talk about scholarship business with Mr. Norton but of course we all wondered who else knew. If I got a name or two, I’d score major points with the rest of the gang.
Mr. Norton shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is this - after Farran’s disappearance, some of the other students have been threatened. I need you to step up and take on extra duties.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. Extra duties would cut into my study time and I made it a point of pride to come second in every class. I had awesome grade point average and would be in the running for a real scholarship to a good college. Occasionally, I slipped and got first place but first place didn’t keep you under the radar. No one ever cared who came second.
