The Other Side of Envy: The Ghost Bird Series: #8 (The Academy)

by C. L. Stone

  “That’s Luke,” Gabriel said.

  Code? I wondered how he knew. I remembered Volto, though, and how he’d tricked me before, making me approach the SUV cautiously, seeking out Luke’s face.

  I found him in the driver’s side mirror reflection first. Then he rolled down his window and waved, smiling. He was clean now. His long blond hair was brushed back and swept up into a black hair clip. He winked at me. “Didn’t I just see you?”

  Gabriel got in on the passenger side. I hopped in behind Luke. The moment we were inside, Luke took off.

  Gabriel sat back, slumped against the door. He breathed out heavily. “Geez. Motherfucker needs to be in jail.”

  “Not yet,” Luke said. He drove down the lane, taking a winding route between the trees surrounding us. “Soon, though. But first, he’s our weakest link. Kota says they’re working on a plan. McCoy and Hendricks seems to have different dirt on each other. We’re looking for Mr. Hendricks’s dirt. In the meantime, we’re following McCoy’s every move. So far he doesn’t do a lot but he’s been on the move lately.”

  “Why is he coming here?” Gabriel asked.

  “Don’t know,” Luke said. “That’s what they want to find out. It might be like the others. He’s been sent to find out what you’re doing. We just didn’t want him finding Sang here.”

  “Now what?” Gabriel asked.

  Luke slowed the car a bit as he looked into the rearview mirror, angling it so he could look at me. I smiled a little, trying to show I was fine, but my heart was racing a mile a minute. I wanted answers, too, but I didn’t know where to go for them. We’d overheard Mr. McCoy talking to Principal Hendricks, and ever since then, we’d kept our distance from the principal and he hadn’t called me down to the office. There was a discussion to try to find out how much Mr. McCoy might have told Mr. Hendricks, but we hadn’t gotten the opportunity, especially when the principal never called me into his office anymore.

  “There’s always someone chasing his tail now,” Luke said. “Only less obvious so they’re not caught. So we’ll see how long he stays looking at your place and if he’ll lose interest. He might be under orders from Mr. Hendricks. That’s hard to tell, though, because since that night, Mr. McCoy operates alone, without talking to Mr. Hendricks at all.”

  Ever since I’d overheard Mr. McCoy at the school dance, talking in the shadows with Mr. Hendricks, I’d been going over what I’d heard. They’d sounded like enemies, and yet they were working together. They were making veiled threats against each other. They thought the Academy team was their common enemy, and it forced them to work together.

  That reminded me of Mr. Hendricks and the superintendent. Neither of them got along like friends. So why work together?

  “Who does he talk to?” I asked. “Does Mr. McCoy interact with anyone else?”

  “I don’t know,” Luke said. He turned the car onto a busier road, and started heading north. “I think I heard Mr. Morris’s name at some point.”

  “Maybe we should talk to him,” I said.

  Luke shook his head. “Nope. I’m supposed to take you all somewhere else other than around where Mr. McCoy might show up.”

  I wanted to press him, but it seemed like the best chance for me to talk to Mr. Morris might not be outside of school. I had class with him. Maybe I could find out then.

  “Right now, we’ve got other things to do,” Gabriel said.

  “Your birthday?” Luke asked.

  Gabriel sliced his hand through the air. “Besides that. I mean about Sang wanting in the Academy.”

  Luke’s head turned sharply to look at him, his hands releasing the wheel for a moment. He caught it just before the car started to drift to the right. “Does she want in?” he asked. He coughed and then looked in the rearview. “Sorry, I mean, you really want in?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I caught Gabriel’s eye, questioning why he was bringing Luke into this. I wasn’t ready to battle Luke yet. Luke didn’t want me to join because he was worried I’d join another team. “I mean, shouldn’t I? I already help out. Wouldn’t it be a good thing if I joined?”

  Luke pulled into the empty parking lot of a run-down café. He turned in his seat so he could face Gabriel and me. “Listen, I heard North talking on his phone the other day about you joining the team.”

