: ) Evangeline
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STONE AND SECRET
Nocturne Academy, Book Three.
Coming Soon
One
Emma
Bran O’Connor was hard to look at.
I don’t just mean he was ugly, although if I was being honest, he really was. He had lank brownish hair, small no-color eyes, and really just terrible skin. Like pizza-face bad is what I mean. He was also shorter than me, thin verging on scrawny, and one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet.
Ha—surprised you there, didn’t I? You thought I was just going to go on and on about how awful he looked but I really don’t need to—the popular kids at Nocturne Academy did that plenty. He didn't need me piling it on too.
He really was a nice guy, though and there was something about him, something I couldn't quite put my finger on…
But I didn't know that on the first day of our new unit in AP Biology. I just stood there at the front of the room, trying not to let my face sag into an expression of disappointment when Mr. Barron called out,
“Emma Plunkett, you’ll be lab partners with Bran O’Connor. Go find your seat.”
Reluctantly, I went to sit beside my new partner. This was my fault—if I hadn’t been late on the first day of this new unit, I might have gotten paired with someone else— someone like Elian Darkwing .
Yeah, I know his name sounds like something straight out of a vampire romance novel but that's because he is a vampire—or Nocturne, as they call themselves. He's tall and gorgeous and completely unobtainable but hey, a girl can dream right? After all, one of my best friends, Megan, is Blood-Bonded to a Nocturne so maybe it could happen for me too.
Well, not this time, apparently because now I was stuck with Bran O'Connor which was going to be a problem.
I don’t mean it was a problem because he was hard to look at. No, the problem was going to be the extra attention having the ugliest guy in school as my lab partner was going to draw from the beautiful people at Nocturne Academy.
Wow, that sounds incredibly shallow.
I promise I’m not the prom queen type that can’t be bothered with less than perfect people. I’m a lot less than perfect myself.
How do I look, you’re probably wondering? Well, look up the word “nondescript” in the dictionary and you’d see a picture of me. And then you’d promptly forget what I looked like because I am that forgettable. Seriously—dishwater brownish-blonde hair, muddy, no-color hazel-ish eyes, no figure to speak of—that’s me. Plain Jane and completely boring.
Everyone else at Nocturne Academy has something special about them. They’re cool, mysterious vampires, or witches with amazing magical powers. Or they can turn into freaking dragons and fly and shoot fire—which recently happened to another good friend of mine, Kaitlyn. Or they’re pretty, sparkly fairies from the Realm of the Fae just slumming it here in the human world until it’s time to make their debut in the Seelie Court.
But me? I’m nothing. I’m meh. I’m so bland I make dry toast look exciting.
Which is why I’m usually able to fly under the radar of the pretty people—in this case, Morganna Starchild.
Morganna was a Fae with perfectly coiffed honey-blonde hair and huge blue eyes that sparkled like sapphires in her perfectly sculpted face. Like all Faes, she looked a little like an Anime character come to life with eyes and boobs that were just a little too big and perfect, and cheekbones that would make any plastic surgeon retire on the spot. She was just basically perfection.
And lately she’d really had it out for me.
I don’t know why Morganna started picking on me. Maybe because I’m not as pretty as her. But then again, to the Fae, all humans look like toads. I mean, we’re just so much less perfect than they are we might as well be one step down on the evolutionary ladder.
For whatever reason, Morganna had made it her personal mission to make my life miserable lately. And having Bran as a lab partner wasn’t going to help her decide to ignore me and get back to her regular life of being perfect and pretty.
Speaking of Morganna, she was currently sitting beside my crush, Elian Darkwing and smirking at me as I settled in my chair beside Bran. She was flirting shamelessly with him, which was supposed to be against the rules. For time out of mind The Edict—this really strong magic spell—kept species of Others from dating or having romantic relationships outside their own species. But since my friend Megan and her Nocturne boyfriend Griffin broke the spell, it seemed like all bets were off.
I tried not to notice the way she was whispering to Elian as she watched me, but I couldn’t help hearing what she was saying.
“Looks like poor little Emma finally found a boyfriend. And he’s almost as pretty as she is!” she said, in a voice low enough that Mr. Barron couldn’t hear it but loud enough that the pretty people in the room—mostly other Faes with a few Nocturnes thrown in—who were grouped around her like a court around a queen, could.
A ripple of unkind laughter followed her remark and I felt my cheeks getting hot and red. Great, this was just what I needed this morning—another dose of Mean Girl hazing.
I didn’t understand why Morganna wouldn’t just leave me alone. But once someone like her decides she’s got it in for you, there’s not much you can do but try to keep your head down and try not to attract her attention.
Which was why having Bran O’Connor for a lab partner was such a liability.
As I got settled in my seat, I saw that Bran was looking at me. I didn’t think I’d ever been this close to him before, even though he was also a Norm—a regular human with no magical powers—like me. Maybe because he didn’t live at the school like most students—he stayed with his family and commuted to Nocturne Academy every day. He also wasn’t a Frostproof lifer like me—meaning he didn’t grow up in our crappy little town here in Central Florida.
