The Culling Trials (Shadowspell Academy #2)(48)

We had almost reached my dorm room before he spoke. “That was incredibly foolish what you did there with the girls. They could have killed you and been within their rights.”

I looked him right in the eye. “And if I’d killed them?”

His lips twitched. “Should you have managed, yes, you would have been within your rights as well. They attacked your friend. You protected her.”

“Then you can remind them of that fact,”—I put my hand on the doorknob—“because if it happens again, I’ll bring a wooden stake with me.”

He should have been pissed off at me for threatening his future students. But he smiled and laughed. “I’ll do that. You are stronger than you look. That is excellent.”

I opened the door and shut it behind me, leaning against it. I only had a second to take a deep breath before a blur of arms went around me. “They didn’t kick you out?” Wally asked.

I pushed her off, gently. “Not today. But the director knows about me.” I made eye contact with each of them in turn. “She let me stay because you all stood up for me. Because we’re working together as a team.”

Ethan grunted. “You mean because I stood up for you.”

“That too.” I nodded. “But I learned something while I was in there. I think another kid has gone missing.”

There was a collective intake of air. “Who?” Pete asked.

“Someone named Mason Whitehall? Does that name ring a bell?” I asked. Wally answered slowly.

“He’s a necromancer. Like me.” Fear tracked across her features. I couldn’t blame her. What if she’d been caught out on her own when she’d been on her way to our room? Would she have been taken instead?

I forced myself to look at Ethan. “Thanks. For what you said in there.”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t lying. My dad would be pissed if we lost you now. He’s not stupid, and neither am I.”

“Well, isn’t that just a bucket full of love,” Pete said.

I grabbed my clean sweats and made my way to the bathroom for a second shower to wash off the vampire blood.

The room was quiet as I tiptoed back to my bed only to find Wally in it. “I’m scared,” she said.

God, I could already see how this was going. With a grimace, I climbed into the bed on the other side and turned my back to her. “Go to sleep.”

She rolled over and threw an arm around me, spooning me. “Fifty percent of people who die in the night die in their sleep.”

“Crap, not this all night,” Ethan grumbled.

I patted Wally’s hand. Just like Sam and her nightmares. How many times had she crawled into my bed in the middle of the night? Too many to count. I sighed. “Go to sleep, Wally.”

I fell into a doze, but it was light. My eyes popped open at the soft thud of a mattress hitting the floor, followed by the shush of it being pushed across the floor. Pete positioned it next to my bed and flopped onto it. He held a hand up, and I took it without thought.

“They could take any one of us,” he said.

He wasn’t wrong.

I squeezed his hand. “No more losses from our group. Tomorrow, we find Gregory.” I yawned and settled deeper into the mattress, my back warm from Wally and my hand tight in Pete’s.

Home. I was home.

The next morning, I woke with an elbow in my neck and a heavy weight on my legs. I tried to sit up.

“What the hell?” I managed to prop myself up on my elbows enough to see the honey badger splayed across my legs on his back, pinning me and the sheets down. Orin lay on the mattress that Pete had pushed over, his head at my feet. Upside-down, Orin was not the way to wake up. His eyes locked on mine. “You did not wake up when something came by our door. It scared Pete.”

The honey badger rolled over, still asleep, let out a fart that I swear lifted a green cloud around his butt, and kicked at the sheets with one foot.

“Jesus, Pete! That’s awful!” I couldn’t help the gag as I fell out of bed and onto the mattress beside us, scrambling over Orin to get away from the stench.

I crawled across the floor and finally stood ten feet away where the air wasn’t so heavy.

Orin was already out of bed, as if he’d never been there. “How are we going to find Gregory?”

“Breakfast and healers first,” I said, feeling the previous day’s aches and pains come roaring back. I was not going to turn down the healers today. I’d aim to find Mara seeing as she likely already knew I was a girl and hadn’t said anything. The last thing I needed was more people knowing my secret.

Ethan rolled onto his side. “And what if we find him and he’s dead and they think we did it because we’re standing over the body?”

I arched an eyebrow at him. “That’s where you come in.”

He arched an eyebrow right back at me. “You want me to use my pull if we get caught?”

“Bingo.”

I was dressed in no time flat, my mind already working toward the goal of finding Gregory, where to start, who to talk to. Because even though Rory and Sideburns were on the case, I could no more leave this problem to someone else than I could leave Wally to have her ass kicked by a bunch of mean girls. Even if those mean girls were vampires.

The five of us ate breakfast by ourselves, and I was not the only one to notice. No one interacted with us, but to be fair, none of the other trial goers interacted with anyone outside their team, so it wasn’t just us. Not even smoking hot Colt came over to chat with Ethan, though he did look my way more than once. I kept my head down and pretended not to notice him.