Hunted (House of Night #5)(84)

I watched Dragon drill the class in fencing exercises. The fledglings didn't seem so podlike in fencing class. But that was probably because it dealt with physical activity, not mental stuff. I paid closer attention and noticed that, even though the class was completing the physical motions, there was no easy banter or harmless teasing going on. Everyone was on task, which was weird as hell. I mean, let's face it. Keeping a gym filled with teenagers who had sharp things in their hands totally on task is nearly impossible.

I was frowning at a group of guys who would normally have been getting at least a couple of reprimands from Dragon, along with reminders to pay attention and not act like idiots (at the House of Night professors can call kids idiots when they act like idiots because the idiot children can't run home to their mommies and cry about it; hence there is a lot less idiot behavior at the House of Night than at most public schools), when Dragon stepped between me and my line of vision. I blinked and refocused on him.

Slowly and distinctly he winked at me before turning back to the class.

About then his huge Maine Coon padded up to sit beside me and lick one of his monstrous paws.

"Hey there, Shadowfax." I scratched his head and felt more hopeful than I had since the Raven Mocker had almost killed me.

Even though school had turned into a nightmare and danger was all around us, lunch felt like an oasis of familiarity. I loaded up on my personal favorite, spaghetti and brown pop, and joined Damien and the Twins at our booth.

"Well, what did you guys find out?" I whispered between big bites of pasta with marinara and cheese.

"You look way better," Damien said, his voice definitely not a whisper.

"I feel better," I said, giving him a WTF look.

"I'm thinking we really need to go over the new vocab for the lit test next week," Damien said loudly, opening his ever-ready notebook and taking out a number two pencil.

The Twins groaned. I frowned at him. Had he gone pod on us?

"Yeah, just because stuff is changing around here, it doesn't mean you can let your grades slide," he said.

"Damien, you are a pain in the ass," Shaunee said.

"Worse. You are a damn pain in the ass with your stupid vocab shit, and I--"

Damien slid the notebook around so that we could read what he'd written below the list of vocab words.

R.M. @ all the windows. Their hearing is excellent.

The Twins and I shared a quick glance, then I sighed and said, "Fine, Damien. What ever. We'll study the stupid vocab with you. But I agree with the Twins that you're a pain."

"All right. Let's start with `loquacious.'" He pointed his pencil at the word.

Shaunee shrugged. "Isn't that something out of Star Trek?" "Sounds right to me," Erin said.

Damien gave them a look of disgust I knew he didn't have to act to put on. "No, simpletons, this is what it means." He wrote: Dragon is on our side. "So, Erin, why don't you try the next word, `voluptuous'?"

"Oooh, I know what that one means," Shaunee said, grabbing Damien's pencil before he could pass it to Erin. Beside `voluptuous' she quickly wrote: me! Then, farther down on the page, she scrawled: Anastasia is 2.

"You know I consider using texting shorthand gauche," Damien said.

"Don't care," Shaunee said.

"Even if we knew what `gauche' meant," Erin said.

"I'll take the next word," I said. Ignoring the next vocab word, I wrote: We gotta get out of here to night, but can't use the Hummer. Can't cloak it. I paused, chewing my lip, and then added, Got to be careful. N knows we're going to try to leave. "I guess I don't know what that next one means after all. Can you help me out, Damien?"

"No problem." Damien wrote: We need to get out of here fast. Before they can stop us.

"Okay, hang on. I'll try the next word. Just let me think about it for a sec." We all ate silently while I thought, but not about the vocab word "ubiquitous" (seriously, I could have thought about that forever and not figured out what it meant).

We needed to get off campus, under my cloaking, as soon as possible. But Neferet was expecting us to try to bolt; she'd made that clear. This meant she'd be listening in to our lunchroom conversations, not just via the Raven Mockers but inside Damien's and the Twins' minds the second she was physically close enough to them to make her psychic eavesdropping work. Again, I thought how relieved I was that no one but Stevie Rae and I knew I'd really be running to the Benedictine Abbey instead of the depot tunnels. Thanks to my note-passing skills and--

"That's it!"

The Twins and Damien stared at me. I grinned at them. "I remembered what `ubiquitous' means!" I lied. "And I have an idea about studying. I'm going to write definitions for some of the words on pieces of paper. I'll give one to each of you, which you're going to be expected to study and learn. When you learn the word, pass it back to me, and I'll give you another one. It'll be kinda like flashcards."

"Have you lost your damn mind?" Shaunee said.

"No," Damien said perkily. "It's a good idea. It'll be fun."

I was ripping strips of notebook paper and writing furiously on them: Get to the stables. After folding each one carefully, I said, "Just think about the definitions we've gone over. Don't read the word I gave you until the bell rings for the end of sixth hour. I mean it." I handeE?I# zd each of them their "word."