Ember (3 page)

“Oh, I think we both know that can’t be true. Still Sebastian’s little guard dog, I see.” Ananchel’s saccharine smile verged on innocuous, making her appear even more dangerous. A sheep in wolf’s clothing.

Candra stumbled back another step, taking a deep painful breath and keeping Ivy locked beside her. Her lungs felt as if somebody had tried to pull them out through her nose. Sebastian was nowhere in sight, most of the students had gone inside, and Father Patrick was beginning to stare.

“Please, Ananchel,” Lofi started condescendingly. “Don’t insult me. You know your parlor tricks don’t work on me.”

Ananchel sighed. “Oh, well, never mind.” Her eyes flickered to Candra again, black as coal now.

Candra couldn’t swear that it wasn’t just a trick of her imagination. She gulped.

“We shall have to finish our chat another time, Candra. I detest lapdogs snapping at my ankles.”

“Woof,” Lofi responded sarcastically.

Ivy chuckled, and for a fraction of a second, Ananchel’s cool exterior dropped—she was positively enraged.

“Later, pup,” she snapped.

“Hmm, if I’m a pup, I guess that would make you a bitch, wouldn’t it?” Lofi bit back with a smirk.

“I shall enjoy getting to know you,” Ananchel purred toward Candra and ran her tongue lazily across her top lip. “Make sure to send my love to Sebastian,” she added to Lofi before she sashayed away, her hips gracefully snaking side to side.

They watched her retreat and disappear around the corner. The sea of blue uniforms had shrunk to a slow trickle, and Father Patrick looked like he was debating making his way over. Lofi blew out a gust of air from her pursed lips before turning around.

“Are you both okay?”

Candra glanced over her shoulder to see Ivy nod, her mouth slack, clearly confounded about what had just transpired.

“Okay?
Now
you have to tell me what’s going on,” Candra demanded strongly.

Lofi’s eyes narrowed, but she said nothing.

Candra’s stomach twisted into what was beginning to feel like yet another tight knot. “I’m serious. I want to…what are you wearing?”

Lofi spun as gracefully as a ballerina, modeling the Saint Francis uniform she was proudly sporting. “Do you like it? I wasn’t sure about the color on me, but I think it works.”

Father Patrick was almost within speaking distance.

“No, I don’t like it,” Candra replied curtly. “And what’s it doing on you?”

Candra was still body blocking Ivy, who stood on her toes to look over Candra’s shoulder. “I’m Ivy, by the way.”

Lofi smiled widely and curtsied, holding the edges of her skirt. “Lofi. It’s my first day.”

Candra suspected Lofi exaggerated the movement just because she knew it would rile her.

“I guess you like the uniform then,” Ivy commented with a teasing smirk.

“For what? School? You can’t be serious.” Candra was aghast, thinking this whole thing was slowing turning into a nightmare and she was being stalked from all angles.

“Are you planning to join us today, ladies?” Father Patrick asked sternly. As soon as Lofi turned her attention to him, his light blue eyes sparkled. Father Patrick’s eyes never sparkled. He was the hardest of all the priests and nuns teaching at Saint Francis. After working in foreign mission during his early life, he had no time for what he blatantly referred to as cosseted students attending private college. “Ah, you must be Lofial Duarte,” he stated rather than asked.

Lofi’s lips spread to a shy grin as she swayed side to side, still holding onto her skirt. Candra compared it to a six-year-old putting on a display of politeness for an elder, or a newly acquired stalker enjoying getting under her skin. “Yes, Father, I was on my way in when I met my friend, Candra.”

Candra shot daggers in her direction only to be nudged by Ivy, who had clearly already been won over.

“Lofial…an unusual name.”

“Yes, Father.”

He studied her appraisingly. “Let’s hope you live up to it.”

Lofial? Where have I heard that name before?
Candra asked herself.

“Okay, ladies, don’t dawdle. And Candra, since you already know each other, maybe you could show Lofial around today.”

“What?” Candra muttered.

“We both will,” Ivy added, linking her arm through Candra’s and then Lofi’s.

“Yes, well…” Father Patrick didn’t need to finish saying what he was thinking about leaving Lofi in Ivy’s hands. Ivy and Candra both knew it had to do with her ungrounded reputation as a bad girl; Ivy was as innocent as new snow.

Her family didn’t have as much money as most of the kids attending Saint Francis, but they wanted the best for Ivy. Candra and Ivy had become friends during their first day of school. A couple of kids that thought of themselves as “mean girls” had stolen Ivy’s crayons, and she’d been crying. Candra had seen what happened and had stomped right over there, snatched the crayons, and told the girls that if they wanted Ivy, they’d have to go through her first. They hadn’t liked someone standing up to them, but she hadn’t been afraid. She’d given Ivy back her crayons and taken the seat beside her. They’d been best friends ever since then.

Ivy nudged Candra, bringing her back to the present, and they walked toward school with Father Patrick close behind.

Candra grunted under her breath toward Lofi, who was practically skipping toward the door. “This is stupid. What are you doing?” Her voice was a pitch higher than normal because of the situation. “You must be what twenty-two, twenty-three? You’re too old to be a student here.”

