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Chapter Fourteen

Kia

The fire started in my locker.

I was rushing into school after dropping off an early-morning delivery for Sara. I pushed through more students than should have been standing around as the bell rang over our heads. They turned to stare at me. “Yes, new girl.” I rolled my eyes. “Get over it.”

And then I saw it. My locker door was open, hanging off one hinge and scorched black. The surrounding lockers were burned as well, and sticky with the residue from a fire extinguisher. The smell of smoke was acrid and burned my nostrils, familiar enough to send my stomach cartwheeling. A firefighter stood next to it in his gear. Headmaster Bradley saw me as I was wondering if I could vanish back into the crowd. “Kia Alcott.”

Students stepped back, leaving me exposed. I felt dizzy and nauseous. This was too familiar, way too familiar. Did I look guilty? I felt it, even though I’d been nowhere near the school when the fire broke out. I was used to evading accusations of firestarting, but mostly because I was used to actually starting them. This kind of irony made me feel brittle, breakable.

“What’s going on?” I asked, my voice squeakier than I would have liked. Seeing the firefighter made my palms sweat. I was back at my old school, smelling burning roses and hearing Riley scream.

“Come with me, please,” Bradley said curtly. “I’ve already contacted your grandmother.”

I followed him because there was no convenient window to climb through. “I didn’t do it,” I said as he sat behind his desk.

“You can see how I might question that.”

“I was delivering pastries at Brontë’s Café,” I told him, clenching my hands when the nervous sweat on my palms started to feel like sparks. “You can check.”

“You can be sure I will.”

“I didn’t do it,” I said again.

“You are suspended, Miss Alcott, pending further investigation.”

“Absolutely not.” Abby marched into the office in her plaid coat and work boots. She must have collected a bouquet of speeding tickets to get here so fast.

“Arson is a very serious offense,” Bradley said. The word “arson” made my head spin.

“I agree. Which is why you will not accuse my granddaughter without serious and irrefutable proof.”

“The fire started in her locker.”

“Circumstantial evidence at best. Kia will continue to attend classes until you can verify without a shadow of a doubt that she was behind the fire. Innocent until proven guilty.”

“Her transcripts speak for themselves,” Bradley said. “Even you must agree with that—”

“If I’d set the fire,” I interrupted, “don’t you think I’d be smart enough not to set it in my own locker?”

He paused at that. “Perhaps it wasn’t intentional, but it’s still serious. Do you keep flammable items in your locker? That is against school rules.”

“I don’t exactly collect Molotov cocktails, if that’s what you’re asking me,” I said. “Maybe someone framed me.”

I’d said it because I was grabbing at straws, but now I wondered. The coincidence was too perfect. And for once, I hadn’t done anything. Even Justine, who was possessive and jealous about Ethan, wouldn’t go that far. She was bitchy, but she clearly didn’t see me as an actual threat. And as a prank, it was over-the-top, especially since I had exactly one friend to my name. There was no way Sloane would ever pull something like this.

“Framed? Let’s not stray into the realm of the ridiculous,” Bradley returned, annoyed. “This isn’t a detective show, Kia. It’s a cry for help.”

I suddenly really, really wanted to flick fire from my fingertips just to see the look on his face. Abby’s hand clamped around my wrist. “Kia wasn’t even here at the time of the incident,” she pointed out sharply. “I trust that will be in your reports? The ones you send to Holden Blackwood’s lawyers?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not the bad guy here.”

“Prove it,” Abby said.

There was a very, very long pause in which I thought very, very hard about self-control.

“I suppose since the incident occurred when the school was empty, we might discuss probation. No extracurricular activities, no failed assignments, and absolutely no infractions of any kind while the investigation is underway.”

“Done,” Abby said quickly.

“Fairness is all well and good,” Bradley added. “But my goal is the safety of the entire student body, not just one troubled girl.”

“I’m not troubled,” I muttered. “I’m
in
trouble. Big difference.” I stopped talking when Abby sent me her patented granny death glare. I’d swear she could make her eyes glitter like animal eyes when she wanted to.

She nodded to Bradley. “Thank you.”

“We’ll have questions,” he said to me. “In the meantime, I’ll be calling your employer and Brontë’s Café to verify your whereabouts this morning.”

