Crash Course Read online

  Souji halted, slowly turning around to face me, his head cocked to one side and his ears perked up. If he’d been in human form, I imagined he would have had his arms crossed over his chest.

  “I can’t shout it. So stand still and wait for me.” He didn’t move, so I drew up beside him. “Okay. There is a dead student on campus, and I found him.”

  My hunting partner froze, his eyes widening even in cat form.

  “I know, right?” I kept walking toward our dorm.

  Souji joined me, but more slowly now, as I told him everything I had seen—including the severed corpse of the centaur shifter floating in the air.

  “Mr. Jamison and Ms. Gayle were fighting over it. I’m pretty sure he thinks the new wraith instructor did it, but I don’t know why. And he seems to think Ms. Gayle should believe that, too.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “You know something about that?”

  He gave me the feline shrug I’d learned to recognize as his version of “I’m not sure.”

  “I want to leave it to the adults.”

  He stopped again and stared at me.

  I blew out a sigh. “I probably shouldn’t, should I?”

  With a shake of his head, he began walking again. I took a few seconds to catch up, trying to decide what to do.

  “I can’t make any final decisions tonight,” I announced, and Souji rolled his eyes at me. “I can’t ask any questions or find out anything, and maybe by tomorrow it’ll all be sorted out.”

  I didn’t really believe it, either.

  Souji walked me all the way to my room, where I dropped my hand on his back and fisted my fingers in his fur. “Thanks for coming to get me. I appreciate it.”

  His purr rumbled under my hand, and I smoothed out the fur again. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything, okay? Good night.”

  He tapped my foot with his paw—his version of goodbye—and I moved into my room, shutting the door behind me and leaning against it. I hadn’t realized how nervous I was until I’d made it safely to my room.

  Without warning, I burst into tears.

  Erin’s voice came tentatively from across the room, out of the darkness. “Are you okay?”

  I tried to answer but simply sobbed harder.

  I heard rustling, then saw Erin’s silhouette as she passed in from the window on her way to me.

  My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I saw her as she approached me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders and leading me over to my bed, where she pulled me down to sit next to her. “Tell me what’s going on. Is it Tony? Did something happen?”

  I sobbed harder, even though I could feel Erin beginning to panic next to me. “What did he do? Oh, Kacie, am I going to have to hurt him?”

  I half sobbed, half laughed. “No. Tony is fine. But while we were on a date, we went on a walk.” I paused, remembering Ms. Gayle’s admonition not to tell anyone. But I’d already told Souji. And I knew I could trust Erin. Besides, I had to tell her something about why I was sobbing. “You can’t tell anyone. I’m not supposed to tell anyone, either. Promise?”

  “I swear. Just tell me what’s going on, so I can help you.”

  “Tony and I went for a walk after the movie, up near the north part of campus.” I paused to take a breath.

  “And what?” Erin asked, almost frantic.

  “We found a body.” I shuddered at the memory. “A dead body. A student. Cut in half, Erin.”

  “Oh. How horrible.” Erin held her hand over her mouth even as she asked the next question. “Was it anyone you knew?”

  “No, but Tony did.”

  “Who was it?” She asked the question as if she were afraid to know the answer.

  “Tony said it was someone named Davis.” He’d told me Davis’s last name, too, but I couldn’t remember it.

  “Davis Carruthers? The centaur shifter?”

  “Yeah, that was him.”

  “Oh, no. How awful.” Erin hugged me tightly. “I’m so sorry you had to deal with that.”

  “How do hunters do it—get used to all the death they see?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I mean, we’re taught to treat the Lusus Naturae like they’re not really people, and that helps a little.”

  “But that can’t really be helpful either, can it? And what about the Lusus Naturae who want to come over to our side, like the wraith who’s teaching parabiology? How do we change how we treat them if they join our side?”

  Erin shook her head. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”

  I didn’t either. But I was pretty sure that dehumanizing—or de-people-izing, anyway—the other side was one way to make certain we never figured out how to live together in harmony. And that was a sure-fire way to keep us fighting each other until the end of time.

  I SPENT THE REST OF the weekend hiding out in my room, certain if I went out, I would either have something horrible happen again or blurt out the whole story to the first person I saw. Both seemed like a terrible idea.

  I sent Tony a text Saturday morning asking how he was. His reply was short: Feeling rough.

  I sent a sad-face emoji, and he replied with, I’m going to try to sleep.

  My last text, Let me know if you need anything from me, didn’t get any reply at all.

  I hoped he really was sleeping.

  Souji stopped by on Saturday, I guess to check on me. When I opened the door, he stepped halfway in, holding it open with his body.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m fine.” I waited, but he just stared up at me expectantly. “I’m not going anywhere until classes Monday.”

  When he still didn’t make a move, I sat down on the end of my bed and stared back at him. “Erin is bringing me lunch. I have homework to do between now and Monday. And I do not want to get involved in whatever is going on out there. I want to stay out of this mess.”

  Souji cocked his head at me.

  “I mean it. I couldn’t help but be involved with Shane or with the demon Santa. But this has nothing to do with me other than I was the one who found him. Nothing.”

