Page 30 of Revenge

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Edward took an invitation. “Why’s Bachmann sending you invitations to a ball? I thought you would have broken up with him by now.”

“You’re still wearing his engagement ring.” Henry took an invitation and turned it around in his fingers.

“Let’s have a look.” Blake reached over and grabbed one. “Why’s he inviting you to a Valentine’s ball?”

“Will you three stop whining?” I snapped. “A single date isn’t enough for any girl to throw away an engagement to a sexy, musical genius. I said I’d give you a chance, not my future.”

Blake snorted into his tea. “I distinctly heard you cry out that you’d give us everything.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Obviously, your ears were muffled by my thighs because I said nothing of the sort.”

Henry snickered and bit down on his toast, while Edward smiled.

“A man knows these things from the cadence of a woman’s cries.” Blake placed down his cup and waggled his eyebrows.

“Right.” I held out my hand. “I’ll take those back, please.”

Henry slipped the invitation he stole into the inside pocket of his blazer. “I’m holding onto this.”

“Me, too,” said Blake.

I turned to Edward. “We only need two invitations between the four of us.”

“This one is for Paul.” He tapped the invitation.

“Paul who?”

“Mr. Frost, the Latin master.”

A breath caught in the back of my throat. This was too good to be true. A teacher getting drunk with students wasn’t on the same magnitude as Mr. Carbuncle’s activities with sixth form girls, but it would be satisfying to embarrass Mr. Frost for a change. I eyed Edward. Had he said that as a test? The natural reaction to a suggestion like that was resistance, so I folded my arms across my chest. “Why him?”

“He’s the best source for anything,” said Blake. “Always has been.”

I smiled. “What kind of things?”

Henry batted my nose. “You’ll find out.”

I didn’t push the issue. Jackie would place cameras all over the apartment and capture Mr. Frost supplying students with alcohol or worse. “As long as he has absinthe, I don’t care.”

Blake leaned forward. “The off-license in the village stocks absinthe, I can get—”

“No.” I licked my lips. To get the boys to loosen up, I needed the most potent version in existence. “The bottles available in the stores is watered down crap. I want the real thing. See if he can get a high thujone brand.”

Later that day, Alice and I sat together in Creative Writing, the only class I didn’t share with any of the triumvirate.

She gave me a nudge on the arm. “Who bought you the roses?”

“Sergei.” I pulled out an invitation to the Valentine’s ball. “This is the singles’ event I was telling you about.”

“Is that for me?”

I fanned myself with the invitation. “On two conditions.”