Orphan Lost, page 22
"Are we?" I asked her, the words falling out before I thought better of them.
Her brows furrowed, and she stepped closer. "I think we need to talk."
"I think I'm done. I'm tired of playing these games," I told her thickly, stepping away and then turning to walk down the hall, leaving her behind. At least that was my intention, but she caught up in just a few steps, walking beside me.
"You're upset. You have good reason to be upset," she said softly. "But you shouldn't make decisions driven by emotion."
I slanted a glance at her. The hurt in her tone said this was something she'd done more than once and been burned for it.
"Whatever you're planning with Calix? You shouldn't trust him," she continued, guiding me with her shoulder towards the library. "Whatever you're feeling, that's valid, but you shouldn't let that make life-changing decisions for you, at least not until you know everything that's going on."
The library doors were already unlocked and open for the day. We walked through the scanner and headed towards a seating area surrounded by bookshelves.
"I don't want to have anything to do with any of this," I finally said. "Not your games, not these bonds, none of it." But I sounded less sure than I wanted, and more hurt.
"I understand that," Juniper said, pulling me to nearest chair and flopping down gracelessly, all long limbs and crumpled skirt. She waved at the chair across from her, and I begrudgingly sat stiffly with my arms still crossed.
"I'm not interested in playing games," I told her bluntly, cutting off whatever she was going to say and leaning forward to pin her with my stare. "I'm not interested in whatever power plays you're all making. Just leave me out of all of it, and I'll go on my way. I'll sleep with Calix, and then I'll be out of your hair and you'll be free of him."
She grimaced. "That's one way to do it, but before you make your final decision you should look at what I got for you at, I might note, no small cost. Birch asked me about it, and it took some time to track down an option that would work." She held out her hand, closed around something small, and I reached out reflexively to take it.
A small piece of cloudy amber fell into my palm, a silver piece attaching it to a necklace chain. It warmed immediately to my skin, and I frowned at it. "What's this supposed to do?"
I hadn't forgotten Juniper bought and traded in spells, and I already had one necklace of hers that would keep Posey from focusing on me. I kept that in the bottom of my backpack most of the time, feeling like it was too valuable to wear and afraid I'd lose it.
It wasn't much of a jump to assume this was bespelled as well for one use or another.
Juniper smiled and gestured at it. "Look closer."
I lifted it up and peered into the clouded amber, and almost immediately I felt a pull to watch, to see. As I looked closer, I saw figures moving in the golden depths.
The necklace dropped from my nerveless fingers to fall onto the floor between us as I snatched my hands back and stared at her. "What is it?"
"A memory," she said, tut tutting at me and picking it up gingerly. "Be more careful. This is one of the hardest-to-get items I've ever had to procure, and I used up more favors than I would like in the process."
I took it back reluctantly. At my touch, the figures in the amber moved again, tiny, stilted, drawing my gaze. "They're too small to see anything."
"From the outside, yes," she said. "You can wake it and relive the memory from the point of view of the person who lived it. I couldn't get your specific memory of what happened when you were bound back, but I bullied Rhodes into giving me his. The spell is locked to you and only you. You can wake it with your blood or with water from Faerie. Either will work."
"Faerie's a real place, huh," I said thoughtfully and frowned, studying the necklace so I didn't have to look at her. Not that I was ever likely to go there, but for all I knew she commonly kept faerie water in her refrigerator. "What does it show?"
"I told you. Your bonding," she said softly, so softly I could barely hear her breathe the words. "From Rhodes' point of view. You can see everything from his gaze, hear and feel what he heard and felt when they first met you."
I jerked my chin up and stared at her. It couldn't be that simple.
"In short," she continued. "The truth of your bonding and what happened that day, what was said and what was felt so you can make decisions after looking at your younger self and hearing her reasoning. This is a strong spell, and you need to be careful. It'll suck you right in so only look at it when you're somewhere alone and won't be interrupted."
I blew out a breath and tucked it over my head, letting the amber fall to rest between my collarbones before looking back at her. "I'm still sick of playing the same stupid games for stupider prizes. I don't want any of this. But thank you Juuni, for being a friend and getting this for me."
She shrugged, unrepentant. "I play the games I have to play to survive, just like any of us caught in these webs. But what I offer you here is truth, hard bought. You want to know what really happened? Well, now you can."
I pressed the stone to my chest, feeling it warm to stinging as I stared at her. Or maybe that was the pressure of my fingers, digging it into my skin.
She sighed gustily and leaned forward. "All I'm saying is: don't make your final decision until you've watched this, okay? You can sleep with Calix and break the bond, that's your choice. It's not the choice I want, honest truth. But I want you to make your decisions knowing all the facts."
I huffed and tucked it under my shirt collar. "You're crazy manipulative, you know that? You're just lucky I have a soft spot for you, otherwise I would have decked you by now," I told her snippily, but I didn't say I wouldn't look at the memory.
Looking in her eyes, I think we both knew I would. She hadn't been able to retrieve my lost memories, but this was the next best thing. I'd be able to see myself, if what she said was true, hear my own words. Know, for once and for all, what happened on the day my face was scarred and I bonded Rhodes and his court.
