Page 43 of Fatality on the Field

There is not enough coffee in the world for this.

twenty-six

LUCAS

The best part of practice is peeling off your gear, especially when you know you played like shit but only half of it was your fault. Conversely, the worst part is when the rest of the room gets so quiet you can hear tape coming off a shin guard four stalls away. Right now it’s silent, except for the showers and the hollow thunk of my helmet hitting the bottom of my bag, and I’m pretty sure it’s because of me.

Why the fuck are these shitheads so involved in my life? It’s confounding.

I drop onto the wooden bench and start unlacing my left skate. The tongue’s soaked, the heel is mush, and the tendon guard at the back is chewed up from a recreational stick fight with Brock. The skate is technically dead, but I’m not using my new ones until the first game of next semester. My shoulder’s still humming from when that same dick lost an edge into the glass during three-on-three, which is about as believable as a starfish fart. I pop the laces with a yank, tug off the skate, and work my toes against the rubber mat to bring the feeling back. My gear smells like it’s fermenting in a used gym sock.

Normal, but not what I want to bring home to Morgana’s. I’ll think about that for the rest of the day and pick it up later. Someone flushes a toilet, then another, and then two guys from the top line shuffle out in towels, not even pretending not to look over as they pass. I make eye contact with one—a guy named Sully, nice enough but a gossip who does a podcast on the team’s power plays in his off hours. I say nothing, just lift my chin. He bobs his head and pushes through the door, leaving the other guy, who glances at me, then at the ice packs I’m taping to my hip.

Not a single query about whether I’m okay—I see you, traitorous Bonecrushers.

Stripping off my pads, I try not to let the silence get to me. My shoulder’s already knitting itself, the ache replaced by a warmth under the skin that I know will go away by dinnertime. Those are the perks of being a shifter: you heal fast, even if it still hurts like hell. The downside is everyone expects you to just bounce off everything, like getting elbowed in the ribs hard enough to crack them is a spa treatment.

I dig in my bag for my phone and check it for texts. There are two from Li, and one from Slade, who apparently has discovered the joys of group chat. I text back a pic of my bruised shoulder and a gif of a polar bear sleeping on an iceberg, and then drop the phone to pull off the rest of my gear. There’s a dark splotch blooming on my left collarbone and a purplish streak that’ll be gone by tomorrow morning. Coach says addressing our problems with one another on the ice builds character, but I think he was just allowing the team to punish me for my unscheduled absence. He’s an ass, but very few coaches at my level and above aren’t.

Driftwood’s the real reason I’m not stoked about being back, by the way. He’s already left the locker room, but I know he’ll make a thing out of today’s practice. Coach is old-school, with a shaved head and a sharp nose; his voice is like a bar bouncer who’s been dry since Carter was president. The dude caught me in the rink tunnel before drills, arms folded and jaw set like he was holding back a punch, and asked me where the fuck I’d been for a week and a half. Not ‘are you okay?’—just angry demands. I told him I’d been handling a family matter and that if he had questions, my lawyer would answer them. He didn’t like that, but he also didn’t want to ask follow-ups with the whole team watching.

Besides, Thorne would eat him alive for a snack and move onto bigger prey for lunch, so I’m not worried.

I get that the rumor mill is working overtime because I was gone for a week plus with zero warning. When I walked into the locker room, the first thing Brock said was, ‘Hey Wolfberg, you finally get out of the country on work release?’ I grinned and said, ‘No, just gone visiting your mom. She said hello—when she wasn’t moaning.’ That shut him up for like two seconds before he tried to blindside me on the first neutral zone rush. Obviously, I was baiting him, but that’s normal talk in the locker room, and Slater was reacting with far more indignation than players usually do at that kind of ribbing.

Unfortunately, he was like that throughout practice. Brock accidentally cross-checking me in the kidneys during a dump in, he skated into my stick so it hit him square in the balls and then acted like I’d slashed him on purpose, and he tripped me up at the face off dot before helping me up with a shit-eating grin. I didn’t give him any of that shit back, but I stayed in every drill because I know that’s what Driftwood wants to see from the problem children. I took the high road, or whatever, but it’s hard not to want to put a guy’s teeth on the glass when you know you could probably do it without breaking a sweat.

I think Morgana, who has not texted me, would be proud of my restraint.

Toweling off my hair, I walk over to the sink. My face looks a little older than last semester—maybe because I haven’t slept right since the murders started. There’s a little blood at my right temple from where I took a puck in warmup, and my left eye is slightly puffy, but all things considered, I look better than last year’s spring break.

