King Of Bad [Super Villian Academy Book 1] (10 page)

Jeff smiled, knowing he’d never said
a word about his family to Source. He introduced Mother and then Sandra.

Source turned to Sandra and
hesitated in mid bow. It was subtle, but Jeff picked up on it. He shot Source a
warning look, but Source just arched an eyebrow in reply and greeted Sandra.
“Ah, there is beauty among the siblings, Jeff. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Source kissed the back of Sandra’s
hand.
“A pleasure.”

Sandra giggled.

Jeff gawked. His sister never
giggled.

“Henry,” Jeff emphasized the newly
learned name, “isn’t your family here yet?”

Source barely glanced around the
room before hooking his arm in Sandra’s and saying, “How about we enjoy the
gardens while I wait for my family to arrive?”

They walked out together, Sandra
dazed and Source debonair, leaving Jeff disgusted.

“Is he safe?” Mother asked,
craning her head to see out into the gardens.

Jeff opened his mouth to answer
yes, but then remembered that technically Source was a super villain. He
shrugged.

After Source’s family arrived it
was evident that the two families got along well. They toured the campus
together, did the local sightseeing together and ate dinner together that
evening. At the end of the day when they dropped the boys off at the dorm, they
made arrangements to have breakfast together the next morning.

Jeff and Source stood on the steps
of the dorm, waving at their departing families. As soon as the red taillights
disappeared, Jeff rounded on Source. “Lay off my sister! What are you thinking?
You may be good enough for me, dude, but you’ll never be good enough for her.”

Source pressed his glasses up his
nose and said calmly, “I suspect I’m better than anyone she’s been interested
in, in the past.”

Jeff whispered, “You’re a super
villain.”

“Not a very good one, Polar, and
you know it.”

“That’s not the point. What are
you
gonna
do when you grow up? Huh? You’re
gonna
help bad guys be bad. She doesn’t need that, man.”

“I don’t want to marry her.”

Jeff huffed and stepped forward.
“Wrong thing to say.”

Source was practically bent over
backward looking up at Jeff. Yet he remained annoyingly calm.
“Your sister’s hot, dude, deal.”

“
Aaahhhh
!”
Jeff spun around and stormed into the building,
wisps of smoke trailing behind from his throbbing fingers.

* * * *

Jeff didn’t speak to Source that
evening or the next morning. He went down to the commons alone to wait for his
family, but was surprised to find them there already. When Jeff walked into the
room, a loud Hawaiian shirt called to him from the corner where his dad was
talking to Tubs. Neither man seemed to be enjoying the conversation. Tubs
scowled as he scanned the room and Jeff’s dad made wide, emphatic hand
gestures.

“Everything okay here?” Jeff
asked.

Tub’s shifty eyes lighted on Jeff
for an instant. The scowl never left his face. Then he returned to scanning the
occupants of the room.

Jeff’s dad swung around with a
huge smile on his face. “Of course it is, son. We were just talking football. I
think the Fighting Game Cocks will go all the way this year, but Tubs here
disagrees.”

Jeff nodded. Something didn’t ring
true, but he couldn’t put a finger on it. “Well then, I’ll just go say hi to
Mother and Sandra.”

“I’ll join you, son.” Dad shoved
his hands into his pockets and sauntered across the room behind Jeff.

Not long afterward, Source and his
family arrived. Source made a beeline for Sandra. She lit up when she saw him
approaching. Jeff huffed and shook his head.
She doesn’t even like nerds
.

Breakfast was loud and fun. Jeff
and Source sat at opposite ends of the long table and held animated conversations
with those around them. Jeff was disappointed when Sandra sat next to Source.
He would have liked to catch up on things with her. When most people were done
eating and the adults leaned back in their chairs, cradling their coffee cups
and one-upping each other on “when I was young” stories, Jeff got up and moved
down to sit across from Sandra.

“So how’s school?” he asked.

She shrugged.

Jeff looked around to make sure
his parents weren’t listening. “Are you going?”

“Mostly.”

“You need to go, Sandra. You have
less than three years left. Just buckle down and do it.”

Sandra leaned forward and reached
across the table to lay her palm on his forehead.

Jeff jerked away.

“Are you feeling okay, bro?”

