Chapter 25
SADIE
Iplanned to sneak into my room, curl up in bed, and stare at the ceiling while I went over everything that had happened in the last twenty four hours, but I didn’t make it in the door before a shadow threw itself at me in the dark.
I stumbled back, the door slamming shut, and only my exhaustion slowed my immediate reaction which was to punch my assailant in the tit.
Moonlight caught blonde hair, and I exhaled a rough breath.
“Elix.”
She didn’t have her notepad, but the way she shook my shoulders until my brain rattled inside my head was pretty self explanatory.
“Long story,” I muttered.
She moved back enough to let me see her face, usually sweet but now hard around the eyes and mouth.
I sighed, saying goodbye to my plans of curling up in bed. “Rev and her gang of mindless followers jumped me on my way back from touring House of Sun’s wing.”
When Elix began to shake, I wondered if I should leave it there, but she narrowed her eyes and made a carry on motion.
“She must have used some vampire woo-woo shit, because I couldn’t move.
Then those pricks threw me over the edge of the boundary like a bag of rubbish.
” I swallowed, the lie unpleasant but necessary.
I brushed my thumb over the charm on the bracelet and added, “I’ve been trying to find my way back to the boundary all this time. ”
She glanced at me, at the shirt I’d stolen from Leander’s wardrobe, and my stomach dropped.
The bracelet disguised my scent, but did it extend to the clothes I wore?
I was so sure when her eyes darkened that she knew, and my shoulders hunched as she stalked to the chest of drawers beside her bed where she’d left her pen and pad.
Those bitches took your clothes, she wrote, so angrily that the page ripped. And it was like a gift from god, that wrong assumption.
“Yeah,” I said faintly, and tried to remind myself I was a good liar. But this lie was bitter on my tongue. It had been so long since I’d had anyone who’d notice I went missing, let alone care that I was gone. “Reed and Professor Beaufort rescued me near the boundary. Reed found these for me.”
I plucked at the shirt, and it took all my effort to keep my focus here, instead of back at the cottage with Leander and Verne.
We’ll kill them, Elix wrote, slashing a line beneath the words.
“I have a better plan,” I said, rubbing an aching spot on my arm, either from the shift or from climbing my way up the hill to the academy. “Sabotage.”
The door flew open behind me and I stumbled as a figure barrelled inside. So on edge, I threw out a punch—and yelped when my fist slammed into Paige’s boob.
“Fuck, Sadie,” she cried, clutching her chest. “A tit punch? Really?”
“I thought you were an attacker,” I explained, wincing but so happy to see her. Two friends—I had two friends who gave a shit about me. It was more than I’d had since I graduated high school. “I thought you were gonna drug me, turn me into a mannequin, and toss me off the edge of the cliff.”
Paige arched an eyebrow, the pain on her dark face shifting to amusement. “Toss you off? You’re not my type.”
I groaned. “Don’t make me punch the other tit.”
Elix held up her pad, and the two words she’d written made me smile wider than I had since I’d arrived in this infernal place. Group hug?
“Hell yes,” I agreed, opening my arms.
Paige threw hers around the both of us, resting her head on my shoulder. “I thought you were dead. I thought we’d find you hanging from the staircase with your eyes gouged out like Fioranna.”
I shuddered. Was that what Rev would have done tonight, if Beaufort hadn’t interrupted us?
“I’m lucky I got the pushed to my death treatment instead of the eye gouging kind.” Maybe Rev and her cronies switched up the methods of every murder. Knowing this place, that was probably one of the lessons—Murder Methods for Beginners. Maybe Rev was just going through the textbook.
“What was this I heard about sabotage?” Paige asked, lifting her head to look between us.
“I have a few ideas. We need to—”
A scream made all three of us startle together, and I tightened my arms around my friends on reflex, Elix’s wide eyes colliding with mine.
What if Rev knows you’re not dead? Elix wrote hastily.
“Oh, she does,” I said in a snarl. “I ran into her in the grounds.”
“If she knows she failed to kill you,” Paige said, staring at the door as the scream continued, shrieking and loud. “It sounds like she found another victim and made sure they’re dead this time.”
The three of us ventured cautiously into the hallway, armed with weapons Elix had pilfered from the House of Stone wing of the building during her tour.
We weren’t the only ones who’d come to investigate; others spilled out of the doorways along this hall, some of them doing double takes when they saw me.
Rogue, whose room was at the end of the hall, spotted me and rushed at us so quickly I didn’t see her move.
One second I was pointing a dagger at the hallway, the next my hand was by my side and her arms were tight around me.
“Surprise,” I said, though I was the one surprised by her reaction. “I’m not dead.”
Rogue drew back to sweep a look down my body, and my stomach flipped at the wrath that entered her eyes.
But she didn’t rat me out, didn’t sniff out the new wolf scent on me, and when her stare lingered on my scratched arms, my sore hands, I realised she was enraged at the sorry state of me.
Maybe she, like Elix, assumed my attacker had stolen my clothes because she didn’t even blink at my new wardrobe. 1
“Who’s screaming?” Paige asked, brushing past Rogue as she released my arms—I didn’t even realise she had hold of me—and searching the hallway.
“Lilis,” Rogue replied, her composure back in place as she gazed down the crowded corridor. “She arrived in the same shipment as me.”
Elix held up her paper. Is she hurt?
“Not physically by the sounds of it,” Rogue replied, her shoulders moving with a sigh, drawing my attention to the flimsy night shirt she wore.
I dragged my stare away, not trusting myself not to stare at her boobs again, and startled when a tall, graceful blonde woman raced into view, covered in blood.
“She’s in a relationship with another slayer. Soria Runel.”
“Her arms,” Lilis wailed, covering her face with bloody hands. “They took her arms.”
The four of us shared a look. First Fioranna’s eyes, and now Soria’s arms? “Jesus,” I breathed.
“It’s like Frankenstein,” Paige said at the same time I said, “It’s fucking Build-A-Bear.”
It was an inappropriate time to laugh, but I’d just narrowly escaped death, returned as a wolf, met two men who claimed me as their mates—I was still figuring out the importance of that—and snuck back into Lunova Academy where we were trained to kill people like me.
I think I’d earned some inappropriate humour.
It died when Elix held up her pad:
Someone’s picking us off one by one.
Rogue nodded, arms crossed over her chest. “And the victims never met each other, which means any one of us could be next.”