ARROWHEART (The Love Curse)

Five.

'Something doesn't feel right.'

Marissa rolls her eyes in her typical belittling fashion. Then she pushes past me, reaching for the office door. She steals a quick moment to straighten her outfit and smooth down her eyebrows, even though they're perfect.

'Eyebrows?' she asks, pointing to them.

'Good,' I say.

'The rest of me?'

Flawless. 'Also good.'

Satisfied with my answer, she grabs my hand and strides into the office, dragging me in tow. When she stops abruptly, I slam into her, sending us both stumbling into the room. I regain my balance and gasp, staggering back.

In front of us are three police officers, guns drawn, pointing straight at us.

One of the men wears thick red-framed glasses and a wool sweater the same shade of brown as his skin. I only know he's an officer by the badge hanging around his neck. He pushes his way to the front of the group. His shaky hand clings to a gun. I glance from him to Mother Superior, hoping for some form of understanding. She stands behind the officers and gives a weak smile. When they're not looking she mouths something, and I'm pretty sure it's, we'll get you out of this.

'You're under . . .'

His words fill the room, and everything slows as the officers grab me and push me to the ground next to Marissa. I fight back every image I've seen on TV of police brutality and tell myself it won't happen to me. But then they yank my books out of my arms, jerk my wrists back to handcuff them, and then lift and shove me against the wall.

Marissa is guided beside me. The difference in treatment is startling. They've so wrongly judged which of us is the threat. And Marissa doesn't even seem to notice how scared I am, instead she looks bored by the whole thing. It frustrates me that her cool, cocky demeanour doesn't even slip when we're handcuffed. I fight the need to cry and instead focus on taking slow, deep breaths.

'Don't worry,' Marissa whispers, her eyes darting to the officer holding me. 'We got this, you ready?'

I can't believe what she's suggesting. Still, another part of me is tempted to try using my ability, to see if I can save myself. My guess is the nuns will act like this is a normal Catholic school and turn on us if they need to. Still, I can't, not even for this. Not only is it wrong, but I'm unpractised. Even if I did somehow manage to successfully turn one of the officers, and Marissa another, we couldn't fight off the third officer. Could we?

I shake my head no, and she rolls her eyes.

So I do the only thing I can. I lift my chin and try to be brave. 'What have we done?'

The officer holding me shoves me further into the wall, and the one in the red glasses begins reciting our rights. All I really understand is that we have the right to remain silent. It's hard to focus on what he's saying when he's staring at me like I'm about to shoot laser beams from my eyes. It's like he's scared of us.

He wouldn't know about our ability, would he?

I bite my lip and return the stare, hoping to read something on his face that could give me answers. His eyes bulge through the thick lenses, and he steps back.

'Take these, these girls to the holding cell.'

I'm jerked around, landing face-to-face with a large sweaty man.

'I'm Officer Tucker Johnson, that's Officer Mark White, and that,' he points to the officer with the glasses, 'is Officer Ammon Matos. You two are coming with us.'

The officers thrust us toward the door and Ammon watches, cleaning his glasses on his sweater.

I twist in their grip to look at him. 'Will you tell us what we've done?'

I'm knocked back around.

'When I find out exactly what you two girls, if you even are girls, have done, I'll . . . well, I'm going to make sure you never reach the mother ship, that's what.'

That confuses me at first, until realization sinks in, slow and painful – they are scared. But it's even worse than I thought. They think we're the vampire aliens.

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