"Thanks," I said brusquely and stood up. When she moved to follow, I flicked my fingers at her, and she subsided into her chair with a pout. She was still in the naughty corner on time out for that spell at the dance!
Then I headed out into the crowded hallway, leaving her and her pout behind.
If I had thought being new was awkward, that was nothing on my new status:
apparently, now I was a social pariah. Leaving the library, students in the halls parted before me, refusing to get close as I walked past them. In class, they tittered and laughed and whispered, and none of them talked to me directly, only stole looks.
At lunch time, I didn't bother to go to the cafeteria, instead sitting in an empty classroom, one of the biology rooms at a large black desk and staring out the windows at the rising wind and dark storm clouds on the horizon.
The weather was only appropriate, echoing the unease in my gut.
I turned my phone on and listened to it chime and chime and chime before I set it down to finish downloading messages while I went through what I'd been able to scrounge up for lunch. Most of it was bagged chips or crackers, and while it wasn't good for me, I wouldn't be hungry.
After a while my phone stopped, and I checked out of sheer perversion to see how many unread messages I had.
154 messages.
I set it back down and thought about whether or not I wanted to read any of them after
all of what had gone on.
Maybe Juniper's.
I was thumbing through her messages when my phone chimed again, and I glanced down reflexively.
Rhodes.
No. Not even happening. I gave up and turned the phone off and continued watching the storm approach from the west, the room slowly dimming as the clouds gathered and the wind picked up.
My heart picked up as well, listening to the wind buffet the windows. We hadn't lived in Texas long, but the storms there had been frightful, sweeping across the plains and dropping twisters right and left with sickly green clouds and sirens screaming out into the skies.
I swallowed my nerves and nibbled at the lunch I'd gotten from the vending machines and sat watching the storm roll in.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway, pausing, walking, pausing, walking. After a few minutes, I realized they were checking each and every classroom.
That told me it was probably Rhodes' court, looking for me. Again.
I glanced around the room, taking in the taxidermied animals covering the walls and the hanging hawks overhead. It happened to be the same room I'd chosen to hide from them in last time, and there wasn't any place to hide in it.
The footsteps stopped one room over, and I weighed my options while I listened to them speak too softly to make out.
Then the footsteps approached the room I was in. I looked out the window, ignoring the doorway.
A sigh, relieved sounding, and one set of footsteps walked up to me, carrying the faint scent of rain and gin. "Stella, sugar?"
Wilder. Smelling of alcohol at noon? That was something I'd normally fuss about now that I'd noticed it was a problem, but today I was just too done with all of them to bother.
Instead I ignored him, watching the wind whip the trees into a frenzy outside.
"Stella, please, you have to talk to us sooner or later."
That was Birch.
Nothing from Oakley, but he didn't want to like me anyway, that was perfectly clear from how he'd fought approaching me at the party.
Silence hung between us, and I didn't look away from the window.
"Stella, sugar pie," Wilder said, breaking first. "We didn't steal your underwear. We tried to stop that from happening."
Did he really think that's what I was upset about? Something so shallow? "None of you have played me straight," I said into that silence. "None of you have been honest with me."
"You know our reasoning," Oakley finally said. "That hasn't changed."
"I do know, and I get your reasoning," I said, finally looking over at them where they stood in the front of the room. "I don't blame you for that at least."
Wilder shifted, crossing his arms. "We, uh, talked about what to do."
"That's nice," I said, looking back at the window as the wind picked up. "But it doesn't actually have anything to do with me."
"No, I mean," he faltered, then continued. "I mean, we agreed want to complete the bond with you. It's our fault you're at risk, so we'll, uh, go with our plan of protecting you and—"
"No," I said, without looking at him. I propped my chin on my hand and studied the greenish tint to the clouds.
Wilder sputtered. "What?"
"No," I said flatly. "I want nothing to do with any of you. I'm done with your fae drama and games. When did you ever consider talking to me about this? Asking what I wanted? Seeing if what we wanted was even on the same page?"
"As long as you're bonded to Rhodes, you'll be in danger," Birch said quietly. "You need us to protect you. We want the bond, for more than being able to protect you, but we also want you to be willing, luv."
"Juniper said sleeping with a fae guy would break the bond since it isn't completed," I said, tone as disinterested as I could manage. "I'm assuming a girl would work too, but not really my thing. So I'll pick a guy, and I'll break it. Set you all free, and you can just go on with your self-absorbed, selfish little lives."
"That doesn't keep you safe, that just keeps you separate from us!" Oakley snapped, the first to respond.
I spun to face them at that, to find the three of them haggard and drawn looking. Lack of sleep or maybe some effect from Juniper's spell, I didn't know, and it didn't matter. "Why should you care about that? I was never your problem in the first place!"
"You chose to help—"
"So you say," I said, cutting him off. "But I remember none of it. It's all been games, games, games since I came here, and I don't know that a single one of you is telling it to me straight."
Wilder licked his lips, glancing at Birch who stepped forward even as I leaned away from him. "What can we do to prove ourselves to you, luv?" he asked, tone coaxing.
"What do you need, so that you'll believe us?"
