House of Korba: The Ghost Bird Series: #7 (The Academy) (7 page)

“So what did you do today?” he asked.

I couldn’t remember. My mind whirled and all I could think about was his fingers on my collarbone, my legs hanging over his. “Not much.”

“Did you work at the diner today?”

“Yes,” I said, part of my memory returning at the mention of it. “For a little while. And then there was a secret Academy meeting in my bedroom when I got home. That’s when I sent you the text. I don’t think I was supposed to, though.”

Silas laughed, it echoing through the emptiness of the apartment. “Mr. Blackbourne mentioned I may have to be careful how I respond next time you try that.”

“I’m not usually sure what I’m supposed to be doing with the Academy,” I said. “

“You aren’t supposed to be doing anything with us. Officially.”

I twisted my lips and then started to pout. I had gotten mixed in with a couple of their assignments, after all. Kota didn’t want me involved, but a few of the others thought I should join, they just didn’t know how. Part of it was that the work was dangerous, but I was starting to learn, it was more complicated than that. They kept me in the dark for my own safety. The problem was, I really wanted to be a part of it.

He chuckled. “Don’t make that face. Unofficially, you’re there. Maybe things will change soon.” His palm slipped down my leg and he tucked two fingers into the edge of my sandal. “Do you want to keep these on?”

I bit my lip, shaking my head. I was being honest. What I wanted was to curl up on the couch with my knees to my chest and I couldn’t do that in shoes. It felt inappropriate to do in someone else’s house.

As Silas’s fingers traced the edge of my heel, and slid over the curve of my foot to remove one sandal, and then the other, tossing them to the floor, an involuntary shiver rumbled through me. The touch was much more intimate than anything I’d felt from him before. How, I wasn’t sure. It was an intention, a sense rippling from Silas.

His head swung back as he looked down at me. I couldn’t focus on his eyes so I watched his mouth, and the coarse facial hair shadowing his chin. The smile that lingered on his lips was full of promises unspoken and urges I couldn’t identify. He leaned into me, his lips finding my ear, tracing my lobe as he whispered. “What would you like to do,
Aggele Mou
?”

It was the second time he’d asked me and I had no better answer for him now than I did a moment ago. It also sounded like a completely different question. His inflection suggested there was a specific answer he had in mind, but he was waiting for me to say it out loud. I had a feeling I knew exactly what he wanted and my lips would never utter those words, not right now.

I knew the boys weren’t supposed to kiss me until I said it was okay. I was too intimidated to even start. “I don’t know,” I said in a quiet voice that didn’t sound like me.

His gaze lifted to my hair, and then traveled along different parts of my face. The corner of his mouth inched up, just as his fingertips traced the outside of my calf back up my knee. “
Aggele
,” he breathed out, bringing his face close, the tip of his nose nudged mine. He paused, hovering over me, waiting.

This was it. Silas was going to kiss me. How I knew that’s what he wanted, I wasn’t sure. He was so close, his eyes so intense. I wasn’t sure if I was ready. I wasn’t sure if I should at all. My mind flashed images of North biting at my neck. I thought of Victor’s arms around me as he kissed me. I thought of sleeping beside Nathan, his arms wrapped around me and holding me in the night. Kota’s green eyes. Luke’s warm smile. Gabriel’s fingers in my hair. Dr. Green’s kiss.

I wanted to make them all happy. I didn’t want to disappoint any of them.

What scared me the most was that despite the thoughts, I still wanted to kiss Silas. I also really liked him. I found him attractive. I wanted him to like me. I wanted to know what he felt like in that way. Yet it still felt like a betrayal to the others, and the guilt was overwhelming. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, and I knew I needed to trust the boys, but this wasn’t normal.

Silas’s face tilted again, his lip brushing across the crest of my cheek. “Tell me.” His voice was strained now, pleading.

As I contemplated what he meant, an arrow of pain struck me in the chest, hard enough that my eyes blacked out. I fell back into the couch. My hand sought out my breast where I’d been shocked. I couldn’t breathe and thoughts emptied out of my head except confusion. “Holy... bejeezus... ugh,” I gasped out, gripping at the device that I realized had emitted the shock.

“Shit, Sang, are you okay?” Silas called to me, his hands reaching for my shoulders. His eyes were wide, horror-stricken. He got on his knees on the couch, hovering over me. “Sang?”

