Girls Can't Be Knights: (Spirit Knights Book 1) (11 page)

“Brian lives here?”

“No.” His nostrils flared and his grip on her arm tightened. “He lives with his mother and little brother.”

“Oh.” Not wanting to anger him more, she dropped her gaze to the floor. “Sorry.”

He grumbled without words and shoved her aside. “You can sleep on the couch.”

She stumbled into the wall and rubbed her arm, expecting to have a hand-shaped bruise later. “Can I have my backpack?”

Scowling, he rolled his eyes. “It’s in the trunk. Stay here and don’t do anything stupid.” He stalked out and slammed the door.

Blinking in surprise that he hadn’t handcuffed her to something, she stared at the door. She could go walk right out the front door. And be completely lost, because she had no idea where this apartment complex was. Even if she found a bus stop nearby, she had no money to pay the fare. Her bus pass sat in the bottom of the very backpack she now waited for him to bring up.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad here. She’d stayed in group homes where the foster parents hated kids. So long as everyone stayed quiet and did their homework and went to bed on time, everything was fine. The one she’d just moved into seemed like that. Avery was probably that kind of guy too.

She still wanted to talk to Justin without Avery around. Maybe she could sneak out in the middle of the night or get away from him tomorrow sometime. Or, she mused as she sank down to sit on his unexpectedly comfortable couch, she could try asking. “Hey, Avery,” she asked the empty room with a smirk, “is it okay if I go out and wander around until I happen to bump into Justin?” Yeah, that would go over well.

Avery returned with her backpack, his brow climbing when he saw her sitting there. Maybe he’d expected her to run off. He dropped her pack onto the couch and crossed his arms. “You’re probably hungry. Pizza or Chinese?”

“Um, pizza, I guess.” She pulled her backpack to her chest and hunched her shoulders. “I like mushrooms.”

The corners of his mouth tugged down as he pulled out his phone. “Is pepperoni okay?”

“Sure.” She listened to him order a pepperoni pizza with mushrooms and wondered if this man might be the good twin of the cop who had beaten the crap out of her. Confused by him, she pulled her locket out and rubbed it.

Avery hung up his phone and turned to leave the room. As he reached the back hall, he glanced at her with his mouth open to say something and froze. “What’s that?”

The question startled her. She tucked the locket under her shirt again. “Nothing.”

He crossed the room in two steps and grabbed her arm, forcing her to her feet. “Show it to me,” he snarled.

Shocked by the sudden return of the scary creep from that interrogation room, she cringed away from him. “Leave me alone,” she whimpered.

Raising his hand, he bared his teeth and clearly had to restrain himself from hitting her. He growled in the back of his throat and snagged a fistful of her shirt, pulling it down hard enough to rip the shoulder seam.

This time, he hadn’t handcuffed her to keep her from fighting back. She swung at his face but he dodged the blow with ease. At the same time, though, she kneed him in the groin; he clearly hadn’t expected
that
. His eyes bugged out, and she swung again, hitting him in the gut. The second his grip loosened, she snatched up her backpack and fled the apartment.

Her father had chosen a crappy champion. Slinging her pack on her back, she ran up the hall, took the stairs down, and burst out through the front door. When she reached the parking lot, she found his car trundling through the parking lot, waiting for her. There had to be another way to go. Checking all around for one, she caught sight of Avery on his balcony, wheezing and climbing over the railing to jump down.

The car gunned its engine and squealed its tires. Claire ran. She ducked between parked cars and covered her head when she heard metal and glass crunch and smash behind her. Risking a glance over her shoulder, she saw Avery’s car had plowed into the parked cars and now was backing up, looking none the worse for the impact.

With a gulp, she darted away from the complex as fast as she could. Panic gave her speed. Hurtling around a corner, she wished Justin would show up to rescue her already. He’d failed at that so far. A guy like that ought to magically show up whenever she wound up in danger. Instead, she kept having to rescue herself and so far, she’d done an absolutely bang-up job of it. He needed to show up and do it right.