Lofi stopped skipping immediately, and her expression shifted toward wounded. “There are thirty-year-olds playing students in the movies these days, and you don’t think I pass for eighteen?”

Candra’s eyebrows came together in a scowl. The sadness on Lofi’s face seemed wrong somehow, as if it were unnatural to her, and Candra groaned, reluctantly giving in.

They passed through the door, back into a sea of blue, and made their way to the lockers, where Father Patrick left them, continuing down the hall. Lofi opened the locker next to Candra’s.

“I’m not even going to ask.” She rolled her eyes and thought about the mousey little thing that previously owned that locker.

Lofi beamed a smile. “That’s the attitude.”

Once they had gotten out their books—which little to Candra’s surprise, Lofi already seemed to have mysteriously available to her—Candra reached over and closed Lofi’s locker door. “Just one question: why are you really here?”

Lofi hesitated, biting the inside of her cheek. “It’s all girls here.”

Candra scrutinized her guarded expression, but she didn’t appear to be giving anything away. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

“Sebastian asked me to. He’s worried for you.”

Candra nodded slowly; there was no way she was going to believe that. “Right…so worried he ran when trouble showed up.”

The bell chimed, signaling the time they had to move toward their first lecture. Candra started to move toward the hall, but a hand with a cast iron grip locked around her upper arm, stopping her. Her head spun to see Lofi looking unusually serious and up close, no more than three inches from her face. Lofi’s eyes flashed with gold sparks when she blinked. She was beautiful and fierce, a real force to be reckoned with.

“Don’t be so harsh on him, Candra,” she began gravely. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “You know what Ananchel is capable of, except she didn’t hold back with Sebastian the way she did with you. It really messed with his head.”

Candra gulped, and her cheeks flamed a burning red. Her throat constricted, cutting off every word she could think to say. The tingles, the fingers brushing tantalizingly under her skin, the euphoria so sweet she passed out…that was holding back? She couldn’t help wondering what Ananchel had done to Sebastian.

“Oh,” Candra groaned, realizing it was probably more a case of done
with
rather than done
to
.

“You have no concept of how far Sebastian has gone to keep you safe, or how far he is willing to go. Ananchel would have taken him down just for kicks. He couldn’t help you; that doesn’t mean he didn’t want to.”

Ivy bounced up behind them, and Lofi released Candra, seeming herself again, although Candra was still a little stunned. Smiling brightly, Lofi fell into step with them to their first lecture together.

“This will be such a novelty. It’s been an age since I’ve been to school,” Lofi gushed.

Lofi stayed glued to Candra’s side all morning, despite never offering her a satisfactory explanation for being there, and protested that school was “so much fun” whenever Ivy or Candra complained about a lecture or even homework.

“That’s going too far,” Candra scolded her during lunch. “You can’t possibly like homework.”

The cafeteria was crowded with students huddled and chattering at small round tables and eating from the self-service buffet.

“Why not? I get to read, write reports, and figure out puzzles. What’s not to love?”

“Puzzles?” Ivy asked, bemused, while pushing cubes of cucumber around her plate. Her eyes flickered up and glanced at Lofi, whose eyes never strayed far from Candra.

Candra knew Ivy was watching Lofi watch her and was still trying to figure out what was going on. Candra couldn’t help with an explanation; Lofi was as evasive as Sebastian and Brie had been over the last few days. Any questions about why they were here or what was going on were met with questions about school, music, books—anything to distract from the original subject.

“Calculus,” Candra offered Ivy, looking up again from the newspaper where she was reading about the escalating rate of muggings in the city.

Ivy switched her attention to her smoothie, sucking it up with a slurping noise that made the uptown girls glower in her direction. She ignored them completely and stared down at Lofi with raised eyebrows. “Candra’s right. You’re going too far now. No one likes calculus.”

“I do,” Lofi countered, curiously examining one of the lumpy French fries from her lunch by holding it in front of her face between two fingers and prodding it with her fork.

“You are seriously out there.” Ivy laughed humorlessly.

Lofi dropped the fry and lifted her face to Ivy. “Thanks.” She flashed her usual full grin, taking Ivy’s comment as a compliment.

Candra laughed at Ivy’s mystified expression, thinking maybe it wouldn’t be so bad having Lofi around after all. At the very least it would be amusing.

The rest of the day passed quickly. Lofi wasn’t challenged by any of the subjects they covered—at least as far as Candra could see—only curious. She raised her hand more than anyone else to ask questions, and a couple of times to correct the lecturer.

“You’d think she’s never been to school before,” Ivy observed quietly to Candra before she left them at her usual corner to go home.

Lofi addressed Candra’s concern before she even had a chance to verbalize it. “She’ll be fine. There will be someone looking out for Ivy. Ananchel won’t get anywhere near her.” Then, to her utter surprise, Lofi turned away to cross the street. “And I haven’t been to school in a while, not for a long while actually.”

“Hey, where are you going?” Candra called after her.