Page 23 of Magical Academy for Delinquents
I flushed. My nostrils flared and my toes curled as I gripped the desk. It was a little early to build a rep for myself by lashing out.
Ho sped up the aisle and yanked a student out of his seat so fast that I didn’t even have time to wipe the spitball off my cheek. The professor pulled the guy backwards by the hair down the aisle as I stared in shock. I had to remind myself not to let my jaw drop when Ho eye gouged the dude with the teardrop tattoo.
The other students looked on with interest. But they didn’t pull out phones like would have happened at any of my prior academies. They didn’t document the incident and plan to get their five minutes of fame on social media from it. They probably knew if they did that they’d be in for the same treatment.
Ho opened the classroom door and said, “Out.”
The dude nearly ran into the door jamb on the way out, his eyes red and streaming real tears to match the ones he’d had inked onto his cheeks.
Ho turned back to glance around the room imperiously. His gaze dared anyone to challenge or disrespect him. Utter silence met that gaze. When Ho’s dark eyes turned back to me, even I had to force myself not to cringe away. His hand rose to his cheek and his index finger stroked it oddly.
That’s when I realized I hadn’t wiped away the spitball. I did so, trying to feign nonchalance. Maybe at MAD, this sort of thing was normal. Maybe professors bodily dragged students around every day. But it took me a second to recover. I was a little taken aback. Nazer had warned me professors didn’t take things lightly, but damn.
My eyes scanned my classmates, many of them marking me as prey. Great. I looked like I didn’t know what the fuck to do in a fight.
Shit. I debated showing off my power, but that was just as likely to draw in the crazies who wanted to suction it out of me like vacuums.
“Ms. Dunemark, please continue,” the professor said calmly, as if nothing had happened.
I glanced back at Malcolm, scolding myself, reminding myself that I needed to be impressing this dude, not anyone else. To my surprise, Malcolm gave me a small, encouraging head nod.
Shit. That almost made this harder. Fangirling started up in my chest, like a whole live stream of jumping, screaming little thirteen-year-old girls going “he looked at me.” I was doing this. I was actually doing this. Malcolm fucking Bier was looking at me. Focused on me. I closed my eyes.Don’t fuck up,I told myself.
Then I opened my eyes and stared back at Professor Ho. I couldn’t look at Malcolm or I knew I’d lose my cool. My cheeks were already threatening to go red as it was. “The studies here in the U.S. have been minimal because of human and animal rights concerns.”
From the back of the room, Malcolm called out, “The published studies have been minimal, you mean.”
“Right,” I cleared my throat. My palms were sweaty. My palms were never sweaty. Dammit. I tried again. “The Pinnacle and the government of the United States haven’t been able to come to an agreement about citizenship if a human became a magical.”
Ho’s eyes twinkled with mirth as he said, “I thought, with your stepfather overseeing the research for the Pinnacle, that you might know a bit more about the unpublished studies.”
Any admiration for him dried out and burnt to a crisp as fury rolled through me. The fuckwad had gone and cut off my legs with a single sentence. The atmosphere in the room went from bored to hostile in two seconds flat. Dammit to hell. The Pinnacle was the enemy to most of these damn students. And now they knew my mother’s shit husband—worked there. Way to put a target on my back. As if I didn’t have enough with the nerd thing. Day one was not going well. I ran my tongue over my teeth, wondering if I could salvage this. How I could salvage this.
One girl at the back of the class said, “So you’re a stupid chess piece?” That’s what the underbelly, the criminal underground, called people who played by the rules.
I narrowed my eyes at the girl. She stared straight back, her dark curls and the leather collar she wore screaming defiance in a way that was all for show. I ran down my mental attendance sheet. She had to be Laura Whitehall, recent plaything of Grayson’s, if my PI was correct. Not officially a girlfriend, though she wanted to be. Interesting that she’d hate chess pieces since Grayson’s daddy was angling to join the Clod at the Pinnacle. The question became, did I make her a friend or an enemy? Which one would get me closer to Grayson?
“If I was a chess piece, would I be here?” I asked her.
“Maybe you’re a nark,” Laura stretched her legs out under her desk and crossed them at her ankles, displaying an ankle monitor just like Zavier’s.
Ohh, that monitor is so badass, girl. You show it off, that’s right,I thought sarcastically snapping my fingers in the air for her. I wondered if she’d paid extra for the ankle monitor just to look more hardcore.
From all my research about the people here, she’d only ever gone down for repeated shoplifting. High dollar stuff? Yeah. But nothing dangerous or crazy. I smiled at Laura as I studied her brown eyes and bright red lipstick. I saw a chance to redeem myself in front of the jerks in the front row, who were leering at me, eager to find me in the hall after class and give the new little nerd a taste of the dark side.
I put a finger to my lips and tapped. “If Iwasa nark, I’d probably know all about the fact that you blew that cop who arrested you in order to get him to change your felony to a misdemeanor, wouldn’t I?” I nodded to myself, pretending to be thinking about it as suddenly the room buzzed with energy, on high alert. Gazes ping-ponged back and forth between me and Laura. The guys in the front row leaned back in their seats, no longer leering.
Fuck. Sometimes I loved being me.
Laura’s eyes narrowed and she glared at me.
“I didn’t do that.”
I pulled Zavier’s innocent bullshit face. “July 17th last year? You sure? Looked like you in the photo. Pretty sure the court minutes still have you on parole for shoplifting, you scary thing, you.”
Snickers kicked off as Laura’s fingers clenched on the edges of her desk. Yup. One enemy made. Hopefully she’d run to Grayson. And either he’d cast her off or come to defend her. Either way, I’d be on his radar. With a billionaire’s son, that was always the first step. Yes-men and coattail riders were a dime a dozen. But opponents? Bitches? Those were few and far between in the land of the wealthy.
My grandmother used to say you’d catch more flies with honey than vinegar. She obviously didn’t know that fruit flies were obsessed with vinegar. Grandma just repeated what she’d been told. She was a bit of a chess piece. But fruit flies were drawn to vinegar like moths to flame. They were so attracted that the fuckers would drown themselves in it.
