Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance) Page 2

  He stepped around and blocked the kid’s backpack from the line of sight of the fifth floor of Strange Hall.

  He knew he should recognize this kid with blond curls. Gray couldn’t come up with a name, but he was in Sterling’s grade. He did remember the kid wasn’t great at alchemy. Understandable, since he was a psychic, not a magic user.

  The boy glanced over his shoulder and gasped when he saw his pet blinking back at him. “Iffie doesn’t like being in the bag. She wants to fly.” A drop of sweat appeared on the kid’s forehead. “Please don’t give me a demerit.”

  Of course the kid didn’t want to lose a point in the inter-house competition, but this was about more than a contest. “What’s your name?”

  “Nikkos, sir.”

  Gray offered his hand, palm up, to the hydra. One of her extraordinarily ugly heads sniffed his fingers. So did the other. He stroked her necks and she purred a two-note growl.

  Stuffed in a bag when she should be flying. He could relate. He was used to his own life having an R rating. Harsh language, violence, adult situations. He had to tone himself down to be suitable for family viewing. But he’d play the part of an alchemy teacher as long as Sterling needed him. Still, he was going to explode if he didn’t get laid or kill something soon. A really big demon would do it. Killing it, that is. Not the other thing.

  A familiar pain throbbed against his right shoulder blade. The muscle knot where he carried his stress had doubled in size since he’d met Pippa Strange’s niece.

  This was one of the few places in the world where these kids didn’t have to hide how special they were. But then she came here. How Cross and the others thought they could keep her from finding out, he had no clue. She’d have to be stupid. She wasn’t. Intelligence shone from those coffee-brown eyes.

  She might be Pippa Strange’s niece, but she didn’t belong here. People thought the times when having unexplained powers would make you the star of a marshmallow roast in the town square were over, but they weren’t.

  His family had spent the Middle Ages preventing lesser Metas from becoming human barbeque. Chances were good Nikkos—the kid’s hydra rubbed her twin jaws against Gray’s knuckles—owed his existence to one of Gray’s ancestors. But the Gray House would protect the Nons from the dark forces threatening to take this world for their own—as long as the Nons behaved themselves.

  Needle teeth crunched into his finger, making him wince.

  “Iphigenia! Geez. Sir, I’m sorry.” Nikkos glared at the hydra, probably disciplining her through their psychic link. Her snouts blushed purple and she dipped her heads at Gray before slinking down into the backpack. Nikkos looked at the ground. “Uh, that means she likes you,” he offered.

  “I like her, too.” Gray pinched the growing red dots on his finger while maintaining his calm. “Is she poisonous?”

  Nikkos shook his blond curls. “She’s not supposed to come out in public anymore.”

  “You get a demerit for this. According to the rules.” A part of Gray knew he should enforce the rules. A bigger part felt like punching someone.

  “Take Iffie to the library and let her fly. Tell anyone who bothers you I said it’s okay. She—” Gray nodded in the direction of Strange Hall “—won’t go in there.” From across campus, Gray had seen Cross skip that part of the tour.

  “Thank you, Sir.” Nikkos ran off, blond curls bobbing.

  He couldn’t believe people thought they could hide the truth about Strange Academy from her. Pippa had been dead wrong on this one. Last wish or not, the Non-Metanormal had to go.

  He looked across the campus to see Nikkos disappear behind the red-brick Science Building. A loud game of touch football was in full swing by the residences. In the shadow of Chapter House’s clock tower, a smiling teenage girl tucked her hair behind her ear as a goofy-looking boy walked by, his nose in a thick textbook. Near the ancient cracked bell on a pedestal in the center of the Quad, a memorial of the 1854 fire that destroyed the original school, a group of staff and students in matching black outfits bowed to Tao Zhang, the psychic self-defense teacher, leading them in tai chi.

  It was what Gray didn’t see that made his stress knot tighten. No budding wizards testing out fireball spells for extra credit. No mutant students showing off enhanced strength. No psychic teachers demonstrating levitation techniques.

