Academy of the Forsaken (Cursed Studies Book 2)

by Eva Chase

  Two forms standing very close together. Trix was braced against the trunk of a broad oak, and Cade was leaning over her, his hand planted on the bark just above her shoulder. His head dipped so close that his nose almost brushed hers. A flare of jealousy shot through me before I could catch it.

  They were foster siblings, not related by blood. There was nothing overtly wrong about that kind of intimacy between them. But Trix had never so much as hinted that she saw Cade as more than a brother. His poise right now was that of a lover.

  I stepped back, ready to swivel on my heel and get out of there, when Cade’s voice reached my ears, just loud enough to make out the words.

  “You seem a little tense, Baby Bea,” he said in a cajoling tone. “You know I’d never make you do anything you don’t want to.”

  “Of course I know that,” Trix said hastily. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to stop.”

  “For fuck’s sake. If you’re going to talk about it like that—”

  He shoved away from her, turning his back. Trix’s mouth twisted with so much anguish it was obvious even in the sparse light. Despite my jealousy, my heart wrenched for her.

  “I didn’t mean it like that, Cade,” she said, reaching to touch his back. “I want you. I’m here for you. You’ve got to believe that.”

  How could he not, when she’d given up her life outside these walls to come after him? But the guy didn’t turn around. He shrugged dismissively. “It’s fine. I’m not trying to push you. We can just talk.”

  Except he was pushing her. It showed all through the cold shoulder he was giving her now, the hint of a sneer he gave to that last word, the fraught look that crossed Trix’s face.

  I’d thought before that he might be hurting her, but I’d pictured that as a physical wound from a monster’s teeth or claws. He was digging a different sort of dagger in. What the hell was he playing at?

  How dare he treat her this way.

  My hands clenched at my sides. “Please,” Trix said, in a voice more plaintive than I’d ever heard from her before, a voice that didn’t have any business falling from that girl’s mouth. “Come back here. We don’t have much time, and I—I want to make the most of it.”

  There was an awkwardness to the way she trailed her fingers down his back that said she didn’t really want his version of “making the most” of that time. If I could see it, then surely he could feel it. But Cade turned, nudging her back toward the tree again, and set a possessive hand on her waist.

  “I’m still the guy who can see everything that’s good in you,” he said roughly. “Lord knows no one else ever paid enough attention. You’ve got me—and you’re all I’ve got. All I want. I can’t help it, Baby Bea.”

  “You don’t have to. I’m right here.”

  Her shoulders stiffened as he dove in to claim her mouth, and my hands balled at my sides. I wasn’t much of a fighter, but every muscle in my body was clamoring to burst in there and haul him off her. He was jerking her around, making her feel like she was doing something wrong if she didn’t give in to his advances, like he was offering her more than anyone else would ever care to—and how long had he pulled crap like that if she didn’t realize how wrong it was? He clearly knew just the right way to trample over her defenses.

  The only thing that held me back was the knowledge that he knew her so much better than I did. If I interrupted them, I had no doubt he’d be able to spin that intrusion so I looked like the bad guy, maybe even that he was protecting her from me.

  His head dropped lower to kiss her neck, his hand sliding up under her shirt, and I couldn’t stand to watch anymore. My face flushed with a heat that was both uncomfortable and furious, I pulled myself away.

  Who was to say there wasn’t a reasonable case for protecting Trix from me? Had I been thinking of what was best for her when I’d given Jenson’s name this afternoon? No, only what was best for me.

  Maybe I couldn’t barge right into whatever dynamic Cade had her wrapped up in—but I could show her something better than that. I could prove that he’d been wrong when he’d said no one else paid enough attention to see her worth. I could show her how she deserved to be treated, respected.

  At least, I’d damned well try my best, no matter how the voices in my head heckled me.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Trix

  From the moment I’d left the library yesterday afternoon, the discovery of the secret yearbook had gripped my chest with a demand to be shared. But Elias and Jenson had been oddly AWOL for the rest of the day, and I wasn’t inclined to turn to Ryo after our argument. I could have mentioned it to Cade, but we wouldn’t exactly have had much time to discuss my findings—and he’d obviously needed something different from me anyway.

  I hadn’t squashed down my doubts well enough, and I’d made him feel like I wasn’t really committed to him, to us. The memory made my stomach knot.

  My restless urge to hash out my discovery with someone I could trust followed me as I showered and got dressed in the morning. My first instinct was to get Elias’s input, since he had the most experience with the staff and a more analytical approach, but I hadn’t run into him yet when I crossed paths with Jenson, who was coming up from basement laundry duty.

  He stopped at the top of the stairs and gave me a smile that looked a little tense around the edges. We hadn’t really talked since his comment about me being the only person around here he liked. He hadn’t seemed all that happy about admitting it. Did he figure it would make me think less of him?

  I didn’t, and he was here. That made up my mind for me.

  “Hey,” I said. “Are you done with the laundry? There’s something big I need to talk to you about.”

  His face brightened slightly, his stance slipping into a more casual pose. “Isn’t it nice that I have a large opening in my schedule, then? Where should we chat?”

