Chapter 6:
"I'm sorry, I thought you said Nathan's ex." I laugh. "What did you really say?" I ask Emery, already knowing the answer.
Emery gives me a sympathetic look. "Don't worry honey. They broke up a long time ago. I'm sure she's not even interested in him anymore." She says optimistically.
We both turn to look at Ava, who is now sitting closer to Nathan, her hand on his thigh. She smiles at him, flashing her fangs.
"A vampire and a werewolf?" I scoff. "I'm sorry. That just sounds wrong"
Emery glances at me. "You read too much twilight."
"Well obviously you do too, otherwise you wouldn't have understood the reference." I point out.
Emery laughs. I pry my gaze away from Nathan and Ava and refuse to look back.
I just met the guy. Why should I care what is romantic interests are?
Because I like him. Duh.
"Why is it that I can't seem to live a normal life?" I ask as I stab my salad angrily with a fork.
"Because you're a monster, dear."
"Well there's that," I reply, "but I can't seem to start at a new school without drama finding its way to me."
"What do you mean?" Emery asks.
"It's been three days, and I have an enemy who can manipulate my mind, a crush who is obviously taken, and I've predicted a person's death." And I've learned that I can kill people with just one touch if I want to. Luckily, I keep that part quiet.
"You do have it hard." Emery agrees. "But what's high school without a little drama?" She grins.
"Right." I snort.
"So. What's the story?" I ask Emery. I watch as she wraps her hand around her glass of coke. Frost starts to form on the sides of glass and soon it's cooler than the regular flat, warm pop she had started with.
"Ava was quite the little trouble maker." Emery starts, taking a sip. "Her and Nathan were sort of.." She wiggles her fingers in the air thoughtfully, "destined. The whole school thought they would make a good couple, and eventually they agreed. Ava and Nathan. Couple of freshmen year. And let me tell you, they were huge into PDA if you know what I mean. I found myself avoiding them as much as possible in the hallway to avoid gagging." She shakes her head at the thought of it. "Anyways. Then they started fighting, about pointless things really. Nathan didn't understand her attitude or Ava couldn't grasp the idea of Nathan rarely talking. Soon, the fights got heated. Yelling, screaming, object throwing. Finally Nathan had enough and ended it. Then Ava had a... breakdown." Emery pauses.
"What do you mean by breakdown?"
"Well, Ava isn't like most vampires. She has this extra ability." She stops and laughs. "Oh you're gonna love this. Straight out of twilight. Ava can torture people with her mind. Like that one vampire in the Volturi or whatever they call it. One glance at her victim, and he's down on the ground writhing in pain." Emery shakes her head and tsks. "She never thought of it as repulsive. She had fun with it. She would let up after a few seconds and laugh it off with the other person. But then she got in trouble a lot and she mellowed down a bit. After her and Nathan broke up, she was angry. No, more than angry. She was pissed. And she took her anger out on innocent members of the student building." Emery stops and looks a bit sad. "She killed two werewolves and a fairy. After she had calmed down, she felt horrible. She went straight to the headmaster and begged her to lock her up."
"She turned herself in?" I ask, surprised.
"Oh yeah. She said she couldn't even control what happened, that something came over her. She claimed she would never have killed anyone. But no one believed her." She looks at Ava in disgust. "Why would anyone? You don't just kill people when you get angry."
I look down, immediately uncomfortable.
"The headmaster sent her off to this reform place for troubled monsters."
"Isn't that what this school is?"
"Nah, this is more of a babysitting gig. At the reform place, it's like hardcore. Therapy session after therapy session and mush for every meal. At least, that's what I heard." Emery says. "That was the end of last year. And for whatever reason now, she's back." She looks back at Nathan and Ava. "And Nathan doesn't seem to have held a grudge."
I watch as Nathan smiles at whatever Ava is saying and puts his arm around her shoulder.
"But there is one person who holds a major grudge." Emery adds.
"Who?"
Autumn returns from the bathroom and walks to sit at our table. Emery swallows nervously.
"Hey, Autumn." Emery says in a friendlier pitch than usual. "So I was thinking. We should totally blow this popsicle stand. Wanna go watch some TV in the common room?" Emery asks.
Autumn looks at Emery, confused. "But I'm not finished eating." She gestures to her cheeseburger.
