The Tiny Curse (Werewolf High Book 2) (11 page)

I sunk to the ground, exhausted, but for a moment nothing happened. No protective cage fell around me.

In the doorway a figure appeared.

But it wasn't Astor.

The figure slinked into the room. It wore a long, dark robe, face covered by a hood like it had read the Evil Villain 101 handbook and dressed accordingly. Astor wouldn't bother disguising himself, which meant that this could only be one person. The person behind everything. The spellcaster. I ducked behind a tall vase of flowers and watched it through the petals.

The entire building let out a groan and for a moment I thought it was magic, that the spellcaster was bringing the whole place down around our ears, but finally, the iron cage dropped. The spellcaster jumped back to avoid getting split in two. Lucky for me — if they'd jumped the other way, they'd have been locked in there with me and I'd have been royally screwed.

Still, even locked safely inside the iron cage, it was disconcerting. The room was too dark to see anything clearly so the spellcaster kept fading in and out of the shadows, a darker spot in the darkness. It paced backwards and forwards around the cage, then reached out to touch the bars. There was a hissing noise and the smell of burning flesh, which was kind of disgusting but also smelled a bit like bacon, which was more disgusting in a different way.

I was torn between whether or not I should stay hidden or try to talk to the spellcaster. Tennyson Wilde had said I'd be safe in the iron cage but I had no proof of that, so I was reluctant to reveal myself, but at the same time, this was the best chance we'd had at getting information. If only I didn't have that deep and abiding fear of ventriloquism and had learned how to throw my voice.

"I am not here for you, Lucy O'Connor," the spellcaster said. They'd obviously done something to disguise their voice because it came out all distorted and wobbly, so I had no hope of identifying them. "You do not need to fear me."

I couldn't let that stand.

"Oh really," I said, not moving from my spot and hoping that my size and the darkness made me hard to spot. "If that's the case why did you shrink me."

"There is a greater plan at work. You are but one small part of it."

I snorted. "Size jokes are not funny."

"We are on the same side," the spellcaster said. "Your kind and mine are natural allies. We should be working together."

I didn't know what they meant about "my kind". Small people? People from the Red House? Scholarship kids? Who even knows, when someone goes around casting spells to hurt people, it probably isn't a good idea to look too deeply into their words for sense.

"Yeah, great idea," I said. "How about you put me back to normal size and we'll talk about that."

"Even if I could, the iron bars prevent it."

"What do you mean, even if you could?"

"The one who cast the spell must lift it. I only provided the source of power for this spell, I did not cast it."

"So, tell Astor to lift it. He obviously takes his orders from you."

"I give no orders, only opportunities."

I sighed. "Look, spare me the cryptic evil villain BS. If you can't break the spell and you're not here to attack me then just go away and leave me alone." I probably should've questioned them more, got as much information on them as I could so we could work out who they were, but I was tired and annoyed.

"There is a way to break the spell, Lucy O'Connor," the spellcaster said, backing out of the room. "But first you have to believe."

*

"What happened? Are you okay? Lucy, answer me!"

I sat up in bed, stretching and yawning. I had no clue what the time was but that was the best sleep I'd had in ages.

"What's up?" I said.

I looked up from my cozy little room to find three massive werewolf faces staring down at me from outside the iron cage. Clearly, the full moon was over.

"Did Astor try to attack you?" Sam asked. He looked tired but better than he had in days.

I shook my head. "Not Astor."

"Don't tell me, you tripped and pressed the panic button by accident," said Tennyson Wilde, rolling his eyes at me.

"No, you jerk. It was the spellcaster."

That made him pipe down. The three of them listened while I explained everything that had happened.

"And that was all they said? Why did you question them about their master plan? Why didn't you get more clues on their identity?"

I rolled my eyes. "Look, sorry that I failed Interrogation 101 but they kind of caught me off guard. Maybe you could draw up a list of questions for me to ask next time since you're so awesome at everything ever."

"How did they get in?" Sam wondered aloud.

"Probably Astor's card, but we should look into it. And also check any security footage."

"They seemed like they were looking for something in particular, and they obviously knew you guys weren't going to be here. You should double check anything they might have taken as well."

Nikolai and Tennyson went off to check stuff but Sam stayed behind with me. I opened up my wardrobe and went through the clothes, trying to pick something to wear out of all the fresh, clean clothes in there.

"It will take a while for the cage to be restored," he said, sitting down on the floor outside the bars. "Do you need anything?"

"Food," I told him. "Bacon." I'd been craving it ever since the night before.

He sent down for some food and then sat there, staring up at me. "I wonder what they meant though, about your kind."

I shrugged. "Probably nothing. Just messing with me."

Sam shook his head. "Strange thing to say though."

"Maybe they meant humans."

"Humans and magic casters have never been allies though, there's a long history of fear and mistrust."

"What are you trying to say, Sam?"

He shrugged again and wouldn't meet my eye. We both knew what he was trying to say but no way were we going to talk about it out loud. Ever.

"Our parents…" he started.

"Our parents wrote a book. So what? That doesn't mean squat, so just drop it."

He didn't speak again until the food came. While he arranged it on a tiny plate, I dressed in a stripy dress but didn't bother with the plastic shoes because they were strange. Once I was dressed, I climbed down out of my house and over to the iron bars, where Sam handed me my food.

"Lucy," he said softly. "If we knew what you were, maybe we could stop all this from happening."

"I'm a human girl," I told him, tucking into my food. "Just a super unlucky one."