  He knew as well as I did the risks of getting into anything we’d want to keep under wraps in this building. I was about to suggest the carriage house, since that’d worked well before, when another familiar figure emerged from the stairwell behind him.

  “What’s going on?” Ryo asked, hesitant but concerned as he glanced between me and Jenson and back again. “You sound like you found out something important.”

  His expression twitched when I met his eyes, but he held my gaze without faltering, as if to say he was here regardless of what had happened yesterday. I crossed my arms instinctively, but whatever else was true, whatever his motivations, I did know he wanted to help. And getting two outside opinions would be more useful than one. It didn’t have to be anything more than a professional sort of conversation.

  Why should I admit how much his confession had affected me anyway? I’d rather he thought I didn’t care all that much.

  “I’ll explain in a minute,” I said. “Let’s take a walk.”

  As soon as I looked at the carriage house when we came around the school building, I knew it was out. That place held a few too many awkward memories, including a very clear one of a recent intimate encounter with Ryo. That was the last thing I wanted to be thinking about right now—the last thing I wanted him to be thinking about either.

  Looking through the yearbook photos had reminded me of another structure on campus that I hadn’t given much thought to before. Back in 1927, a wooden gazebo had stood at the edge of the lawn in the shade of a few elms. Over the decades, more trees and brush had sprouted up around it, and now it stood in the middle of a stretch of trees so sparse it felt a little absurd to call it a forest. But as we walked between them, they gradually blocked out the view of the lawns and the main buildings, giving us a little privacy.

  Ivy had grown up the aged walls of the gazebo, the pointed leaves draped across most of the sides so thickly it might as well have been a wall. I climbed the three low steps into the shadowed interior and swept fallen debris off one of the built-in benches with my hand. Ryo let out a low whistle as he and Jenson followed me.

  �
��No one’s used this in a while.”

  Jenson looked as if he’d restrained himself from rolling his eyes. “What you mean is, it’s gone the same way as the pool and the badminton courts and the carriage house? Where’s the surprise there?”

  Ryo let the snarky questions slide off his back. He sat next to me on the bench, leaving a foot of space where before he’d have scooted over right next to me. The careful distance sent a wobbly feeling through my chest.

  “So,” he said, “what’s the news?”

  As Jenson sank down at my other side, I pulled out my phone. “Since I started this cycle, I haven’t just been remembering more about the times I’ve been here before,” I said. “I think I’m also picking up someone else’s memories, from way before that.”

  I explained about the hazy impressions I’d gotten with Professor Hubert and then around the library, and how the last of those had led me to the yearbook. The guys listened without any obvious skepticism. I guessed, considering all the craziness they’d already accepted at Roseborne College, a person absorbing a few vague memories that weren’t really their own didn’t sound all that ridiculous.

  “I’ve been looking over the pictures, trying to figure out anything I can from them,” I finished, bringing up the photos I’d taken on my phone’s screen. “So far it’s all still pretty confusing, which is why I was hoping you might notice something I haven’t. You’ve both been here a lot longer than I have.”

  “Obviously something important went down in 1927,” Ryo said.

  “But what?” Jenson frowned at the images I was flipping through. “How the hell could anything turn this place into the hellhole it’s become?”

  “Supernatural powers are called supernatural because they don’t make any natural sense.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Expert. That’s so helpful.”

  “Hush,” I said, giving Jenson a light kick to his ankle. “Look, this is the really creepy part.”

  I showed them the individual student photos in the senior section, with most of them crossed out. Ryo’s eyebrows leapt up. “A bunch of the others, the ones that aren’t X-ed out—those are the pictures Professor Filch gives us for the portrait painting contest.”

  Jenson nodded, peering down at them and then glancing at me. “Didn’t you say you were thinking those seven—or eight, or whatever—might have been hurt somehow by the people who went on to run this school? What if they weren’t victims at all? Wouldn’t you cross out the people you did want to mess with, not the people you didn’t?”

  I shot him a relieved smile. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. Obviously we don’t know exactly what happened then or how it created the situation we’re in now, but I’m becoming more and more convinced that however the staff are connected to those kids, it was by mutual agreement, not something forced on them.” I zoomed in on the photograph of the girl with the necklace. “I’m pretty sure Professor Hubert is wearing her necklace. And something about her… I don’t know. Maybe I’m seeing things.”

  Jenson took the phone from me to examine it more closely. A pleased glint had come into his eyes at my agreement. “Don’t sell yourself short,” he said. “How can I not pick up the same vibe now that you’ve pointed it out? The others…” He studied one and then another and paused over one of the senior boys. His tone turned even more enthusiastic. “Don’t you get a bit of that Professor Roth sourness from this guy?”

  I leaned over to consider, my shoulder brushing Jenson’s. He hesitated and then leaned into the touch. There was no denying the eagerness in his expression when he checked my reaction, his usual calculated front falling away to reveal something more genuine. Something I’d brought out in him.

  It really meant something to him that I’d asked for his opinion, that I was taking it seriously. When all he could do was lie, how long had it taken before he’d started hungering to offer something real?

