Toy Soldiers (Helford #1)

(2) Codex

I had seen a lot of things in this world of mystery I lived in, but never before had a seen a stab into the back with quite so clean a cut.

I guess there was a lot about this world that I still didn’t know.

~*~

For the last three years of my life, I had been recruited into this agency; it’s what happens when you enroll in Helford Academy. Somewhere undisclosed on the California coast, a giant rock castle, looking like it sprung straight from the earth, sits, hidden in plain sight, filled with the phantoms that hide in the shadows. From the first day in this school, we were taught that we were a family, and that we were to protect and respect family. People like Shawn drilled into our heads that we were to look after each other’s backs, that we were never to leave the other behind no matter the case. They taught us that there was nothing more sacred than what we shared with the people around us, the ones with the mutual secret.

For the company upstairs to turn around and tell me to betray one of my brothers shook me to the core.

It would be the worst kind of treason.

I walked through the halls at a hurried pace, all of my normal thoughts running through my mind as my hands shook down at my sides, reaching for the reassurance of a weapon that was not there. I thought about how this academy had turned me into a monster, a murderer, and I couldn’t fathom to understand how they could send me out to do it again and again, like there were enough people in this world for people like me to pick off like flies. I asked the empty air how they could ask other human beings to kill, but there was no answer.

This second part of the mission, this betrayal, it would be like shooting my own brother in the back. My own flesh and blood.

But I knew who I was.

I was a murderer.

I was a monster.

I was Caitie Alastair now, and Caitie Alastair did what she had to do to survive.

I might have held my chin up a little higher, but the sick feeling in my stomach didn’t disappear.

~*~

“Ah, there she is,” Shawn announced cheerfully, standing as I walked into the room, my hands tucked into my pockets. “And all cleaned up, I see. Very nice.”

I gestured. “Much thanks for the reconstruction on my face. My eyes haven’t been this swollen since Cecily, and that was the worst hangover of my life.”

Shawn chuckled, turning to angle himself so that he could address the young man who had stood beside him at attention. Automatically, my back straightened, my fingernails digging a little deeper into my palms because I knew who this was, even before Shawn sent him a smirk and said, “This is her—tread carefully.”

I smiled pleasantly, turning to the man as well, my nails drawing blood. “I don’t bite,” I teased him easily. “Not unless I have a clear shot at the jugular.”