The Tiny Curse (Werewolf High Book 2) (2 page)

“You’re his messenger now?” I brushed the pastry crumbs from my fingertips. I really didn’t want to leave in a flurry of righteous indignation, not when there were so many delicious treats to sample, but if she’d just been luring me in all this time to do his dirty work, that put me in a right pickle.

She shook her head. “Nothing like that. I’ll never get between the two of you, I just wondered if you’d caught up with him already.”

I really wanted to try the little guys who looked like deep-fried mini sausages but I hesitated. I needed to know what I’d be trading for them.

“I didn’t really intend to catch up with him.”

“You haven’t noticed anything strange lately then?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. What was she playing at.

“No stranger than usual,” I said. “Why?”

She shrugged. “Nothing concrete, just… the air tastes different. More metallic.”

I picked up a mini sausage and bit into it. It wasn’t their fault if people had hidden agendas, I couldn’t let them suffer for it.

“You think someone’s doing magic?”

“I think Tennyson is worried,” she said. “You should talk to him.” She smiled and passed me a plate of cakes. “How did you go with the history quiz?”

With the subject change, we fell back into our usual routine but her words kept repeating in the back of my mind. I didn’t want to talk to Tennyson Wilde but I didn’t want some magic spell sprung on me unawares either. Why couldn’t that guy just send a message like a normal person?

It wasn’t as if I had much choice about talking to Tennyson Wilde anyway. He was waiting for me when I left the dining hall after dinner the next day, looking like the personification of winter as he lingered in the shadows.  His black hair was stark against the crisp white marble of the fountain, his navy blue peacoat perfectly matched his eyes. Everything about him looked cold and untouchable.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, breezing past him. “You should be more careful, if your fan club see you here, your stocks might plummet.” I really wanted to tell him about the “Tennyson Wilde is public domain” girls, just to see his face, but it wasn’t worth the bother of having a conversation with him.

“You might have the others fooled but I see you for what you are,” he said, falling into step with me.

“And what is that?” I tried to outpace him but his legs were too long and he kept up with me easily.

“Trouble.” He caught me by the arm and pulled me to a stop. “The orb of light, it is acting strangely. With purpose. The energy within it seems to be rebelling, trying to break free.”

I pulled my arm away from him. “And this is my problem, why, exactly? I have nothing to do with any of this, which you've made more than clear, so I don’t understand why you’d come to me about this. Don’t you have a team of experts standing by to solve your every problem.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “You are involved in this.”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever, buddy. I told you before, I am done with trying to convince you I’ve done nothing wrong.”

I turned to walk away but he caught me by the wrist and pulled me close.

“You may not have cast that spell,” he said, his voice a quiet growl in my ear, “but that doesn’t mean you have nothing to do with what is happening here. It’s not a coincidence that this started when you came into our lives.”

He dropped my arm and moved away from me, vanishing before I could even react. When I looked around, a small crowd had gathered, watching the exchange. It didn’t take a genius to figure out how it had looked to them, from their whispers and gestures. A few people had their phones out taking photos and Olivia Hearst and Charlotte Du Pont were watching with looks of horror on their faces. Olivia drew a finger across her throat as if to say I was dead meat. As if Tennyson Wilde was such a sweet prize. Losers.

I had better things to do than to worry about them, anyway. My family called me every week at exactly 7pm and I didn’t want to be late. I’d talk to them every day if I could, it was nice to have the reminder that there were actually normal, real people in the world who weren’t super rich or supernatural. Hannah wasn’t in my room when I got back, she'd gone to study in the library with Fatima and Milo after dinner, which was good because it always felt a little weird having someone listen in when you were talking to your family, I thought. Like they were seeing you naked or something.

“Hey hey hey,” said the oldest of my brothers, Liam, when I started up my computer and the call came through. He waggled his eyebrows in a way that made him seem extra goofy.

“Hey hey what?” I asked. “Why are you being weird?”

My other two brothers, Fletcher and Hamish made kissy faces in the background, then the message window pinged with a link.

“It’s all over the internet,” Liam said, as I clicked on the link. “How come you didn’t tell us you’d landed yourself a hot, rich boyfriend?”

