Almost an entire day of driving later, I pulled up to the towering, ivy-covered gates of the Cascade Falls Academy, or CFA as it was affectionately known. I yawned heavily and cracked my neck a few times. After clicking the gate opener tucked into my sun visor, I waited for the gates to swing inward so I could crawl up the long driveway to the student parking lot.

My little gray Prius stuck out like a sore thumb in a lot full of Range Rovers, BMWs, and Mercedes. Having spent most of my life in abject poverty in an illegally full foster home, I’d never found spending my adopted father’s wealth comfortable. The only reason I allowed him to buy me the car at all was that CFA was in the middle of Nowheresville, Washington. I needed transport to make speedy getaways from my moonlit mischief-making. Not to mention it was the most perfectly unassuming vehicle for an internationally wanted thief to be driving. The best part, though, were the heated seats. A blessing in the winter.

I unfolded myself from the driver’s seat and took a minute to stretch my cramped muscles out before unloading my suitcase from the trunk and hauling it through the main dorm to my room. The school itself was a beautiful thing, modeled entirely on the King’s College of London, all red brick exteriors with creeping ivy and the inside decked out with polished wood as far as the eye could see. My room was the same one I had lived in for five years, after my adopted father, Jonathan, had first enrolled me here as a gawky thirteen year old.

He must have given the school a serious donation because not only had I kept the same room all this time, but I also enjoyed the luxury of no roommate. He’d told me at the time that privacy would make me feel safer, but I suspect he’d been feeling a healthy dose of guilt at sending me off to boarding school only a scarce six months after adopting me. Not that I blamed him; he was a very important man and the father/daughter routine didn’t work well for either of us. Eventually we settled on more of a friendship, or at the very least a loving uncle type relationship. He had circumvented the red tape of the adoption process by providing “evidence” that we were related. His unique position of authority afforded him little leniencies like that, but it was because of his position that I knew I was safe in his care.

Looking longingly at my bed, I debated whether Lucy could wait until after I napped. If I kept her waiting, she’d likely punish me with something awful, like a glass of cold water splashed in my face or a foghorn in my ear. Both of which she’d done in the past. As much as I loved to wind her up, I wanted to see her as we had only managed to catch up via phone all of summer break. Lucifer Jones was the closest thing I had to family. We grew up in the same foster home together, so I’d been over the moon when Jonathan set her up a scholarship to join me at CFA a few years ago.

Leaving my suitcase to be unpacked later, I forced my tired feet to climb the stairs to Lucy’s room on the third floor.

Since it was always good to keep my skills sharp, I pulled a couple of bobby pins out of my hair. After picking the lock on Lucy’s bedroom door, I burst in without warning. Lucy’s shriek as she toppled off the chair she’d been standing on, stacking books on the top shelf above her desk, proved a reward all its own.

Laughing, I didn’t avoid the book Lucy flung at me as she screamed. “Jesus fucking Christ, Kit! I could have really hurt myself, you bloody psycho bitch! Not everyone has your nifty healing trick, you know!” I quickly tugged her bedroom door shut just in case anyone overheard her talking about my somewhat, for lack of a better word, magical ability.

Since I’d turned eleven, I had been able to heal myself from any injury. The catch was that I couldn’t make it happen at will. It only seemed to work when I was experiencing a rush of emotion like fear or excitement, which was available in spades on our thieving jobs.

Unluckily, if I got the same rush with no injuries to heal, I would often find myself going into almost an adrenaline overload unless I could burn it off by exhausting myself. In addition to my “nifty healing trick” as Lucy referred to it, I also had some seriously unusual strength and speed.

As far as I could tell, while my talents weren’t superhuman, they were far disproportionate to my size and stature. At the time that they had manifested, I’d been a scrawny, malnourished beanpole of a kid, and I packed a punch like a full-grown man. Even now, as a five foot eight girl with just a normal, healthy muscle tone, my strength was equivalent to a serious bodybuilder or martial artist.

Maybe more.

I can’t remember the last time I tested the range of my strength, so it was just a guess. As for my speed, again it wasn’t something I tested often for fear of attracting unwanted attention, but I’m definitely a lot quicker than the average eighteen-year-old. My extra abilities had been a major contributing factor in the degree of difficulty we were able to pull off while thieving.

She attempted a glower, but it came off as adorable on her pixie-like face. She’d changed her hair again over summer break. It was now a bright turquoise blue and cropped very close to her head. She’d even added an eyebrow and nose ring in yet another attempt to look tougher than her 5 foot nothing frame suggested.

