Spearwood Academy Volume Three (The Spearwood Academy Book 3) (5 page)

I give him a soft smile. “So if they become female, why aren’t they cursed like me?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t make much sense, does it? Maybe because they were born guys first and then became girls after they passed the age of adulthood?” questions Dante.

The door to the room opens again, hitting the wall behind it. Vex comes in carrying a tray. “I don’t want to hear it, Rom.”

Romulus follows in behind her, carrying his own tray. Behind him follows a guy that could be a carbon copy of him, but his hair lies flat against his head and curls at the ends. “Stop fighting in front of the VIP’s. You remember what Agnita threatened last night if you two continued to fight while in front of the customers.”

“Always the bloody voice of reason, aren’t you Remus?” snaps Romulus.

Vex grabs a fold out stand for trays and sets it down. “Both of you shut up.” She begins to place some of the various dishes on the table: duck, pork, beef, and chicken. My stomach turns at the sight of it all. Vegetables, rice, and several kinds of soup join everything as well. The scent of it all gathers into my nose. A growl emits from my stomach. I place a hand on it. I don’t think I realized how hungry I was.

Vex, Remus and Romulus gather near the door and turn toward us. They bow at the waist. “Please enjoy your meal, served to you at Miss Peacock’s.” They leave in a line. Whatever they were arguing about doesn’t start up again until they are on the other side of the door.

The guys all look to me again. I touch my hair, feeling self-conscious for the first time since everything happened. I wonder how my hair looks right now. I never would have cared before, but now I do, just a bit. It’s strange, having new aspects of myself that are foreign. There are urges I’ve never had before. Like how I feel around Paden and Maverick. I can’t explain it, but I’m overjoyed to be with them. How close were we as children? Why were they around me back then?

“What,” I finally say, when none of them speak up.

“You serve yourself first; it’s only right,” Horace says.

I roll my eyes. “Seriously, don’t start this guys. I’m not that much different than I was before, and I’m not going to put up with the ladies first thing. Serve yourselves too, now, or I will kick all your butts. I have a feeling I could do it now.”

Boxing and fighting with Edgar, as if he was training me, flash in my mind. Who was Edgar, really? Why were the true memories of the last year and a half removed from my mind?

Maverick lifts an eyebrow. “You remember your training then?” He picks up a plate of pork bits and places some on his own plate. He at least isn’t going to test me on whether I could kick his butt or not. Maverick may be the only one in the group that would pin me in a fight.

I shrug. “Bits of it, but I think I could pull it off with using muscle memory, and all that.”

“Interesting,” Paden says, readying his plate as well. It makes me wonder why he was acting at Spearwood. Was he expected to let the servant put the food on his plate for him? We both know his weird obsessive behavior was just an act, or at least it would have been a few years ago. Does he really like me like that? Was there truth behind his words all this time? He didn’t like me when I was acting like a prissy princess. What about now? When I’m more like my old self than ever before.

I serve myself with some white rice and a mixture that looks like Buddha’s Delight: mixed vegetables and tofu.

“Is that all you’re going to have?” Dante asks, when I rest my plate back down on the table.

“There’s not much else I can eat. I don’t eat meat when I don’t have to.”

“You ate it this morning,” Triton says.

“That’s because I didn’t know when I was going to eat again for one, and for two, the other version of me was fine with eating meat. I’m not.”

“Come to think of it, I have never seen you eat meat,” says Amr. “You left the chicken in your bowl when we ate at the Cabin that one time.”

“Why didn’t you say anything? We could have left it out,” Horace says

I shrug. “I’m not the type of person to expect other people to cater to me. I’m the one that chose to be this way. I just tend to pick around meat if it’s served to me.”

“She’s been vegetarian for as long as I can remember,” Maverick says.

Dante pinches a piece of duck a little too hard with his chopsticks. “How far back is that?”

“We were sent to guard her when we were six and five,” Paden says.

