Page 50 of Hunted

“Music,” I said quietly. “I miss music.”

Specifically all the new movie scores my fingers would itch to play the second I heard them, and all the new Paramore albums I could drown my nostalgic angst in. I fucking loved that band. Riot! got me through some tough years for a while there.

Dak offered a gentle smile, which quickly turned into a glower when the mess hall doors crashed open somewhere behind me.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” a familiar oily voice drawled, sending imaginary spiders skitting up my spine. “I do hope you’ve left some for us, Red Team.”

Sebastos plonked down into an empty seat at the end of our table, kicking his feet up and slamming them down atop the surface. His blood-covered boots crushed a pizza box, but he appeared unmoved.

“And suddenly, I’ve lost my appetite,” I said, rising.

“Oh, don’t be like that, little bird. It was only a bit of fun.”

“Yeah? It’ll be fun when I slit your throat, too. Just like you did to Fleur.”

He jolted forwards to rest on his elbows, feet slamming down on the floor. “I did no such thing.”

Rage enveloped me so severely, I couldn’t even formulate a response. Luckily, I didn’t have to.

Ethan stood up next to me, wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and glared daggers at Sebastos. “Let’s go celebrate elsewhere, team. There’s a stench of something rotten in here.”

Every one of our team except Bodie stood quietly. Mercy glowered at him as she collected random pizza boxes, while Ace and Cohen nabbed one of the beer kegs, hoisting it up between their shoulders. We exited out the side door, into the crisp, on-the-verge-of-snowing night, and made our way down into the academic building.

Dak ran ahead, checking doorways until he found an unlocked one, then held it open for the rest of us. The boys hastily set up and passed out the beer, while Mercy handed out various boxes to various people.

Minutes passed in comfortable silence—the most comfortable I’d ever been within a group of people at Blackwing—until Ethan broke it with a loud brrrrrp.

“Gross!”

“Nice one, dude.”

“Ethan,” I whined.

He leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head, offering the most unserious apology. “Sorry, guys. Had to clear the pipes.”

Cohen took his brazenness for invitation and added another fetid frrrrt to the mingling aromas of beer, pizza, burp, and now fart.

But farts were rarely not funny, so Mercy and I sniggered, excusing ourselves away from the subsequent smells. She dropped into the instructor’s chair, and I parked my ass on the desk, smiling at the boys’ raucous laughter.

It hit me then, like a tonne of bricks, that Fleur was dead and I shouldn’t be laughing with another girl in her place. She’d barely been gone—well, I chose not to count the individual days because even one was too many—and I was already finding joy without her.

It wasn’t right.

It wasn’t fair.

Mercy must have caught my internal mood shift, because she cleared her throat and started rifling through the desk drawers. “What do you think Lockwood keeps in here anyway?” she asked, a trace of mischief tugging on the corner of her lips.

“Lockwood?”

“Yes, dummy. Whose classroom did you think we were in?”

I glanced around, realising she was right. All that was missing were the rows of laptops on desks and the man himself.

“What in the…” She trailed off, holding a creased piece of paper so close to her face, I questioned the capability of her eyeballs. “Sinclair, what the fuck is this?”

She shoved the paper at me, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

I grabbed it reflexively—and almost tore it in two when I registered what was printed on it. Because, preserved in a grainy, black-and-white security camera image in the top left corner… accompanied by tiny, impersonally typed details I thought no one knew… was me.