  The boy he’d pointed out did have a bit of the jowly, houndish look of our Archery professor. Not so much that I’d have connected the two for sure, but then, I’d spent less than an hour in Professor Roth’s presence so far.

  “I can believe it,” I said. “You’d be a better judge than me.”

  I smiled at him. Jenson blinked as if he hadn’t expected anything like a compliment and then flashed a grin at me so bright it brought a flutter into my chest. A flutter and an ache somewhere between loss and longing.

  Why couldn’t this be so much more simple? Why did we have to have the weight of so much history, remembered and not, hanging over us—and on top of that, the tangled feelings Cade had left me with over the last two nights?

  “Let me take a look?” Ryo asked.

  I passed the phone over to him. “There are a few of the other photos that match the portraits in the juniors section,” I told him. As he scanned the figures, my hand came to rest on Jenson’s knee as if of its own accord. He didn’t stir, but I felt his gaze shift to me again at the corner of my vision.

  Underneath all the complications, I could at least show the simple fact that yes, I appreciated having him here. I didn’t think what we’d already done was a mistake, even if I had no idea what it would mean in the long run.

  Even if it was hard to imagine he’d still have wanted me all that much if he’d known I might be an even bigger mess than he’d ever been.

  “I think I can see the Hubert and Roth thing.” Ryo tilted his head to one side. “And this dude makes me think of Carmichael for some reason—not that he really looks like him, just…” He scratched the back of his neck. “This was almost a hundred years ago. Are we figuring these are their great-grandparents or something?”

  “Who knows?” Jenson said. “What did you just say about the supernatural? If the professors can control where we go and what we talk about and how our bodies react, why shouldn’t they have other weird abilities too? What if they’re, I don’t know, immortal vampires?”

  Ryo made a skeptical face. “They do still get a little bit of sunlight without going up in smoke. As far as I know, they’re not drinking blood from any of us. And wouldn’t they look like the photos completely if they’re the same people?”

  “Jenson’s point still stands,” I said. “Maybe not vampires, but with the powers they have, they could have lived another hundred years, changed how they look, and who knows what else. Or the current staff could be descendants of these kids, like you said. I’m not sure how we’d figure that out.” I motioned to the phone. “Do the names sound at all familiar?”

  Each of the student photos had a name printed under it, but none of them matched Roseborne’s current staff. The girl who seemed to be connected to Professor Hubert was Mildred Christoph.

  Ryo considered each of them again, and then handed the phone over to Jenson when the other guy reached for it. Both of them shook their heads.

  “Sorry, Trix,” Ryo said. “I wish I could put together more of the pieces. Maybe I haven’t been paying enough attention.”

  “The staff are pretty good at keeping their secrets,” I said. “At least we know a little more than we did before. Maybe I can use this to prod Hubert the next time I talk to her, see if I can get anything useful out of her—or if it triggers more of those sort-of memories.”

  Jenson shifted his weight next to me. “Just stay on your guard, with her and the rest of them.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him. “Do you really think you need to worry about whether I can handle myself at this point?”

  The corner of his mouth quirked upward, and his voice softened like I’d only heard once before, when he’d told me he’d never wanted to hurt me. “Do you really think I can stop myself from worrying about something happening to you, whether I need to or not?”

  So much affection rang through those words that I couldn’t tear my gaze from his bright blue eyes. It hit me then in a way it hadn’t quite before just how much he’d been trying to protect in the last few weeks. Even when he’d been acting like an asshole, he’d been trying to prote
ct me from the dangers of the school, yes. But how much had he also been protecting himself—from the pain of losing the closeness we’d shared that I’d forgotten, from the possibility of finding out I didn’t want it again… and from having to face the intensity of feeling that showed in his expression right now?

  He could have gone for it instead—turned on the wry charm I’d seen him employ so often with our other classmates, spun a few lies to draw me in with the inside knowledge from our past interactions. But he’d pushed me away, at least partly for my sake. Did he even believe he deserved the moments we’d had before?

  A swell of emotion filled my chest. I touched his jaw to tug him into a kiss.

  Jenson claimed my lips with a hungry sound that left no doubt about how much he wanted this, how much he’d been holding himself back. As the heat of his mouth flooded me, a sharper emotion prickled through the wave of desire.

  He’d waited to be sure of me. He hadn’t made any moves on me without my encouragement, even after our make-out in the laundry room. Not because he wasn’t completely enthusiastic, but because it mattered more to him that I was just as into this as he was.

  Ryo was still sitting at my other side, but, well, let him watch. If it made him uncomfortable, he could leave. He couldn’t begrudge me turning to another guy when he couldn’t even enjoy anything we did together.

  My hand returned to Jenson’s knee with a teasing caress, and he let out a muted growl as he kissed me harder. His fingers grazed my cheek and cupped my shoulder—and another hand, tentative but steady, came to rest on my side with a stroke of the thumb.

  A fresh jolt of heat shot through me from that point of contact. I eased away from Jenson to glance back at Ryo. He traced another gentle arc just below my ribs, his golden eyes gleaming.

  “Nothing these days makes me feel even half as good as seeing you feel good,” he murmured. “It still means something. And I’d bet two of us could make you feel even better than just one.”