“I’m serious, Sandra. It isn’t
that long in the grand scheme of things, but you’ll be set up better to be a
total flake the rest of your life if you are an educated flake.”

Sandra rolled her eyes. “You’ll
excuse me if I don’t take advice from the king of bad.”

Jeff nodded. “So, how are Jim and
Bob? Do you see them around?”

“Bob’s in
juvey
; got busted stealing.
Lighter
fluid or something.”

Jeff flushed. He’d turned Bob on
to setting fires.

“I never see Jim. I have no idea
what he’s up to.” Sandra leered at her brother. “I see Jasmine all the time,
though. She used to always ask if you were coming home to visit. She stopped
though. They all stopped.”

Source sat forward and stuck his
head into the conversation. “What do you mean
they
?”

“Jeff’s harem.
Girls love a bad boy. I wonder what they’d think of Mr. Ivy League
now?
” Sandra snorted. Then her expression softened. “As long
as you don’t try to recruit me, I like the change in you. You seem…well, I
don’t know. Self-assured, but it’s more than that. You seem powerful. Like
Clark Kent about to bust out of the phone booth.”

Jeff saw Mother look up at them.
She studied Jeff thoughtfully. He blushed under her intense gaze and she smiled
coolly at him and turned back to the conversation going on around her.

“Thanks, sis.
I guess.”

Later on the plane ride home, with
Pucker floating in a Ziploc bag in his lap, Jeff remained aloof toward Source.
He’d seen Sandra and Source kiss goodbye and he’d nearly lost his breakfast. He
was glad they only had the family visits once a year.

Chapter 14

They knew something wasn’t right
as soon as the van pulled behind the building. Too many outside lights were on
for the late hour.

“Stay in the van, gentlemen,” Tubs
said. He mumbled something to Blink, the driver, before he got out of the van.

Blink turned the van around and
drove back around the building to the street.

“Hey, what’re you doing?”

“Where are we going?”

“Why can’t we hang out?”

“What if there’s fighting?”

The objections from the boys
meshed into one big incoherent complaint.

“They’ll call when it’s safe,”
Blink said, unaffected by the nasty names being flung at him.

Source
slid into an empty seat next to a boy Jeff knew had psychic abilities. The two
whispered together with the boy frequently shrugging. Jeff got the impression
he didn’t know what was going on, but Source kept talking to him. Finally
Source slipped out of the seat and scooted in next to Jeff.

“Bender doesn’t know who’s in the
building, but he said he can feel three new presences. He said they don’t feel
like enemies, but they do feel different.”

“What does he mean by different?”
Jeff asked.

“He couldn’t explain beyond that
their energies feel equal, but different.”

Jeff shook his head. “I’m not
following you.”

“Let’s say there are two people
standing in front of Bender; a human and an S.V. Bender could pick the S.V.
from their elevated energies. So he’s saying that whoever the strangers in the
building are, they have energies equal to ours, but feel different somehow.”

“But not bad,” Jeff confirmed.
“Wait. Does that mean they are bad and not a threat to us or that they are good
and not bad like us and that is bad?”

Source nodded, and then grimaced.
“Huh?”

Suddenly Blink whipped a U-turn
and headed back toward the building. “Seems like everything’s fine. New student
came unexpectedly, put everyone on alert. We’re going home, boys.”

The mood in the van relaxed
immediately. Jeff grumbled, “How do you come to this place unexpectedly?”

At the academy, the boys grabbed
their duffels and streamed into the building. The halls were deserted and the
smell of pine cleaner hung in the air above the gleaming floors. As they passed
an intersecting hallway, Jeff saw Pyro. He stopped to call out hello, but
clamped his mouth shut. Pyro appeared to be planted in front of Tubs with her
feet shoulder width apart and her hands on her hips. Her head bobbed and nodded
as she spoke. Tubs glowered down at her. Jeff stopped to listen.

“I’m telling you something isn’t
right. I can feel it.”

“Pyro, you’ve never tested
positive for any psychic ability like that. You know I can’t refuse to admit an
S.V. based on an unproven intuition,” Tubs said.

“Maybe you can’t refuse to admit
her, but keep a close eye on her. Something’s not right.” Rubbing her stomach,
Pyro stormed up the hall toward Jeff.