  His temper rose. This place was under attack, and Cross refused to do anything about it. Gray wouldn’t let it happen. As usual, other people made a mess and left him to clean it up. He was here to watch over Sterling during the divorce. Good thing, too, with the added trauma of Sterling’s favorite teacher dying.

  He was useless with the emotional stuff, but when it came to taking action, Gray was your guy. He couldn’t fix the divorce or bring Pippa back. But he could get rid of Sadie Strange.

  The hydra will fly over Strange Academy by Christmas, Gray thought. I swear it.

  Chapter Two

  “The red building over there is Rosencreutz Hall—we just call it Rose Hall—the white one is Eastwick Hall, the brown one is Last Hall, and this is Strange Hall,” Christian said.

  Sadie didn’t look at any of the other residences. She was too busy falling in love with the five stories of gray stone that was Strange Hall.

  Her new responsibility.

  She couldn’t believe she had the chance to live in a building like this. She loved everything Gothic and slightly creepy, but she’d hidden that at university so she could fit in. Strange Hall, with its arched stained-glass windows and gargoyles, even looked like it might have ghosts in the attic.

  The thought of ghosts reminded her of Pippa and suddenly the architecture wasn’t so charming. She shivered in her woolen coat.

  “I got it!” someone yelled.

  Her brain registered the words an instant before a ginger-haired head slammed into her chest, knocking the air out of her lungs. A football fell at her feet. She stumbled off the tarmac path into squishy mud that trickled into her shoe and down her insole.

  Christian was at her side in a moment, peeling the kid off her. “Miss Strange, are you all right?”

  “She’s not Ms. Strange,” the boy said. Blue eyes scanned hers as if checking for weakness. He couldn’t have been older than eleven.

  “This is Miss Strange,” Christian said. “Ms. Strange was her aunt.”

  “Sick.” Another boy, this one in a fuzzy coat appeared. As he picked up the football, he sneered at his friend who'd run into her. “You touched her. You’ve got non-germs.”

  “Warwick,” Christian said to the boy who’d spoken. “You get a demerit.” The kid’s eyes narrowed at her, as if it had been her fault.

  A silent third boy lingered behind them. Dark-haired and pale, he kept his arms tightly crossed over the chest of his gray-and-black Columbia Titanium jacket. The look he gave her unnerved her—she’d never glared at an adult when she was ten.

  Christian addressed him. “Sterling, do you have something to say?”

  The dark-haired boy shook his head. As the three boys walked off, whispering, he stole a look back at her.

  She mentally gnawed on what Warwick had said. Not non-germs. Non germs. Non. Her gut supplied the definition. Someone who didn’t belong. An outsider.

  Her mood turned sour. She glanced up at two round windows above the front door of Strange Hall and laughed without humor.

  “Why are you laughing?” Christian asked.

  “Those windows look like eyes,” she pointed out. “And we’re going to go through the door. I thought maybe I was about to become Strange Hall’s dinner.”

  Christian raised an eyebrow at her.

  “I just need to breathe fresh air a few seconds more,” she added.

  During her campus tour, the kids had quieted down and whispered behind their hands when she and Christian approached. She’d chalked it up to the sudden appearance of the principal. But maybe not. Maybe the entire place saw her as an outsider. They were as stuck up as Lorde Gray.

/>   Not that she was sparing His Hotness and his thick wavy hair a second thought.

  On the tour, the place’s general air of privilege and separateness had been broken by the occasional instance of just plain weirdness. For example, the statues of eight muses in the lobby of the main building, Chapter House. By her count, and the empty pedestal, they were one muse short.

  “This whole place is a hotspot.” Christian broke into her thoughts.

  “Is it haunted? You sound like my sister, the ‘psychic.’” She mimed quotation marks.

  She barely had time to catch Christian’s narrowed gaze before it disappeared and he gave a forced laugh. “A wireless Internet hotspot. You’ll have your laptop in the morning.”

  Her mouth went dry. “I can’t afford...”

