Night School Part 5

Wow, how long was I out for? I scramble to my feet, forgetting I have a pile of books still on my lap, and they all go cras.h.i.+ng to the floor. The janitor looks down, his eyes widening as he catches a glimpse of them.

"Fairies?" he asks, looking up at me suspiciously.

"Um, yeah. I have a ... project," I reply, not knowing why I suddenly feel so nervous. What do I care what some janitor sees me reading? "An essay about the history of the Sidhe."

The janitor gives me a hard stare-like he doesn't believe me-and I squirm under his gaze. Am I in trouble here? Did I just give myself away? I try to surrept.i.tiously glance over my shoulder to see if I've suddenly sprouted wings. I don't see anything, but still ...

The janitor shrugs and starts picking up the books. "I'll re-shelve them for you," he tells me. "You'd better get back to your dorm."

I nod and grab my coat, hurrying toward the library entrance, completely creeped out. I look back at the janitor, who has taken a seat in the armchair and is paging through my books. I shake my head. Seriously, paranoid much, Rayne? I mean, who cares if the janitor knows what I'm reading? Or anyone else, for that matter? It's not like someone's going to be all "Hey she's reading a book about fairies-I bet she actually is one!"

Still, I can't shake the nervousness as I slip out of the library and start heading up the cobblestone path toward the door. The campus is quiet and dark, all good slayers have long since gone to bed.

Except for one building where the lights are blazing and I can see shadows moving through cracks of boarded-up windows. A strange hum of electricity dances in the air, igniting my vampire senses. Little hairs p.r.i.c.kle my arms and a chill crawls down my back as I study the building curiously, wondering what on Earth could be going on in there. Are there really Alpha slayers training for secret ops inside? And if so, why are they doing it late at night? Do they have some sort of secret they don't want the rest of the slayers to see?

I take a step closer, curiosity overwhelming me. Suddenly the front door creaks open and a solitary figure steps out, dragging a large bag. I leap aside, trying to retreat to the shadows, but the figure's eyes are already locked on me. c.r.a.p. I've been spotted.

"Rayne McDonald?" it demands. "What are you doing out here?"

Oh great. It's Headmistress Roberta, of all people. The last person on Earth I wanted to run into after curfew. After all, she's practically looking for an excuse to nano me anyway and here I go, handing her one on a silver platter.

"Um, sorry, I just fell asleep in the library," I stammer. "I didn't mean ... I'm ... I'm heading back to the dorm now."

The headmistress narrows her eyes at me, pursing her lips together in a deep frown. At first I think she's going to say something, but then she seems to change her mind. She shakes her head and points up the hill.

"Very well," she says. "But get inside immediately. And don't let me catch you out after dark again." She pauses, then adds in a menacing voice, "Or else."

I don't try to argue and head up the hill double time. As I go, I can feel her hard stare behind me. In fact, if eyes could really burn holes in someone's back I'm pretty sure I'd be Swiss cheese right about now.

I pull open the dorm room door and slip inside, not able to resist the urge to take one last peek down the hill before I close it again, even though I'm pretty sure it'll turn me into a pillar of salt if the headmistress catches me doing so. Luckily, Roberta has evidently tired of watching my retreat and is back to dragging the large bag down the street toward the sanitation building at the very end of the road.

I squint at the bag. Is that what I think it is? And did it really just ... move?

I bolt into the dorm, not caring as the door slams behind me, probably waking half of Slay School. Leaning against the wall, I suck in a shaky breath, my thoughts whirling like crazy in my head.

'Cause that bag she was carrying? It looked a lot like a body bag. And whatever was inside? It didn't seem all that dead.

What the h.e.l.l is really going on at Night School?

9.

Argh, my back! I wake up the next morning, feeling like two knives are simultaneously stabbing me between my shoulder blades. Seriously, I'm starting to think there's some kind of Princess and the Pea thing going on with my mattress. (Since I technically am a fairy princess, after all!) I mean, sure, I've worked out a lot lately on the training field, but I'm also in pretty good shape from being a cheerleader. There's no way I should be this sore.

I glance over and see Sunny is already awake, lying in bed, staring at her useless cell phone, probably flipping through old texts from Magnus. "Hey, Sun!" I call to her. "Will you take a look at my back for a second? Tell me if I have any weird bruises?" I climb out of bed and walk over to her side of the room, turning around and lifting my s.h.i.+rt over my head so she can get a good look.

"Oh my G.o.d!" she shrieks. I whirl around, just in time to see her stumble backward onto her bed, trembling hands covering her wide open mouth, her eyes as big as saucers.

"Come on, they can't be that bad," I say, trying to twist around to see for myself.

"They're ... they're ..." Sunny stumbles. I see her hard swallow. "Rayne, what did you do?" she asks finally, her voice barely a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

"I just sparred a few times with Corbin. But I totally won. So I don't see-"

"I'm not talking about that," she interrupts. "I'm talking about ..." She shakes her head, as if in disbelief.

"What?" I cry, fear starting to creep through me. "Just spit it out!"

"Did you go and kiss your elbow or something?"

