by Angel Lawson
Text Copyright © 2012 Anna Benefield & Kira A. Gold
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publication.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Lawson, Angel – Gold, Kira A.
Odin’s Murder/Angel Lawson & Kira A. Gold-1st ed.
ISBN-13: 000-0000000000
ISBN-10: 0000000000
1. Urban Fantasy
2. Young Adult Fiction
Book Cover by AngstyG.com
1.
Ethan
The cafeteria worker wears her hairnet like a battle helmet. Her metal spoon is a loaded catapult. “Beef, chicken, or vegetarian?”
“Vegi-wha?” I stare at her.
She jabs at the mac ‘n cheese with a rubber gloved finger. The yellow, unyielding mass resists her stainless steel scoop like it’s afraid of her too. “Vegetarian,” she says. “We don’t do veejan here, so don’t ask, but you’ve got to pick something.”
I eye the choices in the pan in front of me. I’m late, last in line, and no steam rises from the trays. Sliced beef floats on a congealed gravy-type substance. The chicken? At least the chicken looks like chicken, even cold. How wrong can you go with chicken?
“I guess I’ll have the ch—“
“Don’t get the chicken,” a voice beside me says. I turn to the tall chick with black hair that I’d seen walking next to the path and not on it, the one with the nice—
I force my eyes up to her face. She’s shaking her head, nose scrunched up.
“Just…don’t.”
“Okay then, I guess I’ll have the—“
“Two salads,” the girl says, holding up two long fingers. “Please.”
The lunch lady shrugs and puts the bowls on top of the glass partition. The bossy girl snatches hers, places it on her red plastic tray and walks away.
“Alrighty then,” I say, claiming my own bowl. I shake off the surge that boils under my skin. Figures that the first chick my age who’s spoken to me in almost 2 years would be bitchy, but only an idiot would ignore a warning about food poisoning. And it’s been a long time since I’ve had fresh vegetables.
I follow the girl and watch as she hands over her plastic meal card to the cashier. I remember the card that came in my information packet during registration and reach into my pocket, pleased I’d made the connection before looking like a fool. The cashier swipes it without a look in my direction and I walk to an empty table across the room. I sit with my back to the wall, out of habit. So far, the Scholastic Honors Program has given me a fair amount of space. These are smart kids; they feel my boundaries.
I dig into my salad, reminiscing about my cheeseburger from three hours ago; a thick, juicy one from Burger Shack, with double cheese, and I’m picturing a pin-up spread of the extra bacon when I hear the salad guardian’s voice.
“That’s my brother’s seat,” she says to a redheaded guy from my dorm.
“I don’t see his name on it.”
“Give it up, Marcus.” She doesn’t back down. “Find another seat.”
“Nah.” A chair screeches across the hardwood floor, and the guy makes an exaggerated motion to sit down. “I think I’ll sit here with you. I’ve missed your feisty little ass.”
Feisty might be another word for bossy, or bitch, but he’s too busy staring at her chest to feel the energy rolling off her.
“Move,” she seethes. Her jaw is set and her hands are balled, that long, black ponytail trembling like the sash on a cocked spear.
He doesn’t. He mutters something I can’t hear, something that makes her cheeks stain red. His fingers circle around an invisible dick, and he opens his mouth, tongue thrusting in one cheek, working in tandem with his hand.
The girl jerks her face away from the orange-haired boy. Her eyes meet mine for one angry second. She’s mortified, but her back stays straight as she turns back to the asshole making obscene gestures. She’s feisty alright, but her hands are as slender as the rest of her, and she’s not even making a proper fist.
My switch flips.
Flashbulb-hot rage launches me from my seat, and I’m between them before she even has to raise her hand, and mine is cocked back for her. I hold back my smile at the euphoric rush when his skin splits under my knuckles.
“What the hell?” The girl’s gasp slows my second punch, but the guy still goes down. I spin to face her, but before I can reply I’m kicked from behind, and the real fight begins.
*
I’m escorted from the dining hall by a guy with the stiff walk of a college diploma up his ass, though his class ring marks him as only two years older than me. The rectangular tag pinned to his preppy shirt reads “Teaching Associate” under his name. The other boy from the fight has disappeared in the opposite direction. The blame for all this has landed on me—tends to happen to those with a record.
“Seems like you’ve done that before,” Jeremy says. “Pretty tight right hook.”
I make him nervous. I like that. I shrug, grin. “Yeah, I’ve been in a scrap or two before.” Or twenty.
“Not that I condone fighting or anything, but you couldn’t have picked a better guy. Maybe Marcus’ll back off a little if he knows someone is willing to put him in his place this summer.”
“So he’s been here before?”
“Yeah, last year. Smart as they come but he’s got a sore spot for Memory.” He grins at my blank look. “The girl.” We arrive at an old building with an ill-matched new addition. “The dean is pretty cool,” Jeremy says. “But fighting is a zero-tolerance offence. Even though people saw you defending her, you still started it.”
“Right,” I say, as we climb the steps to the director’s office.
“Just tell him what happened. Maybe he won’t kick you out, if you’re lucky.”