In fact, he had just transferred here at the end of last semester, but that was long enough for the beautiful people, (Morganna and her crew) to label him a “troll” and dismiss him as nothing more than an ugly little guy taking up too much of the available oxygen.
“It’s all right—just ignore them,” he said in a low voice and I got my first surprise—his voice did not match his body. At all.
It was deep and smooth like dark chocolate melting on the back of your tongue. The kind of voice that sends tingles and chills through your whole body, just to hear it. Hello, ASMR hottie.
Or he would be if his body matched that voice.
I looked at him in surprise—or tried to. But somehow my eyes kept sliding away from his face. Frowning, I tried again with the same result. I got only a glimpse of his awful skin, lank hair, and no-color eyes before my own eyes just kind of slid to the side and I found I was staring over his shoulder.
Weird.
See, this is what I meant when I said it was hard to look at him. It really was—my mind somehow didn’t want to let me study him too closely.
Well, maybe it was a psychological thing. I knew having him for a partner was going to make me the butt of more of Morganna Starchild’s jokes so I subconsciously didn’t want anything to do with him.
Yeah—that had to be it.
“Okay, people,” said Mr. Barron, interrupting my train of thought. “Today we’re going to start with an easy lab, just to get our toes wet. This exercise is called ‘Measuring Heart Rate Accurately’ and it only has two requirements—a partner with a pulse and a watch. Everybody good?”
Several of the girls complained that they didn’t wear watches because they always just looked at the time on their phones. Most places in the Nocturne Academy castle cell phones don’t even work—the magic interferes with them. However, Mr. Barron’s classroom was one of the rare exceptions where you could actually get a signal.
It didn’t matter though because Mr. Barron had a strict no-phones policy in his classroom. He had one of those clear plastic shoe holders hung over the back
of his door, only instead of pairs of shoes, the rectangular pockets were numbered. Everyone had to turn off their cell phone and slip it into a pocket at the beginning of class. No exceptions.
Woe to the hapless student who tried to keep his or her phone or who forgot to turn their phone off or at least on silent. Mr. Barron was pretty easy going about other things but he was death on cell phones ringing or beeping in his classroom. He said he could remember an era when everybody couldn’t get hold of you any time they felt like it and it was a much “better and simpler time.”
My own phone was in pocket seventeen, down near the bottom of the shoe/phone holder since I was late. It sat there in its plain green case, staring at me mutely from across the room. It wasn’t far from a glittery pink rhinestone case with fluffy feathers sprouting from the top. That one belonged to Morganna Starchild—no surprise there.
Morganna was one of the girls complaining most vociferously about needing her phone because she didn’t have a watch. But if she thought she was getting it back in the middle of Mr. Barron’s class she was sadly mistaken. Instead, the Biology teacher picked up a battered cardboard box and started handing out rusty, antique looking stopwatches to people with their hands up.
“You have a watch?” Bran asked me. His deep voice was still freaking me out.
I pulled back my sleeve and displayed the modestly pretty silver watch my mom had gotten me for my last birthday. It wasn’t an expensive brand but we didn’t believe in luxury items in my house—we couldn’t afford to since it was just Mom and me. The watch was pretty, though, and I wasn’t ashamed to let him see it.
“Good,” Bran said, showing me his own watch—a chunky leather and metal thing with a face that appeared to show about fifty time zones. It was totally the watch a science nerd would wear, which made me like him a little better. I was kind of a science nerd myself.
“Okay, now here’s how it works, people,” Mr. Barron intoned in a bored voice. “Using your first two fingers, find the pulse in the thumb-side of your partner’s wrist. Count the number of beats you feel in thirty seconds time. Then multiply that by two to get their resting heart rate. Do this three times each and take the average. Write it all down and then list some activities you think would lower or raise a person’s heart rate.”
“Any activities?” Morganna Starchild gave Elian Darkwing a flirtatious, side-long look and giggled.
“Keep it G rated, please Miss Starchild,” Mr. Barron said dryly. “A good rule of thumb is, if you wouldn’t want your parents to read it, then don’t write it. Okay? Everybody got it? Good—go to it.”
He went back to the front of the room and settled himself behind his desk with a newspaper and a cup of coffee, leaving the class to fend for itself.
Mr. Barron was not exactly what you’d call a morning person.
“Okay, well I guess we’d better get started,” I said. Getting out a piece of notebook paper and a pen, I got ready to go. “You want to go first or should I?” I asked Bran.
“You go.” He held out his wrist to me and I took it awkwardly between my thumb and my first two fingers, feeling for the pulse.
Touching him this way gave me a strange little tingle, though I didn’t know why. I tried to keep my head down and focus on my watch face but it took me several tries to get an accurate count.
“You okay?” he asked at last.
“Hmm?” I looked up at him and the strangest thing happened. For just an instant my eyes focused on his face and I saw…well, I don’t know what I saw but it wasn’t the Bran O’Connor I knew. The face I somehow glimpsed looked like an angel or a god—high cheekbones, blazing blue eyes, a sensuous mouth—
I gasped and ripped my hand away from his wrist. What the hell just happened?
“Are you all right?” Bran’s deep voice sounded concerned. He leaned closer to me and for the first time, I noticed his scent.
