Chaos (Kardia Chronicles) (Entangled Teen) (14 page)

I vowed again to try to catch Mom on a good day and ask her about different types of semis to try to get a handle on what I was dealing with, because the whole thing was making me super twitchy.

I glanced at the clock and groaned. Half hour until lunch and then afternoon classes still to go. I guess I could’ve caved and just given in to him and called an end to whatever this was, but damn it, now that I knew he might be able to help me, I couldn’t let it go. He probably knew things… Things about our world, and my powers, and how to control them. I needed to know what he knew.

That reminder gave me the boost I needed to stick with the plan. Wait him out until he gave in.

“Hey, Maggie,” a voice whispered.

I looked up from my station to see Vaughn Quigley leaning my way, his sweaty face filled with urgency.

“Catch!”

I didn’t have time to think; I just reacted and reached up a hand to snatch the football-shaped wad of paper that he’d tossed in my direction.

His face was redder than usual, which was saying something, and a tingle of unease ran through me. Vaughn was nice enough, but he was almost painfully shy and perpetually damp from nerves. Even now, the note he’d thrown my way felt cool and clammy in my hand. I stared down at it, puzzled. We’d never really talked much aside from when Hortense had paired us together for a research project on photosynthesis, and even then our dealings had amounted to a few e-mails filled with notes and ideas and then one writing session after school at his house. He’d never done more than flap a hand in my direction, paired with a stuttered “h-hello” since.

I glanced around and saw Hortense leaning over Todd Mickelson, who was doing his best to get out from under the weight of her heaving bosom while she instructed him on the proper way to format a bibliography. She seemed engrossed in listening to herself talk, so I carefully unfolded the piece of paper. It was a handwritten note, in two parts. The first half looked like girl handwriting, and blood rushed to my ears as I read it with growing horror.

Hey Vaughn,

I just wanted you to know that, ever since our project a couple months ago, I can’t stop thinking about you. The way you researched the crap out of those flowers and the nimble movements of your fingers as they flew over the keyboard. Not to mention those delicious oatmeal cookies your mom made us when I came over. I know this seems weird and sudden, but I was wondering if you’d like to hang out sometime soon? Like, maybe today at Jimmy’s after school for a slice of ’za?

Hoping to hear back from you,

Mags

I was literally paralyzed. I could feel Vaughn’s eyes burrowing into me, but even if I couldn’t, the sound of his mouth breathing in my direction was loud enough that I would have been aware that his attention was focused solely on me. I swallowed hard and tried to keep my face neutral as the initial shock wore off and anger roared in to take its place.

Mac had finally fired the first shot. And it was a doozy.

My mind whirled, trying to think of how he’d pulled it off. He must have gone through my old school e-mails and found the ones between me and Vaughn, including the one where I told him to thank his mom for the cookies. It was slick. Even though I would die before I said the word “’za,” and the thought of describing anyone’s fingers as “nimble” made me gag, he would have to believe the note was from me because no one else could have known that stuff.

My hands started to shake as the power inside me surged. I was going to kill him.

“What have you got there, Miss Raynard?”

I stiffened and crumpled the note in my hand, turning to face Hortense.

“Nothing.” Maybe if I’d been less furious, I would have been thinking more clearly and could have come up with something better than that, but anger had fried every rational thought from my brain.

“Excellent, then giving it to me won’t be an issue.” She held out her hand for the piece of paper, and I panicked. In an ill-conceived move, I made to throw it behind the partition that created a false wall for a giant, attached row of computer stations. At least there, getting to it would be a big enough task that class would be dismissed by the time she got it.

She plucked it out of the air like a seasoned goalie and her lips spread into a maniacal smile. It wasn’t a good look. A ball of dread formed in my belly.

Who knew old Hortense had mad hops?

“Thank you,” she whispered.

I could sense Vaughn’s reaction like it was a tangible thing. One time I’d caught a part of this nature show where a hunter had shot a deer with a bow and arrow. The poor thing took an arrow to the flank and had eventually collapsed. The camo-clad hunter got closer for a kill shot and the cameraman pulled in tight on the animal’s face. Nostrils flaring, wild eyes rolling back, great blowing breaths sawing in and out of its lungs. Sheer and utter panic. Exactly what I felt rolling off Vaughn now, in waves.