"We can take it on the go." Emery stands and starts tugging on Autumn's arm.
"Food isn't allowed in the dorms, Emery, you know that." Autumn says. "What's going on?" She looks at me. "Why is Emery acting funny?"
"I'm guessing you're the one who holds a grudge."
"A grudge against who?" She looks around and her eyes land on Ava.
Emery sighs. "Nice going, B."
Autumn's eyes begin to turn the golden color I had seen on my first day. A deep growl forms in her throat.
"Uh, Wyatt?" I say loudly in the direction of his table.
He glances over and sees Autumn and his eyes widen. In a split second, Autumn transforms and leaps at Ava.
Before her claws can make contact with Ava's face, Nathan transforms as well and leaps at her head on. They collide, pushing Autumn far away from Ava, and landing on some poor fairies' lunch table. They squeal and leap away.
Nathan and Ava wrestle for a moment until Nathan, at least I think it was Nathan, considering his darker brown fur compared to Autumn's milk chocolate fur, picks up Autumn's scruff in his mouth and drags her out of the lunch room.
The cafeteria slowly sinks back into whispered conversations and I turn to look at Ava's table. Wyatt is saying something serious to Ava, who just seems annoyed.
"What the heck was that?" I ask Emery and Colette.
"That was Autumn spazzing out." Emery states.
"What does she have against Ava?"
"One of the werewolves Ava killed was Autumn's brother, Reece." Colette informs me with a sad look.
"Seriously?" I ask, surprised.
Emery nods. "And here's the kicker. Wyatt and Ava are twins."
"No."
"Yes." Emery says. I scan her face for any sign of joking, but all I find is a grim expression.
"Wyatt and Autumn had a thing." Emery continues. "But after that whole thing happened, Wyatt defended Ava, even though she killed Autumn's brother. Autumn hated him ever since."
"So she hates Nathan too?"
"Well she didn't because Nathan broke up with Ava and didn't defend her. But now..."
"We should go find her then." I say, standing.
Emery nods, and her and Colette walk out of the cafeteria beside me.
Walking down the halls, I see a path of destruction from what I assumed was thanks to Nathan and Autumn. Trash cans flipped over, papers strewn across the floor, even one of the glass cabinets had a crack in it.
"Geez. Werewolves are brutal." I observe.
"Hah. No kidding." Emery says.
"Well they are wild animals." Colette remarks.
We follow the path until we come to a janitors closet. Colette knocks on the door. "Autumn?"
There is a shuffling from the inside of the closet until the door slowly opens to reveal Nathan. When he sees it's us, he opens the door wider for us to step in.
The first thing I see in the small janitors closet is Autumn passed out on the floor. Colette and Emery rush to her side. "Nathan what did you do?" Colette yells at him. Even Emery sends him an accusing look.
Nathan lifts his hands in surrender. "All I did was drag her back to the closet to contain her and when she tried to morph back, she passed out."
"Why would that happen?" I ask.
"Autumn is on the smaller side of werewolves. After struggling with me for so long, her body probably just couldn't handle it. It takes a lot of energy to change back." Nathan explains.
"So she just passed out." Emery says. "Don't we need, I don't know, smelling salts or something?" She glances around the room, as if smelling salts being located in a janitors closet would be normal.
"I'm sure she will wake up soon." Colette says, still staring at Autumn.
Emery groans. "This is my fault! I could've frozen her before she collided with Nathan or.. Or.." She trails off, looking distressed.
"It probably would have hurt her more to fall from that high in the air after she had unfrozen, Emery. Don't worry." Nathan attempts to comfort her.
Emery nods her head, but still holds a guilty look on her face.
********
"Brooklyn! Wait up!"
Wyatt catches up to me as I speed walk to my English class that started in thirty seconds.
"Not the time Wyatt. Class starts like now." I say to him hurriedly.
"Calm down. I'm in your class, and it's right here." He grabs my arm to turn me into the classroom, but quickly recoils. He shakes his hand a if he was burned. "What was that?"
We walk into the room. "I don't know what you mean."
"You shocked me." He says with a confused expression.
"Static electricity, Wyatt. It happens." I sit in a random desk by the window, just as the bell rings.
"It was different." Wyatt slips into the desk next to mine. He looks right at me. "What-"
"Please rewrite the sentence on the board and fix the grammar mistakes." The chubby English teacher interrupts. Wyatt gives an annoyed look, but vows we would talk later.