“Good.”

Abby didn’t talk to me again until we were in the parking lot. “You didn’t do this, did you?”

There was a flash of hurt that she would ask me, but I couldn’t blame her. “No, Abby.”

“Good. Get back to class.”

“What,
now
?”

She nodded sternly. “Before the stories get out of hand. Carry on as though everything is fine, Kia. I don’t need to tell you that you can’t afford this kind of attention.”

“I know,” I said, still smelling burning roses. “Believe me, I know.”

Chapter Fifteen

Ethan

I made a pass through the obstacle course to clear my head. I went through the maze of posts, scaled the brick wall, and pulled myself up one of the rope ladders until my shoulders were screaming and sweat ran down the side of my face. There were platforms set in the tree with rope bridges between them, since some monsters were better tracked from up high. I swung from a rope ladder and leaped onto a platform six feet below me, landing hard but steady.

“Good, you’re warmed up,” Dad said from behind me. He was armed, stone jawed. He tossed me a tranquilizer gun. “Phooka’s escaped.”

I caught the gun, training kicking in instantly. “Where?”

“Other side of the lake. Already trampled a guard.”

I’d heard some phookas were kind, but I suspected those were the ones who’d never been imprisoned across the ocean from their home in Ireland. The phookas here didn’t just trample humans, they tore them apart with their teeth.

Dad had to go around the lake, since Nix, the mermaid in the lake, went savage at the very sight of him. She let me pass because I brought her musical gifts, but she tried to chew her way through the boat with her jagged fish teeth if Dad was on board.

I started tracking without him, which wasn’t exactly challenging. Broken branches and snapped saplings oozed sticky sap. The ground was churned up in half-frozen clumps. Icicles fringed the bare branches of a birch tree, but they were already melting. The monster had passed this way, but clearly it was gone.

“Focus,” Dad snapped when he found me staring at them.

We followed the trail the phooka had smashed through the woods. “What the hell happened?” I asked.

“Something spooked it. You know how it gets. It’ll tear itself to shreds on the barbed wire if we don’t bring it back here. And if it manages to get out, God knows what it will do. You’re always asking me why the Trials are necessary? This is why. Because no matter how good our wards and our fences are, sometimes they break. We have to be prepared. And who better than my own son? This is your birthright.”

And that was as scary as any supernatural man-eating horse.

We heard the snort and bellows of its breath before we saw it. At first glance, the phooka looked like a massive, bad-tempered black horse. Its hooves were enormous and vicious, slashing out at whatever came too close. It dragged chains; the jangling and rattling sound was deeply unsettling. Dad had a rope coiled around his shoulder, but the phooka was too fast and unpredictable. I managed to lodge a tranquilizer dart in its flank, but that barely slowed it down.

It turned sideways, crashing toward the wards, red eyes flashing. One of the Gorgon heads was split. It happened sometimes—weather, a buck scratching its antlers, anything. This one looked as though it had been frozen, the ice splintering it into pieces and draining the magic inside the ward.

The phooka’s tail sparked the magical perimeter. It whinnied, kicking in pain. But it didn’t stop. In moments, it would reach the broken ward.

“Damn, we’ll have to slash its leg,” Dad panted. “Collateral damage. Hate to do it, but we can’t let it get away.” That quickly, he went from saving the maddened phooka from injury on the fences to killing it.

It was Cabal training.

Hell with that. I was sick of my dad and his collateral damage. He’d already sacrificed Summer and Colt. Even Sloane wasn’t unmarked, though she pretended well enough. This one creature, I could save.

Even if it didn’t thank me.

I nearly lost my arm when the phooka snapped its heavy teeth at me. They were red with the blood of the trampled guard. I rolled into the undergrowth, narrowly avoiding being skewered by a snapped branch.

“Ethan, are you crazy?” Dad yelled. “Stand down!”

The phooka smashed the tranquilizer under its hooves. I scrambled to my feet to escape the same fate.

“Ethan, that’s an order.”

Instead of listening, I used a branch to swing myself up onto the phooka’s back.

