Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance) (5 page)

“Class, a simile is a comparison using...” Her voice trailed off. She’d written “Black as a” and couldn’t finish because of the writing already there. Beautiful chalk calligraphy.

Nosce te ipsum
. Pippa’s last words to her students.
Know thyself
. But Sadie knew herself already. It was Pippa’s killer she wanted to know.

She picked up the brush to wipe it off. Her heart clenched in her chest. She steeled herself to erase Pippa’s handwriting and truly make this classroom her own. She felt her eye twitch.

The noise again. She whipped around in time to see the cute boy with blond curls faking innocent by turning his eyes to the ceiling. She almost laughed. He’d start whistling soon.

She put down the chalk brush, grateful to have a reason to leave Pippa’s handwriting on the board, and walked between the desks.

“Are you unwrapping candy back here?” she asked the boy.

“No, ma’am.”

She winced at the “ma’am.” Since she was a young-looking twenty-eight, 'ma’am' had only recently started happening to her.

The scrabbling noise again. She gave the boy the patented Aunt Pippa stare that had once made Sadie confess to eating the last three cookies. He tried to melt into his chair.

“What’s in your backpack, Nikkos?”

A bang on the door snatched Sadie’s attention. The width of dark shoulders silhouetted through the frosted glass left no doubt as to who besieged her classroom. She eyed the bank of windows.
Only three stories up,
she thought.
I could make it.

Sadie’s arch nemesis burst in without invitation, a walking storm. His dark trousers and dress shirt clung to muscles more befitting a thunder god than a chemistry teacher. And she didn’t mistake those gray eyes for a silver lining.

The kids looked up at him, awe-struck, like he was Indiana Jones, Wayne Gretzky, and Spider-Man rolled into one.

She clenched her jaw, ready for battle.

“New student,” he said, which seemed like an odd declaration of war.

Then a little black head popped around his thighs. She recognized the girl from the principal’s office yesterday. The cautious, black-eyed stare went straight to her heart. She remembered Gray’s frown. Who knew what torments he’d inflicted on her? Sadie wanted to whisk her away from the bastard.

“Carmina, Meez Strange,” she said, with a Slavic lilt, when asked her name. Sadie cringed. The Dracula accent wasn’t going to make her life easier. Even wearing the same blazer as the rest of the class, she managed to stick out.

“It’s my first day, too, Carmina,” she told the girl, doing her best to ignore Gray’s solid glare. “Please go sit in front of...” What was the gray-eyed kid’s name again? Sadie recognized him as the football player who had scowled at her the day before.

Gray-eyed? Sadie’s eye almost started twitching, even before she snatched a glance at the seating chart. “Sterling.”

Sterling
Gray
.

Well, shit. Gray looked down his Roman nose at her.

“Thank you for bringing Carmina, Mr. Gray.”
Get the hell out of my classroom, Mr. Gray
.

“My pleasure, Miss Strange.”
Any chance to check up on you, Miss Strange
.

“Well, we appreciate it. Thanks for coming.”
I notice you haven’t left yet. There’s the door. Use it.

“Perhaps I’ll just sit in on your class for a while. I find English fascinating,” he said. “And I have a free period at this time every day.”
You want me to leave? Ha. Do you think it’s a coincidence I have a free period when Sterling is in your class
?

“There are some empty seats at the back,
alumnus
.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
I’d kick you out physically if these children weren’t watching, asshole
.

“Here’s one.”
Look at me, I’m sitting at your desk
. “Is something wrong with your eye, Miss Strange?”

“No.” She felt the nerves spasm. Fine. Nothing he did bothered her. She didn’t even notice him. Watching. His gaze all over her. “Now, where were we, class?”

“Similes,” a voice shouted from the back of the room.

“Nice try, Nikkos,” she said. “Open the backpack.”

The rustling got louder as she approached the blond boy’s desk. A drop of sweat from his forehead plopped onto the tile floor. “It’s my puppy. I’m allowed. I have a note.”

Her B.S. detector went off. She took the folded-up wad of paper, which was still warm from his pocket.

Dear Sadie:

Nikkos is allowed to keep his puppy with him at all times.

Christian

Hmmm. “Fine,” she said. “Open the bag.”