As I'm writing the sentence and repeating the mantra of 'calm the heck down' in my head, suddenly a green line starts to appear on my paper. I watch it as it grows and crawls across the paper magically. It swirls and turns and even starts to sparkle until finally it stops. A beautiful drawing of a unique tree in some sort of green pen is now plastered over my notebook paper. Confused and appalled, I glance around the classroom.
Lindy gives me a little wave and grins enthusiastically. She points to my paper and I return my gaze to it. Now words were slowly being scrawled underneath the drawing. It was amazing to watch the note being written without any sign of a pencil in sight.
"A new trick I picked up in controlling your power class. Like it?" The note said in the same spring green ink.
Fairies could magically write on my paper now? What can't they do?
I give Lindy a appreciative smile and then return to fixing the complicated sentence. I was trying hard not to grow even more jealous of the abilities the other students had. All I could do was scream and kill people. Woopde-freakin-doo.
Just after I completed the sentence, that's when I heard it. A sad wailing coming from a distant classroom. The students in my classroom immediately covered their ears in pain. But the sound did not hurt my ears. It was sorrowful. It almost made me want to wail as well.
Then I realized that it was screaming. A high pitched screaming that pierced everyone else's ears. That screaming could only be coming from one other person.
Payson.
*******
"Another one is dead? With no cause of death?" The English teacher was on the phone, presumably talking to the headmaster.
The screaming had stopped soon after it started, only lasting about thirty seconds. The kids were now whispering and spreading rumors to what had happened.
Someone else dropped dead? What was happening to this school?
"Of course. Right away." The teacher hangs up the phone an starts speaking to the class. "Don't be frightened children. An accident has occurred and the headmaster is taking immediate action sending all students back to their dorms as soon as humanly possible." She pauses. "Well, as soon as supernaturally possible, I guess." She chuckles to herself quietly.
"Back to our dorms? For how long?" One of the werewolves in the back asks.
"Well-"
"It wasn't an accident. It was murder!" Another voice sounds.
"There is no need to-"
"What's going on at Griggs?" Another student. "What are you hiding from us?"
"Yeah! We deserve to know!" Protests are coming from all over the classroom now, accusing the teacher for lying and demanding to know the truth.
"Calm down this instant!" The teacher demands. "I know nothing of the situation so you will have to cooperate until we all learn together." She huffs. "Now if you would please."
The entire student body of Griggs Academy is herded back to their dorms. Before the guys and girls separate, the headmaster comes over the speaker.
"All students at Griggs Academy are on full lockdown for the rest of the night. No student leaves their dorm. If any student is found outside their dorm, they will become a murder suspect and immediately be expelled."
"What a kill joy." Wyatt mumbles next to me.
"Dinner will be served to each dorm thanks to the help of our staff. If their is an emergency, call the office." She continues. "If anyone saw anything suspicious relating to the accident, please report to my office immediately."
Mumbling and grumbling, the guys and girls head to their dorms. Before I make it to the stairs, I spot Nathan.
"Hey!" I call out to him. He catches my eye and meets up with me.
"How is Autumn doing?" I ask him.
"She's fine. She's resting now, I think." He replies.
"That's great." There's an awkward pause for a moment until I speak up, "So why is Ava back?"
Nathan shrugs and says, "They let her off for good behavior."
"Oh." I glance around at the students finding their way to the different dorm areas. "They aren't worried at all?" I ask quietly.
Nathan's eyes harden suddenly. "Why would they be worried? It was an accident."
"I'm only going by what I've heard." I say defensively. "I didn't realize you were on her side."
"You shouldn't believe everything you hear, Brooklyn." He growls. "And there are no sides. It was an accident. End of story."
"Fine."
"Fine." He stomps off into the crowd and disappears.
I huff and fold my arms. What was with him? Why was he defending Ava? Did he want to get back together with her?
I shake my head at the thought. I shouldn't be getting into his business anyways.
"Who peed in his Cheerios this morning?" Emery appears beside me.
"Who's?" I ask, emerging from my thoughts.
"Nathan. He ran into me while I was making my way to you and growled some profanity. It wasn't very attractive." She says picking at her cuticles.
