Fragile Brilliance (Shifters & Seers) (4 page)

“You’ll require an escort,” he said, speaking up for the first time since the official hustings began. He normally didn’t like to talk or draw attention to himself at these things, but he understood the body language of their new Potential and her father. If they let Imogen go alone she would be sporting some new bruises and possibly broken bones when she returned. “A member of the Alpha Pack will accompany you and help you move your belongings back here.”

The relief and hope in her eyes was enough to make Charlie know he was right.

“Really? You guys don’t have more important things to do than help me move?”

“Makya doesn’t,” Scout said. Makya audibly huffed, but Scout didn’t even look in his direction. “He would be happy to help out, unless you were planning on making me promise he would stay the Hades away from you, which I wouldn’t blame you if that’s the case.”

Imogen shook her head with so much enthusiasm her light brown braid flipped up onto her shoulder. “I would be happy to have Mr. Makya help out.”

“Fantastic,” Scout said, leaning back in her seat. “It’s all settled then.”

All this time, Mr. Mandel had been reaching new heights of anger. He stalked up to the desk, well beyond the line of what was considered a safe and respectable distance from the Alphas. Liam and Scout pretended like they didn’t notice, but Charlie knew without looking he wasn’t alone in putting his hand on his gun. Jase and Joshua were also ready to perform their duties as Stratego.

“You arrogant piece of trash,” he said through clenched teeth. “You think you’re so high and mighty for stealing something that never belonged to you. Well, know this, your time is coming. The fall of the Alphas has already begun. And I, for one, will dance on your graves.”

Maggie didn’t belong at Sanders College. Never was that point more abundantly clear than when standing at the counter of the school’s cafeteria.

The choice between gougeres and bourguignon would be so much easier if I had any idea what either of those things are,
she thought as a woman in a pressed grey uniform waited not-so-patiently for her order.

“Bourguignon?”

“With or without?”

With or without what?

“With, please.”
And I’ll just hope that’s with an unhealthy dose of cyanide.

Maggie had saved money for three years, worked hard her entire way through high school, and sat through three interviews just to get into this school, and now she was hoping to be poisoned just so she wouldn’t have to endure another day. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she should be careful what she wished for.

The tiny part of her brain that was calm and understanding realized this was probably how a lot of people felt as they tried to adjust to college life, but Maggie wasn’t in the mood for calm and understanding. She was in more of an overwrought and despair frame of mind, so she stuck with that train of thought, allowing herself to feel the full emotional blow of knowing there wasn’t a single table in the cafeteria where she would be welcome to sit. At that moment she knew exactly how her ancestors must have felt standing in the middle of a whites-only restaurant. Except this time, it wasn’t her dark skin setting her apart. There weren’t a lot of black kids at Sanders, but she wasn’t exactly the only one. She was probably the only one, though, who was here on a full scholarship and wasn’t set to inherit more money than you could earn working sixty hours a week at McDonald’s for the next fifty lifetimes.

You normally wouldn’t expect to see a tiny unaccredited college in the middle of Kentucky filled with rich kids, but Sanders College wasn’t a normal school. Sure, students declared majors and earned grades, but with a pass-rate of over ninety percent, it was obvious Sanders wasn’t exactly known for its rigorous curriculum. What set it apart was an award-winning faculty. You could take English from a National Book Award nominee or Biology from the writer of multiple
New England Journal of Medicine
articles. No one was quite sure how Sanders attracted all-star professors, but after walking through the faculty parking lot and seeing how few classes they each taught a semester, Maggie thought she had a good idea.

But Maggie’s experience over the past week taught her most Sanders students couldn’t care less that their professor was the former CEO of the largest communications firm in the nation. They were just there to get their piece of paper and network so they would have someone to play golf with when they inherited their daddy’s Fortune 500 company.

As Maggie watched a girl slide her hand up a guy’s shirt, she amended that thought. Walking away with a piece of paper and a few more friends wasn’t quite as important as getting a MRS degree for some of the girls.

Dating. Yet another entitlement of the rich.

Maggie was the exact opposite of rich and the thought of dating the progeny of a Real Housewife made her queasy. So what was she doing here?

She’d been working towards this ever since Ida York came to speak to her art camp in the eighth grade. Maggie had won a statewide art competition and the prize had been a full scholarship to a weeklong camp at the University of Tennessee. All one hundred of the eighth graders in attendance had sat enraptured as Ida talked about getting her art shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Modern Gallery in London. She spoke candidly of her life as a world-renowned artist, dropping names of famous celebrities and f-bombs as she prattled on. A dozen different rings caught the light as she waved emphatically, and since they’d been studying textiles just the day before, the whole group could tell that she was draped in a high quality silk dress. When the time for questions came, Maggie, who had always sat quietly in the back of every classroom she’d ever been in, raised her hand.

“How did you become you?” It wasn’t the most eloquent of questions, but Ida understood. Maybe she’d noticed Maggie’s second-hand Wal-Mart clothes or the hungry look in her eyes, but Maggie knew Ida understood.

“I became me by working my ass off,” Ida said. “I suck at book learning, but I did everything I could to make good grades in school, and I worked on my art every single day. Every. Single. Day. I missed every school dance and every house party because I was too busy working. And it paid off, because I was accepted as an independent study student at Sanders College on scholarship. And once I got there, I kept working my ass off.” She held her arms out to the side to indicate the collection of her artwork sharing the stage with her. “Did these take talent? Of course they did. But talent isn’t what makes a great artist. Lots of people have talent. What will make you great, what will make you successful, is hard work.”