The car screamed around the corner and roared after her as she dashed up the sidewalk. Other cars drove past and she prayed for Avery’s sprite to let her go rather than risk being seen by normal people. Brakes squealed behind her and she heard the explosive impact of two cars. Screaming metal made her glance over her shoulder. The lunatic car now pushed a twisted wreck at her like a battering ram. Other cars on the road swerved and braked to avoid it.

She squeaked in panic and ran across the street under an overpass, trusting the drivers to brake when they saw the mad car. Across the street, she heard more smashing, squealing, and shrieking. This time, she focused on breathing, on running, on getting away from that thing. On the other side of the overpass, she scrambled up the embankment and found a freeway onramp.

The demented car would have no trouble catching her up here. She ran across the bridge and saw a truck coming in the one remaining clear lane underneath. Avery’s car lurched up the onramp, metal scraping the road and throwing orange sparks. No one on a freeway would stop to help her. In seconds, the car would reach her. She noticed this overpass didn’t have the usual fencing along the side.

Desperate to escape, she took a deep breath and leaped over the side, hoping this would work half as well as it did in the movies.

Chapter 16

Justin

“This is a stupid idea.”

“That’s why it’s going to work.”

“That’s even more stupid.” Tariel trotted along the street, keeping up with traffic in downtown Portland.

“No one expects the dumb move. It’s like the Spanish Inquisition.” Justin almost smiled. He’d spent half an hour figuring out how to word a note about what had happened to the hat and who it had belonged to. Now he had both it and the hat clutched in one hand as they headed for the Oregon Historical Society. He’d like to keep it, as a memento of Kurt, but they’d take better care of it.

Tariel rolled her eyes, showing the whites. “One of these days, you’re going to get us both killed.”

“Probably. Until then, just remember that
you
chose
me
.”

“To my eternal dismay.” The horse whuffed out a long-suffering sigh. “I wonder what’ll chose Claire.”

“We should go see her after this. We’re already missing dinner, so we might as well go all in and see if I can get screamed at by as many women as possible.”

“Go big or go home.” Tariel chuckled.

“Damn straight.” He sighed. “What do you think about that, anyway? Claire being a Knight, I mean.”

Her ears flicked. “It’s… I think you should bring another Knight to have a look at her. That would also give her another ally in the Palace when she does cross over. You don’t spend a huge amount of time there, after all. She probably will.”

Looking down at the hat, he nodded. As much as he wanted to be her mentor, he had to admit she’d be in a much better position if she collected a number of allies. “That’s a good idea. We’ll swing over to her foster home after this and see if she’ll listen. If not, we’ll leave and I’ll go grab someone.”

They turned up Park Avenue, following traffic flow on the south-bound side. Tariel turned onto the green strip behind Teddy Roosevelt and crossed the north-bound lane, then let him off at the front door. He grabbed the handle, yanked it open, and strode inside. The man working behind the front desk happened to be the gentleman who’d been there the other day, and now he had a line of people waiting to pay to get in.

“Excuse me.” Justin walked past the line to set the hat and note on the counter.

The man stared at him, blinking rapidly. “Uh?”

“I apologize for taking this and hope it wasn’t damaged beyond repair. The note details its exploits, which I suspect will enrich the museum more than the temporary loss of the hat detracted from it.” With that, he gave the man a polite smile and left. Everyone stared at him, watching as he walked out the front door, climbed onto Tariel’s back, and rode up the street.

A few blocks away, with no sirens to be heard, he grinned. “See? It worked.”

“Great,” Tariel groused. “One dumb plan worked, so now you’ll be an insufferable idiot forever.”

Justin laughed. “I love you too.”

Chapter 17

Claire

The group home had never looked more inviting than it did when Claire reached it that evening. Limping, on the run from a small pack of crazed dogs, and bruised all over, she stumbled inside the front door and slammed it shut, then leaned against it. Now that she’d made it here, she needed to figure out what to do. As the truck carried her far away from both Avery and his sprite, she’d been trying to come up with someplace safer to go.

No matter how much she trusted her father, nothing would make her accept Avery as her keeper. Whenever she got the magic pass into the Palace, she’d go find Avery and make him give her the item. She’d be a Knight then, and he wouldn’t be able to beat her up again. The more she thought about it, though, the more she wondered why Avery didn’t take the thing to the Palace himself. As a Knight, he should be able to do that.

