Page 24 of Made in Malice
My palm burns when I fist the strap of my backpack. I’ll be lucky if I didn’t reopen the small cuts from yesterday. I may not be able to blame him for what just happened in that room, but I can blame him for my hands, since he’s the reason I fell both times.
“Bullshit. What happened to your arm? Why were you running?”
“I’m clumsy, but you know all about that, right?”
He has the audacity to ignore my snide question as he decides to look past me into the dark study room. His eyes scan the small space with suspicion, and I use his distraction to shoulder past him to get the hell out of the library. I’m not sticking around here when I know someone could be waiting to get me alone again.
“Where are you going?” he calls to my back, but I just give him the finger over my shoulder instead of answering. Is it baiting him? Probably. Do I care? No.
When I reach the main floor of the library, it feels like a completely different world. There are a few students milling about, but they are all too busy to even look in my direction, or maybe that’s what they want me to think.
Just as I’m about to walk past the front desk, I double back to the woman seated behind the dark ornate wood. “Is there another exit from upstairs besides those stairs?”
Her eyebrows bunch as her eyes narrow in my direction. “The back stairs are off-limits to students.”
I almost tell her someone must be using them, and it clearly isn’t me, because I just came down the main set, but I don’t waste my breath.
LUCIAN
“What did she say?” I demand as I try to pull my eyes off the new Umbras ass. Her pants are loose on her legs, but the thin material hugs her in all the right places, allowing me to see her ass jiggle with her hurried steps as she flees the library, giving me all kinds of ideas and pissing me off because she’s not running from me.
“She asked if there was another exit from the upper level.”
I finally peel my eyes away from the door once she’s gone and look at the woman behind the counter. Her eyes are wide and fearful as she gazes up at me. “That’s all?” I prompt, making sure she’s telling me everything.
“Yes, sir.” She nods jerkily. “I explained the rear stairs are off-limits.”
I turn my back to her and examine the library and the other people here. “You know who she is, correct?” I don’t bother looking at her while I’m speaking.
“Yes,” she confirms slowly, like she doesn’t know how she should answer.
“Do you really think you have the right to tell her what is and isn’t off-limits?”
“Well, um,” she stammers.
“Where are the back stairs?” I interrupt.
“Straight through there. I could show you,” she offers immediately, demonstrating that she understands perfectly well who runs this place.
Instead of answering her, I just walk away. I haven’t spent much time in the library, but I’m sure I can find it without her simpering behind me. Heads turn as I walk past the few students, but none of them speak to me, which is the way I prefer it.
The wooden shelves rise nearly to the high ceiling, blocking much of the view, so it takes me a few minutes of wandering around before I find the door marked “Restricted.” I try the knob, and it twists freely in my palm.
When I haul the door open, I find a simple wooden staircase that twists up to the second floor. It’s empty, but I expected it would be. Most of these sheep are easy enough to control with simple instructions, which makes me wonder why Umbra was asking and, more importantly, who she was running from, because some thing, or possibly someone, spooked her, and it wasn’t me.
I allow the door to close silently behind me and climb the steep steps two at a time, reaching the landing then the top rather quickly. The door opens to the same hall of study rooms we were in not long ago. I make my way back to the room she entered to pick up her bag and take another look around.
I find a simple black pen under the table with the name Bobcat’s etched into the side and an out-of-state phone number. I slide it into my back pocket, knowing it could be nothing, but there’s a chance it belongs to Charity or the person who was in here waiting for her.
I’m certain that’s what happened. The scratches on her arm were fresh, and she was running from something. I could see the fear in her eyes before she crashed into me. It pisses me off, because it’s been absent in her gaze every time she looks at me, but it was present when someone else was fucking with her. That’s not going to fly.
At least I learned something. I need a different approach with the charity case, and I need to make sure everyone else at this school knows she’s off-limits to anyone but the Morningstars.
Nova
My hands are still shaking when I make it back to the estate. My eyes are focused on the rearview mirror almost as much as the windshield because I’m convinced Morningstar, or whoever was in the study room, is going to come up behind me and run me off the road.
Alden is standing near the garage, speaking to someone I haven’t been introduced to, but he turns to watch me as I park my car and hustle into the house without a backward glance in his direction. I don’t want him catching sight of me or the scratches on my arm to confirm my need for an escort or protector. I refuse to walk around with a bodyguard. If I can hack it where I grew up, then I can sure as heck take care of myself here. I just need to be more careful.