  I perked up. “What’d he say?”

  “He was talking to this guy. I sort of know him. He and his team don’t live too far out of Charleston. North had been on a job with him and was trying to fill him in on details, but in the meantime, the guy asked how it was going getting our girl on the team. So he knew about you. North was vague about the details, but asked a few questions.”

  “What the fuck?” Gabriel asked. “He’s just going to blab about her to anyone? What if he told the rest of the Academy? What if they looked in on her?” Gabriel sat back and groaned. “Jeez. What happened to not talking about her much?”

  “Hang on,” Luke said. “I don’t think this guy will talk to the other groups. From their conversation, it sounded like they’d talked about this in depth before. I think this other guy has a girl on his team.”

  “A couple team?” Gabriel asked.

  “No, there’s other guys on the team. At least two, maybe a third.”

  This seemed to spark Gabriel’s interest. I eagerly sat on the edge of my seat, waiting for confirmation, one way or another. “Does having other people on the team make a difference?” I asked.

  “Does if there’s a girl,” Gabriel said. He focused on Luke. “Where are they? Can we go talk to them?”

  “You want to?” Luke asked.

  “North’s talking to him. He’s telling them about our business. If North thinks he’s okay, then we should be able to talk to them. Why didn’t he say anything before?”

  “He’s been keeping a lot of secrets lately,” Luke said quietly.

  I’d noticed North had been quiet for the last couple of weeks. I thought maybe he was simply tired. Football was starting to gear up for some final games before playoffs, plus he was working a lot of extra hours at the diner. He often took short naps, and I’d find him on Kota’s couch passed out for a few minutes before he got up to go to work.

  We exchanged looks. I probably should have disagreed with Gabriel’s idea, but I couldn’t help it. Curiosity won over. Without a word, we all nodded at the same time. We wanted to know.

  Luke turned the car back on, and turned the wheel. “Good,” he said. “Glad we’re all agreed. Let’s go.”

  THE THREE AMIGOS DISCOVER

  Gabriel got directions to the house by asking covert questions to someone else in the Academy. He said he was asking because he needed a favor from one of the guys.

  The house was brick, two story, and surrounded by live oak trees in a wide circle around the property, making the big house look cozy at first. As we got closer, I realized the house was larger than it seemed, more like an estate. The structure was a good distance from the nearest neighbor, and we couldn’t see anyone from the yard due to the woods surrounding the property.

  The estate itself looked dingy. The white paint was old. There was ivy growing over part of it, although some of the ivy had died and all that was left were branches and a few dead leaves sticking to the walls. A heavy amount of fall leaves covered the lawn.

  “Creepy,” Luke said as he drove slowly along the gravel lane toward the house.

  “When the zombie apocalypse happens,” Gabriel said, “this is the last place I want to be. Zombies would be coming out of the woods all the time. You can’t see shit.”

  “I’m hoping for dino-pocalypse, personally,” Luke said. “Less smelly.”

  “More smell,” Gabriel said. “Dinosaur poop probably smells.”

  “I can stand poop over rotting dead bodies trying to eat my brain.”

  I giggled. It eased my fear a little bit. I imagined I wouldn’t want to come here in the dark, though.

  “How do we know they’re even here?” Gabriel asked
.

  “It’s the weekend,” Luke said. He pulled up along the drive close to the door and parked there. There was a garage off to the side, with several cars parked in the driveway. “And it looks like they’re home.”

  There weren’t any signs of life in the windows. For a Sunday afternoon, there wasn’t much activity going on.

  “Still,” Gabriel said. He opened his door, stepped out and looked around. He moved to open the door to the back seat and I climbed out to stand beside him.

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  “Ask what they know about keeping a girl on their team,” Gabriel said. He pointed to the front of the house. “Don’t worry. No matter what, they’re Academy. Even if they live in an old, rickety house.”