It bucked, shrieking. I clamped my knees around its side, digging my fists in its mane. My spine cracked slightly as it shook and kicked. I yanked hard on the left side of its mane, forcing it to turn away from the wards and the forest that eventually led to cottages and towns. We left Dad behind, still screaming.

“I’m trying to save your life,” I shouted in the phooka’s flickering ear. “Ingrate.”

Small problem with my plan. I had to hold on until dawn. When the sun rose, the phooka would let me off.

If I fell off before then, it would eat me.

Apparently back in Ireland, the phooka helped with household chores.

Not here.

We thundered through the woods as I held on, jaw clacking with every jump. Cedar boughs slapped me in the face. I held on tighter. The phooka’s mane was long and tangled with leaves and pine needles. The chains smashed against my ankles. On our third circuit around the lake, Nix’s head rose out of the water. She made strange, strangled sounds. The phooka slowed after sunset, but it didn’t stop crashing through branches until long after midnight. I was bruised and scratched and aching. A wolf howled, following us. The phooka flicked its tail nervously, pushed toward the bestiary. When the sun finally rose, the phooka bucked one last time, throwing me into hard, packed mud. I could barely walk. I had to hold onto a pine tree. Sides heaving like bellows, the phooka wandered into the bestiary, where Abby waited with a tempting bucket of raw meat and carrots.

I slept in one of the equipment sheds, too exhausted to make my way back to the house.

I had the nightmare again, almost as soon as I fell asleep.

Summer was alive, but only for a few moments, only long enough for her to die in my arms over and over while strange animals shrieked in the distance. I felt her blood on my hands, saw her eyes go glassy. The silver ring on her finger rolled away into the undergrowth.

And then there was ice everywhere, in my nose and mouth, tearing up the soles of my feet, even stabbing my lungs from the inside. I was naked, running through the snow, feeling frostbite gnaw on my fingers, tasting blood from my ruined lips. I had no weapons.

And I wasn’t even sure what was chasing me.

Sometimes it was the Harpy I’d shot with an arrow on the night of my Trials. I could still hear her screech, could still see the way she fell like a dead weight into the lake. Dad had told me she’d killed a family camping in the conservation park nearby and that the rangers wouldn’t know how to stop her. That she’d keep killing. It wasn’t until a few months later that I’d started to wonder if he’d been lying to me. If the Harpy, as foul and vicious as she was, was actually just another creature plucked from some cave in Greece and far from home. I’d killed her before she could kill me; but we were both trophies in Dad’s museum.

She drowned in green and yellow blood, and I had to drag her corpse out of the water, again and again, until Colt was there, dragging himself after me, his legs useless and heavy. I kept running. Dad threw spears at me. Kia was there, too, but I couldn’t protect her. She was too far away. She was on fire.

And then Summer was alive again.

Only she was chasing me, too.

Chapter Sixteen

Kia

I decided I didn’t believe in werewolves.

I had circumstantial evidence at best. Being shirtless in the woods and covered in scratches was hardly conclusive. And wolves ate rabbits every day. Real, actual wolves, not the kind that transformed under a full moon. And, yes, that was a lot of justification for a girl who could create fire out of nothing.

I spent most of the afternoon at Brontë’s drinking lattes, brooding about my scholarly fate and researching increasingly bizarre things on the internet. I hid the burn scars on my palms with fingerless gloves. I forced myself to stop Googling werewolves and firestarters. The last thing I needed was for my laptop to be searched. I wasn’t sure if the school could legally do that, but the cops or the fire department could, if charges were pressed. My stomach roiled. I typed in Ethan’s name to distract myself. Purely out of curiosity.

I managed to find snippets from local papers and some girl’s creepy fan-girl website. It was all hearts and bad poetry. Still, she blogged about things I didn’t know, like Ethan getting caught half naked in a school rowboat during a fund-raising carnival with not one but two girls. His father had then conveniently paid to have the auditorium renovated and had furnished the library with new computers. These were the first of many generous donations that happened after Ethan was caught in various offenses, from rowboats to lighting fireworks on the football field during the tenth-grade formal dance. I couldn’t blame him for that last one. Formal dances were brutally boring.