“Wha—What?” Nikkos stammered.

“I’d like to see your puppy. I want to know everyone in my classroom.” She reached for the zipper.

Gray’s hand clamped on her wrist. How had he crossed the room so fast? “Leave the dog alone.” His steel eyes flashed.

“This is my classroom. The note doesn’t say I can’t see the puppy. And I’m sure he—”

“She,” Nikkos broke in.

“I’m sure
she
could use some air.” Sadie wrenched her hand out of Gray’s grip.

Nikkos sweated like a dog himself, his eyes pleading with Gray. “Fine.” Gray clapped Nikkos’s shoulder and winked at him. “If Miss Strange wants to see a puppy, we’ll show her a puppy.”

Why did everyone go on autopilot when Gray was around? It was just weird, as if he really were a lord or something.

Gray reached inside his sports jacket with one hand and reached into the backpack with the other. Her ears plugged with pressure. Again.

Nikkos held his breath as Gray lifted out a wiggling, sad-eyed, black Labrador puppy with odd red eyes. Cuteness aside, Sadie got that
Twilight Zone
feeling again. Keeping a puppy in a backpack? No one saw a problem here?

“What’s her name, Nikkos?” she asked, trying to get him to breathe again. The puppy was cute. The situation was weird.

“Iphigenia.”

“That means ‘mythological creature’ in Greek,” she told him. The puppy sniffed her hand. Gray grinned, as if anticipating something.

“Ouch!” Tiny needles crunched her flesh. Gray looked smug. She decided she wanted him dead, despite the lowering of the general ambient hotness quotient this would cause.

“Iffie!” Nikkos started sweating again. “Geez, Miss Strange, I’m sorry. She only bites people she likes.”

She compressed the wound and tried not to sound annoyed. “Ha ha. Sharp little teeth she’s got. Her shots are up to date, right?”

Nikkos nodded, looking nervous, and Gray put the puppy back in the bag. “Well, I’ll be off, Miss Strange. I just remembered something. English is boring and a waste of time,” Gray said, loudly enough so the whole class could hear.

Her throat went dry. He’d hit her weak spot, the “teaching” part of this teaching job. The kids started whispering to each other. All she could do was clench her fists into her thighs and watch the discipline in her classroom slip away.

Gray headed toward the door. “By the way, Miss Strange, your eye is twitching.”

*

***

******

****

*

“What are we going to do?” The desperate voice echoed to the ceiling of the Strange Hall foyer. Sadie couldn’t miss it, even over the sound of the heavy oak doors falling shut behind her.

Students in gray and blue—the boys with loosened ties, the girls with shirts untucked from their kilts—ringed a taller figure, looking to him for answers. The prefect. What was his name again? Right. William Springwater.

Exhaustion kept her calm. She barely had the strength to shake the wet hat of snow from her hair. Only her throbbing finger wasn’t numb from cold. She had discovered two sets of wounds on it.
Odd
. Iffie the puppy hadn’t bitten her twice.

She’d just come from trying to visit the library, where she’d hoped to speak to the librarian about her aunt’s death. But the force field thing had stopped her. It was like hitting a wall. How could it only be her mind, as Christian said?

“What are you going to do about what?” she asked. The ring of students opened to her, and as she walked up to the prefect, she noticed they stood on the edges of the dark circle set into the marble floor.

At seventeen years old, William had a few inches on her. She got the feeling he’d have a few more before he finished growing.

“Miss Strange.” William exuded authority, barely raising an eyebrow while everyone else panicked. A Rudyard Kipling poem ran through her mind.
If you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs...You’ll be a Man, my son.

Fine. She could be a Man, too.

“What’s the trouble?” Around Sadie and the prefect, a lot of shuffling of feet and looking at the ceiling happened.

“No trouble,” he said with confidence.

She would have believed him. Except for the accompanying crash that came from beneath their feet.

He crossed his arms and set his square jaw.

She closed her eyes. Focus, girl. Getting mad will make you look hysterical.

She turned her voice sweet, almost lyrical. “William Springwater, you are supposed to report any trouble to one of the residence advisors. I may be new here, but I am an R.A.”

William’s jaw flexed. “We’ll wait for Lorde Gray.”

