6. Addie
ADDIE
JAMIE DUFFY – RESONANCE
“And then she goes ‘unusual latency,’ like it was the most obvious answer in the world,” Fleur drawled, her accent sticking on the th sounds. She ducked, giggling, when I threw a chip at her face in retaliation.
Ethan rolled his eyes. “I was there, you know,” he grumbled, stabbing the chicken-something a little more forcefully than the poor, delicious beast deserved.
“Oh, I hadn’t noticed,” she teased around a mouthful of food. “Since you blinked out fifteen minutes in.”
“It was an unaccomplishable task,” Eth griped, looking to me for reinforcement.
I just shrugged and plopped another chip in my mouth. “I accomplished it.”
His expression darkened. “Yes, but you’re scary-smart at that stuff.” He absentmindedly moved food around the plate with his fork, then froze as something occurred to him. “Remind me never to let you near my phone.”
I scoffed at the same time as Fleur snorted.
“You don’t have a phone.”
“Well, when we graduate and are finally allowed to connect with the outside world again,” he replied, stabbing again. “I’ll have a phone. And you”—he punctuated the word by pointing at me with a forkful of chicken—“aren’t allowed near mine. God knows what you’d do to it.”
“Set your profile picture to a dick pic you inevitably send to some poor girl,” Fleur offered, giggling.
“Nah, set his ringtone to a sex moan probably,” I said with a casual shrug.
Fleur’s grin shifted from amused to lethal in half a second. “Add a secret location tracker so we can drop in on him when he least expects it.”
I grinned, shoved the last chip into my mouth, and brushed the salt off my fingertips. “You’re a fool if you think they’ll ever let you have social media again, though,” I said, watching as Fleur’s fork snuck ever-closer to Ethan’s plate.
He pouted in the most stereotypically cartoonish way, food completely forgotten. “I just miss fart compilation videos.” The wistfulness in his tone was almost funnier than Fleur’s sleight of hand.
“Of course you do.” I laughed—which escalated into a full-blown cackle when her fork retreated across the table, withdrawing with the goods secured.
Ethan, oblivious to the culinary larceny, rocked back on the bench seat. “What? They’re hilarious!”
I said nothing, just tried to rein in the snickers lest I blow Fleur’s cover as she made another snatch-and-grab.
“I saw that, blondie,” he said.
Fleur sniggered and Eth continued without pausing for breath. “Farts are universally funny, Adelaide, and if you disagree, then there’s something wrong with you, Ice Queen.”
My fork clattered onto the table. I levelled him with a hard stare. He didn’t even know it, but he’d just dashed whatever tiny morsel of a chance my libido had given him to finally get into my pants.
Instead, he smirked, raising both palms in mock surrender. “Easy,” he murmured, like he was soothing a spooked horse—which shot my ire higher. His lips parted to speak, but then his gaze snagged on something over my right shoulder and he dropped all pretence of mirth.
I took the hint without question. My hands slid off the table and dropped into my lap just as a nauseatingly familiar drawl sounded behind me.
“You made a mistake out there today, bitch.”
Seb had apparently opted for the meatballs for dinner tonight—his garlic-and-beef-scented breath accosted my nostrils as he leaned in. “No one stabs me and gets away with it.”
I reached out with my left hand to grab my water bottle and take a sip, letting him fret for a moment longer. Fleur and Ethan tracked the hellspawn trio’s movements like the assassins they were trained to be, so I wasn’t worried about a literal backstabbing.
“I seem to recall that you misplaced your dagger in my shoulder first. I was merely returning it to you. Wouldn’t want Daddy to know you’d lost such an expensive weapon, now, would you?” I commented casually, knowing it would trigger his smalldick ego.
And right on cue—
“You little—” he started, stepping into my personal space bubble.
That’s not polite.
But the words died on his tongue when his flaccid cock registered the press of sharp metal against itself, even before his mind had the chance to catch up.
The steak knife I’d swiped off the table was now lodged firmly in my right hand with its tip resting against the crotch of Seb’s trousers.
I didn’t even have to turn around to know his next move—pity he never knew mine.
“I’d rethink your next words carefully, Varco,” I murmured, my voice taking on that hardened edge.
He took a step back, and only then did I twist to glare at him.
“Knives tend to get misplaced around here,” I finished, watching the storm pass over his hateful face, before it finally landed on a dark smirk.
“That they do. Watch your back, Sinclair. You’ll get what’s coming to you one of these days.”
My eyes narrowed. “Try me,” I spat. “See how that goes for you.”
“Varco!” a deep, gravelled tone boomed across the now-silent cafeteria. “Don’t make me sanction you twice in one day.”
Beckett seemed like the kind of guy to stomp across a room when he was hellbent on a direction—but his feet passed silently over the worn tiles, revealing his less obvious strengths. He’d make an incredible master thief in another life. Unfortunately, his skill set was spoken for in this one.
“Three strikes and you’re out, kid,” he snapped.
