Chapter 13
It’s with a cautiously optimistic attitude that I make my way to my second special class of the year. I have my coffee and my newfound excitement about learning how to shift. And who knows? Maybe this will be the day Bane and I put our personal aversions aside and find some semblance of common ground.
At least enough not to kill each other.
It surprises me, when I find myself in front of B13 — the door ajar — and hear some young guy ask with reverence in his voice, “But wait, where did that happen?”
“In California,” I hear Bane reply. “I used to live there, among other places.”
I glance at my watch to make sure I’m not early. I’m not, so I walk into the classroom and see him sitting on the edge of his desk, surrounded by a mix of male and female shifter students. The ginger one, I believe, is Finn Brennan, the one Bane is here for.
“Wow, that’s awesome,” one of the girls says just as Bane turns his eyes onto me.
“Ah, morning, Miss Novak,” he says with an easy smile.
It all throws me off, but I guess you never know with this guy. “Morning,” I reply, but it’s not without hesitation that I start making my way to my desk.
“Why don’t you all make yourselves scarce,” Bane says as his eyes sweep over his fan group. “Work calls.”
Smiling and wide-eyed, some of them nod and some wave, but they immediately leave, closing the door behind them. I take my seat.
“So,” Bane starts. Without getting off the desk, he reaches for a folder behind him and starts perusing it, making me wonder what’s going on. Is that…
“Anna Novak, 29 years old, born in Croatia,” he recites. Then he looks up at me to ask, “That all correct?”
I guess it is my student file. And I guess we’ll be doing questions again. Only this time, I remind myself, I’ll be trying to tell the truth and I won’t be blocking my animal.
“Yes,” I say with a determined nod.
That seems to please him, but I’m busy feeling the presence rise to the surface, making my senses sharper. How is it that this time, I only have to decide not to block it?
Bane looks down at the file again. “And it was four years ago,” he keeps going, “that you first arrived to work as the Librarian here. Correct?”
He’s still looking down at the file, giving me the opportunity to scan his face. But the presence seems to want me to inspect him a lot more closely.
He looks up at me, an eyebrow quirked. It”s beautifully shaped, just like his nose and his lips, this sharpness in their lines making them interesting, not just attractive.
Shifting, Anna, shifting is your focus today. “Yes,” I reply, making myself refocus my thoughts.
“Before that, where were you employed?”
The question makes me frown, simply because it’s a question involving my past. But I find myself a lot less tense about it than usual.
My lips stretch into a smile. “Before that, I took a break to do some traveling.”
I guess it’s sort of true.
He squints at me. “Yeah? Where’d you go?”
“Ah,” I say with a wave of my hand, “I ended up mostly hanging around the hotel pool.” When I see the suspicion in his eyes, I give him a shrug and a smile. “What can I say? They had mean cocktails.”
To my misfortune, he doesn’t move on from this. “Hotel? Not hostel?” he insists. “So it wasn’t exactly a budget vacation?”
I’m still feeling more relaxed than ever answering questions like this, but it doesn’t make it smart. “Wow, ‘hostel’, ‘budget’,” I start a little mockingly. “I thought rich people didn’t have words like that at their disposal. Is that why you agreed to come teach here?” I raise my eyebrows at him in fake sympathy, failing to resist the urge to poke at him. “Your gambling empire turning to dust?”
“Sorry to disappoint,” he quips, “but it’s only growing stronger. Also, I’m the one asking questions here.”
“You are,” I murmur, still smiling, “but I’m starting to notice they’re all personal questions that have nothing to do with shifting.”
Something flashes through his eyes. “They are,” he says with this devious little smile. “Very basic personal questions, Miss Novak. So imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find answers to any of them, at least not before your arrival to Grimm Academy.”
The words and the smile make my bubble burst. I sit straight. “And where did you expect to find them? In that student file?” I ask with a laugh that I hope doesn’t sound as awkward as it feels.
“Sorry, um, I seem to have misspoke,” he says, obviously feigning confusion, before he leans a little forward to pin me with his eyes. “It was my usually highly efficient and incredibly expensive team of trained professionals that couldn’t find answers to any of those questions.”
For a second, I just blink at him, watching his lips curl into a self-satisfied smile. Then, when the realization starts hitting me, so does the anger.
Quickly, I lock the presence away and grit out, “You had PIs try to dig up dirt on me?”
“Not ‘dirt’ specifically. More like…” He shrugs, that smile still dancing on his lips. “Anything.”
“And why would you do that?”
He lets out a scoff. “I’m on a mission here, aren’t I? Until I get you to shift, I’m obligated to come to these classes. So I need to know stuff about you. It’s not like you’re being an open book with me, is it?”
For a second, I just stare at him. It’s not fair, because my past doesn’t concern anyone, let alone him. It’s not criminal and it has nothing to do with my shifter side.
I force myself to calm down so as not to raise any further suspicion, but there’s an underlying threat in my voice when I say, “Alright, here’s what we’ll do.” I lean a little forward, sliding my forearms down my desk. “You’ll stop wasting my time with these questions and you’ll start with the actual class. In return, I won’t report you for violating my privacy like that. How does that sound?”