  “My house is an old rickety house,” Luke said. He came around the other side of the car and started up the walkway toward the front door. “But that’s because no one kept it up and we’re fixing it. This house, no one kept up on purpose, but there’s people living here. The lawn’s covered in leaves, but the bushes haven been pruned back. The hinges on that door look new, but the paint around the window looks chipped.”

  “Maybe they only know how to do a few chores,” Gabriel said, following Luke up the steps. I was close behind. “Maybe they don’t know how to repaint, but they can repair a hinge.”

  “Maybe they’re older than we thought,” Luke said. “They can only do so much.”

  The porch creaked badly the moment Luke stepped on it. He and I both looked for a way around the creaking by easing our weight on the wood boards, but the moment either of us put weight on a step, the noise gave us away.

  “That’s done on purpose,” Luke said. He lifted his head, gazing through locks of his blond hair toward the windows. “They listen out for this.”

  “Smart,” Gabriel said. “We should do that to your house.”

  Luke nodded and then stepped up, creaking and all, to the front door.

  He rang the doorbell in multiple ways: fast, slow, stopping, once, fast. It wasn’t the same pattern as before. Random.

  There was an echo of voices on the other side, at least three, but there could have been more. All male.

  Gabriel and Luke stood together at the door. I slid behind them, ducking behind their shoulders. This wild day was just getting crazier by the moment. My courage was draining fast. I thought up excuses as to why I might want to wait in the car.

  Looking at them together, it was the first time I realized Gabriel was taller than Luke. Didn’t he used to be shorter? He must have grown.

  There was metal scraping against metal as locks were undone. The door opened, creaking almost as much as the stairs.

  I had a hand on both Luke and Gabriel, my palms to their backs, ready to run.

  At the door was a middle-aged man, maybe late thirties, thin, with a scar from his chin all the way to his lip. He had dark eyes and dark hair. He studied us carefully before opening the door more. He was taller than Silas, wearing jeans and a dark sweater.

  “We don’t need our lawn mowed,” the man said in a low rumbly voice with the equivalence of get-off-my-property venom in his tone. “We do it ourselves. And we like our leaves where they are, thank you.”

  There was a silence. I swallowed the thickness in my throat, ready to apologize and leave. Gabriel tensed under my palm, and backed up a step. He must have felt the same way.

  “We’re from the Academy,” Luke said, tense but steady.

  The man’s eye twitched. “You say...” His voice drifted off.

  Silence filled the space. Was he not from the Academy? Did we have the wrong house?

  “What are you three doing?” A female voice rang out from inside the home. “Who’s at the door?”

  The man in the doorway cringed, like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He backed up and opened the door wider.

  A woman finished walking down the steps to stand near two other men. She had blond curly hair cut to her shoulders. She was taller than me, with a shapely body and a couple of faded scars along her arms. She wore black pants and a bulky sweater that clung to her shape and hung off her shoulders.

  Beautiful.

  There was something else about her, too. Her eyes. Her face. Something wasn’t right about it. I couldn’t pinpoint it. Sadness?

  Haunted. Like a doll, only spookier. Kota once said my face was haunted. It didn’t look like that. Hers was far more delicate.

  She smiled faintly at seeing us clustered on the porch. The men that stood beside her stepped out of the way as she came forward. “Are you the new neighbor children?” she asked.

  “They say they’re from the Academy,” the man who answered the door replied.

  Her eyes widened and she waved a hand at him. “Then let them in, William,” she said to him. She looked over to one of the other men, the one with black hair slicked back on his head. “Henry, fetch the lemonade and that tin of cookies we got in the mail the other day.”

  “Are we having tea?” the third man asked. He had strawberry-blond hair, bright blue eyes, and fair skin with freckles on his face and arms. He frowned, like he didn’t like this scenario. He was an inch or two shorter than the woman, but he stood tall, and wore thick-heeled boots, so he was even shorter than he appeared. He was bulky, though, with broad shoulders and muscular arms. He studied us with caution.

  The other men were just as tense. They moved stiffly, but did what she asked. William, the man with the scarred face, waved us inside.

