by Dean Murray
The Perfect Weapon: Adri Paige can visit people inside of their dreams, where they are defenseless.
The Ultimate Spy: Adri's power lets her ferret out anyone's secrets and even influence their waking actions.
The World's Biggest Prize: Adri's power comes with a price. Dark forces hunt her, hoping to bend her gifts to their purposes.
The Real Problem? Adri needs to make it through high school without letting anyone around her figure out her true capabilities—all while crushing on a guy she knows is probably trouble.
Hunted
by Dean Murray
Copyright 2013 by Dean Murray
Also by Dean Murray:
The Reflections Series
Broken (free)
Torn (free if you sign up for Dean's Mailing List)
Splintered
Intrusion
Trapped
Forsaken
Riven
Driven
Lost
Marked
The Greater Darkness (Writing as Eldon Murphy)
A Darkness Mirrored (Writing as Eldon Murphy)
The Dark Reflections Series
Bound
Hunted
Ambushed
Shattered
The Guadel Chronicles
Frozen Prospects (free)
Thawed Fortunes (free if you sign up for Dean's Mailing List)
Brittle Bonds
Shattered Ties
Chapter 1
I had a headache again, but that was pretty much the case all of the time. I was almost used to my brain trying to work its way out through my ears, so that couldn't have been the reason I opened my stupid mouth.
I'd hated Janessa for a long time and managed to keep my mouth shut, so I was pretty sure that wasn't the reason either. Maybe it wasn't either reason, maybe it was both of them together combined with a couple of other things that were so small that I didn't even realize they were bothering me, but I wanted to get up from my table and go tear Janessa's hair out by the roots.
Normally I'm not even the slightest bit violent. Unlike my sister, Cindi, I've pretty much made it through school by keeping my head down and ignoring other people as much as possible. You'd think in a school with a student body approaching five thousand that it would be easy to get lost in the crowd, but I'd had to actively work at staying anonymous. It was almost like there were so many kids attending our school that anybody could find a clique without even having to try.
Janessa and her friends talked crap about pretty much everyone in the school most days, but today it was getting to me like it never had before. Maybe it was the way that she was leading a smear campaign against Jackson, one of the new guys who had just moved into school. It wasn't that she didn't like him, she was doing it to make sure that none of the other girls would date him.
Once she finished sucking her current boyfriend dry then she'd be able to move in and redeem Jackson's social image by dating him. It was beyond shallow, but she'd invented a kind of social cold storage for future boyfriends. Given how oblivious I was to most things in school, if I knew about it then everyone else in the school did too.
Janessa was bad, but the people who let her get away with it were nearly as terrible, and the whole thing was making my headache even worse than normal.
"…and I was like seriously? Not only can I do a better back handspring than you, I'm going to ace our history test, at which point you're going to turn over your spot on the homecoming committee to me."
Janessa's voice was like an icepick shoved into my brain. It didn't seem to matter what I did or how I sat, I could still hear her as well as if she were sitting right next to me instead of at the next table over.
"…I know, right? She's still complaining that I had to have cheated somehow. She totally can't deal with the fact that not only am I hotter and more talented than her, I'm also smarter."
I couldn't help the snort of disbelief that made its way out of me. Maybe if I'd kept my head safely buried in my book I would have been able to pretend like it hadn't been in response to Janessa, but I looked up at the same time and she locked gazes with me.
"Did I say something funny, chubs?"
My fists clenched tight at the despised nickname, but I didn't actually want to get into a yelling match with her so I dropped my eyes back down to my book and hoped that she'd just let it go.
"That's right, you lame nerd. Next time don't forget your place."
Seventeen years of life had conditioned me to let the comment go, to turn the other cheek and just be glad that I had less than two years left in this hellhole, but this time I found myself looking back up and glaring at her.
"Yeah, you said something funny. You're kind of forgettable so I can't quote it exactly for you, but I think it boiled down to the fact that you tried to use the words 'talented' and 'smart' in a sentence that included you as the subject."
She was on her feet now, which should have been an alarming development, but somehow I was standing and instead of backing away from her, I was actually moving towards her too.
"You're forgetting who you're talking to, chubs. You're getting above yourself and I'm glad that it gets to be me that puts you in your place."
I could see it in her eyes. Normally Janessa and the rest of the cheerleaders, my sister included, ruled the school with an iron fist, but she was scared—not that I'd hurt her, but that I'd say what everyone else had to be thinking.
"You didn't ace your history test, you paid Richard Parsons a hundred bucks to steal the answer key for you and everyone knows it."
Janessa yelled something about me spying on her as she threw herself at me, but somehow I managed to give as good as I was getting. The neckline to her cheerleading outfit ripped with a satisfying sound that brought excited whistles from some of the bystanders who'd gathered around us within seconds of the fight starting.