  When Souji didn’t move, I threw myself backward onto my bed.

  “I am at least taking this weekend off from whatever this school is throwing at me next.”

  At that point, Souji finally moved to the foot of my bed and sat down. He reached out with one paw and dropped it onto my leg. I heaved a big sigh and sat back up.

  “If this ends up being something that I have to get involved with, I will. But if I can possibly avoid it, I’m going to. But for just these two days, I want to stay out of it, okay?”

  Souji nodded and padded out of my room.

  I shut the door behind him. I think I already knew that there was no way I was going to be able to avoid getting involved in what was about to happen.

  But I did manage to stay out of it for one weekend.

  Chapter 7

  I started Monday morning hoping that the adults on campus would have figured out what was going on.

  Erin hadn’t heard anything all weekend long about a body being found, which was pretty amazing on this campus, where rumors spread like wildfire.

  As I walked into parabiology class Monday morning, I scanned the front of the room. The wraith instructor was there, and this time, I had a slightly better grasp of what she looked like. I wondered if that was because I’d spent so much time over the weekend thinking about her and about Mr. Jamison’s veiled accusations. Or, veiled to me, anyway—I suspected Ms. Gayle knew exactly what he meant.

  I still didn’t know the wraith instructor’s name, so I had taken to calling her Ms. Hush in my mind. Her features still made my gaze want to slide off them, but I could tell now that her long, dark straight hair was pulled back in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her skin was paper-white, her eyes black from her pupils all the way through her irises, and her lips were either painted or naturally a dark, almost blood-red burgundy.

  She blinked in surprise when I made eye contact with her and nod
ded. “Good morning,” she said, her voice whispery.

  “Good morning,” I answered her.

  As I slid into my seat at my desk, Angelica leaned over to me. “What did she say to you?”

  “Just good morning. Could you not hear her?”

  The centaur shifter shook her head. “No. It just sounded like static.”

  That was interesting. Apparently, I was getting better at understanding her faster than most of my classmates—or at least faster than some of them.

  At the front of the classroom, the loudspeaker crackled to life.

  “Good morning, Academy,” Ms. Gayle’s voice echoed from speakers and classrooms all the way down the hallways. “This morning, we will be convening in the main auditorium for a short assembly, including a series of announcements. Please gather your belongings and make your way quietly and in an orderly fashion to the assembly hall. Thanks so much for your time and attention, and I will see you momentarily.”

  I glanced around at my classmates, none of whom seemed especially surprised by this announcement. Maybe it wasn’t unusual? Just because we hadn’t had one like it since I got here didn’t mean it was strange.

  I had a vague idea where the auditorium was. If I remembered correctly, it was in the Administration Building. I was fairly certain I’d passed it several times in my trips to the commons room, where we had held our meals over the winter break.

  Getting there wasn’t my main concern, anyway—I could follow my classmates to the auditorium.

  I was, however, a little worried about what kinds of announcements the headmistress was planning to make. I was guessing she knew she couldn’t keep Davis’s death quiet for much longer. But I was also nervous about what she might have to say regarding how he died.

  And for some reason, I felt a strangely protective need to stick close to Ms. Hush as we filed out of the classroom and down the stairs toward the building exit.

  Ms. Hush looked surprised to see me walking next to her.

  “Do you know what’s going on?” I asked quietly. I didn’t know how many of my classmates might understand this conversation, so I tried to keep it vague.

  “I have some information,” Ms. Hush said.

  “Did you know I was one of the ones who found...him?”

  She nodded, her expression wary. “I had heard that, yes.”

  “I was there for some discussion afterwards.”

  We walked quietly for a few moments.

  “You seem to have spent some significant time focusing on me recently.” Her line seemed like a non-sequitur, a change in topics, but I suspected it wasn’t a shift at all.

  “Because I can have a conversation with you and remember it?” I asked.

  She nodded. “That usually only happens with people who are exceedingly interested in me.”

  “For now, I’ll just say that I’m not the only one who’s interested in you.”

  She considered my words for a long moment before nodding. “Thank you. I appreciate the heads’ up.”

  I started to jog ahead to catch up with Angelica and Zanya, walking ahead of us. Then I paused and glanced back over my shoulder. “If my instincts about you were wrong, I’ll help those other people...no, I will take you down myself.”

  A half grin tilted up one corner of her mouth, and for the first time, I realized that if I could really focus in on her, Ms. Hush would actually be pretty.

  Then her eyes turned completely black, and she squinted at me, baring pointed teeth. “I would expect absolutely nothing less, given your reputation.”

  As I jogged forward to catch up with my friends, I worked not to show the jolt of fear that shot through me at her expression.

  “YOU GUYS HAVE ANY IDEA what’s going on?” Hazel asked as she slid into the row Angelica, Zanya, and I had taken. Everyone else murmured their denials. I simply stared off at the sections where the older students were sitting.

  “There’s Tony,” I murmured. My friends would all assume I was watching for my crush. But really, I was trying to figure out how he was doing.

  Not well, given how pale and drawn he looked.

