Page 43 of Wolf Trial

If it was Elix or Paige… Sure we’d only been friends for a few days, but the thought of something happening to them made my chest tight.

It occurred to me that Rev was out here not just to meet her father, but to dispose of another body. Was I the second person they’d killed? Was Fioranna the first?

“Rowlys Montclair,” Reed answered, and it was such a relief to hear an unfamiliar name that I couldn’t hide my emotions. My shoulders slumped and I blew out a hard breath. Not Elix or Paige. My friends were still alive.

“I’ll escort her back to her room,” Beaufort offered bluntly.

“No need,” Reed said, blustering and impossible to argue with. “I’m headed that way anyway. Sadie follow me, and don’t dawdle. I hate slow walkers.”

I was eager to get away from Beaufort, convinced he knew what I was, so I hurried after Reed without complaint. But my mind was elsewhere, consumed not with revenge this time but with another slayer missing.

“Reverie’s the killer,” I blurted out as we crossed the wide lawn before the imposing, gothic sprawl of the academy.

Reed snorted loudly. “No, she is not. That girl doesn’t have the stomach for this kind of mutilation.”

I blinked, processing that, adding it to everything I’d already figured out about Reverie. But if Rev and her henchwomen weren’t the killers, then who killed Fioranna? There was more than one killer in Lunatic Academy. Not just the bullies who murdered me, but a psychopath capable of gouging someone’s eyes out of their dead skull.

Oh, right, I almost forgot. The entire academy was full of psychopaths. We were all killers.

It could’ve been one of them.

CHAPTER 25

SADIE

Iplanned to sneak into my room, curl up in bed, and stare at the ceiling while I went over everything that had happened in the last twenty four hours, but I didn’t make it in the door before a shadow threw itself at me in the dark. I stumbled back, the door slamming shut, and only my exhaustion slowed my immediate reaction which was to punch my assailant in the tit. Moonlight caught blonde hair, and I exhaled a rough breath.

“Elix.”

She didn’t have her notepad, but the way she shook my shoulders until my brain rattled inside my head was pretty self explanatory.

“Long story,” I muttered.

She moved back enough to let me see her face, usually sweet but now hard around the eyes and mouth.

I sighed, saying goodbye to my plans of curling up in bed. “Rev and her gang of mindless followers jumped me on my way back from touring House of Sun’s wing.”

When Elix began to shake, I wondered if I should leave it there, but she narrowed her eyes and made a carry on motion. “She must have used some vampire woo-woo shit, because I couldn’t move. Then those pricks threw me over the edge of the boundary like a bag of rubbish.” I swallowed, the lie unpleasant but necessary. I brushed my thumb over the charm on the bracelet and added, “I’ve been trying to find my way back to the boundary all this time.”

She glanced at me, at the shirt I’d stolen from Leander’s wardrobe, and my stomach dropped. The bracelet disguised my scent, but did it extend to the clothes I wore? I was so sure when her eyes darkened that she knew, and my shoulders hunched as she stalked to the chest of drawers beside her bed where she’d left her pen and pad.

Those bitches took your clothes, she wrote, so angrily that the page ripped. And it was like a gift from god, that wrong assumption.

“Yeah,” I said faintly, and tried to remind myself I was a good liar. But this lie was bitter on my tongue. It had been so long since I’d had anyone who’d notice I went missing, let alone care that I was gone. “Reed and Professor Beaufort rescued me near the boundary. Reed found these for me.”

I plucked at the shirt, and it took all my effort to keep my focus here, instead of back at the cottage with Leander and Verne.

We’ll kill them, Elix wrote, slashing a line beneath the words.

“I have a better plan,” I said, rubbing an aching spot on my arm, either from the shift or from climbing my way up the hill to the academy. “Sabotage.”

The door flew open behind me and I stumbled as a figure barrelled inside. So on edge, I threw out a punch—and yelped when my fist slammed into Paige’s boob.

“Fuck, Sadie,” she cried, clutching her chest. “A tit punch? Really?”

“I thought you were an attacker,” I explained, wincing but so happy to see her. Two friends—I had two friends who gave a shit about me. It was more than I’d had since I graduated high school. “I thought you were gonna drug me, turn me into a mannequin, and toss me off the edge of the cliff.”

Paige arched an eyebrow, the pain on her dark face shifting to amusement. “Toss you off? You’re not my type.”