She slapped me hard enough that I saw stars, but it wasn't enough to stop me. I punched her in the eye, which hurt my hand a lot more than I'd expected it to, but the blow nearly knocked her on her butt. A second later she scratched me on the arm, so I tackled her and scratched her across the face at which point two of the football players who'd been watching decided that they'd better break us up before somebody lost an eye.
Janessa was yelling that she was going to kick my head in for ruining her outfit as the guys pulled me off of her, but I was suddenly less worried about her than I was about just how much trouble I was going to be in with the administration. The assistant principal had already made it to the study hall and he looked even more pissed off than normal.
**
It turned out that he was pissed off, but I got the feeling that his ire wasn't directed at me as much as it was at Janessa. He read us both the riot act and then sent her home to get some new clothes and me to the school psychiatrist's office. Mrs. Bauer left me cooling in one of the hard plastic chairs outside her office for nearly two hours before opening her door and gesturing me inside.
"Okay, Adri, what gives?"
I shrugged as I sat down on one of the battered wooden chairs in front of her desk. "What do you mean?"
"I've been reading your record and this is the first time that you've gotten into any kind of problem at all. Your grades are above average, but nothing spectacular and until today I couldn't even put your face and name together. You're not the kind of girl who ends up in my office for having a knock-down-drag-out fight with one of the cheerleaders."
"I don't know. I guess I'm just getting tired of the way that Janessa and her friends lead such a huge double life."
"They are cheerleaders, sweetie, it's practically a job requirement." She waved my protest away. "I'm not saying that it's right, but it's hardly like it's a new development, so it can't be the root pro
blem behind today's little outburst."
I shrugged. "I really don't know. It was just one of those things, I guess. She was talking about how she aced her history test but the whole school knows that she cheated on it."
Mrs. Bauer shook her head. "I know this is hard to believe, but I spend more time actually talking to the kids in this school than anyone else here. By the time that 'everyone' knows something I've usually known it for at least a couple of days. I hadn't heard anything about this before you yelled it in study hall, and neither had any of the half dozen other kids who've been in my office in the last two hours."
She leaned back and rubbed her eyes like she wished that she'd been able to go home when school ended rather than having to stay after and deal with one more problem kid.
"You're related to Cindi Paige, aren't you?"
"Yeah, so?"
"So Cindi is on the cheerleading team, and from what I've been hearing, she and Janessa are rivals. They are both sophomores and Janessa having won a spot as a flyer has to have rubbed Cindi the wrong way. Isn't it possible that you did all of this as a way of helping Cindi out, of taking her rival down a couple of notches for her?"
I didn't mean to laugh, it just kind of exploded out of me.
"You obviously aren't as well informed as you think you are. Cindi and I hardly talk to each other. If I was going to get into a fight for someone, I can pretty much guarantee that it wouldn't be for Cindi."
"Are you sure, Adri? Maybe you don't even remember Cindi telling you about her suspicions that Janessa had cheated, maybe you didn't set out to start a fight with Janessa, it just kind of happened."
I shook my head. "That part is right, I didn't mean to start a fight with her, but this honestly has nothing to do with Cindi or anyone else."
Mrs. Bauer closed her eyes for a couple of seconds and then sighed. "I can't make you tell me the truth, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn't disappointed. I have dozens of kids come through my door every day who are basically beyond help. I do what I can, but after more than twenty years doing this I've learned that it ultimately comes down to whether or not the kids I'm working with want to be helped. I can give the ones who want to change the tools that they need, but there's not a darn thing I can do for the kids who are determined not to change."
I felt like she was waiting for me to respond, but I didn't know what she was after so I just shrugged.
"Adri, whenever a new kid comes through my door with a record like yours I usually get excited because those are the kinds of kids who generally just need a little help to get back on track. You need to think about your life and what you're doing with it because right now you're coming across as one of the kids I can't help."
She dashed off a note and handed it to me without looking. "You're going to get in-school detention at the very least, but I'm recommending that the administration not come down too hard on you this time. You know where the door is."
A few seconds later I was standing outside of her office a little bewildered at just how quickly she'd gone from interested and supportive to cold and uncaring. I looked up and down the empty hall and wondered if I dared go home now, but the sound of someone clearing their throat brought me around to find that Cindi had been sitting in a chair waiting for me.
"So you got in your first fight, huh?"
"No need to look so smug about it, Cindi."
She shrugged and picked up the stylish black messenger bag that Mom and Dad had finally purchased for her a month ago just so that she'd give them a few minutes of peace. It had taken two months of her begging and I'd spent the entire time hating the fact that she was making them buy her yet another expensive accessory that she didn't need.
"I wouldn't say that I'm smug, more like I'm just astonished that something finally brought you out of your shell enough to notice other people."
"Very funny. What are you doing here anyways?"
"I figured that there wasn't any reason to let a good catastrophe go to waste. I called and told Mom that you'd been in a fight and that I'd stay to walk you home. She agreed, which meant that I got to stay here and talk to my friends for nearly as long as if I'd had practice today. Thanks for that, by the way."