I coughed, yanking out his cell phone. The screen was glowing. “What...” I panted, still short of breath. The shock was gone, but the area on my breast tingled.

“Fuck. I forgot you had that,” he said. He took the phone from my hands, but continued to hover over me. “What?” he barked at whoever was on the line.

I cupped a palm over my breast to ease the sting. “Ow,” I breathed, still clutching at my chest. What happened? Did his phone shock me? It felt familiar, but not as strong as a zap from a stun gun.

Silas’s face went dark and he moved off of me to sit back on the couch, listening to his phone. He grunted, handing it off to me. “He wants to talk to you.”

“I don’t know if I want it,” I said. “It shocked me. I think it’s broken.”

“Just talk to him,” Silas said, frowning.

I moved slowly but trusted him enough to take the phone. “Hello?”

“Sorry,” North’s voice powered through to my ear. “What the hell was his phone doing in your bra?”

“Wait...wait...ugh...what?” The shock had left my breast tingling and feeling weird and the questions I wanted to fire back at him weren’t formulating properly.

“Don’t put his phone in your bra. In fact, don’t hold his phone. And tell Silas to back off if he’s scaring you,” he ordered.

“How did you know it was in my bra?” I countered, finally finding the words.

North fell silent.

“North?” I demanded.

Silence.

Something clicked in my brain. “Were you watching us?”

“It’s a good thing I was.”

“There’s a camera on us now? I thought they were for emergencies.”

“I was making sure you were okay.”

“I’m with Silas,” I said. Didn’t he trust him? Wasn’t that enough? “Did you shock me? These phones can shock you?”

“I thought it was in Silas’s pocket.”

“So you were trying to shock Silas.”

“He deserved it.”

“Why in the world do you have shocking phones? And why are you watching us? And that was mean. I can’t believe you’d do that.”

“He’d do it to me.”

“I don’t care. Don’t shock. No more shocking. That hurts.”

“Sang,” he bellowed into the phone. “I will shock who I want if I think they need it. Don’t let Silas intimidate you. Tell him to back off if you’re uncomfortable.”

“I’m uncomfortable with someone watching us without saying they’re going to do it and trying to shock other people, North.”

“Don’t make me come over there.”

“Ugh,” I grumbled, and I moved the phone from my face, hitting the button to end the call. I tossed it to another part of the couch, falling back and putting my hands on my face.

My phone started buzzing in the other cup in my bra, scaring me that it might actually shock me, too. I quickly pulled it out of my bra, tossing it over with the other one. I caught North’s name on the screen, but I ignored it.

“Your phone isn’t set to do that,” Silas said. He had a knee up on the couch, sitting back on his heel, looking solemn and uncertain.

“Why is yours set like that?”

“It’s the emergency line,” Silas said. “When it rings through and it’s on silent, it shocks you to make sure you feel it.”

I sat up again, rubbing at the spot in my chest. “That hurts. Holy crow, I can’t believe you do that to each other.”

“It’s also not really meant for...I mean we usually carry those in our pockets. It’s not so bad when it’s on the ass. Or I guess I’m used to it.”

“Why isn’t mine set like that?”

His eyebrows furrowed. “What?”

“Why isn’t my phone set to shock?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, why don’t I get an emergency line with a shock thingie? Why can’t you shock me for emergencies?”

His lips parted, his mouth moving as if he was looking for an answer but didn’t really have one.

I frowned. I knew the answer but I didn’t want to say it out loud. I didn’t have an emergency line because they wouldn’t call me if they had an emergency. Useless Sang.

“Can you believe him?” I groused. If Silas didn’t want to talk about Academy things, then he could listen to me complain. “He’s watching us and then tries to shock you.” I lowered the hem at the neck of my shirt a few inches, revealing the skin that had been electrified. The area looked normal. No burns.

Silas’s eyes followed the hem of my shirt down and he moved closer, hovering over me. “You’re okay, though, right?”

“I think so,” I said, replacing the hem up and pressing my palm down on my breast over my shirt. “You should shock him back.”

Silas smirked. “I’ll do it if you want me to.”

“No,” I said, even though I wanted to say yes. I dropped my hand from my chest. It still felt funny. “He’ll probably expects it and isn’t holding it.”