  He pulled on the iron O serving as a doorknob, opening the heavy wooden door of Strange Hall for her. She stepped across the threshold and into a high-ceilinged foyer with matching curved staircases sweeping up either side. Kids aged ten to eighteen strolled, hustled, and sprinted through the room. Stained glass dyed white winter light a rainbow of colors in patches on the floor. She gaped at the architecture until she noticed several students staring at her, while Christian continued speaking, to both her and the kids. “Comes with the job. You’ll need it—Eloise, did you get a new coat?—for the e-mail. Parents here are very involved.”

  A twelve-year-old girl blushed between freckles and hugged her clarinet case to her flat chest. Crush on the principal? Sadie knew why. He was gorgeous, a demi-god in dress slacks, and he walked around making people feel comfortable in their own skin with his warm voice. She followed his butt up the stairs, feeling the smooth ridges of the ornate wooden balustrade under her hand. For a guy with a desk job, he kept fit.

  Christian was perfect and nice and right here, so why the hell did she keep wishing it was Gray’s ass at eye level? She closed her eyes and inhaled. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she be attracted to nice men? Why date the evil?

  From her vantage point on the stairs, she looked down at the odd pattern set in black tiles in the otherwise white marble foyer floor. A circle surrounding a complicated pattern of straight lines that formed an eight-pointed star.

  She tried but couldn’t picture eccentric Aunt Pippa—wise, weird, and warm—in this staid old mausoleum of a building. She would always remember her reading tea leaves from fresh mint tea in Mom’s kitchen, silver bangles chiming on her wrists. But who was she at Strange Academy? Just another teacher. Had she whipped out her tarot deck to read her students’ futures? Or had she suppressed it, brewing up so-called spells on a hotplate in her school apartment?

  A gaggle of little girls came out of nowhere, streaming down the stairs, showing her to the side. Sadie nearly went tumbling over the railing. It was a long way down. The girls were followed by a voluminous ice-white coat with a head sticking out of the high collar. The woman’s face was camouflaged by long straight hair the same white as the coat.

  “Oh, Dr. Cross.” The soprano voice made the words into music. “We’re off to observe the stars. Girls, this is your last chance. Do any of you have to go?”

  “No, Ms. Jones,” the bundled-up girls chimed in unison.

  Sadie stiffened. Even the idea of having the responsibility for all those kids almost overwhelmed her. And classes started tomorrow. What had she gotten herself into?

  Ms. Jones shook a velvet bag at Christian. Even though her hair was ice white, her face was wrinkle free. She couldn’t be much older than Sadie. “Tonight we perform the frost moon ritual.”

  “Yes, have a good time on your field trip to the observatory.” Christian emphasized the final words. Her B.S. detector was getting a workout.

  Ms. Jones blinked at him, and then blinked at Sadie. The white-haired teacher opened her mouth to say something but was interrupted by one of the girls tugging at her coat, looking up at her with wide eyes and crossed legs. “Ms. Jones. I have to go.”

  “Jewel Jones,” Christian said, after the girls and Ms. Jones left and the two of them had continued walking toward her rooms. Christian moved in front, as if to shield her from further danger, and insisted on carrying her baby blue, hard-sided, retro suitcase. “She’s another residence advisor here. We’re looking for a new senior R.A. to take your aunt’s place. No luck yet.”

  “Strange Hall. Strange Academy. Is everything around here strange? Maybe you hired me just for my last name.”

  He compressed his lips. “Candidly, Sadie, it didn’t hurt.”

  “Pippa said she was related to the founder.” She tried to keep the misery out of her voice. “Guess I am, too.”

  “Like I said, it didn’t hurt, but you wouldn’t be here without your master’s degree in literature. And your aunt’s recommendation.”

  The corridor seemed to darken around her. “Pippa recommended me. As her replacement.” She kept her tone flat, though the hair on her arms rose in anticipation of his answer.

  “Exactly,” he confirmed, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  This was beyond B.S. It was impossible. Sadie was grateful Christian’s keen eyes couldn’t see through the back of his head. You don’t recommend a replacement if you aren’t sick or retiring. Unless you think someone is going to kill you.

  “So that’s why you hired someone who ‘isn’t one of us,’” she said.