At least I’m not missing any teeth this time.

Across the room, two guys are whispering by the whiteboard. I catch the words legal and murder and my name in the span of three seconds, and my face burns hot. Instead of reacting, I keep my head down and let the water run over my hands. It’s not like I didn’t expect it, but hearing it out loud is worse. The only silver lining is that Slater is finally gone—he’s a guy who’d shout it so everyone could hear.

I finish washing up, get dressed, and start packing my bag. My shoulders are still tense, so I roll them, feel the familiar pop, and then drag my hoodie on. The best thing about hockey is that the second you leave the locker room, you can pretend none of it ever happened until the next day. It’s like a memory wipe, or at least a good enough patch to make it through the afternoon. I grab my duffel, slide my phone into the front pocket, and walk out without saying a word to anyone.

In the hallway, the sound of a vacuum echoes from the janitor's closet, and I almost laugh at how normal it all seems. Even the little things—the way the floor smells like bleach, or the way the cold sneaks through the glass doors—make it feel like life might go back to normal if I just keep moving forward. I give in and text Morgana to tell her I’ll be home on time for dinner later, and then start the long walk across campus to the next thing on my list.

Based on my past—mostly involving my parents—it’s easy to pretend not to care what the guys are saying about me. I’m not sure if I believe myself, but it’s better than getting into a fight that will make me a loser even if I actually win. Besides, I have bigger things to worry about than the rumor mill, like who’s trying to frame my family and how to keep my ass out of jail.

I figure if I just keep skating, maybe I’ll stay ahead of it all—which might be naïve, but it’s working out so far.

Crossing the grass with my bag slapping against my hip, I growl at the wintry air trying to get in. That injury is still tender from practice, and the muscle wants to lock up, so I keep a brisk, even stride, so no one can see me favoring a weakness. It’s busy out here, even with the cold, and there’s a line at a satellite coffee cart that wraps around the bottom half of the quad. I catch a whiff of burnt espresso and sugar, and my stomach gurgles, reminding me that I haven’t had more than a protein bar since way before practice.

Shifters gotta eat, especially when we’re spending a fuck ton of energy and getting body slammed a bunch.

When I get to the main drag between the library and the Arts building, I notice the changes on campus I’d missed this morning. All the lampposts are strung with red and black banners: State U Timberwolves, Tantalus Bowl, and some kind of stylized football with a wolf's tail. There’s a folding table outside the library, manned by two undergrads in State U jerseys, handing out what look like rally towels and color-coded wristbands. Behind them, on the steps, a kid in a full wolf mascot suit is hyping up a group of students with a megaphone while a bored grad student hands out printed schedules.

I slow down, feeling a weird jolt in my chest. Football isn’t my thing, but I know what this means—weeks of non-stop alumni parties, donor events, family visits, and press appearances, all jammed into the gap between New Year and the middle of January. For most kids, it’s just an excuse to get drunk or bail on classes, but for the guys on the team—and the coaches, and the staff, and anyone with a stake in the school’s reputation—it’s basically an audition for the rest of your life.

Son of a bitch, this place will be flooded with non-State U people and crowds we can’t control.

I’m about to slip past the table when I see the new banner on the glass facade of the athletics complex. It’s so big they had to hang it in three separate strips—State U Football, Tantalus Bowl, and Three Weeks. There’s even a digital countdown clock next to the main entrance, blinking down the days and hours like we’re launching a space shuttle or some shit.

Three weeks? I stop, one foot on the curb, and let that sink in. Only twenty-one days until every supernatural media outlet, league scout, pushy parent, and sponsor is on this campus, breathing down the neck of my mate. She’s barely survived one semester in this job, and now she’s got to host the biggest event State U’s seen in a decade. Alumni will expect her to smile, glad-hand donors, and act as if she’s thrilled to be part of it. That sucks because I know for a fact she’d rather eat a brick than go to a media day.

All this on top of two unsolved murders, a campus full of suspicious staff, and enough legal paperwork to choke a… Well, gargoyle, I guess. I grip the strap on my bag a little tighter and keep moving, but the image won’t leave my head. Morgana with her hair glaring at spreadsheets and drinking coffee by the gallon, being polite to people she hates, or hiding her fangs because it’s what the job demands. My mate is trying to learn the rules to a game she barely knows, because if she screws it up, it’ll go on her record and maybe even back her into a corner with the Council.