Page 26 of Outcast

He rose from his seat. “Are you threatening me?”

“No, sir.”

He stretched out his hand. “Give me that phone.”

I stepped back. “If you want to look at the videos, I’ll email them.”

The headmaster jerked his arm, and in a voice laden with menace, he said, “I won’t ask you again.”

I took a few steps back and slipped the phone into the inner pocket of my blazer. If he wanted it, he’d have to tackle me to the floor and get it himself. With his secretary outside and staff teaching in nearby rooms, I doubted he would risk a scandal if I screamed.

He remained behind his desk, face so red, the flush showed through his thinning hair. “Recording devices are prohibited and violate the privacy of the students. Give me that phone.”

“People upload videos on the Mercia-Net all the time, and you do nothing.” I folded my arms across my chest. “You only seem to want to intervene when students are committing crimes that will bring your academy into disrepute.”

His lips flattened, nostrils flared, eyes narrowed with disgust. “Five demerits. Ten, if you don’t leave immediately!”

Chapter 9

By the time I rushed back to my room, Charlotte had already gone, and she’d straightened up her mess. It would be a futile effort, but I knocked on Mr. Jenkins’ door anyway and showed him the evidence of the ransacking, but he also asked me to hand over my phone. I left his office without comment. Not only was he powerless against Edward and his friends, he actively tried to protect them from the consequences of their actions.

I found Charlotte at dinner, sitting next to Blake with her back ramrod straight, as though she was directing a lesson on perfect posture. Blake also spotted me and grinned. It was the kind of smile that would make a girl’s toes curl up to her ankles and her thighs squeeze together with need. The kind that would get her to agree on anything… even something dangerously stupid like public fellatio.

Heat rushed to my cheeks, and I pressed my lips together to hold back my reaction. It didn’t work, so I gave myself a mental slap and focused on the image of Charlotte going through my things under the watchful eye of Mr. Carbuncle.

She raised her chin. “Do you have something for me, Trollop?”

I tapped my smartphone and played the recording. “What were you doing in my room, Underwood?”

The haughty expression melted into slack horror. Her thin lips parted, and her vacuous, hazel eyes darted from side to side, looking for someone, anyone to throw me an insult and shut down this distasteful subject.

“Charlotte Underwood sneaks into people’s rooms.” I held up my phone like a beacon. Even if people couldn’t see the video, they would know it existed. “Here’s the evidence!”

“Hobson,” she hissed through her teeth.

People around us craned their necks to see the video. Those at nearby tables stood to get a better view, then reported back to their friends on other tables. Within moments, loud chatter filled the room.

“Look at her!” I shouted for the benefit of those who were pretending I didn’t exist.

Charlotte shot out of her seat. “Enough!”

I lowered the camera and folded my arms across my chest. “There’s more where that came from. You make a clumsy cat burglar, but what you lack in stealth, you make up for in enthusiasm.”

“How dare you,” Edward’s cold, resonant voice rang through the room, causing it to go silent. He rose from his seat with the grace of a panther and glared at me with cold, blue eyes just as predatory. “How dare you come here and disturb our peace.”

I squared my shoulders. “Don’t change the subject with faux-outrage. You’re quick to tell me that this is your school, yet when you see thievery and corruption, you have the nerve to ask me how I dare expose it? Does the Duchy of Mercia have any integrity or did that wither over the past few generations?”

“Get out.”

“So that’s how it is. Defend your friends and ignore the evidence of their dirt?” I stuffed my phone in my pocket. “Let me tell you something. If you don’t stop this asinine victimization campaign, I’ll collect every scrap of evidence I have and use it to bring you down.”

His face turned bright red, and he upturned the head table, making its contents crash toward me. “Leave!”

I jumped out of the way, heart thundering. Even Charlotte clapped her hand over her mouth. I looked to my left and right and even at the faces of the other two members of the triumvirate, but no one showed an ounce of concern that he’d nearly thrown a table at me.

A small hand wrapped around my arm. It was Rita’s. “Let’s go.”

Even though my insides trembled, even though my knees wanted to buckle, I pulled my shoulders back and walked around the tables and out of the dining room with as much dignity as I could muster. We walked through the hallways and up the stairs, our footsteps echoing in the ensuing silence. Then Rita opened up the room and sat me on my bed. My body was so numb, I could barely feel myself sink into the mattress.