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Cherry hesitated again and threw her rag down, huffing out a sigh. “Broken homes are tough, huh?”
“You got that right.” I took a huge slug of my wine, draining my glass. “Y’know, Cherry, when I was a kid, I didn’t know if I was a weapon or a resource.”
“That’s if they actually want you around in the first place.”
“That’s right.” I wiped a dribble of wine off my chin. “Sometimes your whole existence can be … inconvenient.”
“Exactly.” Cherry thought about the time her mom started bringing multiple men home when she was five years old. I thought about the time the CIA got hold of one of my partial prints after I murdered an archbishop, and Dad threatened to disavow me.
“It makes it harder when only one of them has any money,” I added. “And the one that has the cash never deserves it.”
She nodded, blowing out a slow breath. “Ain’t that the truth?”
Look at us. Bonding over our childhood trauma.
After a beat, Cherry snagged the bottle of wine and refilled my glass, a touching act of solidarity. I glanced up and saw her fears for me had melted away. The monster with the hard jaw wouldn’t touch me; not when I had another man looking after me—a man who obviously had resources, based on my expensive outfit and the casual way I talked smack about his money. Cherry’s monster preferred to torture vulnerable women.
“Thanks,” I said, taking a big sip. “I don’t really want to have to listen to my dad talk on the way back to the hotel.”
She nodded, her expression still hard. “If you need to puke, do it in the bathroom, okay?”
“I will.”
She hustled away.
Talking to Cherry had been a nice distraction. I sipped my wine, trying to focus on the sounds around the bar so that my thoughts didn’t start to scream at me again. I already had a little buzz; I just needed another distraction to keep the screams at bay until I could get drunk enough that they were silenced completely. In the meantime, I let my ears prick up, listening to the people around me.
The werewolves in the corner kept their voices low, their words drowned out by country music on the cheesy jukebox and the howling wind outside. Strangely, they had something in a small crate on the table, covered with a ratty blanket. Occasionally, one of them would lift the corner of the blanket, poke at whatever was inside, and laugh.
I assumed it was an animal of some sort. Cherry had glared at them a few times but said nothing. Her thoughts told me she wasn’t allowed to reprimand them.
The lone men scattered on the other side of the bar were silent, too, glued to a football game on the TV. Occasionally, one of them would call out to Cherry for a refill. The old couple behind me were also quiet, their faces both turned to the window.
Everyone had settled in. Rain pelted down outside, driven almost horizontal by the blustering wind.
Everyone was too quiet, though. The music was terrible. Turning slightly on my stool, I re-crossed my legs and glanced around surreptitiously, trying to distract myself until the alcohol dulled the pain in my head. Within half a second, I’d neatly categorized every person in the room.
Apart from the wolves—and whatever little animal they had in that covered cage on the table—the bar was full of humans. None of them could See.
They were lucky. Ignorance was bliss.
I knew that better than anyone.
Chapter Three
For the first sixteen years of my life, I knew nothing of the supernatural. All I knew was lies and death. I didn’t know who I was, other than what I’d been told to be.
Then, one day, not long after my sweet sixteenth, my father sent me on a new assignment. I was supposed to infiltrate a school, the most secretive and expensive college in the country, in fact—Sacred Heart Academy in Washington DC. The school itself sat on prime real estate, land that my billionaire developer father was desperate to get his hands on. Dad had been chasing that hunk of land for more than thirty years and had been frustrated at every turn. He wasn’t used to losing. Eventually, he pulled in the big guns. Me.
My assignment was to enroll in the school and destabilize the institution from the inside. The directives would change depending on what I reported to my handlers, but the general plan was that I would murder the principal, then his replacement, and a handful of key students, all while making it look like an accident—perhaps the work of a terrible disease caused by mysterious mold floating up from the ancient buildings, or suicidal psychosis induced by radiation deep under the lush green grounds. I had a great imagination. My handlers gave me a lot of leeway to design the kill methods myself. Once the students started dying, the parents would panic and pull their kids out.
That was the plan, anyway. But my handlers didn’t account for one thing. The school was actually an academy for supernatural creatures.
Old witch, shifter, and vampire families didn’t send their young ones there to learn magic. They were there to do the usual stuff; math, science, literature. In most respects, it was a normal, albeit expensive and exclusive, high school.
But the kids were also there to learn how to live in the human world—how to hide their fangs and fur and magic. Supe laws were strict, secrecy was paramount, and exposing yourself to the normies was a crime punishable by death. The academy let a handful of dumb normie kids enroll so they had someone to practice on.
Apparently, the supe parents loved that particular part of the curriculum. Their precious babies could get used to hiding their magic in a controlled environment, and not worry about the authorities coming down hard on them for breaking the rules. The normie kids would get their memories magically altered quickly and easily if one of the supe kids messed up.