It was amazing. He smelled fresh and wild, like cedar wood and salt from the ocean, and some other, wild, dark spice I couldn’t classify.
Like his voice, his scent didn’t seem to match the rest of him. Of course, I didn’t know what I had expected him to smell like—maybe glue from putting together model airplanes or chemicals from playing with a chemistry set? I don’t know.
It sounds crazy but I couldn’t help thinking if I just closed my eyes and listened to his voice and smelled his scent, I could almost imagine him as someone else. Maybe the god-like being I’d somehow glimpsed for just an instant when I touched him.
Which was nuts.
“Are you okay?” Bran asked again.
I kept my eyes open and answered him as calmly as I could.
“Sorry, I just got a little, uh, shock. Like, static electricity—didn’t you feel it?”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” he murmured in that soft, deep voice of his. I didn’t want to think about how it made me feel so I stuck out my arm at him.
“Here. You’re turn,” I said.
He took my hand in both of his and I found that his touch was surprisingly warm and gentle. My body was reacting in all kinds of weird and crazy ways which I was trying desperately to ignore as he found my pulse.
“Hmm,” he murmured. “Your pulse is jumping all over the place. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said tightly, trying not to look at him because I was afraid I’d get that same freaky optical illusion of his face that I had when I was touching him a minute earlier. “I’m just fi—”
And that’s when my cell phone started to ring.
I knew it was mine because the ring tone was the Bach Cello Suite No. 1 Prelude. Yeah, I know I’m a geek but it so happens that I like classical music and I’m not ashamed of it.
Or I wasn’t until my phone started blaring in the middle of AP Biology.
Mr. Barron’s head jerked up at once like a dog on a scent.
“All right—whose is it?” He sounded like a dog too—his voice was a low, angry growl.
I felt my stomach drop all the way down to my school-issued Mary Janes. Mr. Barron had actually been known to suspend people for cell phone infractions and a suspension does not look good on a college application. Especially when you don’t have the money for college so you’re trying to get a scholarship to get out of this crappy little town in the first place.
In an instant I saw my whole life flash before my eyes.
I saw myself suspended for my cell phone, then refused any kind of scholarship, then stuck waitressing at the I-Scream, U-Scream ice cream parlor slash diner, which is currently my after-school job, for the rest of my life.
All because I forgot to put my damn cell phone on silent.
Bran seemed to understand at once what was going on—I must have looked really panicked and guilty. That or else my pulse, which he was still taking, had suddenly gone into overdrive.
“It’s yours?” he asked me in a low voice.
I gave a quick, jerky nod, unable to speak.
“All right,” Mr. Barron snarled, slapping down his cup of coffee so hard that the bitter brown liquid slopped over the side and splattered his newspaper. “I said whose is it?”
“Which pocket?” Bran asked me softly.
I frowned at him, what was he planning to do?
“Number seventeen,” I whispered back.
He nodded and then looked at the shoe rack, concentrating so hard it almost seemed like he was trying to burn a hole in the plastic pocket which held my phone with his eyes. I thought I saw him whispering something to himself but none of the words I heard made sense to me. They sounded like they were in some other language—one I’d never heard before.
Suddenly my phone cut off in mid-ring. I threw an amazed glance at Bran. Did he do that or was it just a coincidence?
Whichever it is I wasn’t out of hot water yet. Mr. Barron was stalking over to the phone holder, a scowl still on his face. He looked like he was dying to suspend someone.
“Whose was that?” he demanded, glaring at the class.
“I don’t care that it stopped ringing, whoever owns that phone had better come up here and turn it off now so it doesn’t ring again. If you get up here quick I might only give you detention for a month.”
Detention for a month? That would spell the end of my after-school job and then I wasn’t sure how Mom and I would make ends meet. She earned enough as a medical transcriptionist to pay the rent on our crappy little apartment and keep the electric on but my salary from the I Scream was what mostly bought the groceries and paid the water bill.
Still, detention was better than suspension. Maybe my boss, Joey down at the I Scream would let me take a leave of absence or maybe just come in an hour later. I doubted it—he wasn’t exactly the most understanding manager—but I had nothing else to hope for.
Slowly, I began to raise my hand.
Only to hear Bran say, “Excuse me, Mr. Barron—I’m afraid that was my phone. It sounded like my ring-tone, anyway.”
“All right then get up here and turn it off, O’Connor,” Mr. Barron snarled. “And you can count yourself lucky all you get is detention.”
“Yes, Sir.”
As I stared incredulously, Bran made his way to the front of the room, fished my phone out of pocket seventeen, and turned it off. Thank goodness I didn’t have an overly-girly phone case like Morganna’s. My plain green case really did look like it could belong to Bran or any other guy in the class for that matter.
“All right, good,” Mr. Barron grumbled as Bran let the phone slide back into its pocket. “And it had better not happen again, O’ Connor.”
“No Sir, it won’t,” he promised and came back to slide in beside me at our lab table.
I waited until everyone had gone back to their lab, including Morganna Starchild who was staring with sharp interest at the two of us. But when she finally turned around and focused her attention on flirting with Elian Darkwing again, I felt free to talk.
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