Page 4 of The Vampire and the Case of the Perilous Poltergeist

I twisted in my seat and reached back to hand Jones my notebook. A lot of people needed to write stuff down for it to sink in; not me, of course, but then I’d never been ‘most people’, even before I’d been turned into a blood drinker.

He looked at me gratefully, took the notebook and mouthed, ‘Thank you.’ Thorsen glowered harder as if my kindness actively offended him. His parents must be so proud.

‘That was very kind of you, Barrington, but you need to pass the test as well,’ Lieutenant Polk remarked. His tone made it clear that although he thought it waskindhe didn’t think it wassmart.

I nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

He stared at me a moment longer then turned back to the board. He continued droning on a few minutes before we got to the Q&A section of the lesson. ‘Okay, let’s recap. What is first-degree theft?’ Polk asked.

As one, we studied the table tops; even though we were far beyond high school, nobody wanted to be marked out as a know-it-all swot.

Polk sighed. ‘Anyone? Barrington?’ He picked on me, no doubt paying me back for giving my notebook to Jones. He was generally a fair teacher but this call-out felt a little too pointed. Maybe I was being overly sensitive but it seemed like bullying lite – and Ihatedbullies.

Oh well. The heads-down thing wasn’t working too well so maybe it was time I embraced my inner swot. I sat straight in my chair and held Polk’s gaze as I recited, ‘First-degree theft is a class-B felony. It consists of stealing goods, property or service at a value of $25,000. If convicted, an offender may face up to ten years in jail and $100,000 in fines.’

Polk’s mouth tightened; that wasn’t what he’d wanted from me. He’d wanted me to fail. What a charmer. His eyes narrowed. ‘What if they have no prior convictions?’

All eyes flicked to me again; it was like a swotty version of a Wimbledon tennis match as their heads swivelled back and forth. The atmosphere was tense and Jones was looking at me with wide eyes. This wasn’t what Polk had been lecturing about, but it had been in the reading that I’d dutifully devoured. ‘The offender will probably be given one to three years in jail.’

Polk grunted affirmation and turned away. Sidnee nudged me with her elbow and whispered, ‘Good job.’ I gave her a quick smile.

I could feel the anger rolling off Thorsen and his cronies. His shoulders were tight and he twisted in his seat to glare openly at me. This time I didn’t bother to smile or make nice. What was the point? He was determined to despise me no matter what I did, so I might as well embrace showing him up.

I was done with pandering to his delicate ego. I’d be civil because, thanks to my mum, manners were as much ingrained in me as speaking English, but I wasn’t taking his crap anymore.

I was done playing nice.

Chapter 4

Class continued until our midday lunch break. Polk tried to trip me up one more time but lost interest when he realised I had the answers. Sidnee got one question, which she handled beautifully, and Thorsen got one that, annoyingly, he answered correctly. Poor Jones fumbled through his question and got it mostly right, but he earned another verbal jab from the lieutenant that made me fume.

I was grateful when it was time for lunch. Nobody needed me to be tiredandhangry.

Sidnee and I hurried to our room to put away our books and for me to drink a hasty cup of blood. Since we were supernats, I was allowed a small refrigerator next to my bed to store blood. The truth about us was ‘need to know’, and most of the students and instructors were not ‘need to know’ personnel, so the rest of the staff had been told I had a medical issue and needed to keepmy medicine cool. The fridge had a combination lock so no one could open it and see rows of blood bags waiting for me inside.

Only the head of the academy, Lieutenant Fischer, and one of the instructors, Sergeant Marks, were in the know. Polk, Blake and Wilson knew nothing of the hidden supernat world, and Fischer had made itveryclear to us on our first day that it must stay that way.

Sidnee, Margi, four male students and I were supernat recruits. Marks had commented that seven was an unusually high number for one intake because most academy cohorts only had three or four supernats, so I guessed the stars had aligned and tipped the scales in our favour. The current group, ped and supernat combined, had comprised forty students to start with although three of the peds had already dropped out.

I had a fridge but no microwave so I drank my blood cold. I tried not to gag on the thick, gloopy substance and did my thing by plugging my nose and downing it in one. Margi and Sidnee kept a lookout for me as I downed the coppery vintage. When I was done, I put the empty bag in a sealed bin marked for medical waste.

‘Are you hunky-dory, Bunny?’ Margi asked in her perpetually upbeat tone.

I gave her two thumbs up then the three of us headed down to the cafeteria. The blood boost had given me a little extra energy to fight the daylight fatigue that was pulling at me.

You’d have thought that the food would be institutional at a place like this but it was actually really good because a local restaurant had tendered for the catering and we were treated to bang-up meals every day. It was without a doubt my favourite thing about the academy: every day we had the choice of a sandwich, soup and salad for lunch. Today I left the salad well alone; we’d already done physical training, take-down trainingandhad a lap around the obstacle course so we were all starving.

Our intake was split into four squads with ten members in each. At lunchtime we were supposed to sit with our squad for teambuilding or some such shit. Sidnee, Margi and my squads were all down a guy; the only full squad had some of Thorsen’s henchmen in it and a couple of the male supernats. Harry was a caribou shifter and Eben was a witch, though I didn’t know which type.

I grabbed a laden sandwich, some soup and a cup of water from the buffet then sat next to Danny, the other supernat in my squad. He was a raven shifter; the only other bird shifter I’d met was Edgy, but he didn’t like to shift after he’d lost his arm in a horrible accident. Danny didn’t have the same issue and every chance he got he fluttered around in bird form. I didn’t blame him; I’d do the same if I could fly. Flying was cool.

‘Hey, Danny, how are you today?’ I asked before I bit into my turkey sandwich.

‘I’m all right. I saw what Thorsen tried to do to Sidnee on the mats. She handled that well,’ he said quietly.

‘Yeah. He must have been a slippery baby.’

Danny burst out laughing. ‘Remind me not to piss you off.’

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