The page loaded to show a series of photos of Tennyson Wilde talking to me earlier, only from the angle of the photos it looked less like a vaguely threatening conversation and more like a loving embrace.

“No,” I said. “No no no no no no, this is not okay.” I scrolled through the page, looking frantically for some sort of “click here to report this post as a dirty awful bunch of lies” link. It had only been like five minutes ago, how had it spread so quickly?

“We googled him and the internet said he was the richest 9
th
grader on the planet,” said Fletcher. “Do you think he’d buy me a bike? I don’t mind if he dates you if he buys me a bike.”

My eight-year-old brother would pimp me out for a bicycle? Kids these days, seriously. At least ask for a PS4.

“I am not – nor will I ever be – dating Tennyson Wilde. If you want a bike you’re going to have to save up and buy one like a normal person.”

Fletcher pouted at me and I felt a momentary twang of guilt. Not that I wasn’t dating Tennyson Wilde because ew ew a world of ew, but there was that one time he had offered me a briefcase of money but I hadn’t been able to fulfil my side of the bargain. I wondered if that offer was still on the table. It was my dream to one day have a briefcase full of money and maybe if I found out who was controlling that orb of magic, I could negotiate with Tennyson Wilde about it.

“Enough about that jerk,” I said, smoothly changing the conversation, “tell me about the science fair.”

The three of them starting talking at once, yelling over the top of each other to explain how Fletcher had been robbed of first prize due to unfair adjudication, and I hid my smile as I sat back and listened, pleased to have distracted them.

Still, it was worrisome, for other reasons than the obvious. I still hadn’t told them that Sam was alive, and now that his popularity was skyrocketing as the newest Golden boy, his face was getting more and more well known. If my brothers were poking around on gossip sites or whatever, it wouldn’t be long before they saw something they couldn’t explain. I should tell them before that happened, but I couldn’t explain it either. Nobody really knew what had happened to Sam, only that he’d suddenly developed werewolf powers and he couldn’t control them. That wasn’t something you could explain over Skype, so I said nothing.

It was late by the time my brothers finished telling me about the woeful betrayal of justice at Greenville Elementary science fair. Hannah had returned from dinner and started getting ready for bed, and I hadn’t even looked at my homework. Still, I felt so much better after talking to them. Even though they were jerks who would pimp me for a bicycle.

Once I finally signed off from them, Hannah sat aside her homework and turned to me. She had her hair up in two pigtails on either side of her head that made her look cute like a bunny. The expression on her face was not bunny-like though. Unless it was a bunny who was trapped by a fox and about to get eaten.

“Those photos are everywhere,” she said.

I shrugged. “It’s not what it looked like.”

“That doesn’t matter,” she said, shifting forward on the bed. “Olivia and Charlotte, all the girls like them, they’re not going to just let this go. You need to be careful, Lucy. Promise me, you’ll be careful.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant by careful, it wasn’t as if I ever went out of my way to get into troublesome situations, but I promised her. But as I got ready for bed, I started getting madder and madder about it. I hadn’t done anything wrong, why should I have to modify my behavior at all, just because other people were jerks? I mean, I’m not a dummy, I know that’s just how the world works, but still, it is balls.

And it wasn’t as if Hannah was wrong. I’d thought things had gotten bad after Tennyson Wilde had said I was annoying on his blog, but apparently it was even worse for him
not
to hate you. Well, any sort of acknowledgement from him was clearly a bad thing. By the time I got to class the next morning, my arms were bruised from people slamming into me in the halls, someone had stabbed me in the leg with a pen, and I was fairly sure there was a chunk missing from the back of my hair.

I got to history class to find someone sitting in my seat. This big meathead guy, Astor. He was the kind of guy who thought it was witty to be a dumbass. He was on the polo team and all buff and stuff, so a bunch of girls thought he was tops but he had little piggy eyes and a fat neck and I thought he was the worst sort of person in the world. The type of person who thought he could get away with anything just because he had money.

“You’re in my seat,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows and made a big show of looking around the desk, then turned in his seat and looked over the back of it.

“I don’t see your name on it,” he said, giving me a smug smile.

I rolled my eyes. “Could you even read it if it was?”

He dropped the smile. “Look, girlie, I know you think you’re special because you’re boffing old T-son or whatever but don’t think that gets you any special treatment with me.”