I stare at her, suddenly remembering the ritual I performed in the library last night, horror slamming through my insides. Leaping from my bed, I dive for the full-length mirror I installed behind my closet door. Twisting around, I try to catch a glimpse of ...

My wings.

Well, not wings exactly. Not yet. But there's definitely some kind of growth going on back there. Two large lumps, protruding from my shoulder blades ...

Covered in white feathers.

My head spins and I force myself to return to my bed, sinking down onto the mattress, a combination of fear and excitement whirling through my brain.

It worked. It actually worked. I can't believe it.

"Rayne! Why would you do that?" Sunny cries in an anguished voice. "After all Mom and Dad have done, you just, willingly ... UGH!" She buries her eyes in her pillow. "I can't even look. It's so grotesque."

"Nice, Sun," I snap, feeling a little offended. I turn my head to see the little feathered b.u.mps. "Thanks for making me feel all self-conscious." They are kind of weird, yeah, but once they grow into full-fledged wings, I bet they'll look kind of cool. Though a little hard to keep under wraps ...

"Why, Rayne? Why would you do this? I mean, of all the crazy things you've-"

"I did it for you, dummy," I interrupt grumpily. "So how about you lay off the whole judgmental thing for once?"

"Wait, what? For me?" she demands, looking over, her face full of confusion. "What do you mean, 'for me'?"

"Look, it's simple, really," I tell her. "Like you said, if Mom and Dad fail in their talks, one of us is going to have to take the fairy queen gig, right? So who're the fairies going to choose now-the reluctant mortal who can't stand the taste of nectar or the full-fledged fairy with amazing wingspan who's ready and willing to go?"

Sunny shakes her head in disbelief. "Rayne, I never wanted you to have to-"

"You're my sister, after all," I interrupt. "And I love you. Even if you are a total crybaby at times."

"Uh, thanks. I think."

I grin wickedly, then turn serious. "Sunny, I want you to be able to have the happily ever after you want for yourself. And I know this way you'll actually have a chance to have it."

Sunny crosses the room in two seconds flat and throws her arms around me, burying her face in my shoulder.

"Hey, hey! Watch the wings! I don't want to lose any feathers. After all, fairy pattern baldness is no joke. And I doubt Rogaine would work for something like that."

Sunny giggles and cautiously reaches out to pet the wings in question. As her hands make contact, she squeals and scampers back to her side of the room.

"I still think it's totally freaky," she says, rubbing her palm on her flannel PJ bottoms.

"I do, too," I admit. "Not to mention once they start growing, they're going to be a bit of a problem hiding from the student body."

"And here I thought you concealing the fact that you're a vampire was bad enough."

I let out a frustrated breath. "That's even worse. I'm so hungry for blood I'm going crazy. I had a nightmare that I broke into a blood bank and drained it dry."

Sunny looks concerned. "There's no place to get blood here?" she asks. "What about ... from me?" I can tell it takes her effort to say this and I appreciate the grand gesture.

Luckily I can easily turn her down. "Holy Grail blood, remember?" I remind her. "Poisonous to vampires over a few months old."

"Oh yeah," she says, relief clear on her face. She's quiet for a moment, then adds, "So what are we going to do? You can't stay here and starve to death. And if those wings keep growing they're going to be a problem."

"Yeah," I say, glancing at the mirror at my little winglets. "I have no idea how fast these things are going to grow either." I shake my head, annoyed with my impulsiveness. Seriously, what was I thinking, going through the ritual like that? I guess it just seemed so ridiculous-I didn't think it would actually work ...

"I think we have no choice," Sunny says, interrupting my self-rebuke. "One way or another, we have to get out of here." She looks over at me, setting her chin determinedly. "We're breaking out of Slay School tonight."

10.

"Okay, I think the coast is clear," I hiss, after peering out the front door of our dorm room and looking left and right, taking special care to make sure Headmistress Roberta isn't out on her nightly body bag run. (I didn't mention that whole thing to Sunny 'cause I didn't want to freak her out too much.) But the campus appears dark and still, with only a crescent moon to light our path. I slip outside, careful to stay in the shadows. My sister steps out beside me, her backpack stuffed to the brim.

"I thought we agreed we'd travel light," I remark, raising an eyebrow at the nearly overflowing bag on her back.

"I need all this stuff," she protests. A moment later, a string bikini top falls out of the bag. She grabs it with a sheepish look. "It's designer," she explains. "And Magnus gave it to me, so it's sentimental."

I sigh and shake my head, then begin slinking around the side of the dorm, back up against the cold stone walls. The temperature has dropped at least twenty degrees and I'm hoping that, in addition to her Calvin Klein resort collection, Sunny has a big warm parka in her overstuffed escape luggage. After all, we have no way of knowing just how far we may have to travel tonight.

Earlier in the day, I hit the library, trying to do some research on exactly where in the world we are here at Riverdale Slay School. Lilli had said the only way out was by helicopter, but my guess is that's something they say to all the new students to encourage them to stay put. After all, they don't want them slipping out at night and heading to the nearby town tavern to get wasted and dance on tables. So not behavior becoming of a Slayer in Training.

