Page 60 of Cruel Hearts

Miss Martin’s brows drew together. “You’d better not keep him waiting.”

Dread tightened my stomach. This had to be urgent. Mr. Burgh usually waited for the weekends or dropped me a note if he needed to ask me something. I packed up my things and walked around the desks to the back of the room, where the first-year still hovered by the door, wringing his hands.

I rushed down the hallway and the spiral staircase, wondering what might have happened. If this was about Elizabeth and her diet pills, there wasn’t much I could add to Maeve’s statement. It wasn’t as though I had seen any of the transactions taking place.

At the bottom of the stairs, a figure stepped out in the periphery of my vision and yanked me by the hair. Pain radiated across my scalp, and I kicked out, hitting a bony shin with the heel of my foot. My assailant grunted and twisted her grip.

“What did you say to Mrs. Campbell?” Elizabeth snarled.

“Get off me, you freak!” I swung my elbows back into thin air.

Elizabeth slammed me against the wall and pressed her bony body against my back. “Bitch.” Her hot, pungent breath on the side of my face made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “Tell her it was a lie, or I’ll stick a lit candle where the sun doesn’t shine.”

“You little perv.” With all the strength I could muster, I slammed the back of my head into her face.

The pressure of her weight disappeared from my body, and Elizabeth hit the ground with a thud.

“You’ve broken my nose,” she howled loud enough to wake the whole of Scotland. “Call the police!”

Doors flew open, and students rushed out of the classrooms. I glanced from left to right, my insides turning to stone. Fuck, fuck, fuck! Elizabeth rolled on the ground, hamming it up like a dying fish. I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the kindergarten playbook:

When in trouble, get someone else into bigger shit.

Chapter 22

The sanctuary was a white room in the east tower that overlooked the paddocks. A table and a chair took pride of place in the middle, facing a wall holding frames containing each page of the academy charter.

I turned to the teacher, a black-haired man who had left a class of third-year math students to deal with me. “How many times do I have to tell you, Elizabeth Liddell started the fight.”

“And finishing it means you’ll stay here until the authorities arrive.”

“Where’s Mr. Burgh?”

“I’m not his secretary.” The math teacher shut the door, and a key turned in the lock.

My shoulders slumped, and I turned the knob, just in case I’d imagined the sound. They’d locked me in the tower while the crazy wench who had lured me into a fight and allowed herself to get head butted was sitting with the academy nurse, enjoying a round of tea and chocolate digestives.

“What if there’s a fire?” I shouted.

No answer.

A hot rush of frustration seared through my veins, and I slammed my fist on the door. The only person to blame for this fiasco was myself. Instead of watching my back like I might have done if this was Richley, I dropped my guard, thinking that Elizabeth had been recalled home. Selling dodgy diet pills that hospitalized girls was ten times worse than throwing a box of pins at a teacher.

I walked to the far wall and scanned the first page of the academy charter. Reading through these would be an exercise in masochism. Elizabeth had probably gotten away with breaking all the rules, but it wasn’t like I had any other alternative forms of entertainment.

About thirty minutes later, as I read through the definition of lewd conduct, a tap-tap-tap on the window broke me out of my thoughts. I turned around to find Maxwell scrambling outside with his arms on the window ledge.

A breath caught in the back of my throat, followed by the thrashing of butterflies in my stomach. I rushed to the window. “Fuck.”

Without a second thought, I twisted the metal knob that held down the sash and pushed up its wooden frame. It eased open an inch and then jammed. “Bloody hell.” My biceps strained against the stuck wood, which groaned and creaked. “Who do you think you are? Donkey Kong?”

Maxwell chuckled. “Did you say donkey dong?”

“More like monkey dong,” I snapped. “What the hell made you scale a tower?”

“To keep you company.”

“How did you get up here?” With one mighty heave, I wedged the window up another six inches before it stuck again.