Page 16

Chapter 16

" H oly..." Any desire to finish my exclamation died with the need to vomit arose, violently.

I slapped a hand to my mouth, just in case. What had Troy done ?

The girl looked up at me through a pair of misty glasses, a strand of her black hair stuck to her lips.

"Please help me," she said, sobbing. "I...I don't know what...I..."

My mounting disgust urged me not to approach, but the poor girl was in such a bad way, I couldn't just leave her there especially when Troy had vanished.

"What happened?" I asked, edging nearer.

"He said he wanted to show me something." The girl took a breath so deep that it took her whole body to achieve it. "He gave me this flower to hold and next thing I knew..."

She jutted her elbow at a dried up rose on the floor next to her.

Oh joy. So Troy had shown off his powers again and not just aged the flower but her hand with it.

My jaw clicked and my teeth scraped against each other, uncomfortably.

"Okay, let's get you to a nurse," I said, holding out a hand to her.

My stomach lurched as the girl reached out with her skeletal hand, her right one. Her eyes widened at the sight of it again, and she parted her lips in another bone-chilling scream.

By the time Penny had finished her lectures and joined me in the cafe with Hecate, I was already three herbal teas deep and wishing they were something stronger.

I told her the entire story, including how I had taken the poor girl, whose name I had learned was Angela, down to the nurse's office. The nurse, an angel, or so the plaque on her door had said, had turned deathly pale at the sight of the girl's hand.

Or at least, what remained of it.

The minute I turned the girl over to the nurse, I excused myself to go to the cafe and calm down. An unpleasant mixture of shock and anger crackled through me like static that kept rubbing against each other inside me. Whatever romantic gesture Troy had thought he was going to perform hadn't just backfired because of his reckless use of his powers, but he had bolted at the first sign of trouble. Because it didn't matter what this girl said, his family would smother her testimony if she even dared to make one.

One thing was for certain: I couldn't say anything against Troy. I couldn't put myself on the Franklin family's radar, not when I still had plans to follow through on. But I could do more for Angela than just support her story, which would no doubt get flushed down the toilet with money and/or intimidation. I could remove Troy's ability to screw up people's lives for good and get one step closer to cornering Romilda.

"It makes me nervous even being in the same room as that guy, but that ?" Penny placed a hand gingerly on her cheek. "What are we going to do?"

I pulled out my cigarette packet, ready to light up before I remembered we were inside and shoved them back into my pocket. Gods, I needed a smoke.

Did I tell Penny about my plan to take Troy's power? No, she had too much on her mind at the moment and I couldn't risk her trying to talk me out of it. I was almost certain she wouldn't rat on me to Edward, or worse, Asher, but we were in public. This was neither the place nor the time.

"Nothing, I guess," I said, settling for a sip of my lukewarm tea instead. "Didn't you tell me his family was really influential?"

Hecate raised her head from where she sat curled up in Penny's lap, squinting at me over the top of the table. Her bullshit detector had activated.

"For making our food mouldy, sure!" Penny said, gesturing to the table as if it still held the disgusting buffet. "But this is something else. What if they can't fix her hand? He really needs to be held accountable for this or he could kill someone."

"Nobody's going to bat an eye until he does and even then it'll probably blow over in a year," I said with a shrug. "It's a losing battle, Pen. Best thing to do is to avoid him and hopefully one day he'll get himself into a mess even his family can't get him out of."

Penny bundled Hecate up in her arms again, staring intently at her half-eaten muffin. I chewed my lip and grabbed my cigarette packet again. Lying to Penny was a stressor all of its own, and I had finally reached my limit.

"I need to have a smoke," I said, getting up. "I'll be right back."

"Okay." Penny didn't look up as I shimmied out of the booth, but snapped out of her reverie as Hecate wriggled out of her arms and padded after me.

I craned my neck as Hecate clawed her way up my back and draped herself around my shoulders. She pressed a paw to my neck while I grabbed a cigarette from the packet.

"Really? You expect me to believe you're just going to forget about what Troy did?" she asked.

"Not for a second," I said, sticking the cigarette between my lips. "Penny's got enough to think about right now. I've got to concentrate on the plan on my own."

"You realise that this means you have to step up your plan, right?"

I pushed the glass door of the smoking area balcony open and a chill breeze almost knocked the cigarette out of my mouth.

"What do you mean?" I muttered, walking over to a secluded corner away from the group of students passing a cigarette around.

"Think about it. If this girl says something and wants to make a big deal out of it, they're going to be on alert. The last thing you need is for them to put extra measures in place that'll make things harder for you when you try to sneak into their home."

Crap. Hecate was right.

While I had convinced myself that Angela wouldn't take things any further, what evidence did I really have of that? What was to say she didn't know what she was getting into by raising what Troy had done? That she didn't know how powerful the family really was? Or maybe that wouldn't matter to her at all and she would want to take them on regardless.

There were too many unknown variables and possibilities, and if I was going to achieve my goal, I needed to exact my plan before anything major happened to put the Franklin family on their guard.

"I've got no choice then." I lit my cigarette and took the first glorious drag from it. "Tonight is the only chance I'll have to steal Troy Franklin's power."