She clenched her teeth to keep them from grinding. Gray. Gray. Gray. Where could she get away from him? And why did people use his whole name all the time?

Doubt crept into her mind. Everyone trusted him but her. What if he deserved all this hero worship? What if her attraction to him didn’t mean he was bad?

Boom
! The noise came from below her feet. A small hand grabbed hers. She looked down at a boy whose hair grew wild over his eyes. He whimpered and shoved his face into her skirt.

Her heart missed a thump. His fear had to stop.
Now
. She wasn’t waiting for Gray.

“Right,” she said. “So if I were a basement door in a private school dormitory, where would I hide?”

A girl with sun-kissed brown skin and a long braid pointed.

“Of course,” she said. “Under the stairs. Thank you...”

“Tituba,” the girl supplied.

Why did that name seem familiar? As she handed the boy to Tituba, she made a mental note to Google the name later.

“You shouldn’t go down there,” William advised.

She squinted into the midnight-black basement beneath the rickety steps and agreed with him completely. For an instant, she was tempted to leave this problem to Gray.

No, dammit. The safety of these kids was her problem.

She put a tentative heel on the stairs and tested her weight on it. It held, with only a little creak. Her other foot joined it. Whew, that was over. Now all she had to do was repeat it about a dozen more times. Then find a light switch. Then figure out where the noise came from. Then go deal with it.

Simple.

She was down about five more steps when she leaped at the sound of the door slamming behind her. Her foot twisted and she pitched forward. She grabbed the railing and clung to it as her shoe clattered down the dark steps.

She froze, sucking in breath, giving her eyes time to adjust to the low light. Maybe a minute went by while she clung to the splinter-covered railing, listening to the blood pounding in her ears and breathing in the smell of dust. When the black resolved itself into lighter and darker black, she lowered her bum onto the gritty steps and stared into the shadows.

This was it, she realized. This was the moment. If she went up those stairs, she wouldn’t stop there. She’d just continue out the front door of Strange Hall, into her car, past the Strange Academy sign, and just keep going.

Aunt Pippa would understand. She’d tried, hadn’t she? Wasn’t it enough?

She stood and removed her remaining shoe. She stepped down. Hell no, it wasn’t enough, she told herself.
And you’re not scared of the dark, Stupid. You never have been.

She took the rest of the stairs at a normal pace. Eventually, her toes hit cold concrete. No more stairs. She was fine. She’d just read too many books. It was her imagination telling her the basement went on for miles in every direction. It couldn’t possibly be the labyrinth it looked like.

She ran a hand down the wall looking for the light switch. If this were an Anne Radcliffe gothic, there’d be something truly hideous waiting for her down here. But this was real life, not
The Mysteries of Udolpho
, so those weird sounds were probably coming from a broken water pipe.

Then she heard what sounded like scratching and growling ahead. Despite her determination, it freaked her out just a little.

Something brushed her face. She jumped—and then felt like an idiot for jumping. While skimming the wall for the light switch, she hadn’t considered it might be hanging from the ceiling. She grasped the string and pulled, then winced at the piercing light from the bare bulb.

Five steps away, a door rattled on its hinges, then stopped. Her mind twisted the sound behind it into rasping breaths.
Don’t be stupid
, she ordered herself, squaring her shoulders and laughing at her overactive imagination.

The door stuck. She leaned against it and shoved. When it finally gave, it swung inward and she stumbled after it.

Yellow eyes stared at her above a snout covered in wiry brown hair. Animal musk choked her. Hot breath snorted onto her face. Black lips curled back from jagged fangs.

Her jaw dropped as the thing reared onto its hind legs.
The word you’re looking for is “werewolf,”
supplied her brain.

Something grabbed her from behind. She lost her footing and slammed back against something hot and solid. While her mind reeled between the werewolf growling in front and the unknown threat behind, an arm wrenched her onto her feet.

Then she couldn’t breathe. A cloth was pressed over her lower face. She inhaled to scream and a chemical taste filled her mouth. She lashed out, swinging the shoe in her hand wildly. It connected with something that swore in complaint. She tried again but couldn’t raise her arm. Each effort came slower. Her eyelids were heavy. Her body went limp. Her mind was falling asleep.