I shake my head again and continue walking. I didn't want to go back to my dorm room. I wanted to see Payson. Then I wanted to see Autumn. And then I wanted to kick the crap out of Nathan. And possibly spy on Ava a bit. But that was only a maybe.
I said goodbye to Emery and walked into my dorm room. Colette was already there, fixing her hair in a mirror.
I decide to decorate my half of the room. Something different from the plain brown walls, but definitely not as drastic as Colette's cotton candy disaster.
I pulled my favorite Paramore poster out of my still half unpacked suitcase and attempt to plaster it on the wall next to my bed.
"What is that?" Colette asks from behind me.
"Just a Paramore poster. Thought I'd spruce up my living area for a change, considering I'll be studying here." I reply, taping the last corner of the poster.
"What is Paramore?" Colette asks innocently.
I turn around slowly and stare at Colette. "You've never heard of Paramore?"
"I'm from France, remember?"
"That is no excuse." I shake my head. "To think that someone has never heard of one of the greatest rock bands of all times."
"So they are a band?" She asks, confused.
I slowly wipe my hand down my face and turn back around. Colette gives a little "humph" and I hear her return to her bed and flip through magazines.
After I finished decorating my side, I felt extremely satisfied and admired my work. After pinning some pictures onto my bulletin board of some old friends from my old school, I had also finally replaced the boring brown comforter with my purple one from home, placed a matching lamp on the nightstand, and organized my books in a neat pile.
I turn around to see Colette standing in front of her full length mirror. She snaps her fingers and blue smoke appears around her body, then quickly dissipates. In place of her school clothes, she has a cute yellow sundress on. She snaps her fingers again. This time a stylish blue dress hugs her lean figure. Satisfied, she poofs her hair one more time and then looks at me.
"How do I look?"
"Great." I say, still in awe of her power. To be able to change anything you want with just a snap of your fingers? Amazing. "May I ask where you think you are going?"
"There's a little party going on in one of my friends dorms."
"I didn't pin you as a rule breaker." I say in amusement. "Or a murder suspect."
"I didn't 'pin' you as a rule keeper, Brooklyn." She grins. "You're welcome to come if you'd like."
"Nah, I think I'll sleep instead. Go. Have fun."
"Okay. See you later!" She blinks once and disappears in a cloud of blue smoke.
Right. Who needs stairs when you can teleport.
Sitting back down on my bed, I check my phone for messages until I hear a knock on my door. Sighing, I stand up.
"I swear Wyatt. Can't a girl have some peace and-" I open the door to find, not Wyatt, but Trinity standing there calmly.
"Uh, hi Trinity." I look behind her. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be in your dorm?"
"Oh please. Headmaster Jordan has these lockdowns every time Payson screams." She invites herself in and sits down on my bed. "Besides, I don't see your roommate anywhere."
"What do you want Trinity?" I ask again, quickly becoming annoyed.
"Feisty. So that's what Wyatt sees in you."
"Sorry?"
"Don't play dumb." She snaps, all of a sudden hostile. "I know what you're trying to do. And you won't get away with it."
"Wait. You seriously think that I like Wyatt?"
Trinity just stares back at me, while I burst out laughing.
"Oh this is so predictable. I should've seen it coming." I'm almost crying now, I'm laughing so hard. "You are so worried about your reputation and having control of all the guys in the school. Then I come and sit with guys for one day, and the little green monster attacks you, huh?" She stares at me in confusion. "Jealousy, Trinity. The little green monster is jealousy. You know what? Nevermind." I laugh some more.
"This isn't funny Brooklyn. I came here to tell you to stay away from Wyatt."
"Do you even know what a guy friend is, Trinity?" I ask her, holding in my laughter and wiping my eyes.
"I have plenty of guy friends!" She argues.
"I'm sure. Well, Trinity, before you try your siren thing on me, let me reassure you. Your message is received. I promise you, you don't have to worry about Wyatt and me."
"Oh." She says. She pauses for a moment, as if she's thinking. "Wait! You don't like Wyatt."
"Yes, we've been over this."
"That means you like someone else." She completely changes her attitude and is now sitting Indian style on my bed, bouncing up and down. "Who is it?" She asks excitedly.
"Why the heck would I tell you?"
She stands up quickly and grabs my hands, forcing me to jump up and down with her. "Who is it?" She practically screams.