Sebastos puffed out his chest like that would get him somewhere. Like Beckett wasn’t twice his width and pure muscle.
I should know. I’d walked right into it.
“My father—” Seb started.
“Your father,” Beckett interrupted, “would be appalled at the lack of discipline you’ve displayed on two separate occasions today alone—”
“Three,” Evander cut in from the doorway.
He rested against the jamb with arms crossed neatly over his chest. He didn’t waste time with politeness—his gaze bored into me again, scanning my body for injuries.
When they lingered on my hand a little too long, I remembered the steak knife still clutched in my clenched fist.
When Beckett shot a questioning look over to our tech instructor, I made use of the opportunity to discard the would-be dick-piercer back onto the table.
Evander’s face relaxed ever so slightly as he pushed off the doorjamb and strode into the room.
“Three?” Beckett asked his friend.
“Three. He’s the one who launched a laptop at my head during class today.”
“Oh, come on! It wasn’t at your head!” Sebastos whined, horrified at the prospect of that disciplinary meeting.
Evander’s face broke into an easy grin, and my stomach disloyally somersaulted at its appearance. “I guess I could be persuaded to believe you.”
When Beckett turned back around, he levelled Sebastos with another hard glare. “Bed. Now. You’ve done enough damage today.”
I could have sworn Beckett’s eyes drifted over to my shoulder—but surely, I was mistaken. Because he couldn’t possibly know Seb was the reason for the wound, could he? I hadn’t breathed a word to anyone other than my two best friends, and no one else had witnessed the attack.
Surely those trees didn’t have eyes—not all the way up there.
So, unless Seb dobbed himself in during Beckett’s office foray earlier—and there’s no way he was that thick—then he couldn’t have known. But maybe he suspected. Maybe he’d find out.
“That goes for all of you! Lights out in ten.”
And just like that, Hunter Beckett initiated a ten-minute countdown that felt more like the other shoe dropping than a bedtime story.
All initiates rushed to clean up their plates and beat each other to the communal bathroom before the lights were literally turned off at the switchboard, and we were subjected to the palpable darkness that was Assassin Academy at night.
We flew through piss stops and teeth cleaning faster than lightning strikes, switching into sleepwear quicker than cracks of thunder. The skies outside stormed racketously and no one wanted to be caught with their pants down when the instructors flicked that power switch.
Fleur, Eth, and I milled about my bed, watching the other initiates flounder.
“You know, you were right,” Fleur said to Ethan before kissing both his cheeks in her standard goodnight.
“About what?” he asked, the tips of his ears reddening.
She grasped my face in both hands and pressed her lips to my cheeks too. “Farts are hilarious,” she answered quietly, her eyes suddenly riveted to the bed beside us.
Its occupant, Lee Wong, was plumping up his pillow, readying himself for sleep when he started coughing and gagging out of nowhere. His gaze shot accusingly around the room, seconds before his shoe whacked Dallas Delaroche in the back of the head.
“What was that for?!” Dallas shouted, rubbing his close-cropped skull as Fleur collapsed into a fit of silent laughter, shaking the whole cot.
“For dropping ass near my face, you dirty prick,” Lee answered, refusing to accept Dallas’ innocence on the matter.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” I whispered, overjoyed at her ease in instigating World War Three in the dorm room.
She answered with a salacious wink. “A lady never farts and tells.”
Ethan sniggered, then muttered, “Goodnight, ladies.” He pressed a kiss to both our foreheads then traipsed over to his own cot on the far side of the room.
Before I could fold myself beneath the covers, the lights flicked off, leaving me floundering in the dark with an immovable Frenchwoman atop them.
“Take mine tonight,” she murmured, dropping back onto the lone pillow. “I cannot be bothered moving now—your pillow smells, by the way. I’ll take the ice water alarm clock for one morning.”
Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth—seriously, where did that saying come from and had it ever made sense?—I jumped at the chance for a decent night’s sleep.
“No take-backs. Me and your two fluffy pillows have a date tonight! Great timing, too, since I just got my period and I literally feel like I’m going to expire.”
She winced, only a flash of teeth visible in the darkness. “Eesh, it’s bad again?”
“Worse every month.”
She pressed another kiss to my cheek. “There are tampons and pads—the good ones—in my trunk. And a few disposable heat packs, too. Help yourself. My mother, at least, sees to it that I have those kinds of necessities in here. Now go curl up in my comfy bed and try not to, how you say, expire.” She laughed and tucked herself neatly beneath my blankets.
“Thanks, blondie, I owe you one!” I half-whispered, half-sang, proceeding to practically frolic over to Fleur’s cot right in the middle of the room.
Her giggle followed me over, and then I snuggled into her floral-scented pillows and immediately forgot about everything else.
She got to sleep like this every night?! Honestly, where was the justice in the world?
Sleep claimed me quickly after that, and I dreamed of fresh baguettes and scenic river walks until the sound of a dumped ice-water bucket jolted me awake.