“Please don’t,” I murmured, locking gazes with Hortense. Begging her actually hurt. My teeth were clenched so hard, my jaw ached, but I knew what she was about to do, and an achy jaw was fine by me if my plea worked.

It didn’t.

In fact, if anything, she looked even more triumphant. Bitch.

She lumbered toward the middle of the room and cleared her throat like she was up next on slam poetry night at the coffee house.

“Class, we have something that Maggie wanted to share today.”

Half the students shifted in their seats, glancing up indifferently, while the other half didn’t even pretend to give a shit.

That would change.

“Dear Vaughn,” she began, her beady eyes widening.

As she read, my head pounded. It was bad until the throbbing got so loud I couldn’t hear her talking or the other kids’ snickers anymore, which was a relief. My hands shook as I tried to focus on control. Breathing in and out. Staying calm. Not grabbing Hortense by her flabby neck and stealing every motherfucking bit of love she’d ever had until there was nothing left of her. More breathing.

My world went silent as I focused harder, visualizing my emotions as light. It was the sun at first, encompassing everything, but I drilled down hard, narrowing my focus to a spotlight, then harder until it was narrow…a pinprick of light, like the red beam from a sniper scope. And at the end of that beam was Mac Finnegan.

Bang, bang.

Sound filtered in now as Hortense wound down, and my mind cleared except for the one portion filled with thoughts of violence aimed at one person—and it wasn’t my teacher. I was pretty proud of myself, but it wasn’t over yet.

“Well, Maggie? We’re all waiting on your answer.” She pinned me with a malevolent stare. Why did this woman hate me so much? “Will you?”

Would I? I hadn’t had a chance to read Vaughn’s reply to my fake invite, so I had no clue what the question was.

The part of the room that hadn’t been interested before was all about it now, and every one of them eyeballed me. I caught sight of Ella Stevens, whose lip was curled in disgust. I heard the snickers of the few boys behind me. And then I looked up and saw Vaughn’s sweaty face, heart in his eyes.

So would I?

“Yep.” It came out like a croak, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “Yes. I will.”

It was the right answer because although everyone in the room gasped, Vaughn’s face split into a grin. I had no idea what I’d just agreed to. Movie date? Going “steady”? Romanian bonding ceremony with blood oath?

Whatever it was, I knew I had done the right thing. Once Vaughn and I were alone, I could let him down gently and fix this. Then, when I was done, I would go to Mac’s house, climb in through his window, and stab him to death with a spork. Why a spork? Because that was surely the most humiliating way to go. Death by spork.

Gleeful, bloody thoughts filled my head as Hortense continued her shtick, referencing
Romeo and Juliet
and the tender saplings of young love.

Thank gods the bell took mercy on me and rang at that very moment. I shot to my feet like I’d been launched out of a cannon.

“Sorry about the note,” Vaughn said as he rushed to my side.

His cheeks were the color of ripe watermelon and his sweat glands were working triple time. “I was going to put it in your locker the way you did with mine, but I didn’t have time to go between classes and I didn’t want to make you wait.” He took a crumpled paper towel from his pocket and mopped his forehead with it.

Normally, there was a mad rush for the door, but a handful of our classmates was clearly intrigued by today’s drama and dragged their feet. Ella Stevens was one of those people, and I resisted the urge to go up and pop her in her recently plasty-ed rhino.

Vaughn shifted his books to his other arm and swallowed hard enough for me to hear it. “I-Is, uh, is everything okay?”

I looked away from Ella and faked a smile. “Yes, fine. Sorry, I was just thinking about my chem test.” I logged off the computer and turned to face him. “Walk with me.” No reason to give these people an even longer show. They’d seen enough.

“Do you like pot roast?” Vaughn asked, falling into step next to me as we made our way out of the classroom. Hortense looked pretty smug when we passed, and I wished I’d been born a witch instead of a semi, because turning her into the giant piece of crap that she was would have been extremely satisfying.

“Pot roast? Yeah, I guess so.” I was mentally writing my “it’s not you, it’s me” speech, so I hadn’t connected the dots yet.