I try as hard as I can to remember that far back, but all I can recall is a feeling of crying. No flashback comes to the front of my mind. I wish I could use my memories on command, like a normal person. “I can’t remember.”

“Don’t worry, the memories will come back on their own with time. Edgar told us if you ever had the process reversed that it would take time, and that we couldn’t reveal shared personal memories until you remembered them.”

Edgar, in over a matter of hours, has gone from being a simple, old man, to being more complex than a quantum physics problem. “Who was he? I already know he didn’t find me by the barn when I was a newborn.”

Paden nudges around his food. I can’t help but to do the same thing. I was starving when they first brought it, but now all I can think about are all the questions I have and want answers to. I take a small bite of baby corn, one of my favorite things to eat with this dish. “He is one of the Vox as well. He used to say he never thought he would live to see the day that the female shifter walked this Earth, and it turned out he was chosen to raise her. ”

I swallow, Edgar’s death hitting me hard since I learned about it. A lump forms in my throat. “Was.”

Paden looks to me. “What?”

My fingers shake, making my chopsticks tremble. “He was a member the Vox. He died, around morning, the day before yesterday. It’s what started this whole mess with the brain warping.”

“How did he die? Do you know?” Maverick asks. He takes my chopsticks out of my right hand and grabs it in a comforting manner.

“I talked to him a few hours before, when Amr and I found out we were twins and just before you two kidnapped me for lunch. He sounded sick. Like he had a cold, or something. I called him after I got back from lunch, and that’s when one of the Hands told me that he had passed away; that Spearwood people were there packing the whole place up.

“That’s not possible. A common cold doesn’t kill our kind, not even pneumonia,” Bullock says.

“What does that mean?”

Paden growls. “Edgar didn’t die of natural causes, he was murdered.”

“Mur-murdered.” The word tastes rancid as it leaves my mouth. I never thought of that as a possibility.

“I’m sorry,” Maverick’s grip on my hand grows tighter. I hold his hand back.

Paden shakes his head. “We have to figure out why Roseman is doing all of this.”

“There’s the war that he’s been talking about with one of the Ancients,” Bullock says.

Dante cocks his head. “War with whom?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t go into detail in front of me. All I know is there’s a war coming and Roseman is the leader of it. I think he wanted Avalon to only be taught Air magic, so he could control her better. The Ancient wants her to be taught everything she’s able to learn, so she’ll be a stronger warrior. In the end, I would’ve had to follow their orders over his.”

“I remember that,” Maverick mumbles.

My need to know about Edgar’s apparent murder stills for a second, as I look at him. He let it slip that we were there when Bullock received punishment for being an Outcast.

Bullock turns his body more toward us. “How would you remember that? As I recall, I was the only one there.”  So he doesn’t remember waking up while I was healing him? His brown eyes narrow at us. “You two were there. I thought it was all a dream.”

“Can someone please enlighten the rest of us that don't know what you're talking about?”

I look at Bullock. “I don't know what you're talking about.” I'm not sure why I want him to think that day, when I healed him, was a dream.

He arches a light brown eyebrow. “You don't?” He stands. “I guarantee I have proof that you were.” I frown now. He takes off his blue blazer and white button up shirt, and turns his back to face the table, revealing his scar-riddled back. There's something new, however, at the top of his left shoulder—where the scars that I healed start—lies a perfectly shaped hand print, glowing a faint blue. “I think if you put your hand there it would be an exact match, don't you?” He faces me again and puts his shirt back on. I try not to let my eyes linger on his bare chest before it’s hidden from my view.

“Fine, you caught me,” I say.

Bullock sits back down in the chair and looks AT me, as if waiting for an explanation of my actions that day. I shrug. “I wasn't going to let you go with wounds like that. I know now that Dr. Quinn wouldn't have been allowed to heal you either since they were inflicted by an Ancient.”

“I could have taken care of it myself; I always have.”

