When the Shadows Fall by Elise Noble

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 23 - SKY

AT GREENFIELDS COMPREHENSIVE, assembly meant fidgeting in a cold hall for fifteen minutes while the headmaster bollocked us for smoking behind the bike sheds, lamented our poor grades, begged us not to swear during next week’s Ofsted inspection, and reminded us that students weren’t allowed in the stationery cupboard, with or without a teacher. Especially with a teacher. Everyone knew where Channel in year twelve had got caught doing a practical with the biology teacher the previous Friday night. They hadn’t exactly been subtle about it. And yes, her name really was Channel. Pronounced Chanel, like the perfume, but her mum copied the spelling from her handbag and it was a knock-off.

At Shadow Falls, Mr. Rosenberg welcomed us to the start of a new week and encouraged us to sign up for the annual ski trip to Whistler if we hadn’t already, and then we were treated to a performance from the woodwind ensemble plus a motivational talk from a former pupil who’d clerked for a Supreme Court justice before starting her own law firm. I wasn’t worthy. And I was also beginning to see why the fees at Shadow Falls were so high.

“Monday morning blues, Chem Girl?”

“Huh?”

Asher put two fingertips to the corners of his mouth and pulled them down in an exaggerated sad face.

“Maybe I’m dreading the thought of spending the next eighty minutes sitting with you.”

That and the fact that my comms would most likely cut out again. Rune had started talking at six this morning, guessing what might come up in my chemistry lesson while I brushed my teeth and combed my hair.

“And there I was thinking you just weren’t impressed by my uncle’s line in self-righteous bullshit.”

Wait a second. Asher didn’t get along with his uncle? I’d assumed the whole family was tight. They lived and worked together, after all. The research was trickling in. Grandma Rosenberg—Tovah—lived in an annexe to the family home, which was set back in the woods to the east of the main school building. Officially, it was known as the Lodge, but it was the size of a mansion. Saul had the largest portion of the house. Until recently, his wife and daughter had shared it with him, but they’d moved out after a divorce—irreconcilable differences, apparently. According to the court documents, Ayda, the daughter, visited every other weekend, but I hadn’t seen her yet. Ezra appeared to live in a wing attached at a right angle beside the quadruple garage. I hadn’t yet worked out how Asher fitted into the accommodation arrangements.

Could he be testing me? Seeing where my loyalties lay? Or was the old Blackwood cynicism rubbing off on yours truly? They all had it. Emmy, Black, Rafael… Nate was the worst. Sometimes, he struck me as being one step away from full-blown paranoia.

“Mr. Rosenberg seems quite genuine to me.”

Asher rolled his eyes. “You’ve got chemistry now?”

“Yup.”

“Know where you’re going?”

Before I could answer in the affirmative, a high-pitched voice called out from behind us.

“Asher!”

I didn’t need to turn around to know it was one of the Britneys. Nor did it surprise me when Asher peeled away to talk to her. They seemed like each other’s type. Pretty to look at and vaguely annoying. I carried on to the chemistry lab.

“Good luck,” Rune whispered. “Sofia’s going to cover biology for me. I need to…” She trailed off. “Alaric wants me to speak to a therapist about what happened. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

Moments like that were the worst part of my situation. I wanted to reach out and give Rune a hug, but I couldn’t even offer a word of sympathy.

“I’ll talk to you this evening,” she said, and then she was gone.

Vanessa was already in the lab, and… Oh, crap. There was equipment out on the bench. Beakers, thermometers, little dishes with powder in them.

“We’re measuring enthalpy changes,” she said. “What did you think of this morning’s talk?”

“Inspiring.”

“Another one who’s been drinking the Kool-Aid,” Asher said from behind me.

“Don’t you ever have anything nice to say?” Vanessa asked.

“About this place?” He shrugged. “What are we meant to be doing today?”

Dr. Merritt went over the instructions, and Asher decided he was helping Vanessa with the practical parts. That left me to write everything down, which was the easiest job. I could manage to draw a graph, just about. The lesson was almost fun.

Unlike biology.