I wanted to hit her on the arm as hard as I could, but I settled for just frowning at her. It only took a second for the frown to slip though as I realized just how much more violent I'd become lately.
"I was serious, by the way, Adri. I don't think that you hit Janessa for me or anything, but it's actually worked out pretty well. Her uniform is basically ruined. I mean, she could still wear it, but I don't think anybody would be watching the game."
Cindi's expression was so mischievous that it drew a smile out of me despite my best efforts. My smile made her smile in turn and then she pushed open the main door.
"Janessa could always use one of the loaner uniforms, but Miss Winters is kind of pissed off at her for all of her drama over the last couple of weeks, so she's going to be out of commission for at least a few days until she gets a new top ordered. Which means…I get to be the one at the top of the third pyramid!"
"Um, congratulations, I guess?"
"You guess? This is the hugest opportunity ever. I'm only guaranteed the spot for tomorrow's game, but if I do a good job there's no telling what might happen. I might manage to bump Janessa out entirely."
I shook my head at her. "I still can't explain your fascination with flying. The idea of being thrown twenty feet into the air and just trusting that someone on the ground is really going to catch me doesn't sound fun at all."
"You should try it sometime, Adri."
I snorted. Actually I was snorting a lot lately. I needed to watch that. I wasn't exactly gunning for a boyfriend or anything, but I didn't want to end up being repulsive to everyone around me.
"I'm not exactly flyer material, in case you haven't noticed. Janessa was quick to remind me today, just in case anyone else had forgotten that stupid nickname you gave me."
Cindi didn't look repentant very often, but she looked sorry this time. "I'm really sorry about that. I should never have given it to you in the first place, and I definitely should have made sure that I never used it around anyone from school. It doesn't actually apply any more though."
"What do you mean?"
"Gosh, sometimes I seriously question the fact that we're the same gender. Do you mean you really haven't noticed how much weight you've lost lately?"
"I haven't lost any weight, Cindi. You're still the skinny one in the family."
"Seriously? Have you looked at yourself lately? Your clothes are all practically falling off of you now. Honestly, that's probably part of why Janessa came at you like that. She's pretty self-conscious about her body and you're pretty much the same size as her now. You should come work out with the squad, you'd totally be flyer material in like a month."
I turned and grabbed Cindi's arm, pulling her around so that she had to face me. "Is this some kind of joke?"
"What the freak? You're turning into a total head-case lately. No, it isn't a joke. Seriously, look at yourself in the mirror sometime, you've totally thinned down."
Cindi was a lot of things—not the least of which was a spoiled brat—but she'd never lied to me when it mattered, so I let her go, somewhat mollified.
"That doesn't make any sense. I haven't changed anything. I'm not eating any differently, I'm not exercising, there's no reason for me to be losing any weight."
Cindi shrugged. "Well, I guess you're just lucky then because you're definitely losing weight lately."
We started walking again and I once again wished that we lived somewhere else. We were well past the hottest part of the day, but even now the humidity made any kind of exercise unpleasant. I could already feel a trickle of perspiration running down between my shoulder blades and it wouldn't evaporate until we made it home and got into the air-conditioned and de-humidified air inside.
Another month or two and the temperatures would drop, but we'd be l
ucky if we got all of a full week of nice weather before the snow and extreme cold arrived. Living in Minnesota meant you constantly had to worry about either heatstroke or frostbite, which would have sucked badly enough all by itself, but we lived close enough to the school that Cindi and I had to walk there and back all winter through the worst of the cold. If the temperatures dropped far enough sometimes Dad would run us into school before he had to leave for work, but that just meant we had to hang out at school for the better part of an hour before classes started.
As much as I hated the heat, I hated the bitter cold even more, so I decided I should be appreciating the weather today rather than just dreading the rest of the walk home. I knew that Mom was going to freak out once I got home, so I tried to think about something other than the events from school, but I couldn't seem to get Mrs. Bauer's words out of my mind.
We were nearly home before I broke the traditional silence in which Cindi and I usually made the trip.
"Were you the one who told me that Janessa cheated on her history exam?"
Cindi looked at me oddly. "We never talk about the squad. I mean, we hardly talk at all as it is, but we never talk about the other cheerleaders because you think that they're all a bunch of stuck-up idiots."
"I know that, I'm just trying to figure out where I first heard that she'd cheated. Maybe you were talking to someone on the phone and I just overheard your conversation."
I got another odd look as Cindi shook her head at me. "My phone has been broken for almost two weeks, you know that. I've been restricted to just texting people with my iPod since I dropped it in the parking lot while doing stunts with the other girls. Besides, I never even considered that Janessa might have cheated. I just figured she'd conned some poor sap into helping her study for it."
"I'm pretty sure that she really did cheat. The way that she attacked me was crazy. It was about more than just the fact that she doesn't like me."
