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Soon.
We waited at the outer doors before exiting. It was unlikely there would be anyone roaming this late, but we weren’t sure. Also, someone or something was making the lights happen…but who?
The lights stopped, suddenly, and the air was pierced by a cry of fear or pain.
“What the hell?” Blaze was out the door and running in the direction where the lights had been.
We followed, not bothering to try to hide in the shadows or anything. My wolf fought to get out, and I stripped as I ran. Ididn’t want to ruin my clothes, but sometimes a wolf was all you could or should be. Blaze was doing the same ahead of us, Cas to my left.
My fur was plenty warm, but cold was the least of our problems because Blaze came to such an abrupt halt, he nearly tumbled head over tail to land on…on what?
Arriving at his side, I stopped just before planting my front paws on the chest of a student who lay prone on the lawn, as singed as the circle he lay in the middle of. They were too burned to identify, only the shreds of ashy clothing confirming that they were wearing male student attire, so presumably a guy.
Had he been set on fire by someone? Burst into flame from within? None of that explained the lights at all. But he was dead; nobody could survive burns that melted flesh that way.
My wolf tipped up our snout and let out a long, mournful howl. My brothers joined me, and the sound rang out across campus before any of us could even consider whether that was a good idea.
Within seconds, windows blared with light, and a siren went off. We exchanged startled looks. There was a siren? It was a reform school…but not a prison. Not exactly. Was it supposed to be used if someone tried to escape?
We had broken more than one rule tonight. Leaving our room—something I wished we’d never done. It wasn’t as if we could have done anything to help the dead guy, and we were going to be busted for shifting without permission as well. A much worse sin in the eyes of the administration.
So…we did the single thing we could and raced for our clothing in the hopes of at least not being caught in our fur. Casimir’s shirt was buttoned not quite right, and Blaze’s fly was half down, and none of our shoes were tied, but we were not naked and we were not wolves when the doors opened and people spilled out into the night.
“We called for help.” I’d repeated that at least a dozen times since we’d been hustled back into the building for questioning. There hadn’t been time before we were separated to discuss a strategy or what we’d say, but this wasn’t our first escapade and we’d laid plans long ago in case we got caught. They just required adjustment for the specific situation. “We saw some lights outside the window and went out to see what they were.” Keep as close to the truth as possible without adding any crimes for which there was no evidence against us. We’d been out of range of the lit area when we shifted and back to our skins and dressed when we entered it again.
“After curfew.” She tapped her pen on the top of her desk.
“Yes, we were wrong to do that.” Part two of the strategy, don’t deny what there is evidence for. We were out there, and everyone saw us.
“Which of you was howling?” She thought it was just one?
“Howling? We called for help…”
“There was a report of howling?”
I shrugged. “If there was, maybe we were just too terrified to hear it. Maybe it was the person who was killed? I’d howl if I was on fire.” I shuddered in remembrance of what we had found. “Can you tell what happened?”
“You’re really going to play games, aren’t you? Were you all out for a sneaky fun run and stumbled over this? Or did you maybe have something to do with it?”
“None of those things are true.”
She questioned me for another few minutes, but my answers never varied, and finally she called someone to escort me back to my room. “You and the others will stay there until we sort out what’s happened or decide to charge one or all of you for this horrendous crime.”
Apparently they didn’t think it was a case of spontaneous combustion.
Chapter Nineteen
Karelis
Halfway through shifter biology, someone came into the class and got the professor’s attention. He was handed a piece of paper and after reading it over, passed it back to the messenger.
“After this class period, instead of moving to your next one, everyone is to report to the gym for an assembly.” Almost every student groaned. All I did was wonder if I could sneak into the dining hall for a snack.
“Enough of that,” he snapped. “If there’s an assembly, then something important must be going on. Now, back to the lesson.”
While most of the magic of shifting was speculation, there were some things we could pick apart and come to our own conclusions. It begged the question as to how exactly we were going to be questioned and tested on hypotheses that had no way of being proven, but I was up for the challenge. The professor mentioned a diagram, and I flipped through my class documents in search of it. While I found it easily, I noticed the girl next to me wasn’t having much luck. Leaning over, I whispered to her, “It’s diagram 3A.”
While she clicked on 3A easily enough, once she turned to me, I knew she wasn’t going to say thank you. Her eyes were narrow slits. “Don’t fucking talk to me again, bitch.”