“We could wait until he’s asleep,” Silas said.

I laughed. I had to give North some credit. It was like a light switch. The Silas I’d been used to seemed to be back. He lightened the mood and I wasn’t nearly so stiff and afraid any more. “Let’s wait until we do another sleepover thing. Then we can watch.”

Silas beamed. “Kota will ground us.”

“Totally worth it.”

Silas boomed with laughter, sitting back on the couch and putting a hand on his chest. “You’re as bad as Luke.”

“Oh wait,” I said, getting up so I was kneeling on the couch, making my eyes wide. “It’d be really cool if we could get it to do it without using the emergency button and make it go off at random intervals. It’d totally drive him crazy.”

“Now you’re thinking evil.” He smirked. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

“I wouldn’t really do it,” I said, swinging slightly off balance. I shot a hand out to his leg to keep myself upright as I sat back on my heels. “It’s just fun to think about. Besides, North can beat me up.”

Silas turned to me, grasped my hands and held them up to stabilize me as I knee-balanced on the couch. “North wouldn’t beat you up.”

“He might if I zapped him.”

Silas grinned, squeezing my hands once. “You want to really drive him crazy?”

I bit my lower lip, nodding, but unsure if I wanted to zap North really. It really did hurt.

“Go put on something you can get wet in, and we’ll go down to the hot tub. No cameras there. He can’t watch us.”

I grinned, nodding. “Yeah. He’s not supposed to be doing that, anyway.” I jumped up from the couch, excited by the new plan. I grabbed the straps of my book bag to pick it up. “Serves him right.”

Silas stood up, took my hand and guided me back toward the hallway and stopped at a door, opening it to reveal a guest bathroom with just a toilet and sink. “You’ve got something that will work?”

I pushed a palm across my cheek, rubbing. “I might. The things I grabbed to sleep in should be fine.”

“I can give you a shirt to sleep in if you want.”

Going to see a hot tub and sleeping in one of his shirts later? I was starting to really like visiting his house. “Okay.” I stepped into the bathroom, closing the door and throwing the lock.

I pushed my back to the door, taking a deep breath. I was excited to explore, but part of me was feeling nervous again. I’d be out of reach of North’s eyes. Did I want to get so close to Silas again? I hated to admit that I did, and at the same time I couldn’t help but feel like maybe North was mad at me for being so close with Silas. He didn’t sound mad about that before. He said to tell Silas to back off if I was uncomfortable. The confusion of everyone being so unclear was worst. What did they want me to do?

I fished out a tighter tank top and a pair of dark blue cotton shorts. I blushed when I realized the shorts were from Victoria’s Secret and had the word Angel scrawled across the hips. I hurriedly got dressed in them, dropping the lower hem of the tank top down to cover the word. It felt a little awkward to wear them around Silas when he called me angel in Greek. It felt like encouraging something I wasn’t sure I was ready to think about.

When I finished, I stuffed the clothes I’d worn back into my bag, slung it over my shoulder, and opened the door. I stopped, looking up one hallway and down the other back toward the living room. Where did he go? I stood alone in the hallway, waiting, listening. Thumping from a stereo sounded below my feet. A car engine started up somewhere close by. There were so many new noises, and I felt the encroachment of other people being around us. I wondered how Silas listened out for trouble.

But then I remembered not everyone needed to. I’d spent years listening to the sounds of my own house to figure out when it was safe to emerge from my room unnoticed. Normal people didn’t have to do that.

A door opened down the second hallway and Silas popped into view. He was barefoot and wore familiar dark blue swim shorts and a Red Sox t-shirt. He spotted me in the hallway, curled his fingers at me. “Come put your bag in here,” he said.

I padded down to him, the carpet smooth against my feet. He held out a hand for my bag. I passed it over, and he dropped it just inside the door. It was a bedroom, and I caught a glimpse of a massive bed in the middle before Silas nudged me back down the hallway.

He headed back to the living room, picking up both of our cell phones to hold in his hand. He disappeared behind a side door and came back with two large towels, picked up his house keys and shooed me out to the front door.

The crisp air cut into my skin in the shadow of the overhang. When he locked the door, he grabbed my hand and we walked together to the parking lot.