“Cool. That’s what my mom’s making for dinner. I texted her that I was asking you, and she wanted to make sure that was okay. She’s really excited to see you again.”

And probably even more excited that her son had managed to get a girl over to the house without relying on a white van and duct tape. It was the memory of Mrs. Quigley’s sweet face that had my stomach in knots now.

We were almost at my locker, and it was decision time. I either needed to pull the trigger—which felt a little like it would result in the death of both Bambi and his mother—or I had to bite the bullet.

I could almost taste the gunpowder on my lips. “I’m really excited to see her, too. I’ll be by at six. Tonight, right?”

He nodded and beamed and the rest of my doubt fled. This was the right thing to do. Maybe a little social interaction would make him less nervous around girls in general, and I could help him somehow. I’d have to tell him tonight that we could only be friends, but I was thinking that might be enough for him.

He headed off to his next class, and I waited for Libby to join me at my locker so we could go to lunch. Only the hand on my shoulder wasn’t Libby’s. The urge to latch on hit me hard enough that my knees quaked, and I knew who my assailant was before he even spoke.

“Hey there, Magpie. I hear you have a date tonight.”

I wheeled around and shook him off. The power surged fast and hot and I was about to let it fly when a little voice inside me reminded me,
This is what he wants.

I clutched my fists at my sides and managed to keep my voice low and controlled, which was no easy feat. “That was fucked up. Your beef with me has nothing to do with Vaughn.”

He shrugged.

Shrugged.

“Collateral damage.”

I was about to go ape-shit on him, happy to take the detention for breaking the “inside voice in the hallways” rule just to get some of the anger out, but then I saw something that made me pause. A crack in his cocky smile. A tinge of genuine regret in his damned beautiful eyes.

“And it wasn’t about Vaughn. This is about you and what you’re capable of. I don’t know how to get it through your head. Your kind is bad news. No exceptions.”

That couldn’t be right, could it? The goddess of love hadn’t managed even a single good descendant, anywhere? I thought again how easy it would be to agree and just let him take me to the Council and be done with all of it. Then I remembered that I had no reason to trust this boy and a million reasons not to. And I also remembered that this power was a part of me. A huge part. A legacy from my mother and her mother. A part that for some unfathomable reason I wasn’t quite ready to let go of yet.

Libby came up behind Mac but slowed when she saw him, brow wrinkled in confusion. I waved her off with a thumbs-up to let her know I was all right. She seemed more than happy to leave me to it and jerked her chin toward the lunchroom before scurrying away.

“I don’t have any knowledge about semis or anything else in this crazy world you come from, but I know this.” I stepped in to him, ignoring the crackle between us that still called to me as much as I wanted to junk-punch him right now, and lowered my voice to a hiss when I noticed a few stragglers in the fast-emptying hallway. “Whatever you are is no frigging treat, either. You think you’re a good person, bullying a girl half your size and trying to humiliate a boy who can barely get the balls to raise his hand in class? What if I had shot him down in front of everyone?”

It took Mac a telling second to answer but when he did, his face tensed and his eyes went flat. “To be honest, I kind of figured you would. And still, better a thousand embarrassed kids than even one more in a bloody coma by your hand.”

I flinched as the shot hit home. Eric. It all went back to him. How could I argue when Mac was right? There was no denying that I’d almost killed a kid. I slumped, suddenly exhausted. Why was I fighting this again?

“Have fun on your date tonight, Magpie, and then buckle up. Because we’re just getting started.”

Mac walked away, his usual swagger more of a march, and I knew that, whatever chink I thought I’d seen in his armor was fast on the mend. Wish I had that kind of resilience, because this latest run-in with him had totally wrecked me.

And there was no question in my mind that round two was going to be much, much worse.

Chapter Eight

Dinner with the Quigleys was…interesting. Mr. Quigley was working late, so it was just me, Vaughn, his mom, and his brilliant but odd eight-year-old sister, Alice, who insisted that we all call her Rue, like the kid from
The Hunger Games
. Apparently she hadn’t gotten through the whole first book yet, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that things didn’t pan out so hot for her namesake.