I’ll need more than luck. I’ll need a guardian angel. And she’s going to be pissed as hell at me.
*
“Mr. Tyrell.” The SHP director, Dean Burnett, drops my three-inch-thick file on his desk. My eyes flick from the file to his lined face. “I was hoping I wouldn’t see you in here so soon.”
I snort and lick my bottom lip. It’s swollen, tender. “Never hope for the impossible.”
He ignores me, which is probably for the best. Humor isn’t always my ally. “We had an agreement, your caseworker and I.” He holds up a sheet of paper. “You signed it as well.”
“I remember.”
“You promised to keep your anger in check. This means no fighting.”
I stare at the massive oak desk between us. A glint of silver catches my eye. A sleek, slim letter opener rests next to an antique ink well, its pretty point straight at me. I shift my gaze back to Mr. Burnett, and say what he wants to hear. “I understand.”
“I hope you do, Ethan. You are a bright, talented young man.” He opens the file to my academic scores, glances at them with raised eyebrows, measures the thickness of the stack of behavior reports behind them with his finger, and then cocks his head at the thumbnail pics of my photographs in the back. “This kind of work is exactly what we want to see at the Scholastic Honors Program. But this summer session will be difficult for you if you can’t abide by the rules. I also think we’re both aware of what happens to you if you do not complete this program.”
I nod. Getting back into an orange jumpsuit is not an appealing thought.
“The upside of all this is that we can kill two birds with one stone,” he says. “I believe you are to check in with Ms Wallman after you’ve been situated, and I’m supposed to call the moment you get into trouble.”
He picks up the phone and dials the number written in red ink on the sticky note on the front of my file—I know it by heart—and holds the receiver out to me. I cringe, but I can hear it ringing at the other end, and I take the phone.
“Hey, Bob,” she answers, and I picture her cell phone, the cover a shiny purple to match her fingernails this week. “I’ll fax the judge’s order as soon as I get back to the office, but—”
“Mary, it’s me.”
“Ethan! Why are you calling me from Dean Burnett’s office?”
“Because I can’t afford a cell phone?”
I hear her bracelet clatter. The line of tiny silver pendants was bright against her dark coffee skin in the morning sun when she picked me up in Wilmington earlier today, jingling on her wrist as she lectured me the list of dos and do-nots. More than once, I’d thought about snatching the jewelry, but the fallout wouldn’t be worth it. She’d kick my ass. Twice.
Dean Burnett looks down at my portfolio to a picture of her I’d taken last fall. She’s pretty good-looking for an older chick.
“Dammit, Ethan, already?” she yells. “You’ve been there all of three hours! Who could you possibly pick a fight with in only three hours? Let me guess. Someone touched your camera. No, they made a comment about your hair. Was food involved? Or a girl?”
She knows me well. I say nothing.
“Do you have any idea how hard I had to bust my ass to get you into that program? How many miles I’ve driven today?” She begins the tirade I heard earlier. “If you screw this up, you go back. They don’t even need a court order, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Do you really want to go back there?”
With the hand not holding the phone, I run my finger down my nose, tracing the slight bump where the bones had been broken.
“No, ma’am.” She likes it when I am polite.
“Nine more months, young man. You have nine more months until your commitment to the state is over, and then I can’t help you anymore. Do this right, it will even be less. But this is your last chance to clean up your act, so you’ve got to keep out of trouble this summer, do you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
“It’s a fresh start, Ethan. Make the most of it. Now put the dean back on the phone.”
I hand it over, listen for a few seconds to their conversation, eyeing the clock and the door, wondering how long this will take, but the director is already telling her goodbye. He hangs up the phone, and eyes me a moment over his reading glasses.
After a long sigh, he waves his hand. “I’m going to let this slide. I understand that there is some transition upheaval when leaving your circumstances. Plan to work several nights this week in the dining hall. Constance always needs a hand washing dishes. I’ll let Jeremy know when.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t want to see you in my office again. We took a risk allowing you into this program—don’t make me regret it.”
“Won’t happen again, sir,” I say again, as I leave. I steal one last look at the desk, pausing at the door. “You won’t see me in here again.”
I exit the office, stopping just short of plowing into a man with wrinkled clothes. He clutches at a thick bunch of papers. Several spill on the floor.
“Oh, sorry, didn’t see you.” He lets me pass as he enters the office. “Bob, you were looking for me? I’ve got my orientation with the history group in five minutes.”
“Yes, let me put this away, and I’ll walk with you.”
I glance back, and watch the dean stow my file in a cabinet and lock it, while the other guy drops half the crap he carries and scrambles to pick it up. His wallet tumbles from his pocket and lands under a chair, but he doesn’t see it.
Dean Burnett takes the heavy chunk of keys in his meaty fist as he ushers the messy professor down the hall, opposite my shadowed corner, but he doesn’t lock the door. “Did I hear correctly?” he asks. “About Sonja Williams?” and then they are out of earshot.
I slip back into the office. My eyes are focused only on the prize, and I snag it with fast fingers that touch nothing else. I stash it in my pants pocket, and back out of the room. My long, slow stride down the hall is at odds with my fast heartbeat.