“Oh, shush. You missed me and you know it,” I teased, the usual rush of love for my pseudo-sister flooding me. She grumbled a bit under her breath as I flopped on her bed and pulled a pillow over my face.

“All right, let’s hear it.” She recovered her composure swiftly, getting down to business while also yanking the pillow off my face. “Did everything go okay with the drop off to Marius? Also, I assume you had no troubles on the drive back, as you’re here in plenty of time for school tomorrow and seem to be in one piece... that I can see...”

“You say that as though I’m reckless.” I was somewhat offended by her lack of faith in me, and she raised an eyebrow. “But you are correct; no dramas at all on the drive, if you don’t count extreme fatigue from driving nineteen hours straight with nothing better than gas station snacks in my belly.”

Lucy rolled her eyes; she’d never been a fan of my melodrama. She knew I wouldn’t turn down any food if hungry, no matter how subpar it might be. She was the same. A carryover from our childhood in the foster home where we’d starved between meager meals and savored every little morsel.

“Drop off with Marius didn’t happen, though,” I admitted reluctantly, bracing for the scolding she was undoubtedly going to give me. “He called right before I got to our rendezvous point and said the client couldn’t collect from him until Thursday and he ‘isn’t comfortable holding the goods for that long.’” The middleman was a slimy bastard, but he was a necessary layer of security to keep our less than legitimate transactions from biting us in the ass later.

Lucy stared at me and sat forward, disbelief sharp on her pixie face. “Please tell me you did the sensible thing and stored the ring in a safe location and didn’t bring it back to school with you...”

Well, since she told me to tell her the sensible thing, I said nothing and studied the new poster she’d pinned on the wall. Her screech threatened my hearing. “Ugh, you are unbe-fucking-lievable sometimes! Give it to me.”

I fished the stolen jewelry out of my bra, where I kept it tucked safe in a little velvet pouch, and handed it over to her. She snatched it out of my hand and spun back to her computer desk, digging around in the drawers until she pulled out one of those little metal detection wands.

“I’m fairly sure we already know it’s made of metal, Luce.” What was the big deal? She made a dismissive noise in her throat and didn’t answer me. A few seconds later, the little wand changed from a steady, slow beep to a high-pitched whine, and Lucy flung it aside in exchange for a magnifying glass.

“Kit, you flaming idiot, this has a tracking device embedded in between these ugly green stones.” Before she even finished her sentence, I swiped the ring off her palm and tossed it into the glass of soda sitting beside the computer monitor.

We both sat silent for a moment, watching the brown carbonation bubbles form and reform on the priceless ring in the bottom of her glass.

Finally, Lucy said, “Not... the smartest course of action. I would have suggested leaving the tracker active until you could lead the trail away from Cascade Falls, but what’s done is done; there’s definitely no rescuing a delicate piece of technology like that from the sugary depths of my soda.”

“Oh.” Once again, I’d acted without thinking. “Shit. Yeah, fair point; that would have been smarter.”

Lucy shrugged and waved her hand as if to brush the problem off for another day and changed the subject. “So, I have lined up our class schedules so that we have our lunches together every day. I figure, seeing as you no longer have Ryan to keep you entertained, you’re going to have a whole lot of time for hanging out with little old me.” She grinned, knowing how annoyed I was that my friend with benefits from the previous year had graduated and left me rather bereft in the romance department.

Due to our negligent upbringing at Mother Suzette’s, neither Lucy nor I had really attended school until after we were rescued from her foster home. Sure, she had us enrolled but a few measly bribes had the right people looking the wrong way. When we were first admitted to CFA, we had both been drastically behind in our classwork. We’d worked our butts off to catch up, but the lack left us almost a year older than the rest of our senior class. I’d never had a taste for younger men, and Lucy seemed to take almost perverse pleasure in what was looking like a very dry year ahead of me.

I pouted and pretended to cry. “Lucy, how will I survive with only you to entertain me? And no, do not even think about suggesting I start batting for the other team. That pool is all yours to swim in, thank you very much. Maybe fate will be kind and give us a really hot TA for Mr. Crowley’s math class.” I perked up at the idea; it could happen. Mr. Crowley was well overdue for retirement at the tender age of eighty-seven, but I suspected he wouldn’t take a break until the day he died.

Lucy rolled her eyes as she fished the ring out of her glass. “You look like crap. Go to bed.”

“You’re so complimentary sometimes, Luce.” I laughed, leaving her room. “But you have a point. I’ll see you tomorrow, and hopefully that tracker isn’t going to cause us too much trouble!”