He flushed, feeling like he’d been
caught peeping in a girl’s bedroom window. But when Pyro saw him she brightened.

“Hey there, kid. How the heck are
you?” She stopped in front of him, arched her back and shielded her eyes with a
hand. “Whoa! Is that really you way up there?”

Jeff snorted. “Yes, it’s me.”

“What do people call you, Arctic?”
She raised an eyebrow at the plastic bag Jeff clutched with Pucker contentedly
floating inside.

Jeff snorted again.
“No, Polar.”

Pyro frowned. “I don’t get it.”

After Jeff explained how the name
came about, she asked about his training. They laughed about the training sessions
that had gone poorly and discussed various teachers and their philosophies.

“What’s with the fish?” Pyro
asked.

“Pucker? She’s my sidekick.” Jeff
lifted the bag and smiled at Pucker who lazily flapped her fins to stay afloat
as Jeff caused the water to slosh around inside the baggie. “So you got another
bad feeling, huh?”

“Another?”

“Yeah, remember that day at my
house? You had a bad feeling there too. Granted I always felt that way, but…”
Jeff flashed his crooked smile.

Pyro stared through him, distant
and thoughtful. She rubbed her stomach again, but lighter this time as if remembering
a past nausea.

“Is it the same feeling?” he
asked.

Pyro blinked and focused on him.
“Yes, it is
exactly
the same feeling. I’d forgotten about that.”

They stared at each other for a
time before she finally shook her head. “Weird. I have no idea what it means.”

They said goodbye and Jeff turned
to head to his dorm room. He was surprised to find Source waiting.

“Dude, I thought you were gone.”

“What and miss all the fun?”
Source said.

A movement down the hall caught
their attention. Tubs walked out of his office followed by three people; two
adults and one stunning, Amazon brunette.

Tubs shot a psychic blast at them
so fast they didn’t have a chance to block it—not that Jeff was any good at
blocking even when he had warning. Wincing and rubbing their heads, Jeff and
Source scurried off toward their rooms.

* * * *

Sitting front and center in math
class the next morning was the Amazon. Jeff almost stumbled when he saw her.
Even folded into a standard classroom desk, her body went on and on. Her olive
skin glowed under the fluorescent lights. Miles of wavy sable locks tumbled to
her waist. A short skirt revealed a never-ending expanse of legs gracefully
wrapped together under the desk. They seemed indecent. Jeff wasn’t attracted to
her, per se, but she intrigued him.
And scared him to death.

Amber colored eyes gleamed when
they met his. She looked him over from head to toe and a half smile curved her
full lips. Jeff fought the urge to scurry past and with all the casual
aloofness he could muster, he sauntered to his desk at the back of the room. He
heaved a loud mental sigh when he was safely behind her. He might understand
Pyro’s
claim that something wasn’t right about the Amazon.
Though he doubted that he and Pyro were referring to the same
thing.

To Jeff’s dismay, the math teacher
had the Amazon introduce herself to the class. She stood at the front and
stared pointedly at Jeff most of the time. When she spoke he groaned. Her voice
was warmed butter rum—soothing, comforting and intoxicating. Jeff made the
mistake of glancing at her while she spoke about her home in northern Italy. As
soon as they made eye contact, Jeff was transfixed. Though she continued to
speak aloud to the class she also spoke directly to Jeff in his mind. It wasn’t
in a language that Jeff understood, but he knew she was hypnotizing him.

A loud bang cut the connection
between them. Jeff blinked slowly and saw the teacher had dropped a large math
book onto the tile floor. “Now, now, it is a strict rule of the academy that
students do not use their abilities on one another.”

The Amazon blushed. Jeff flushed.
His mind was filled with lurid memories involving him and the Amazon in which
she often wore nothing but a blush. He knew she had to have put those thoughts
there. Now he had to figure out how to get rid of them.

For the rest of class, whenever
Jeff caught a glimpse of her in his peripheral vision or heard her speak or
clear her throat, his mind filled with bogus, but realistic, memories of the
feel of her sateen skin on his or her appetizing scent. She glanced over her
shoulder and stoked the implanted longing in him. She smiled down at her desk
as though enjoying a private joke and he snapped his pencil in half.