  My arms stiffened at my sides. My eyes were wide. My hand crept up to the dip at my neck. I’d go back in a heartbeat and talk to Mr. Blackbourne about anything after this experience. We should have asked him first.

  Luke and Gabriel were shoulder to shoulder as they entered, moving to adjust only to avoid a potted plant on a stand. I kept right behind them. The foyer was dim, but beyond it, the hall was lit up well, as if making up for the gloom outside. There was a tile floor and a wooden staircase leading to a second floor, and ornate objects on tables. Portraits and plants took up a lot of space. There was a living room to the left, and an open door on the right revealed a room with bookshelves and an unlit fireplace.

  William closed the door behind us and then turned, took one look at me, seeming to see me for the first time, and then placed a hand over his chest. “Oh god,” he said as he closed the door. He turned a couple of locks, but kept his eyes on me. “Don’t tell me this is about a bird.”

  There was a groan from Henry and the blond man. Henry marched away, through the living room and pushed at a swinging door that opened to reveal a kitchen. Henry disappeared, the door shut closed behind him.

  The third man, the fair one, approached us, his hands up and stepping protectively in front of the woman. “Listen,” he said carefully, “just tell us why you’re here.”

  “Actually we are here about Sang,” Gabriel said.

  “You’ve been talking with North Taylor about her,” Luke said. “We’re here to find out what was said and what we need to know.”

  “North Taylor?” the woman said. She looked at the others in confusion. “Who’s been talking to him?”

  “Henry has,” William said through gritted teeth.

  “How come no one’s told me?” the woman asked. She turned to us, reached a hand out to Gabriel in offering. “My name is Lily.”

  “Gabriel,” he said. He took her hand and shook it.

  She moved on to Luke who shook her hand and said his name.

  She moved again to angle herself between Luke and Gabriel. They parted, revealing me behind them.

  She held out her hand.

  I lifted mine to meet hers.

  I said my name, but my voice was gone.

  “Pardon?” she asked.

  “Her name is Sang,” Gabriel said.

  “Nice to meet you, Sang,” she said quietly. She moved with an air of grace like what I had seen in Victor’s mother, however, this woman…Lily…. She moved more smoothly, like it was
natural rather than taught.

  “No wonder they’re asking about you,” William said, who was standing by the living room opening. The blond man reached out, punching him in the arm. William winced and shook his head. “I just mean I understand it. I didn’t say anything about...”

  “Just shut up,” the blond man said.

  “Don’t mind them,” Lily said. She waved her hand delicately toward them. “They get overprotective of me around new people.

  The blond man mumbled something but I couldn’t understand it.

  Lily studied me for a moment and then smiled, the unsure glint still on her face but she masked it behind warmth. “Sang,” she said. “How about you and I go into the library and chat? If you feel comfortable, I’d like to talk with you.”

  No, no, no! My eyes went wide, and I looked at the boys, afraid to leave them. There was nothing wrong with Lily, but this was a creepy house and the men didn’t want us to be there.

  But North came here. He hadn’t told me. They’d asked about me? Talked about me? Why?

  Gabriel and Luke shared a look and then stared back at me, waiting. They waited for me to voice my own opinion if I wanted to go off with Lily or not.

  Maybe it was better if we split up. Looking around, there weren’t any other girls. Just the three men and the woman. Boys with a single girl.

  If they were in the Academy, then it obviously was allowed. North had come here to ask about me, possibly to see how I could join with them?

  I nodded, relenting to the request, but I pulled my phone from Gabriel’s pocket. I’d hold onto that. Just in case.

  Gabriel let me without looking at what I was doing. He knew.

  Luke touched my arm briefly, encouraging.

  I moved forward, feeling a knot tightening in my stomach. This was more than I’d bargained for. North had talked to them; I had to believe if he talked to them about me, then I should be able to trust them.

  Why hadn’t North told me?

  LILY’S DOG TEAM

  Moments later, I was sitting on a clean sofa in a library. I’d never been in a formal library in a home before. This one was better than I’d ever dreamed to have for myself.