To my surprise, his lips tug into a smirk. “Perfect,” he says, his voice suspiciously saccharine.
Then he stands straight and starts walking over to me.
I feel my eyebrows pull down as I watch him come to sit on the side of my desk, bent at the waist to face me.
“What’re you doing?”
He raises his eyebrows in feigned innocence. “Teaching you to shift,” he says as he takes the cup of coffee off my desk, turning it in his hand. “Or is it lessons in embroidery you’re after?”
“How is this teaching me to shift?”
He sniffs the coffee through the lid. “Ah, black…” And only then does he turn to me to acknowledge my question. “You’re so stuck up, you can’t even get close,” he says with a shrug. “You need to let those emotions surface.” His face lights up with a knowing smirk. “Some of that anger, for example.”
And he lifts the cup to his mouth, and without taking his eyes off me, he downs it all.
The bastard, he’s intent on pissing me off, I think as he puts the cup back down and throws me a smug smile. Maybe the smart thing would be to let him, but I can’t. Forcing myself to stay in control, I give him a fake smile and say, “Oh you’d like some coffee? Well, help yourself.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” he says, and he grabs my tote off my desk, making me almost move to stop him.
I grit my teeth. Let him, I tell myself. Don’t show that you mind.
“The Blood Treaty,” he starts reciting as he takes one of the books out, “the Ramifications of the Agreement Between the Scions and the Vampiric Crown and Its Effect on the Postmodern Era.” He shakes his head. “Ugh.”
“Too basic for you, I get it,” I say, but he’s already tossing that back inside and going back to rummaging, making me grit my teeth again.
“You know,” he says, “I’m falling asleep just looking at the contents of your bag.”
“And here I went to so much trouble to make it interesting for you.”
He ignores me, throwing yet another smug smile on when he finds something and takes it out of the bag. A tampon. “Well well, what do we have here?”
I roll my eyes at him. “No, not the tampon,” I drawl flatly. “Please, I’ll die of shame.”
My actual indifference is making it boring to him, so he just tosses it back inside and takes something else out.
My notebook. “Hey,” I hear myself warn before I even realize what I’m doing.
It makes a spark appear in his eyes. “Interesting,” he sneers.
The next thing I know, he’s lifting the hand with the notebook in the air. Gritting my teeth, I scramble to get out of my chair, but he’s already off my desk, walking backwards with this self-satisfied grin on his face.
“Give it back,” I demand as I try to catch him.
He lets me almost do it and then pushes past me, knocking into my shoulder with his. He’s found what he’s been looking for and he doesn’t seem to be willing to part with it.
I turn on my heel and keep following him as he walks between the rows of desks.
“Is it a diary perchance?” he asks mockingly, just as I lunge at him and almost grab the notebook.
He turns around and grabs my hand into his, squeezing it into a fist so I can’t move it at all.
“Don’t,” I warn as I watch him move to open the notebook with his free hand.
“The musings of a unique, troubled mind, am I right?”
I take advantage of his focus on the notebook to break my hand free, putting all my effort into keeping my cool. “I’m asking you, nicely, to give it back.”
“Ah, nicely. Pity. And what if I don’t?”
I get in his face, watching the smile slide off his face. He keeps staring at me and now his nostrils are flaring and his chest is heaving and I’m snapping out of it, urging myself to back the fuck off and not get myself into actual trouble, the notebook be damned.
Then, just like that, he gives it back, but he doesn’t stop staring at me.
Feeling exposed like never before, I don’t even make the conscious decision. I just turn on my heel, grab my tote off the desk and move to get the hell away from him.
But just as I’m about to reach the door, all the lights in the room go out and I find myself in complete darkness.
My heart pounding, I stumble back, bumping into something hard.
Just as I spin around, wondering what the hell is going on, the lights go back on and I find him standing in front of me, so close, I can only see his eyes. All of a sudden they shift into those pitch-black animal eyes with fire burning in them.
My breath catches, the presence stirring inside me again.
“You can’t keep hiding from me like this, Miss Novak,” he warns in a low, tense voice. “Not if you want to succeed.”
“Oh yes I can and I most definitely will,” I snap. “Why don’t you worry about what you can and can’t do?”
He just looks at me for a moment. Then he grits his teeth. “You’re right,” he says, taking a step back. “What I can’t do is teach a lost cause, and I should just make peace with it,” he tells me forcefully, not letting me look away. He waves a hand around. “I mean, a shifter who doesn’t even want to be a shifter is bad enough. But one who’d rather flunk all her exams than accept anyone’s help? Well, let me make it easier for you, huh?” He jabs an angry finger in the air between us. “From now on, you truly are on your lonesome. I’ll be showing up for these classes because I absolutely have to, which goes for you too in case you thought you could wiggle your way out of it. But I won’t be lifting a finger to help you, smartass.” He folds his arms, his face twisting in anger. “How does that sound?”
This overwhelming rage floods me. Are you really going to let him talk to us like that? the voice inside my head demands.
“Shut the fuck up,” I snap at it.
“Perfect,” I tell Bane through gritted teeth.
“Perfect,” he echoes.
At that, I just throw daggers at him for a second and then storm out of the classroom.