Chapter 3 #3
When you’re descended from that kind of power, you become the greatest object of desire within a mile, and it’s unfair that I can hate Tia the way I do and still feel that tug in my gut, the prickle of sweat on my palms like I’m a schoolgirl peeking at a crush.
Tia ducks her head at something the guy beside her says, tucking a curled lock behind her ear. Her hair is braided into a crown over her head, sparkling like a tiara of jewels.
She looks exquisite, and my fingers itch to spill red wine over her.
As I stare, Tia’s gaze shifts.
Our eyes catch.
She stills.
My feet carry me forward before I can even register that they’re moving. One moment I’m in clear view of the yaoguai, the next I’ve replaced my visual of spells and demons with a front seat to the show of a pissed-off Tia.
I straighten to my full height of Shorter-Than-Tia, and raise my brow. ‘Hello, new labmate. Loser life treating you the same as always?’
Look, I even pretend to be civil – I offer her a crooked half-smile with the remark.
Tia takes a demure sip from a flute of champagne and sniffs. ‘We’ll be spending so much time together once our internship restarts this week. Why are you here? Do you pre-emptively miss me?’
No, I’m here because you look pretty and easy to pick on and I’m bored. Oh, also, something is very, very wrong. I can’t say that, though, so I turn to the intern beside Tia. ‘Hey, can you leave us?’
The man blinks once, twice, and his annoyingly wide smile vanishes before he turns and leaves.
‘I really preferred it when you were mean to everyone far away from me,’ Tia says the second he’s disappeared into the crowd of people. ‘Please don’t drag me into all the fights you like to pick.’
‘Not everything is about you. We have to work together soon, and we’ve been so good at hating each other from afar.
I was just making sure we could keep up the great work in private.
’ I beckon a waiter over and relieve him of another glass of apple juice.
God, I have to steal some of this. But as I take a sip I spot another yaoguai by the doors of the gala hall.
My heart stutters in my chest. What’s happening?
Suddenly, sticking to Tia feels more like a tactical move than a boredom-born antic.
Speaking of Tia, her face morphs rapidly into a polite smile as a journalist passes by, and grinds down into a gritted grin the second they’re gone. ‘Were you born petty?’
‘Were you born a spineless people pleaser?’ I fight to keep my voice stable. There’s another yaoguai by the back of the room. Now that I’m seeking their light-sucking, slinking figures, I notice them everywhere. There shouldn’t be so many. My skin crawls with a million possibilities.
I turn to Tia. ‘Remember when you cost me my top grade because you wouldn’t testify that I’d made my final presentation by myself, even though you saw me working on it all night at the library?’
‘The day before the exam.’ Aside from looking irritated, Tia looks calm, which means there can’t be anything big planned tonight.
Right? ‘That final presentation took me weeks to finish, and yours was too detailed to have been done overnight. I don’t care whether you cheated – there’s no way I trust you enough to vouch for your integrity. ’
‘Because I’m a Fox?’ I counter. I take another sip of my apple juice, but it sours with the nerves in my stomach, and I have to set it down on a nearby table. ‘Are you just bitter that I’ll always be better than you?’
Tia shoots me a glare. ‘Because you copied all my physics notes for our finals. I don’t care that you’re a Fox. You’re rude, and unhinged, and mean. I can’t believe I have to put up with you for another year.’
‘Feeling’s mutual. If you hate me so much, why can’t you just walk away?’
‘Because I was here first! Christ, you’re so infuriating.’ For a second, Tia’s voice rises above the hushed whisper she’d been using, a hairline fissure cracking through her placid facade.
It’s startling enough that I pause my yaoguai search (I’ve counted four and that’s such a bad, shitty, awful number) to grasp Tia’s dark gaze. Her bare shoulders are tense with the type of reeled-in fury you only see from someone who was raised to take anger, not show it.
But she locks her emotions away with admirable speed and deflates quickly. ‘Just – do us both a favour, and go to the other side of the room.’
The other side of the room, where there are miraculously no more yaoguais.
Shit. I look past Tia to see three of them prowling close, their gazes dark with focus, their tenebrous forms slipping between the crowd.
Most of the guests are unfazed – the magic-less cannot see them, and the magic-born know they are safe with the Sentinels on site.
I have magic and I’m safe. At this distance, there’s a seventy-five per cent chance that the yaoguais can sense magic – and, judging by the way they’re cornering me, they’ve definitely been sent to sense my Fox magic, and they’re doing a very good job.
Instinctively, I shuffle closer to Tia. ‘No, thank you. They’re doing a big speech about the moonstones soon, and this spot is the best view of the stage.’
We’re at the back of the hall, furthest from the stage. I don’t even bother kicking myself over the shitty lie. I’m too busy screaming in my head.
Tia looks like she’s about to burn a hole through me.
I proffer a wide, fake smile as I sweep the room again. The four yaoguais are getting closer.
Tia doesn’t seem to notice any of this, which means she either doesn’t care or she’s expecting their presence. Which is it?
When I look back at Tia, I’m met with a frown.
‘What are you looking at?’ she asks.
Then, for a split second, her eyes flick to a yaoguai in the corner.
She knows. She’s known this whole time, which means there is something planned – and I’m caught right in the middle of it.
Fighting every instinct to run, I meet Tia’s gaze. I pointedly don’t look at the yaoguais. Anything to keep up the facade that I’m magic-less.
Instead, I tip my chin towards an approaching figure behind Tia. ‘Someone’s here for you.’
Tia whips around to regard the ballroom, and curses under her breath.
It’s Kevin Tan. He parts the crowd like Moses and the Red Sea (if Moses was bald and the Red Sea had been extremely reluctant), and stops an arm’s length from Tia. ‘Lune, good evening. I’m Kevin Tan, CEO of Ferrix.’
Despite my nerves, I have to look away to hide my smile when I see the bruise I’d left on his cheek.
But looking away means facing the three yaoguais, who are now circling us within a horrifying five-metre radius.
Where is the fourth?
Tia shakes Kevin’s hand. ‘Good evening, Mr Tan. Please, call me Tia. I’m off-duty.’
‘I was intending to discuss the stolen blueprints, actually, which you lost on duty.’ Kevin sniffs as he looks around. He says something else, but I’ve stopped listening.
Cold flashes up my neck, blaring WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
The fourth yaoguai is at the door. It leaves only one escape route for their victim – the exit to the lift lobby.
In front of which Tia has been standing the whole night.
It’s a trap.