  Bad enough for Angelica to comment on it. “Is he okay?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  Zanya leaned past the centaur shifter. “How did your date go Friday?”

  I glared at Angelica. “Did you tell everyone?”

  She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Not everyone.”

  “Well?” Hazel asked from the other side of Zanya.

  “It was fine,” I answered shortly. “We went to the film showing, then we talked about eighties movies. Raiders of the Lost Ark, mainly.”

  “Was there any kissing?” Hazel asked.

  “Raiders of the Lost Ark doesn’t sound like a kissing kind of conversation,” Zanya opined.

  “Besides, Kacie always blushes when you talk about dates, and she’s not blushing now,” Angelica added. “I’m betting there was no kissing.”

  Then you’d be betting wrong. I didn’t say anything aloud, though. I was too afraid I would blurt out the truth of what had happened.

  Besides, I was too busy trying to locate everyone who’d been at the scene of the body discovery Friday night.

  I expected Ms. Gayle would be on the stage in a few moments.

  Mr. Jamison paced along the bottom of the stage, almost visible anger radiating from him in a thunderous cloud that hovered over his head.

  The three instructors who had levitated Davis’s body out of the snow huddled on the other side of the room, their faces still grim.

  Ms. Hush, although she had not actually been there, was still a major player in this drama, though right now she had had all but faded into the woodwork along the side of the room.

  Ms. Gayle didn’t give the audience in the auditorium time much time to speculate about why we were there. She strode out onto the center of the stage and plucked a microphone off the stand. As usual, she wore high heels and a skirt. Today, she also wore a sweater in the school’s colors.

  I suddenly remembered the last headmaster, Mr. Finnegan, explaining to me that the burgundy color represented the blood spilled in defense of hunters.

  I shivered in my seat.

  “Hello, everyone,” Ms. Gayle said. “Can I have your attention please?” She paused, making eye contact with various sides of the room. When the room grew quiet, she began speaking. “I’m very sorry to announce that we’ve had a death on campus.” She waited for a few seconds for the gasps and audible responses of, “What?” and “Oh, no!” to die down.

  “We are in the process of arranging to conduct an investigation into this death. Many of you knew the student, Davis Carruthers.”

  The whispers and gasps grew louder.

  “Those of you who were friends with Davis may receive a request to speak with investigators. We ask that you please do so as quickly as possible. We would like to be able to get his family the closure they deserve at this time. In the meantime, please maintain your usual schedules. If you need to speak to a counselor, contact my office. We will be making those arrangements this week.”

  She moved back toward the stand, setting the microphone in place and leaning forward to say, “Thank you. If you will please—”

  Her closing remarks, however, were interrupted by Mr. Jamison, who had stopped pacing, and now stood in front of the stage, his arms crossed over his chest belligerently. He leaned forward, pointed at Ms. Gayle with one jabbing forefinger, and shouted at the top of his lungs, “I demand that you arrest that wraith!”

  This time, I gasped, turning to look at Ms. Hush. I noticed that only about a quarter of the audience looked at her, too.

  That must be how many of us can see and remember her.

  Ms. Gayle tilted her head to one side inquisitively. She opened her mouth as if to ask Mr. Jamison why he would have his fellow instructor locked up. However, his next shout overrode her, drowning out her voice with his own.

  “I demand you lock her up under sus
picion of murder.”

  His final word, murder, echoed through the sudden silence of the auditorium, reverberating with the accusation.

  Chapter 8

  The auditorium erupted in shouts. Overriding everything else was Mr. Jamison’s voice demanding that Ms. Gayle lock up Ms. Hush while he conducted the investigation. That only lasted a few seconds, however, until Ms. Gayle took the microphone back in hand and announced that instructors would be meeting in the commons room of the administration building and students should plan to return to class after lunch.

  Ms. Gayle all but slammed the microphone back down and to the stand and stomped offstage.

  Mr. Jamison was still shouting after her. His voice cut across the babble. “I call for a vote of no-confidence in Ms. Gayle’s leadership as headmistress,” he bellowed. “I demand a vote of no-confidence!”

  I glanced around, suddenly realizing that Ms. Hush had disappeared entirely. I wondered if she had left before or after Ms. Gayle had announced the teachers’ meeting. Or during. That could have been a good time to make her escape.

  For that matter, I wondered if she planned to go to the teachers’ meeting at all.

  Mr. Jamison raced around to the side of the stage and up atop it, chasing after Ms. Gayle. They both disappeared backstage.

  Everyone in the auditorium was talking, shocked voices echoing through the room. Every so often, a phrase would float to the top of the noise.

  “Can’t believe it.”

  “...how was he murdered?”

  “...wraiths kill for pleasure...”

  “Jamison is right...”

  “...doesn’t have what it takes to lead. No-confidence vote is the way to go.”

  None of this felt right. Mr. Jamison was not the kind of instructor who would do this. He was a nice guy. And if you’d asked me before today, I would have said that he was more likely to try to talk to someone quietly, in person, rather than tossing out screaming accusations in the middle of an assembly.

  Whole chunks of this didn’t make sense. Why was Jamison so certain Ms. Hush had something to do with Davis’s murder?