From the dining room, she heard a chair scrape on the floor and the sound motivated her to move again. She hurried to her room, hoping to avoid questions. Leaving Drew behind would suck for both of them, but at least he’d be safe here until all this crazy stuff stopped.

“Claire!” The foster father’s voice boomed through the house, making her flinch.

Like everyone else staying here, she kept her wheeled suitcase packed at all times with as little as possible sitting out. She only needed to grab the wad of dirty clothes in her laundry bag, her coat, and her threadbare white unicorn. With everything stuffed into the suitcase, she zipped it up and wheeled it out of the bedroom. The foster father filled the hallway, standing between her and escape.

“Don’t even try to stop me. I’ve got somewhere else to go now.” She had no idea where that somewhere else might be, only that it would be better and safer than this one.

“We got a call you got arrested.” His onion, garlic, and potato breath assaulted her.

“I’m free now, and I’m outta here. Keep collecting the checks for all I care.” She stepped up and got into his face, daring him to stop her.

“You’re not old enough to go out on your own.” He planted his large fists on his wide hips. “If you’re running away, I’m locking you in.”

She glared at him. “You’re gonna need handcuffs and duct tape to keep me here, you fat bastard.”

He smacked her across the face hard enough that she let go of her suitcase, then he grabbed her around the neck. “Wrong answer. Let’s go, Princess.” He dragged her out of the room and down the hall. “Why is there always a troublemaker? Every single time we get a batch of new kids, there’s always one that can’t be bothered to just go to school, stay out of trouble, and follow the rules. I don’t think we have really awful rules here, either. Some places, they lock up the food, decide when you can use the bathroom, that kind of thing. All we ask is you be home by dark, sit down to meals with everyone else, and let us know ahead of time if you won’t. That’s really not so bad, all things being equal.”

As he hauled her along, Claire struggled against his beefy arm, gasping for breath and digging her heels into the rug. After everything that had happened over the past few days, this turn of events seemed so unbelievable that she had no idea what to do about it. He flung the closet door open and squatted down to grabbed the handle of a trapdoor and heave it up.

“Watch out, Princess, the first step is a doozy.” He shoved her at the dark hole in the floor. She grabbed the edges, kicked at him, and squirmed. He growled and wrestled with her until he managed to loop his arm around her neck and choked her. Her vision faded and she went limp. The world spun as he tossed her in. Dazed, she landed in a heap on a sheet of plastic and groaned.

Her neck ached and her cheek hurt. Rage boiled out of her in a wordless scream at the world. The moment she got her wits back, she surged to her feet in the four-foot high crawlspace and thumped her shoulder into the trap door. It didn’t budge. She tried again and again, accomplishing nothing except hurting her shoulder. “I didn’t get through all of that to be stopped by you!”

Something thumped on the floor above and the foster father’s muffled voice shouted, “Shut up, kid!”

“Go to Hell, you sonofabitch.” Ignoring another thump on the floor, she took a tour of her new prison. She had no hope of getting her head through the tiny vents to the outside, let alone her shoulders. At least that meant Avery couldn’t use them to get in, either. Of course, if he came to the house and they told him where to find her, she couldn’t escape.

Seeing no way out, she screamed again and dropped down under the trapdoor to cry. Someone thumped on the floor again. The second that trapdoor opened for any reason, she’d surge up to kick, bite, and claw her way out. Justin hadn’t come before and he wouldn’t come now. He wasn’t Superman, and she wasn’t Lois Lane.

She pulled her locket out to rub her thumbs over it and press it to her cheek. Daddy would find a way to get her out of this, even if it meant sending Avery. He’d open the door and help her out, then she’d kick him in the shins and run away again. This time, she’d take all her stuff and go someplace unexpected to hide.

She curled up in a ball and waited in the near-dark, unable to guess how much time passed before chairs scraping and thumping overhead turned into the front door opening and shutting, then the younger kids playing tag outside.

“Psst, Claire.”

She looked up, confused by the whisper. “What?”