Saving Year Three (Grim Reaper Academy 3)

“Because it was easier to devise plans to get rid of you than accept that... that this whole time, I was thinking about you for entirely different reasons. I was obsessed with you, damn it! You were on my mind day and night. I couldn’t think straight anymore, I could barely focus on school. Every single thing I was supposed to do since early morning till late at night was ten times harder to do because of you. Simply because you existed, and I wanted you.”

I shook my head. “This doesn’t make any sense. When you like someone, you don’t try to kill them.” My head was starting to clear. I walked past him, heading back to the party. I needed space to figure out what I’d just done.

“Haven’t you ever heard… You sometimes love someone so fucking much that you could kill them?”

“Shit, Sariel!” I yelled over my shoulder. “That’s messed up.”

“Mila!” Now he was the one trying to catch up with me.

“No.” I turned to him, a determined look in my eyes. “What we did back there… We’re not doing it again. It was one kiss, nothing more. We’re friends. I want to help you. I don’t want you to go through what I went through. What you and Lorna put me through. But this…” I motioned between the two of us. “This isn’t happening. I’m sorry.”

His shoulders sagged. I walked away, knowing he wasn’t going to follow me this time. My thought

s were a jumbled mess. I didn’t even notice Lorna walking up to me, hands squeezed into fists at her sides. When she was close enough, she raised them and hit me in shoulders.

“What the fuck, dumpster princess? You’re going after him, too? GC and Pazuzu are not enough for you? You have Francis Saint-Germain wrapped around your little finger, and you’re still not satisfied! You want Sariel now!”

“What? How… Lorna, no. You got it all wrong.”

“Really? Because I was just coming over there to make sure you weren’t on the rocks, since my cloaking spell doesn’t cover them, and I saw you two kissing. You were kissing him!” Tears pooled in her eyes. “Sariel never kissed me!”

“Lorna, I’m sorry… I-I know what you saw, but it doesn’t mean anything, I promise.”

“It doesn’t mean anything?” she huffed. “I hope you’re lying to me, bitch, because if he’s genuinely in love with you and that kiss didn’t mean anything to you, then I’m going to fuck you up. I won’t let you break his heart!”

I was dumbfounded. “I don’t… understand anymore. You want me to be with him? You don’t want me to be with him? Make up your mind.”

“I made up my mind a long time ago. I just never followed through…” She drew her right arm back, fist at the ready.

She was going to punch me. My eyes widened, and for a second, I didn’t know what to do. Step aside? Duck? Hit her before she hit me?

It all happened in a fraction of a second. The music stopped, and everyone on the beach started running in all directions. Or trying to. We were surrounded by Unseelie guards, and there was nowhere to go. Lorna let her arm fall to her side.

“Shit.”

“Lorna, the cloaking spell…”

“You greedy bitch distracted me from it! This is all your fault!”

I saw Crassus stepping away from the crowd, looking for me.

“Fuck. Okay, so the spell broke for a minute or two… How did they find us so fast?!”

“That, greedy bitch, I have no idea.”

“Stop calling me that!”

She cocked an eyebrow, shook her head as if to say I wasn’t worth a reaction, then teleported away. I should have done the same. We were probably the only ones at the party who could teleport on their own, without the help of teleportation pins, which I could see now the Unseelie were confiscating from the inebriated students. I should have followed Lorna’s example and gotten out of there. But Crassus was just up ahead, and he’d seen me, anyway. Besides, I wasn’t going to leave my lovers and friends behind. What kind of person would that have made me?

I just hoped Corri was okay and she’d zapped out of there before anyone saw her.

CHAPTER NINE

Crassus and two other Unseelie guards were ordered to take me, GC, Paz, Francis, and Sariel to the Headmaster’s office. Naturally, my father knew we were to blame. Or, more like, I was to blame, and the guys had just followed me to my doom like puppies. I could understand why GC and Paz were there with me, but why bring Francis and Sariel into this, too? Did he have a sixth sense, or was he paying some of the guards to tell him who I hung out with?

“Rule two,” Morningstar started in a low, serious tone. “All parties and celebrations are forbidden. Which word is unclear to you, Mila? Should I translate this for you in Bulgarian?”

“So funny,” I mumbled under my breath.