And sure enough, after paging through a billion cryptic texts-no books in this library are less than a hundred years old, I swear-I was able to get a general idea of where the school resides and information about a small village probably located somewhere in the vicinity.

Sadly, "somewhere in the vicinity" isn't exactly GPS coordinates so we may be wandering for a bit. Still, it's better than staying put and having my fairy vampire status discovered by the student body and faculty. Because I'm guessing that's grounds for immediate expulsion. And not the kind where you're just sent home in shame, either.

We reach the back of the dorm and settle into complete darkness. I look over at my sister and nod. "Okay, now!" I cry, breaking out into a run. The cold air whips against my face as we dash for the nearby forest, cras.h.i.+ng through the underbrush. Only after a few hundred feet of "dodge the big pine tree" do I dare stop and turn around to look, hands on my knees, panting to catch my breath. Sunny catches up to me a moment later. The forest behind us is silent and still. I grin at my sister. We did it.

"Piece of cake," I say. "We should have tried this our first day here."

"Yeah, but ..." Sunny looks around the woods. "Now what? Do you have any idea where we're supposed to be going?"

"Well ..." I tap my chin with my finger. "Look! There's a path. Let's follow it. It has to lead to somewhere, right?"

"Sure. Like to the gingerbread house where the evil witch waits to throw us in the oven."

"Please. That was totally Germany. We're in Switzerland. A whole 'nother country." I step over a rotting log and head for the path. "In fact, I bet this is the road they use to bring in weekly supplies. After all, they have to get the students' food from somewhere and helicoptering it all in isn't exactly economical."

Sunny looks at me doubtfully, but falls into step anyway. Reaching in my pocket, I pull out a small LED pocket light/lighter combo-all I could find at short notice. I flick it on and point it down toward the ground, keeping the light low. Don't want someone back at school to see it flickering and alert the guards.

As we walk down the windy path, the wind whistles through the trees and tall shadows, cast by my light, dance madly across the road. Sunny grips onto my shoulder, her fingernails digging into my flesh. "Should we be dropping bread crumbs or something?" she whispers, still on her little Hansel and Gretel kick, I guess.

I open my mouth to answer her, but a cras.h.i.+ng noise behind us makes me shut it again. I whirl around, shakily s.h.i.+ning my flashlight into the bushes. A wild animal? Or something more deadly? From beside me, Sunny whimpers in fear.

We wait, holding our breaths, but are greeted with nothing but silence. I shrug at Sunny and motion for us to continue. After all, it's too late to turn back now.

But a moment later, another noise erupts-a low growling sound, somewhere to our left. Sunny looks over at me with wild, frightened eyes. "What was that?" she hisses.

I shrug, hand in my bag, reaching for the stake they gave me with my Riverdale enrollment papers. Though what good a small hunk of carved wood is going to do against a big, snarly wolf or lumbering bear is anyone's guess. Fear pounds through my heart as I s.h.i.+ne the flashlight into the woods. Maybe the light will scare the creature off ...

Suddenly I'm grabbed from behind. I scream, but my voice is m.u.f.fled by a smelly rag, stuffed into my mouth, and a black hood, pulled over my head. Two hands grab my shoulders, two more grab me by the ankles. I kick as hard as I can, but they're too strong.

I can hear my sister thras.h.i.+ng behind me. Oh G.o.d-whoever these people are, they've got her, too.

After what seems an eternity, our captors stop and I'm plopped unceremoniously onto the ground, my b.u.t.t slamming against hard rock. I can smell something here. Something like ... burning flesh. The hood is ripped from my eyes and the gag pulled from my mouth. I look up, catching sight of the glowing eyes of the ...

Alphas.

More precisely, the laughing-their-a.s.ses-off Alphas.

"Oh man, we got you!" Varuka crows, high-fiving Mara. Leanna does a little dance around the bonfire while Peter works to untie my sister.

"You should have seen your faces!" Mara cries. "You were totally freaking out."

"Who did you think we were?" Leanna asks gleefully. "Vampires?"

But, to my ultimate annoyance, it's Corbin's face that glows with the most satisfaction. "Hmm," he observes. "Maybe you're not as brave as you thought you were, huh, Little Slayer?"

Now untied, my sister leaps to her feet, her eyes blazing with fury. "How dare you?" she screams at the group. "How could you-?" She breaks off and I realize she's this close to crying. I don't blame her. My whole body's still trembling, amped up with fear and adrenaline. I scramble to my feet and cross the campsite to be by her side, shooting Corbin my best Raynie Look of Death.

"Nice," I growl. "Real effing nice."

"What?" he protests, holding up his hands in mock innocence. "You're just lucky it was us and not the patrol. I mean, let's face it, you guys weren't exactly subtle, cras.h.i.+ng through the forest like that. We heard you and saw your light a mile away. And if the guards caught you, there'd be h.e.l.l to pay." He grins wickedly. "We saved you from a fate worse than death, if you want to know the truth. You should be thanking me."

I scowl. "Well, next time don't do us any favors, okay?"

"Aw, don't be like that!" Peter begs, evidently in a merry mood. He prances over to me, playfully hooking an arm around my shoulder. I shove it away. "Hang out for a while. We've got beer and burgers."