Page 41 of Challenge Me

My lips brushed his, barely touching, my breath held between us.

“Ghost,” I whispered. “I will paint you with their blood.”

Chapter Fourteen

Lai

Considering I had spent the night folded into the hard rear seat of a 1970 Dodge Challenger, unable to properly stretch out to any position that my king-sized bed would have easily accommodated, I felt good. There was a pleasant heaviness beneath my skin, and for once, I had slept without dreams.

Plotting revenge was great for my health.

I gathered up my bedding and slipped silently away from Ghost, giving the Challenger one final glance; his engine was silent, his lights dark, and no translucent cowboy appeared beside me to wish me a good morning. Good. Better that way. I didn’t have as much luck as I tried to sneak past Al’s Mustang, though; Fox was already there, his shadow reclining on his hood with his legs stretched toward the bumper, his cooling engine ticking rhythmically beneath him. His glowing yellow eyes were fixed on the tiny screen of a Game Boy console.

“You look like you’ve slept rough,” Fox commented as he looked up, loudly popping a mouthful of chewing gum.

“Morning, Fox.” I smiled. “Is Al already inside?”

Fox nodded, his attention immediately shifting back to the small screen, my presence apparently no longer of any interest to the rude little creature. I didn’t bother with a farewell, hoisting up my blankets and heading up the steps into the manor.

◆◆◆

I ignored the curious looks from students as I made my way back up to the family apartments, bundled up in my own bedding like an out-of-shape mummy. The school occupied most of my family’s old manor, but the east wing’s second floor was still mine: three rooms of utter privacy, including my old bedroom, preserved as it had been before the first godling arrived at the manor years ago, before my home became an academy, a refuge, and occasionally an active war zone.

It was off-limits to everyone, even my husband. There were a thousand rules in this school, put in place to protect the students and the staff, and not entering my old bedroom without invitation was number two on the list, sandwiched between ‘Don’t Make Deals With The Fae’, and “Don’t Steal The ‘Herbs’ From Klein’s Garden’.

I lifted the little bronze doorkey from its hook and twisted it in the lock, and the door opened with a familiar creak, releasing the ghosts of old perfume, lacquered wood, and dried flowers.

Al had been there plenty of times in the past, and always called the space overwhelming, but I found comfort in what he considered a hoarding situation. It wasn’t a hoard; there was a difference between hoarding and curating a personal archive of emotionally significant debris. I knew precisely where everything was. Every last scrap of paper, every broken clasp, every dusty memento from a life I refused to discard or organize.

I dropped the blankets beside the door, where they could patiently wait for me, then crossed the room. After shifting a few cassette tapes, a tarnished goblet, and the preserved skull of a man I no longer remembered killing, I found an old lacquered chest beneath the coffee table. I lifted it carefully and sank onto my old floor bed; dozens of cushions swallowed me at once, rearranging themselves around my weight like an old spiderweb, relieved to have their rightful owner back in its center.

“That’s a familiar sight,” Al commented lightly.

My head snapped toward the doorway. I glared at the intruder, unsurprised to find the usual suspect leaning against the frame with a smirk on his face. Al’s hair was tied back, and his sleeves were rolled above his forearms as though he had already begun pretending to be a responsible principal, above the rules of this place, even rule number two.

“What do you want?” I sighed as I lifted the chest lid, my eyes drifting over the few antique vials nestled in velvet.

Al lingered on the threshold for another moment, clearly enjoying the fact that he had breached my sanctuary without immediately being stabbed. Then he pushed himself away from the frame and stepped into the room, ignoring the warning curl of my lip pulling back into a snarl. “I want to know what you’re planning,” he asked, as casually as if he was asking me about my lesson plan for the semester.

“Me? Planning?” I lifted a clear vial and held it toward the light; a thin layer of liquid gathered at the bottom, almost colorless apart from a faint blue sheen. Only a few drops remained, but that was more than enough for what I intended to use it for.

“You must think I’m an idiot,” Al chuckled warily, and I couldn’t help it; the snarl turned into a smirk. Al knew what the little vial contained, after all.

I measured him with a long look. “Oh, I know that for certain. In fact, I have years’ worth of evidence.”

“All just circumstantial,” Al chuckled.

I rolled my eyes, but Al was relentless. He crossed the room, stepping around the myriad obstacles with ease. He had lived with me long enough to have developed the instinct that warned him which piles were stable and which might unleash a minor avalanche. A moment later, he lowered himself beside me, sinking among the cushions until half of him disappeared into the bed.

“So, who’s going to die?” He leaned closer, invading my personal space until I could feel the warmth of him against my arm.

There had been days, many years ago, when I would have given anything for him to be so determined to stay close to me. Back then, a glance had been enough to feed my obsession for weeks.

Thankfully, I had grown up.

“I don’t know yet, but I’m starting to think it might be you,” I warned, throwing another irritated glance at him.

“You can’t go out killing people.” His tone carried authority that I easily ignored. “You have make-up classes today. Most of your students have finally recovered.”