snake a reason to strike at you. Just slow an’ easy, honey.

“And very charmingly, too.” Marcus glanced significantly at Hiro. “I think we may excuse Milady

Anderson; she’s very tired.”

Bruce stiffened, Kir’s eyebrows went up, and Ezra smirked. He smirked so loudly, in fact, that I

could almost hear it through the noise in my head.

“Milady.” How Hiro managed to make it clear he was talking to me without taking his eyes from

Anna I don’t know. “I shall escort you to your Guard.”

Well, wasn’t that nice of him. I got the feeling there were two different groups here. One of them

was maybe on my side, but the other was definitely on hers. And if it came down to it, she was the

queen of the school, right? You bet she’d have her group of adoring boys. Girls who look like that

always do.

Anna’s face hardened, but her tone didn’t change. “I suppose a transcript will be made available to

me?”

Good God, if she put any more syrup over that she’d drown in it. I swallowed hard. The stone in my

throat had gone away, replaced with a faint tang of waxen, rotting citrus. Gran called it an arrah—an

aura, like migraine sufferers get right before their heads cave in.

Me, I get it right before someone tries to kill me, when an old friend is going to show up, or when

the serious weird is about to happen. If I weren’t so busy trying to stand up straight and look a little

less scruffy, I might have been laying odds with myself over which one I was looking at now.

“Of course.” Bruce said it the way adults do when they really mean, No, are you stupid?

Now that was interesting. It was tug-of-war in here, and I was the rope. How long had she been

here, the only girl in a school full of boys? And looking like that, she probably had a really great

time with it. Things were probably so easy for her.

It was enough to make you want to hate someone. As if I didn’t already feel like she was fingernails

on chalkboard.

Hiro’s chair scraped against the floor as he pushed it further back. I took that as my cue to get moving, and the taste of wax-rotted oranges flooded my tongue as I stepped away from the chair at the

head of the table.

I stopped just once, my gaze still locking with Anna’s. Her cheeks had turned pink. A spark of crimson fired in the back of her pupils and snuffed itself out just as quickly.

I got going again.

Walking down the side of the table was uncomfortable, to say the least. I hate being stared at. And

by the time I got down to the end, Anna had folded her arms and was standing right in the doorway,