Page 13 of Mayhem

I missed home for half a second. Then I stabbed the tart with my fork and made that someone else’s problem.

“So Camille is expensive to touch,” I said.

Priya nodded. “Very.”

“And Nichlas?”

Priya pushed her salad away and leaned in, her forehead scrunched up as she glared at me. “That’s why Nichlas is weird. He doesn’t have Camille’s family. He doesn’t have obvious money, not the kind that makes people step sideways in a cafeteria. He isn’t charming enough for people to protect him because they like him, and he isn’t scary enough for people to protect him because they’re afraid of him. He’s not even useful in an obvious way. He’s just there, and everyone knows not to touch him.”

Behind me, the girl at the next table lowered her voice again. This time I caught pieces. Nicky. Upstairs. Someone told him. Looked scared. Priya’s nails tapped once against her glass, silently reminding me not to say anything.

I brought the coffee to my mouth and drank even though it had gone lukewarm and bitter. Nichlas had run from me and landed here, safe in the most pathetic way possible. He was a name people swallowed because someone else had put a hand over him. That should’ve been satisfying. It wasn’t. It made the scar down my side itch beneath my shirt, a hot line of memory I refused to touch in front of them.

“You know him, don’t you?” Priya asked. “That’s what all the questions are for. Who is he? Why’s he important? Why would the Kings—”

I cut her off. “He looks like someone I used to know.”

Priya didn’t push with a question this time. She studied me for a second and then pointed at my tart with her fork, giving the whole table somewhere else to look. “If you’re going to lie that badly, you should at least finish dessert first. Then maybe at some point, you can tell us what’s going on.”

I chewed on my bottom lip, my gaze still running across the cafeteria several times before landing on Nichlas scurrying down the back hall. I didn’t even see which door he came out of but it was all well enough. “Look, I like the three of you,” I started, trying to find the right words. “I’m not a fan of the uniform or the shoes or whatever bullshit hierarchy is here. That being said, I’m not spilling my life story to you three.”

Maren frowned. “Echo, we already told you about us. We’re not asking for your life story.”

“Aren’t you? I don’t fit in and so you need to know why I’m here.” I pushed to my feet and stole one last fry. “Also, the only thing I know about you all is that you’re rich. And that you three stick together for “protection”.” I used air quotes to emphasize. “I love that for you but that doesn’t warrant my entire backstory. Besides, I’m here for school. That’s what everyone keeps telling me this place is for, right?”

I threw them a wink and focused on getting back to my dorm so I could shed the heels, update my notebook, and figure out a way to kill Nichlas without getting caught. The little bastard being protected changed the math. Witnesses were one problem. Retaliation was another. More bloodshed sounded fun, but it was also messy.

hunter

Nichlas’ file had been open on my desk for most of the afternoon, and the longer I looked at it, the less sense it made.

On paper, there was nothing remarkable about him. He was twenty-four, enrolled in business, had decent grades, and no disciplinary record worth mentioning. He’d come through Aldrich the same way plenty of Quorum kids did, routed into the school because someone above them had decided a degree would make them more useful later. His intake paperwork was clean. Too clean, considering what sat near the bottom of it.

Hansen family protection.

That part had come later. The original placement had been routine, then something changed and my father’s name appeared on the file with no explanation attached. I’d gone through the intake twice, checked the date against the internal records, then pulled every note linked to Nichlas’ transfer. The result was the same every time: missing attachments, one sealed entry I couldn’t open, and language vague enough that whoever wrote it had known exactly how little they wanted anyone else to understand.

Continuity of protection. Family-level discretion.

I read it again, then leaned back in my chair and rubbed at the ache building between my eyebrows.

“Still says the same thing,” Malakai teased.

He had been on the small couch against the wall, though he hadn’t stayed there for long. Somewhere during the last half hour he’d moved from the couch to the arm of it, then to the windowsill, and now he was leaning against the side of my desk with his phone in one hand and my pen in the other. He’d been turning it between his fingers for several minutes without apparently realizing it belonged to me.

I held out my hand. “Pen.”

Malakai glanced down at it, then passed it over without comment. He waited until I set it beside the keyboard before reaching past me and taking the paper clip from the top of the printed file instead.

I looked at him as he bent it once between his fingers.

“Kai.”

That small change happened around his mouth, his lips curving into a deviant quirk. He put the paper clip down and picked up his phone again.

I went back to the screen. There was no point throwing Malakai out. He’d come back, and I’d waste more time arguing with him than I was already wasting on Nichlas. Besides, if there was anything buried in the system that I had missed, Malakai was the person most likely to find it. Information came to him even when he wasn’t looking for it. People talked around him, forgot he was listening, then acted surprised later when he remembered every word.

“What did you get from admissions?” I asked.