“How did it go?” Jeremy asks, making me jump in my skin as I round the corner in the lobby. He’s holding a clipboard and a roll of ‘Hello, my name is:’ stickers.
“I’m doing dishes.” At his chuckle, I flash a wry grin and push through the heavy exterior doors. The grassy quad isn’t empty, but the students lurk in the shade, save for a brave few blinking against the glare from their campus maps. Most of us have a free period after lunch. Marcus stands under a tree, ice pack melting on some bruised knuckles. His left eye is purple and swollen. A few guys stand around him, and I can see their lips moving with the usual sidekick muttering. The tall girl isn’t around.
I find a corner of my own, a quiet perch on the edge of some steps, and slide the treasure from my pocket. The silver letter opener winks at me in the sunlight, the polished steel edge honed glittery sharp. I rub my thumb over the point, a smile pulling on my split lip. Not bad loot for such a small fight. To the victor goes the spoils.
2.
Memory
Julian, in his typical obsessive habit, is organizing the ridiculous number of books he’s brought with him. Under his breath he mutters the author’s names. “Saki, Salinger, Steinbeck, Shelly....”
“You really had to bring all of those?” I peer into the mirror on the back of the door, and apply another layer of kohl liner under my eyes.
“I may need them for reference,” he says, plucking Frankenstein out by its spine and shifting it before Grapes of Wrath. “Not all of us have a photographic memory.”
“You need fiction? For reference? Besides, we have laptops. JFGI, Julian.”
He ignores me, but he’s my twin, and I can read him like a Dr. Seuss book. He doesn’t know what it means, and it serves him right, since he hasn’t read anything published in this century. Right now, he’s so anxious to get his books organized before our first classes tomorrow, he’s twitching.
“So what happened in the cafeteria?” he asks.
“It’s your fault, you know,” I say to his back, just to bait him. “If you hadn’t been late none of it would have happened.”
He scratches his spine with his middle finger.
“Marcus was being a dick. I was about to go off on him, but that kid with the shaved head, the big one, came out of nowhere and started beating the pulp out of him.” I’d stood there, watching them fight, fascinated by their raw, feral movements and the way the guy from the serving line’s back flexed as he pummeled my mistake from last year. His quick feet and powerful punches stirred something dangerous in the pit of my stomach even now, just thinking about it.
Satisfied with the mirror’s display, I flop down on my back on the other bed, but then frown at my hands, and pick at the chip in my nail polish. “I hope he doesn’t get kicked out. I’d like to thank him.”
“Well,” Julian gestures to the closet across the room. “His stuff is still here. Wait around and you can either thank him or say goodbye.”
“He’s your roommate?”
“Yeah, Ethan something,” he says. “I only met him for a minute though. Seems quiet enough. Didn’t bring much with him.”
“Not all of us pack our entire room for a month-long college seminar.”
“You know what I mean. Look, hardly any clothes, no books. I think I saw him unpack a camera and stick it in his desk drawer. Nothing else.”
“At least you only have one roommate to deal with. The girl we’re stuck with is freaky little. I mean tiny. And weird.”
“She’s a freak,” he says. “Pot meet kettle.” He gl
ares at my hair, freshly dyed to blue-black, and my shoes, red platform mules that give me an inch on him. He may travel with an entire library, but I carry style like a high school girl collects emoticon apps.
I roll on my side. “She’s squirrely or something. Too much junk everywhere. Piles of crap. Rocks and shells.” I gesture to his bookshelves. “Kind of like you.”
“And are you sure rooming with Sonja is such a good idea? I heard she was in Burnett’s office so much last year they were going to let her bunk in the admin building. Where is she anyway?”
The door swings open and the boy from the cafeteria appears, without the counselor who had escorted him from the dining hall. His lip is swollen and fat. I want to press my finger against it, to see if it would hold the print, like an overripe plum.
“You,” he says.
“Me,” I say, artificial bright, because he’s staring at me with a look harder than ice, and I realize I’m on his bed. I sit up. “So they let you go, huh?”
The boy shrugs and tosses a jacket on the chair by the little desk. “For now. What are you doing here?”
I cross my legs, and my skirt rides up higher. His eyes are glued to them, and he doesn’t care that I know he’s looking, so I pretend not to notice.
“I’m Memory, Julian’s sister.” I hold out my hand. “Thanks for kicking Marcus’ ass.”
“Ethan,” he grunts. “No problem.” He ignores my hand.
I’m stung by his rudeness, as most guys are receptive to that smile, but I don’t show my irritation. I stand, smoothing my palms over my hips, straightening my skirt, and he follows the movement with his eyes. He steps away, letting me move past, and takes my place, lounging back. He’s too huge for the dormitory bed, shoes hanging off the end. His feet are big, too.
I raise an eyebrow, but Julian just shrugs. “Well, I’ve got a another roommate to wait for, and—”
“And clothes to shrink?”
I flip off my brother, ignoring the snort of laughter from the bed. “I was going to say, hide my belongings because the other one looks like she’ll start nesting in my sock drawer.”
