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“Unbefuckinglievable,” she mutters to herself as she scoots out the back door of the school, skirts the gardens around to a thicket of bushes, and pauses to make sure nobody has followed her.
Peace has returned to Birchbane. The only sounds to be heard are birdsong and the slight rustling of the mountain breeze through carefully tended topiary.
When she is quite sure she is alone, Storm plucks a thin cylinder from her pocket, along with her omnipresent lighter. She puts the paper tube to her lips and sparks the light, drawing deeply. Smoke rushes into her mouth, cycles through her lungs, and is expelled in two long streams through her nose. She leans against the hedge, head tilted back, mouth slightly open as she breathes deeply and feels some of the accumulated tension drift away.
Yes.
God yes.
That’s so, so much better.
“What are you doing?”
“Christ!” Storm drops her lighter as Laura emerges from the undergrowth “How! How are you everywhere!?”
“You are smoking?” Laura lifts an unimpressed brow at her.
Laura looks incredible as always, though she is attired simply in black pants, boots, and sweater. All she needs are a couple swipes of face paint and she would be ready to hunt terrorists through a jungle. She doesn’t need face paint to hunt her new prey, though. Finishing school students like Storm lack the wiles of the truly criminal.
Staring up at the woman, Storm literally cannot believe her bad fortune. It is as though she has entered some kind of an alternate world where everything that can go wrong, does go wrong.
Jane’s words come floating back to her:If I catch you lurking or otherwise misbehaving again, you will spend the rest of the day being punished.
“No,” Storm says. “No. No. No. No. No.”
“You are definitely smoking,” Laura says.
“Yes, of course, I’m fucking smoking. Theno no nois about being caught.”
“You are also caught,” Laura says.
“Please don’t tell Jane,” Storm begs, dropping the cigarette and stamping it out.
“Miss Strict,” Laura amends.
“Don’t tell her either. Please.” Storm looks at Laura with the closest she can get to a puppy dog expression. “You can do anything. I’ll doanything. Just don’t tell her.”
Laura hesitates for a moment, reacting to the genuine fear in Storm’s tone.
“Why do you not want me to tell Miss Strict?”
“Because! I can’t go two seconds without messing something up. She’s going to start hating me soon. I’m already supposed to be seeing her at three today. If you go telling her I’ve done something else wrong as well, she’s probably going to think I’m doing it on purpose. You already made her think that after that whole scene with the headmistress. She was on my side until you were allhey, maybe she shouldn’t have got in trouble.”
Laura is not completely immune to the fact that Storm is now properly melting down. Her lips twist slightly with a hint of amusement. “Have you considered simply being good?”
“Considered it, yeah. Achieved it? No. Please, Laur…. Miss König. Please.”
Laura is not one to offer pity, and Storm doesn’t really expect it. But that’s not going to stop her trying.
“Please,” she says, in the way people can only say please when they mean it more than anything they have ever said in their entire lives.
Laura folds her arms over her chest and looks down at Storm with what Storm hopes is some modicum of even the slightest possibility of reprieve.
“Please?” Storm squeaks the word and considers actually falling to her knees. Fuck it. What does she have to lose at this point? She drops to her knees, staring up at Laura. “If there’s any part of you that likes literally any part of me, please don’t tell her.”
Laura rolls her eyes at the theatrics.
“Get up,” she says with a sigh and brief upward motion of her hand.