Sam didn't say anything else about it but I could tell it was on his mind. He didn't say anything to the others about it either, at least, not in front of me. I was sure Tennyson Wilde had picked up on it though, nothing got past him, so maybe they were talking about it when I wasn't around. Making a list of things I could be, going through their database of magical creatures and ticking me off it. But I knew it was wrong. I was human. There was literally nothing different or special about me at all, I was the most ordinary person ever.

The day after the full moon, Astor was back, and more obnoxious than ever.

"I know she's here somewhere," Astor said. "I know you lied, so now you gotta just shut your faces and do what I say. You're gonna hand her over in the next 48 hours or I'm going to post that video all over the internet. Now, get me some lunch and one of those Swedish massages. And not with some ugly girl either, the hottest girl you got." He snapped his fingers at Tennyson to hurry him along.

"We have to get that video," I whispered from Sam's pocket as everyone left the room as quickly as possible. "I'm small enough to creep up and steal his swipe card out of his pocket without him noticing."

"They have fingerprint ID and retina scan as well," said Tennyson.

"I'm okay with him losing a hand and an eye," I said. "It might be good for him, character building, you know?"

"Any of us could get into the Green House easily," said Nikolai. "We'd just need to turn on the charm. It's getting into his room that's the problem."

"That's not the only problem," I said. "By now he's probably backed the video up to the cloud, so we don't need to just find the device that has the original video, but anywhere he might've saved it to as well."

Which gave me an idea. I'd never written a virus before but I knew the theory behind it. I couldn't do it myself though, not unless I wanted to spend hours running around a keyboard, jumping on keys.

"This is not going to work," Tennyson said, looking over Sam's shoulder as Sam typed out my instructions.

"Well, it's better than your plan, which was to do nothing and just let Astor do as he liked. And there's no reason it won't work. We just need to send this to his phone and watch the beauty unfold."

We named the file "BOOBS.jpg" and sent it to Astor through the messaging system on the school app. We saw when he received the message but couldn't tell whether or not he'd opened the file. There was really no way of judging if it had worked or not, that was the one flaw in my amazing plan. That was why we had to steal Astor's phone to see if all the data had been wiped.

Tennyson Wilde thought he was the king of plans, but his plans always sucked the most. At least my plan hadn't involved anyone getting up close and personal with Astor's back pocket. And I don't know why it had to be me, anyone could've snuck into the polo club's locker room and grabbed his phone. Sure, they'd have been way more noticeable in Tennyson's pocket but it wasn't impossible.

I kept my eyes tight shut and blocked my ears as I waited in the coat pocket while the polo players got ready to train. There was some grumbling from a few people about Tennyson's tactics and that kind of thing, which seemed mostly incited by Astor. I didn't much care for the opinions of the polo team, no matter how loudly they gave them, but it did give a good indication of where I'd be able to find Astor's stuff. It took them forever to change clothes and complain, but finally they filed out onto the ground, leaving me alone with their sweaty jock straps and other treats. I climbed down out of the pocket and onto the bench, climbing over everyone's school clothes they'd dumped down to try to find Astor's stuff.

Astor hadn't left his stuff lying around like the others had, but had shoved it willy-nilly into his locker. That made my job a bit more difficult. It crossed my mind that I could bow out, tell them it had been too hard, I couldn't get all the way up into Astor's locker. Nobody would blame me. The locker was up super high. But everyone was counting on me to get this done. If it hadn't been for me, Astor would never have been able to film Sam turning all wolfy because none of them would've been anywhere near Astor. Even though Tennyson and Nikolai were jerks, they had no obligation to me and yet had protected me from the moment Tennyson had found me in the snow, about to be eaten by rats. Now it was my turn to protect them.

Astor's locker was near the end of the row, right near a bunch of spare polo sticks. That was perfect. I grabbed one with both hands, wrestling it into position. Astor hadn't locked the locker, I noticed, just pulled it closed. I tried to lift the polo stick up high enough to hook around the handle of Astor's locker and pull it open, but it was too heavy and I lost my grip, and the polo stick clattered to the floor. I tried again with another stick and the same thing happened, they were just too heavy and cumbersome for my itty bitty hands. I had to try something else.

I grabbed another polo stick and balanced it with the handle against the ground and my arms around the knobby end bit. This really needed to work because I did
not
want to end my life squished up on the floor of the boys' locker room.

I kicked off from the bench, clinging to the polo stick as I flew through the air. Wow, they really should give these jobs to someone a bit less clumsy than me, I thought, as the locker grew closer and closer. I had to time it perfectly.

When I thought I was close enough, I let go of the stick and launched myself at the strips of holes in the locker. What even are those holes for? Ventilation? For what though? Lockers were a mystery to me. But I caught on and pulled myself in through the hole, landing safely inside Astor's shoe, which had a nice, springy sole.

It was pretty dark inside the locker but I looked around as best I could until I found his phone inside his blazer pocket. Unlocking it was no problem — he said his passcode out loud every time he typed it into his phone and he never seemed to bother with fingerprint ID. Hitting the numbers with enough force for it to register was a bit of an issue, but I managed it.

First, I went to his photos app. I braced myself for the horrors I might find there, but lucky for me, it was empty. His mail was empty too, and his messages and call log. I went into the school app, but the only thing in there was the message with the virus. It was great that it had worked so well but also sucked that I had access to all his info but couldn't actually find anything out from it because it had been wiped. I searched through all his apps, my arms aching from the effort of swiping across the screen, but I couldn't find one for the cloud. It was possible he had everything automatically back up though, so I went into his settings to see if I could find anything out. If I could find even the email he used to log in, I could try to access it when I was home.

Before I could get into his settings though, I heard something unmistakable. It sounded like a herd of buffalo only more obnoxious and entitled.