I sat on my own at the front, only for Asher to walk in at the last minute and sit next to me. The lab was already too hot, possibly to keep the tankful of tropical frogs living on a shelf at the back happy, and his arrival made the back of my neck tingle. He didn’t have the same pheromone-laced aura as Rafael, but the vibes he gave off made me uncomfortable for a whole variety of reasons.

“Are you always late?” I asked.

“Ideally. If I get here any earlier, some girl sits next to me.”

I pointed at my boobs. “Hello? You sat next to me.”

“You don’t count.”

Was that a compliment or an insult? I wasn’t sure.

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re different.”

“In what way?”

Sofia was supposed to be an adult, and yet she was snickering away in my ear. I was one big joke to them, wasn’t I?

“You just are.”

Gee, that was helpful. “You seemed happy enough to speak to the Barbie dolls earlier.”

“If I don’t stop right away, they follow me around until I do. Trust me, it’s easier to get it over with.”

Asher had been reasonably bearable in chemistry. He’d taken some of the load off Vanessa and participated. Not so in biology. He scribbled a few sentences in unreadable handwriting and then leaned back in his seat, arms folded as the teacher covered the basics of human reproduction.

The mechanics, I could cope with—shove part A into slot B—just as long as I didn’t think about the actual experience. A bead of sweat rolled down my back, and I focused on writing. As long as ink was flowing across the page, I couldn’t seize up completely. Did I look normal? My spine prickled with ice crystals, little needles that jabbed into my back and reminded me that I was damaged inside.

And the final straw? When I was drawing an *ahem* diagram, Asher peered at it and smirked.

“Is that drawn from experience? Because you can do better than that, Chem.”

“Shut up. Aren’t you even going to take notes?”

“No need, babe. I already know all this stuff.”

“I’m not your babe, asshole.”

The teacher cleared his throat. “Sky, would you care to recap that last part?”

Why me? Why not Asher? Because he was a Rosenberg and I wasn’t? Vanessa was right—they paid lip service to equality here. My cheeks burned as I read out what I’d written. At that moment, I hated Asher Martinez and his whole damn family.

“What a dick,” Sofia said in my ear. “Chill, sweetie. Revenge comes later. Do you have gloves with you? I saw a clump of poison oak in one of your videos of the grounds.”

I wrote a reply on the edge of my paper. Yes, I have gloves.

“It’s a shame those are leopard frogs in that tank in the corner. If they were Phyllobates terribilis, we could have some fun with them. The golden poison frog. One can kill ten men, did you know that? When I lived in Peru, I kept half a dozen as pets. I’m thinking of getting more, but Leo isn’t keen on the idea.”

Poor guy. I pitied any man who lived with Sofia. She was certifiable. Emmy’s moral compass was wobbly, but Sofia’s pointed in the wrong direction entirely from what I’d seen of her.

I scrawled NO in the margin.

“It was just an idea. Okay, something more subtle. I saw what might have been Coprinopsis atramentaria over by the tennis pavilion. The common ink cap mushroom. Eaten on its own, it won’t do much harm, but mix it with alcohol, and boom. He’ll be puking for days.”

STILL NO.

“You’re the life and soul of the fucking party, aren’t you?”

What were the frogs for, anyway? I had an awful feeling we were meant to dissect them. At Greenfields Comprehensive, they’d made us cut up mice and Johnny Mowlem threw the insides at me. That had been my last ever biology lesson. Until today, clearly.

When the teacher gave us a set of questions to read through and answer, I leaned closer to Asher.

“Do we have to dissect frogs?”

“Today?”

“Any day.”

“Yeah, why? You’re not gonna puke, are you?”

Maybe. “I don’t want to kill an animal.”

“How about a human?”

Did he know? How could he? I felt the colour drain out of my face.

“It’s getting more tempting by the second,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Chill, Chem. I’m joking. You seemed pretty pissed with me earlier, that’s all. And we don’t dissect real frogs. The girls freaked out last year, and the school ended up keeping them as pets. We have fake frogs now. They look just like the real thing, but they’re made of rubber.”

Phew. Rubber frogs I could deal with. Did Emmy get squeamish? Probably not.

I managed to ignore Asher for the rest of the lesson, and he made little effort to participate. Was this what it was like to be rich? The guy was squandering an education that cost more than most people’s salary each year.