I sigh. “Fine. Next time, I will let you suffer, you ungrateful bastard. Can we get back on the subject of Edgar?” The pull of the moon has eases into my muscles and bones. Great.  I push my plate away from me, having barely touched the food at all.

“You need to eat, Avalon,” Paden says.

“I'm not hungry. I would eat if I was,” I snap.

He looks away from me. I look down at my lap and rub my forehead. “I'm sorry. I'm just a bit off still, okay? I have a bunch of different emotions fighting for the lead right now, and knowing Edgar was killed isn't helping any of it. Not to mention nightfall is about less than an hour away, I can feel it.”

The others start to eat a bit more. At least they can get the food down. I'm afraid mine will come up when the curse forces me to change.

“Edgar, why does this have to happen every night?” I ask through thought. An old, pale-blue dragon sits across from me—not much bigger than my own form.

“It's just how the curse works, Avvi. As far as I know, there's no way around it. You're the first female of our kind to make it as far as you have, and that's why we are protecting you from the reach of the families, until you are old enough to fight against them yourself.” He lies his head down on the ground.

“We'll find a way to break you're curse somehow, Lon,” says the smaller-than-me silver dragon to my right. “I promise.”

“You okay?” Maverick asks, putting a hand on my shoulder.

“Yeah, just more memories. I don't want to talk about it right now. How do you think Edgar was killed?”

“You said he sounded sick when you talked on the phone with him the last time?”

I nod at Paden.

Mirren sits back in his chair. “There's only one thing that would make our kind have flu-like symptoms and kill us: ingesting the seeds of an Angel's Trumpet plant.”

“Today, I'm going to teach you three about a very poisonous plant to us. It's also poisonous to Norms as well, but in this day and age it is unlikely to kill them unless they can't get to a hospital,” Edgar says, his Scottish accent fainter than I ever remember hearing it.

Paden and Maverick sit at the small round table with me; each with their own notebooks.

He points to a colored chalk picture on the black board of a plant that points to the sky with long, narrow, purple petals that unfurl at the top. “It is called Datura, or Angel's Trumpet. It's a flower that blooms only at night. It is poisonous to all living things, but is especially to us.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because it is a flower that awakens at night, in the rays of the moon, and we are creatures created by the Sun god. The moon has been against us since the beginning.”

The old way of thinking didn't make a ton of the sense to me, but I never liked the moon very much either, considering what it does to me.

“When the seeds are ingested by a Norm they can cause delirium, violent behavior and amnesia among other things. Not a pleasant high, from what I understand. Norms can be killed with high doses if they don't have their stomach pumped with orally administered activated charcoal to help the stomach from absorbing the poison. If it's too late and they are already showing signs of Datura, then the drug physostigmine is an antidote.”

“How does it affect us though?” Maverick asks.

“We get flu like symptoms: congested cough, sneezing, and the chills. We don't know why it affects us like this, but by the time the cough shows up, we have less than an hour or two to live. There’s no cure. It will kill you.”

I fold my arms. “He would've had to ingest the seeds in order or for that to kill him. How would the seeds have gotten into his system?”

Mirren shrugs. “That's easy. Put it in his food or drink, when he's not looking and then just sit back and wait the half hour it will take for his body to absorb it. Not that difficult.”

“How would that have happened though? As far as I know, he lived with a bunch of Norms as the hands on the Orchard.”

“Could have been someone else, someone he trusted, who came to visit,” Triton says.

I don’t know what I’ll do when I figure out who Roseman had kill Edgar. The anger rolling in my stomach tells me I could kill them, but the moral side of me says I could never do something like that.

“I don’t think Roseman did his own dirty work. He had someone do it for him. We’ll have to find that person,” I say.

The pull of the moon gets to the point where I can’t ignore it anymore. I push away from the table and stand. “We’re going to need that place Agnita was talking about. Night fall is only minutes away. I sigh. I want that necklace back.