"Trinity, I think you might be bipolar." I say in between jumping. Finally, I pull my hands away. Trinity stares at me intently.
"Who do you like, Brooklyn?" She says slowly and forcefully.
"Nathan." I spit out. I put my hands over my mouth in horror. Where did that come from?
"Nathan Barnes?"
"Did you just force me to say that? I ask her angrily.
"The werewolf?" She ignores my question. "Oh this is great! Perfect drama." She claps her hands together. "Ava just came back too." She says thoughtfully.
"Trinity, please don't tell anyone. It's not even a real crush, just a tiny admiration." I plead. "It would be disastrous if anyone found out."
"Alright alright." She sighs. "But on one condition."
**********
"Hey, Wyatt. So Trinity's pretty great huh?"
I'm sitting at Wyatt and Ryan's lunch table again, receiving dirty looks from Emery. I tried to tell her I was sitting here because I was being blackmailed but she ignored me.
Nathan and Ava were off somewhere, probably making out. But did I care? Nah.
Trinity was winking at me from across the cafeteria, and now Wyatt was looking at me strangely.
"Sure." He says. "Why?"
"No reason." I say shrugging. "Just seems like you would make a good couple." I say almost as a question. This was so stupid. I hated Trinity for this.
"I guess." Wyatt scratches the back of his head. "How's Autumn doing?"
"Shes fine. She just decided to skip lunch today for whatever reason." I pick at the casserole that was served today and keep my gaze downwards. Autumn hadn't spoken to anyone much. We were all worried about her.
"So Ryan. I haven't seen you work your magic yet." I say.
"My magic?" He asks innocently.
I roll my eyes at him. "You are a shapeshifter, are you not?"
"Oh, right. My magic." There's a popping sound and suddenly sitting in front of me is a small bird. It hops over to me and pecks me gently on the hand. Then goes back to its chair and transforms back into Ryan.
"That was the weirdest thing I've seen in my life."
Ryan gives a mock bow and returns to eating his burger.
"Very impressive. Birds are great in war." Wyatt laughs.
"Speaking of war." I say. "Since you're on that council thing that gossips about stuff,"
"We don't gossip, we discuss." Wyatt interrupts, proudly correcting me.
"Right. Could you tell me why we are being trained? You know, practicing our skills? What are they preparing us for?"
"Well it's no secret." Wyatt says in a low voice.
"Then why are we whispering?" I whisper back.
"Because I'm on the council and this stuff is supposed to mysterious." He whispers back. I chuckle and let him continue. "There is this huge history with Draki."
"Draki?"
"Yeah, you know. Half human half dragon." Wyatt says. "They used to hang out with all of the monsters once upon a time. Like fifty years ago. Then, some of the monsters starting dropping dead without a cause of death. Sound familiar? The bigger council of monsters, which is like our council but worldwide, suspected that the Draki had somehow evolved this power that could kill someone by draining the life out of them. That way there would be no physical evidence other than that they died."
"Why did they suspect the Draki did it?" I ask, feeling uneasy.
"The Draki were acting all weird around that time. Not coming to council meetings, rarely contacting other monsters, and so on. So the council, minus the Draki portion of course, decided to confront them about it. Well the Draki were extremely offended that they accused them of such a crime. They basically told the council that they wanted no part in the monster council anymore, and that they were from there on out, rogues."
"Did they ever find out who really was killing the monsters?"
"No. And it got the council members fired and replaced. None of the monsters trusted them anymore. They thought it could be an inside job. " Wyatt replies. "The newer council suspects that the Draki will someday retaliate. So all of the monster academies around the world are training the teenagers to fight, if such a war were ever to occur."
"And now history is repeating itself." I continue. "Kids are dropping dead, without a cause of death, and everyone's going to blame the Draki."
Wyatt nods. "They'll think that the Draki are taking revenge."
"But they didn't do it in the first place, how can they be blamed?"
"I don't know." Wyatt says. "But whoever is doing it really wants all of the fingers pointing at the Draki."
"So now what happens?"
"Now you will see an increase in the intensity of the training. More exercises. More drills. More everything."
"This sucks." I say.
"Big time." Wyatt agrees.
I was only sure of one thing. I needed to talk to Payson.
****
A/N
A huge thank you to @zoey_ross for the new and improved cover!