His privilege made me angry. I might not have had much to show for my time in London, but I’d kept Lenny and myself out of jail, and everything I did have, I’d worked damn hard for. Vanessa had been right. Asher was a bum.

“You going swimming this afternoon?” he asked after class.

It was that or yoga, and swimming had its plus points. My training bruises had faded enough for me to wear a bathing suit now.

“Probably. You?”

“Nah.”

“You prefer downward-facing dog?”

He shook his head. “Not my thing. But watch out for Freddie Thornberg. He’ll offer to help with your stroke, but he just wants to cop a feel.”

Asher seemed genuine in his warning. I didn’t understand him. One moment he was a prick, and the next, he was…sort of nice.

“Thanks. Are you going running instead?”

“No.”

“But you like running, right?”

“It’s okay.”

“Just ‘okay’? Why did you cheat on Saturday and then get up early to run on Sunday?”

“Because one time when I got around the course too fast, they tried to put me on a team. And I’m not representing those assholes.” He jerked his head east, in the direction of the Rosenbergs’ house. “So I told them I cheated when I got my best times. And now I have to keep up the pretence.”

Interesting logic.

“And the swimming?”

“I’ll swim on my own later. Unless you want to join me?”

“Er, no.”

Asher somehow managed to smirk and laugh at the same time. “Take care of yourself, Chem Girl.”

Of course, I still had Sofia with me when I headed for the pool. And she was still acting like a psycho.

“So, Freddie Thornberg, huh? I’ve got his bio here. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree with that one—his daddy got accused of rape by his former secretary. The charges went away, though. Guess there was a pay-off.”

“Is it too late to switch to yoga?” I muttered.

“Don’t worry; you’re trained for this. If he gets handsy, grab his balls and twist. Or we can get creative. Pools are fun—they use chlorine-based disinfectant to destroy pathogens and acid to control pH. Mix the two, and voila! Chlorine gas. If you do it the right way, the pulmonary oedema looks like a total accident.”

I had a horrible feeling she was speaking from experience, and I really didn’t want to hear it.

“Is this earpiece waterproof?” I whispered.

“Uh, no. I don’t think so. I’ll check with Nate.”

“Shame. Guess I’d better take it out then.”

Peace at last. Thank goodness.

Of course, all good things come to an end, and Emmy was waiting for me when I plugged myself back in. Vanessa was nowhere to be seen, and I made sure to close the bedroom door before I started talking.

“Don’t bullshit me,” Emmy said. “You knew that earpiece wasn’t waterproof when you picked swimming.”

“If you’d spent the entire day with Sofia explaining a thousand ways to kill people, you’d have done the same.”

“She’s dedicated.”

“She’s insane. And she wouldn’t shut up.”

“There’s a possibility she might have forgotten to take her meds this morning,” Emmy conceded.

“Next time, give me Ryder if I can’t have Rune. At least he’s quiet.”

“I’ll see what I can do. But first, an update. We’ve hit a slight snag with the backup plan.”

My stomach dropped.

“What snag?”

“Marshall got a letter from the Master. Seems he doesn’t believe we managed to steal Spirit, so we won’t be able to catch one of his people in the act at a handover. Xav’s copy was too damn good.”

“So what happens next?”

“If Spirit was our only connection to the School of Shadows, perhaps we’d alert the authorities to the theft. But thanks to you, we don’t need to do that.”

“Which means…?”

“Which means all the eggs are in your basket at the moment.”

Great. No pressure. Just me, a four-hundred-acre campus, and a stolen painting to find.

“Sky?”

“I’m here.”

“You’re doing fine. We don’t need to solve this tomorrow. Slow and steady wins the game, so keep mapping out the campus, carry on listening, and we’ll narrow down the areas where a painting could be hidden. We put a tracker on Ezra’s car while he was in town this afternoon.”

“What about Saul’s?”

“We’re working on it. He doesn’t seem to go out much.”

I lay on the bed and closed my eyes. “A den of thieves, and I’m stuck right in the middle of it.”

“Look on the bright side—Shadow Falls is meant to be pretty in the autumn.”