Page 6 of The Curse Trilogy

“Tell me,” she growls, and Hale slides to the floor, his pain becoming all the more pronounced as he curls into a ball.

“Charman,” he grunts under duress.

She dusts her hands off very smugly, releasing him from her hold. When she struts by me, I taste the triumph she has started celebrating too soon. My stern tone halts her cocky stalk.

“Tell me the three things you did wrong,” I demand.

I love being a bitch.

“Excuse me,” the bratty girl scoffs, a derisive snort following behind.

“Watch how you address your superiors,” Hale warns while slowly standing back up.

“Sorry, Mrs. Crush,” she says very humbly, her eyes lowering to the ground like a child in trouble.

“It’s Ms. Crush, and I’m still waiting on an answer,” I say without cracking the grin I want to.

Hale starts smirking despite his attempt to suppress it. He enjoys hazing the new ones as well. Clay rolls his eyes at our amusement, but I can tell he’s having a bit of fun as well, despite his very obvious attempt to look disapproving.

“I’m really sorry, Ms. Crush, but I got the name we were looking for. You said anything goes, so I’m not sure what you’re looking for,” she says with stupefied bewilderment.

“Let me educate you,” I tartly remark. “You don’t walk into a room and exert your dominance by inflicting pain. You need them to want to talk to you. You have to own the suspect. The first thing you did wrong was use your gift. Your gift should never be displayed to anyone without top level security clearance. Anyone else that sees it should be in a body bag by the time you finish up. Now your suspect lives, and he’ll go tell everyone the gift you possess. They’ll prepare for you, and you’ll lose your edge.”

She lowers her eyes again to hide her embarrassment, but I’m not through berating her just yet.

“The second thing you did wrong was force your suspect into a state of frenzy. If you do your job right, then you get the right name. If you try to force a name out the way you did, then you have someone pissed off and ready to shut you down. You didn’t gauge his eyes, his body language, or his reaction to the name. It was a lie - a false, made-up name to hinder your quest. Now you’ve wasted precious time and valuable resources on a dead end because your arrogance interfered,” I scold, and her eyes lower all the more - her body begging to sink beneath the floor.

“And the third?” she asks curiously, not looking up.

In a blink, Hale blurs across the wall to rip her from her slouched stance. He slings her against the wall to cause a crack in the structure, and her eyes widen in sheer terror as she stares down into the unforgiving eyes of her assailant.

“You didn’t secure your suspect,” I murmur with a cocky smirk.

Hale drops her to the ground, and then he walks back over to the other side of the table to take his seat for the next student. His feet prop up on the table, his hands slide up to rest behind his head, and his eyes wait expectantly on mine to meet them.

“Now that I have your attention, I’ll demonstrate the proper way to interrogate a suspect. From now on, don’t think you know more than I do. As you can see, this isn’t class time out here. Most all of the beings that sit on the other side of that table are skilled, merciless, and they’re just waiting for you to mess up.

“If you plan on being an interrogator, then you have to keep your eyes open at all times. This room opens up the secrets we need. This room carries more weight than you realize, and this room could be the answer to stopping or starting a war at any moment. Understood?”

They all salute me in unison, and then Hale grins even more upon hearing my dominating tone. I resist the urge to roll my eyes at his incorrigible behavior before turning back to the seven far more attentive students.

“I don’t do well with a visible audience. Go stand with Commander Jude behind the glass, and don’t do anything but watch.” I instruct, and Hale’s eyes dance menacingly.

“Would it be too easy if I said I was hot for teacher?” he says mischievously, his salacious grin only growing.

“Yes. It would,” I grumble.

This is going to be harder than I thought. Why am I doing this with him? I know better. I should get Clay. Damn you, Hale Banner!

“The first thing you need to know is your suspect’s biggest weakness. With full bloods, it’s the vein. The drink they need from the vein outweighs almost any other desire. With humans it’s the chance of immortality. If you tell a full blood they can drink from a vein, you had better sell it to the point they can’t turn you down. If a human wants immortality, then they have to have the right gene for the venom to work. Otherwise, they’ll become the infected instead of the immortal, and then you’ll be the one to have to put them down,” I murmur very authoritatively.

Hale leans back in his seat while taking in my very assertive instructions.

“And what do you do when it’s our kind?” he interjects with a daring tone.

I offer a wry smile while strutting toward him like a vixen on a mission. Very slowly, I pull off the blazer that has been hiding my very slinky shirt that drapes dangerously low once I undo the top two buttons.

His eyes grow wide when I let my hair down and toss my jacket to the chair while pulling my handcuffs out of the pocket.