I stared at him, aghast. "Like I'm some sort of puzzle, is it? Just tell me the right words, smile at the right time, and I'll fall in line?"
Outside the wind buffeted the windows, and I spared it a glance out of pure,
Texas-storm-trained reflex. The sky was greenish-gray, low clouds and gusts of wind.
"That's not what I meant," Birch tried, even as I scanned the horizon for the danger my gut knew was coming. "We've hurt you, whether we meant to or not. We need to make it up to you."
"Only because you need my help," I snapped, hardly paying attention. Against the far bluffs and rain-soaked trees, the clouds were beginning to drop.
That was enough for me.
I stood up, shoving my chair back and spinning to them. "Where's the tornado shelter?"
"Tornado shelter?" Wilder echoed blankly and glanced past me at the window I'd been looking out. "We don't have one."
"Where do you go for tornado drills?" I demanded, heart rising in my throat as I watched the clouds elongate into a tail, slinking towards the ground. It was still in the distance but far too close to us.
Oakley seemed to clue in then, leaning forward and studying the sky. "We go to the interior classrooms and kneel against the inner most walls." Class was in session, and they'd surely think I was crazy if I barged in and demanded we take shelter.
But my storm-honed instincts were screaming that the threat was real. I glanced at the cloud's tail, thin and long, probing towards the ground.
My pulse picked up and I glanced wildly at the guys.
"Tornado?" Wilder asked, leaning to see more clearly. "For real?"
Another glance, surety burning in my chest. "What, that isn't obvious enough for you?" "We have to warn—" Birch began, stepping back towards the front of the room where the teacher's call button was mounted on the wall.
The first wail rose, tornado siren stuttering as it kicked on, and I was moving before I could put a plan together. Out the door, bolting down the hall even as chaos erupted from the classrooms I passed, students pouring towards the interior walls.
I ran. And I left the guys behind.
Swearing broke out behind me, footsteps echoing mine as I raced through the school, shoving through crowds of scrambling students.
A teacher shouted, and I caught a glimpse of his pale face and gaping mouth. Faces blurred as I ran, making the students I pushed past indistinguishable from each other.
All of it so slow, too slow, like running in a nightmare.
I reached the nearest girls' bathroom a heartbeat later, some gut instinct of mine screaming that this was the safest place to be. I burst inside, the door slamming into the wall.
A second siren rose, screaming into the sky, muted by thick cinder block walls.
I skidded to the handicap stall at the end, noted the lack of windows with relief, and shoved the door into the empty stall, pushing past until I was crouched, pressed between the toilet and the wall as close to the center of the building as I could get.
I covered my head and crouched down as the door slammed open again.
"Stella," one of the guys shouted, and then Wilder was pressing into the stall beside me.
The school alarm system kicked in then, wailing sirens and flashing lights warning danger, danger, danger, and I crouched down as far as I could manage, folding in on myself and fitting into the corner so tightly that I couldn't see the guys, could barely hear their shouting over the alarms.
Wilder pressed in closer, yanking Birch down beside him, "This isn't a drill." I barely made out his words over the racket.
Oakley swore, and then he was shoving Wilder and I further into the corner as he pressed in beside Birch.
Dimly over the cacophony, I heard a low roar, something felt more than heard, and I squeezed my eyes shut. If I died from something as mundane as a tornado, after all the talk of magic and spells and bonds, I was going to be disgusted with fate.
Someone's fingers dug into my shoulders as the roar grew, vibrations traveling through the cement under my feet. Around us the pipes began chattering and moaning, and there were sucking noises coming from the sinks.
I felt a bite of panic in my chest, a gut-deep terror that I realized abruptly wasn't mine. Rhodes didn't know where we were and he was terrified, his fear flooding me through our bond and making my teeth chatter. If he could feel me, I was probably feeding nothing but stark terror back to him.
The fingers on my shoulder dug in deeper and Oakley was shouting something inaudible at the other guys and gesturing.
I dragged in a breath past the panic choking me and turned my head to see Oakley standing and pulling at Birch's shoulder.
"Get down," I screamed at him, but if he heard me he didn't so much as glance at me in the flashing lights. I couldn't make out what he was saying, but Birch looked up, brows arched with comedic levels of surprise.
Birch glanced at me where I pressed into the corner, Wilder's arm a weight on my shoulders, his fingers digging a dull throb into my bicep. He rose then, turning and yanking on Wilder.
Wilder looked up, the whites of his eyes showing before some understanding of whatever Oakley was screaming clicked through, over the pipes gurgling and gasping, the sirens, and the growing roar of the storm bearing down on us. He released me and shoved himself upright before turning and hooking his hands into my elbow and pulling for all he was worth.
"Are you insane?" I demanded, but I couldn't even hear myself. I fought being pulled from the safety of my corner, but Birch leaned in from the other side of the toilet and helped, and between the three of them, they dragged me kicking and writhing into the middle of the handicap stall.
I fought them, scratching and slapping at their arms, screaming myself hoarse, but they pressed in close around me until all I could see was jeans and linked arms, hands held, fingers twined. Their knees cut into my shoulders, my legs tangled with their feet, and even in my panic I couldn't make myself grab them to hold on.