When Sloane came in, I slammed the screen down. She ordered three cupcakes and some kind of drink that was mostly whipped cream. Ethan followed, with Justine and her friends. He leaned against the counter, his tie loosened. I tried not to stare, but it was more difficult than it should have been. I wasn’t the only girl sneaking glances. My eyeballs hurt from trying to look-not-look.

“Kia?” Sloane poked me. “Earth to Kia.”

“Sorry, what?”

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked, licking cupcake frosting off her thumb. “Besides the school thing?”

I would set my own self on fire before admitting what I’d been doing. It was way more embarrassing than believing in werewolves.

“Oh, let
me
answer,” Justine interrupted. Her cloud of perfume usually made my tonsils itch long before she was in sight. She flipped her hair, and I nearly broke out in hives.

Even Sloane’s nose twitched. “God, Justine,” she said. “Do you have to marinate in that stuff?”

She lifted her chin haughtily. “I like it. And not all of us want to smell like a wet dog. You might try some soap at least.”

They glared at each other for a long, burning moment and even Justine’s friends realized there was something else going on under the obvious insults. But they looked as uninformed as me. “Oh my God, Justine.” Sloane slumped in her chair like she was exhausted. I was glad I wasn’t the only one who felt drained by her. “Go away. Hasn’t this week sucked enough?”

Justine leaned in toward me, dropping her voice. “Ethan’s out of your league, Kia. A Blackwood wouldn’t date a dropout. You should cut your losses and go back home.”

“It’s not dropping out if she’s expelled,” Sloane pointed out helpfully.

“Thanks,” I said drily. “And I didn’t set that fire.” I hid my hands under the table.

Justine shot me a look of disdain and marched off, her friends scurrying behind her like loyal handmaidens. Or cocker spaniels. I took a very deep breath, and it burned all the way into my lungs. “Think arctic thoughts,” Sloane said as the windows behind us fogged up. “Justine’s not worth it.”

“I really don’t like her.”

“I’d never have guessed.” There was sweat darkening the collar of her shirt. “So are you crushing on Ethan, or what?”

“What?” I squeaked. “No! Shut your face!” If he’d heard any of this, I wouldn’t have to wait to be expelled. I’d drown myself in the lake. I thought he might possibly be looking my way, but I absolutely refused to look back.

“Most girls do, you know,” Sloane said.

“I’m not most girls,” I replied emphatically.

“I get that,” she returned. “I practically got third-degree burn blisters standing between you and Justine.”

“You did? Where?” I suddenly felt nauseous. I grabbed her arms. I couldn’t see any singe marks on her clothes. Even though I drove to the factory parking lot every day, testing the fire in my hands, I still didn’t fully trust myself. At the castle, my palms itched and burned, but when I was outside and not worried about being discovered, it came much easier. I still had burns, though, and I was beginning to stink of lavender oil.

Sloane extricated herself from my too-tight grip. “Take it easy. I was kidding,” she said.

“Oh.” My heart was still beating fast, like raindrops on a tin roof. “Sorry.”

“I don’t think you set that fire.”

I smiled weakly. “Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, you’re smart enough not to set a fire in your own damn locker.”

“Right?” I was offended all over again. “A little credit would be nice. Just saying.” I reached for a piece of cupcake off her plate. She slapped my hand. Hard. “Ouch.”

“Mine.” She crammed the rest in her mouth.

“Girl Chokes to Death on Cupcake,” I told her when her eyes watered. “I’ll light a candle in your honor.”

She chewed slower. I waited until she’d swallowed before asking, “Sloane, do you know what a cabal is?”

She coughed again and guzzled half her drink. “Went down the wrong way,” she croaked. “And I gotta go.”

She was in the parking lot before I realized she hadn’t answered my question.

I lifted the laptop screen again, and any questions I might have had about whether or not Sloane knew more about Ethan’s weird midnight rituals were instantly forgotten. Ethan’s stalker fangirl page was still loaded, and one of the links jumped out at me.

Summer Kirihara.

When I clicked on the link, it brought me to the local newspaper’s article on the tragic death of Ethan’s girlfriend. Missing, presumed dead after a long, exhaustive search. Blood found in the forest. Claw marks on the trees.

Mauled to death by a wild animal.

Maybe I did believe in werewolves after all.