Page 44 of Mayhem

A few people looked as I started across campus barefoot, but people had been looking at me all morning anyway. At least now I was giving them something worth the effort. The modified uniform itself wasn’t the problem. I actually liked the way the skirt fit, and whoever had altered the jacket understood that having tits did not mean every piece of clothing needed to hang off them like a tent. The shoes were the problem. My boots had never betrayed me like this.

My phone started vibrating before I reached the quieter path behind the humanities building. Runo’s name filled the screen, and I answered on video while still walking because there was no point waiting for privacy with that family. If he wanted privacy, he would have raised somebody else.

His face appeared much too close to the camera. Dark curls took up half the screen until he leaned back, ocean-grey eyes moving over whatever tiny portion of me the phone showed him. “Why are you outside without shoes?”

I lifted the heels into frame. “Because these are instruments of war and I refuse to die for fashion before I kill Nichlas.”

Aeron appeared over Runo’s shoulder almost immediately, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “Your feet are bleeding, sweetheart. Sit down before you walk dirt into them, and tell me you’ve eaten something that wasn’t coffee.”

“I ate.”

“That answer has never meant anything useful when it comes from you.”

I found a low stone wall bordering one of the gardens and sat, setting the shoes beside me while Aeron continued looking offended by the state of my feet from several states away. The blisters were worse now that I could actually see them, raw crescents at both heels with enough blood to ruin the backs of the shoes. “They took my boots,” I told him. “Apparently I dress like I’m planning a robbery, so the local dictators decided to improve me.”

Slash’s voice came from somewhere outside the frame. “Get the boots back.”

“Thank you. Finally, somebody parenting correctly.”

He came into view a second later with an apple in one hand and a small knife in the other, which made the criticism feel more legitimate. “Wear whatever they want when it matters. Change the shoes when it doesn’t. If they care enough to fight you about footwear, they have too much free time.”

Aeron gave him a look. “Or she could bandage the wounds and stop walking barefoot through a public place.”

“I’m going to do one of those things.”

“Echo.”

I smiled at him and leaned back on one hand. “You called me. What do you want?”

Runo had been watching the whole exchange with the kind of amusement that usually meant he was about to make my life worse. “I wanted to know how school was going, but now I’m much more interested in your dictators. You’ve mentioned rules, stolen boots, and Nichlas in less than two minutes. That sounds like a predicament.”

“It’s not a predicament. It’s an arrangement.” I shifted the phone so they could see less sky and more of my face. “I came here to kill Nichlas. Turns out he’s wrapped up in this whole Quorum thing, and the three men running the school decided I can’t touch him because protection means something to them even when the person being protected is a useless coward. So now I do work for them, follow enough rules to keep Hunter from developing an aneurysm, and eventually they give me Nichlas.”

Aeron’s brows went up. Slash stopped cutting the apple. Samael appeared at the edge of the kitchen behind them, drawn in by the word Quorum even though he had probably been listening the entire time.

Runo smiled slowly. “Three men?”

“That is not the important part.”

“It might be. You’ve complained about all three of them every time you’ve checked in, and somehow I know more about the one who keeps following you than I know about what you’re studying. Which one are you sweet on?”

I stared at him. “I am not sweet on anybody.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Don’t ‘mm-hm’ me. Malakai is a fucking barnacle. He appears places. I’ll be in the library and suddenly he’s sitting there touching my shit. I leave class, there he is. I go eat, somehow he’s eating my food. Yesterday he followed me across campus for no reason except apparently he had nothing better to do.”

Runo’s smile spread wider with every sentence. “That was a lot of information about a man you’re not sweet on.”

“He’s annoying enough to require documentation.”

Slash leaned closer to the phone. “What does he do besides follow you?”

“He’s chemical engineering, which was deeply disappointing because I assumed he majored in hitting people.”

That caught Slash’s attention properly. He lowered the apple. “Chemical engineering is useful.”

“He’s smart as fuck, unfortunately. I’m trying not to encourage him.” I let out a small sigh. “I also threatened to rip out his tongue piercing yesterday. Does that help?”