I snorted and then I choked on my snort. 
T-son
? Was that actually a thing?

“Just sit somewhere else,” he said, his smirk returning. He had cystic acne scars around his pig eyes.

I looked around and every single seat in the room was taken. There weren’t usually that many students in the class, I was fairly sure some of the people weren’t even freshmen. I felt like such an idiot standing there, in the middle of the classroom.  Nobody actually looked at me but I could feel the weight of their attention on me, mocking me.

“Take your seat, Miss O’Connor, class is starting,” our history teacher said, glaring at me from behind his desk.

“There
are
no seats,” I said, waving my hand around to illustrate my point. Surely he realized that half these people weren’t even in the class.

“Then I suggest you find one.”

A few people snickered and Astor outright grinned at me. I stood for a moment, frozen with indecision. I could walk out, but what then? I'd only be hurting myself, getting behind in class and needing to catch up in my own time. I could punch Astor right in the smug, smirking face, but that would only result in detention, probably. Plus, I doubt I’d even bruise his thick head. He was too solid for me to push off his chair, so when the teacher turned to start the lesson, I swept Astor’s books off his desk and onto the floor. He rolled his eyes and bent down to pick them up, and I grabbed the leg of the chair and tipped it so he overbalanced and went sprawling onto his face. Before he could recover, I slipped into the chair and put my bag on the desk.

Astor got to his feet and turned to face me. His face was twisted into an ugly expression.

“You’ll pay for this, bitch.”

I blinked at him, stunned. I’d expected him to retaliate but still, the full force of his hostility was a shock.

Without a word, everyone who wasn’t actually in the class stood up and left and Astor took one of their seats. By the time the teacher turned around, there were only half the people left in the room. He didn’t seem surprised, which made me wonder how much of the bullying he was aware of. Wow, you really could not trust anyone in this world.

The day got no better from there. People shunned me in classes, even the teachers. They stared at me, always watching, and when I noticed them staring, they’d burst into laughter. When I tried to go to the bathroom, the door wouldn’t open and I was only saved from catastrophe by sneaking into the boys’. People tripped me and pulled my hair but when I turned around to see, they were already gone. I wanted to fight against them but how could I if I couldn’t even see them?

I tried not to let it get to me. I mean, it wasn’t as if I cared what this bunch of jerks thought. Still, it was an awful feeling. By lunchtime, my heart was heavy and my head full of dark thoughts. I picked up a bit when I saw Hannah waiting for me at our usual table. She sat with Milo and Fatima, who both looked up when Hannah waved me over. Milo said something angrily to her, then got up and stormed off. I’d half-expected it. When Tennyson Wilde had first expressed his dislike of me, Milo hadn’t made any secret of not wanting me around. I wasn’t surprised, but I was disappointed. Milo was funny and interesting, and I thought we’d started to become friends. Apparently, that was done.

I hesitated before sitting down.

“Don’t mind Milo,” said Hannah. “He’s just being stupid.”

“Is he though?” asked Fatima, not looking up from her biology notes. “Milo isn’t the one getting bullied in the hallways, making a scene in class, picking fights with people.” She glanced up at me and started gathering her things. “You’re not exactly trying to make things better for yourself, are you.” She gave a little shrug and stood up. “No offence, Lucy. I don’t have anything against you personally. I just don’t want to be seen with you while you’re making yourself into a target.”

I felt as if I’d been sucker punched as I watched her go. Fatima had always said exactly what she thought, so it wasn’t as if she was saying those things to be mean. She genuinely thought I brought trouble on myself. It was basically what Tennyson Wilde had said as well.

“I won’t be offended if you don’t want to be seen with me either,” I said to Hannah. It was a lie, I’d be super offended, but I didn’t want her to feel obligated.

She was still eating, so I stood up to leave. I could get something to go.

She shook her head and smiled up at me.

“Don’t be a dummy,” she said. “I don’t care about any of that. Sit down and eat your lunch.”

I blinked down at my plate as I pressed the button and my lunch appeared. It wasn’t that I was crying, I was just so grateful to have someone on my side. I’d never had a friend like Hannah before and I didn’t know what I’d do without her.