Maggie had taken Ida’s words to heart. By the end of her freshman year of high school she’d gone from being a C-student to having a 4.0. She started volunteering at the rec center the week after she got home from camp and was teaching art classes by the time she was fifteen. Even when she started working part-time at The Dollar Store, she kept up her grades and spent every available minute at the rec center. And Ida was proven right. It had paid off. She had gotten into Sanders and was studying under one of the most respected ceramicists in the nation.

The day she’d received her acceptance letter to the program, she’d cried. Knowing she would get the opportunity to study what she loved with some of the best minds in the industry was too much emotion for a girl who never believed she would be able to go to college.

She’d gone from ecstatic over being accepted to wishing she could leave so quickly it gave her whiplash.

“You don’t want to eat that,” a voice said from behind her. She turned to see Scout Donovan eyeing her tray with a crinkled nose. “I think they killed a horse, covered it in swamp water, and then gave it a fancy name so poor college students would be tricked into eating it.”

“This is meat?” Maggie felt like kicking herself for not being brave enough to ask what the hell it was she was ordering.

“Only in the vaguest sense of the word.” Scout stuck her finger in the glop sitting atop the mystery meat and gave it a poke. “What is this?”

The girl who had been standing at Scout’s elbow smacked her friend’s hand like she was a misbehaving child. “You can’t just go around touching people’s food.”

“I’m not sure the USDA would actually qualify it as food,” Maggie said, not minding at all that some strange girl had touched the contents of her plate. It wasn’t like she was going to eat it anyway. Remembering her manners, she looked at Scout’s friend and smiled. “Hi, I’m Maggie.”

“Talley Matthews,” the girl said, stretching out her hand. The tray was a little hard to balance with one hand, but Scout solved the problem by snatching it away. “Please ignore Scout,” Talley said. “She was raised by wolves and has no manners whatsoever.”

Talley didn’t look like the kind of girl Maggie would have imagined as Scout’s friend. Scout had all the cold beauty of a supermodel, and from what she could see, the bluntness of someone who had been so pampered her whole life she expected the world to simply bend to her will. Talley was just as beautiful, but in a much more normal, girl-next-door way. She was a little on the heavy side, her figure reminding Maggie of Duane Bryer’s Hilda. The contrast of her dark hair, blue eyes, and freckle-dusted skin weren’t as startling as Scout’s complete lack of contrast, but compelling all the same. But the part about Talley a person immediately noticed was the kindness shining out of her eyes. You couldn’t help but feel all the warm fuzzies when she was nearby.

Maggie hadn’t realized the opposites attracting thing applied to friends.

“It’s really nice to meet you, Maggie,” Talley said, still holding onto Maggie’s hand. Since Maggie hadn’t really shaken many hands in her life, she wasn’t quite sure, but she felt like this one had been going on for much longer than necessary.

“Same here,” Maggie said, trying to free herself. For someone so sweet and innocent looking, Talley had one heck of a grip.

At some point during this exchange, Scout had somehow managed to get rid of Maggie’s tray. Since it wasn’t sitting on a nearby table, she could only assume Scout had handed it off to one of the staff people who worked in a waitress-like capacity. Without the tray to keep her hands otherwise occupied, Scout was able to cross her arms to complete her closed-off, forbidding look.

“You didn’t come to the hustings,” Scout said.

“Yeah, about that…” Maggie frantically tried to think of a way to tell the most well-known student at Sanders to leave her alone without sounding like she was telling her to leave her alone. “I’m honored, really. But I’m an independent study student. I don’t really have time to be in your little club.”

“You don’t have time for my
little club
?”

Yeah, that probably wasn’t the best word choice. Too bad life didn’t come with a gum eraser.

“I’m sure it’s really… amazing.” Was that what secret clubs aspired to be? Amazing? Or was
really pretentious
a more appropriate compliment? “And I would love it if I could find the time or money to join, but as it is…” She shrugged, leaving off the obvious.

“Little club? My
little club
?”

Good God. What did she want? Did she think Maggie would fall to her knees, thanking her for sparing her a glance?

“Ignore her.” Talley placed a hand on Maggie’s arm. “She gets a little overwrought about ‘the society’,” she said, adding air quotes and a roll of the eyes. “But it really is amazing. At least we have real food.” A girl in a tight dress and heels walked past them so closely Talley had to take a step to the side to avoid getting plowed over. “And no one wears Prada,” she added, her eyes following the girl whose tray boasted a well-balanced lunch of an apple and bottle of water. “With the exception of Scout’s desire to control the entire universe, we’re a pretty laid back group.”

Maggie had to admit Talley seemed more like her kind of people. She was wearing a pair of well-worn Old Navy jeans and a vintage Coca-Cola shirt. Once she stopped to think about it, Scout didn’t exactly have the rich kid look going on either. In fact, the cut-off jean shorts and plain black tank top looked like they could have come from Wal-Mart. Maggie hadn’t noticed how much Scout’s clothing stood out from the typical Sanders fare until Talley pointed it out, probably because Scout didn’t need two-hundred dollar jeans to convince people she was better than them. Her instantly recognizable scowl did a fine job of that all by itself.

“We’re having a barbecue this afternoon.” Talley moved the hand that had been resting on Maggie’s forearm to link into the crook of her elbow. “Hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, and an entire freezer full of Grater’s ice cream. Some honest-to-shiny real food with real people wearing real clothes.”

“That sounds nice, but…” Maggie knew she should stop letting Talley lead her to the door, but the picture Talley was painting was so tempting.

“We live just outside of town,” Scout said from somewhere over Maggie’s right shoulder. “Lots of grass. You can get away from campus and actually breathe a little. No obligation. We just want a chance for us all to get to know each other a little better.”

Maggie turned to meet Scout’s pale blue eyes. “But why? Why would you want to get to know me?”

Scout’s eyebrows rose just a fraction of an inch. “Because you’re special.”