  Christian’s back stiffened and he whirled on her. He seemed much larger and very close.

  “Where did you hear that?” His voice had turned to a malicious growl.

  “G—Gray said it when he was in your office.” She stepped back. Christian loomed.

  Blue eyes that had seemed so warm and friendly now pierced her. She swallowed, unable to break from his gaze, unable to even blink. Pressure filled her ears and she had a dizzying feeling Christian could look into her mind.

  “Can you hear through walls, Sadie Strange? I’ll have to remember to watch out for you.”

  Then he laughed, the corners of his mouth quirking up. The odd look was gone. With it, the tension disappeared, like text deleted from a computer file. She felt more off balance than ever. It was all she could do to follow numbly.

  He stopped at the last door at the end of the corridor. “Are you sure about taking your aunt’s apartment?”

  “I’m sure.” She was suddenly eager to get rid of him. “I’ll just go in alone.”

  After Christian left, she stared at the round golden key in her hand for a long time. Maybe this was stupid, thinking she could live in her aunt’s old place. But how else could she have made sure no one else would go into the apartment? Hidden among Pippa’s things might be the clue she needed to figure it all out. She would search everything until she found evidence of the truth about her aunt’s death.

  She turned the key in the lock. The door opened a couple of inches and then became so heavy she had to shove with all her strength to squeeze through sideways.

  Aunt Pippa’s apartment was a tidy little hobbit-hole. Her stamp was all over it, from the literary prints on the walls to the chocolate-colored comfy chair and the couch patterned with whimsical swirls.

  The main room was larger than all her student apartments combined. On one side, the dining area had a round table actually made of wood, not laminate from Ikea. A warm amber glow came from the pendant lamp above it. On closer inspection, she saw that the amber teardrops making up the lamp were actual pieces of amber. Wow.

  Wow again: On the other side of the room, a curved window seat begged you to curl up with a favorite novel and a mug of thick hot chocolate and read the winter away. There were a dozen red cushions to sit on and a creamy throw blanket to ward off the chill. She intended to spend a lot of time there. But then she frowned. You don’t have a lot of time, remember? You’re just here long enough to answer a few questions.

  She passed a narrow kitchen lined with cupboards on both sides and walked down a short hallway to enter the master bedroom.

  The circular window al
lowed a round patch of white light to fall across Aunt Pippa’s yellow-flowered quilt on the canopy bed. Sadie’s steady, dull grief flared from the background, making her chest ache. She folded up the bedding, glad to have some fidgety thing to do. She could sleep in Pippa’s bed, but not under her sheets. She’d mail the quilt to her mother.

  So far, so good. No one would walk up to her and say Oh, by the way, Insert-Name-Here killed your aunt, but today had confirmed her suspicions.

  As she walked back into the main room, she felt completely justified in her behavior at the funeral. Her sister, the so-called psychic, was a faker who even had the police fooled into thinking she could help them with their investigation. Ha! Chloë wouldn’t know a crime if it came up and snatched her purse.

  Sadie froze in mid-step. Holy shit, the wall. Aunt Pippa’s wall was covered in bookshelves. Empty bookshelves.

  Her heart pole-vaulted into her throat as she looked closer. The pattern of dust silhouetted the missing books on every shelf, from floor to ceiling.

  Her hands tightened to angry fists as burning anger ripped her open. Someone had stolen all Pippa’s books. It would have taken hours to do it.

  Pure adrenaline poured through her veins as she spied what was in the door’s path, what had made it so hard to open earlier. Her brain struggled to put meaning to what she saw.

  The brown paper-wrapped box jamming the door had a single word written on it, screaming out in Aunt Pippa’s distinctive calligraphy. Sadie.

  *

  ***

  ******

  ****

  *

  Gray toyed with the love potion in his pocket as he took the Strange Hall stairs two at a time. All he had to do was get her to drink it and then tell her to quit the job.

  Easy. The only hard part would be ignoring the chemistry between them and not seducing her out of her stuffy suit. That would solve his little getting laid problem. If he could just forget about the fact she was a Non. Maybe it would be all right, just this once, to break the rules.