CHAPTER 11
For a second I thought he was still going to refuse, but then he looked back at me and muttered, “Fine.”
“Excellent!” the Vandy trilled. “Now, Miss Mercer, attack Mr. Cross.”
I stared at her. I had never so much as wielded a flyswatter in my life, and this woman expected me to just lunge at a guy with a pointy wooden stick?
The Vandy’s smile hardened. “Any day now.”
I wish I could say that I suddenly discovered my inner warrior princess and expertly leaped at Archer, weapon hoisted high, teeth bared. That would have been cool.
Instead I raised the stake to about shoulder height and took two, maybe three shuffling steps forward.
Then viselike fingers clenched my throat, the stake was wrenched from my hand, and a sharp stabbing pain shot up my right thigh as I landed on the ground with a thump that knocked the breath out of me.
And as if that wasn’t bad enough, once I landed, something hard and heavy—his knee, I thought—hit me right in the sternum. You know, just in case there was one last breath left in my lungs. The point of the stake scraped the sensitive skin just under my chin. I looked up, wheezing, into Archer’s face.
He was off of me in a heartbeat, but all I could do was roll onto my side, draw my knees up to my chest, and wait for oxygen to reenter my body.
“Very good!” I heard the Vandy say from somewhere far off. I was literally seeing stars, and every ragged breath I took felt like I was trying to breathe through broken glass.
On the upside, my crush on Archer was totally gone. Over. Once a boy has slammed his kneecap into your rib cage, I think any romantic feelings should naturally go the way of the ghost.
Then I felt hands under my arms, lifting me to my feet. “I’m sorry,” Archer murmured, but I just glared at him. My throat still felt thick and swollen, and I didn’t want to try to push any words through it.
Much less all the words I wanted to say to him.
“Now,” the Vandy was saying brightly, “Mr. Cross showed excellent technique there, although I would have definitely stayed on the opponent’s chest longer.”
Archer nodded very slightly at me when she said that, and I wondered if he was trying to say that’s why he’d done it; I would have been worse off if it had been the Vandy. I really didn’t care. I was still pissed.
“And now, Mr. Cross, Skill Four,” the Vandy chirped.
But this time Archer shook his head. “No.”
“Mr. Cross,” the Vandy said sharply, but Archer just tossed the stake at her feet. I waited for the disemboweling or the caning or, at the very least, the writing up, but once again, the Vandy just smiled her tight smile. She picked up the stake and handed it to me.
I was certain I was going to throw up. Wasn’t there some other newbie she could torture? I glanced around and caught a few sympathetic looks, but everyone else just seemed relieved it wasn’t them about to get squashed.
“Very well. Watch and learn, people. Skill Four. Come at me, Miss Mercer.”
I just stood there staring at her.
She pursed her lips in irritation, and then, without warning, her hand shot out to grab me. But I was ready this time, and angry and hurt. Without thinking, I pulled my leg up and thrust it out.
Hard.
I saw my sneaker-clad foot slam into her chest as if that foot belonged to someone else. It couldn’t possibly have been mine. I’d never kicked anyone in my life; I certainly wouldn’t kick a teacher.
But I had. I had kicked the Vandy in the chest, and she went sprawling onto the blue mat, not far from the very spot where I had sprawled earlier.
I heard the other students draw in a collective breath. I mean, really. All fifty of them seemed to gasp at the same time.
It was right about then that the enormity of what I’d done hit me.
I knelt down and offered her my hand. “Oh my God! I . . . I didn’t mean . . .”
She threw off my hand and got to her feet, nostrils flaring. I was so very, very screwed.
“Miss Mercer,” she said, breathing heavily, making me think of a bull, “is there any reason you can think of that I shouldn’t give you detention for the next month?”
My mouth moved, but nothing came out.
Then, like a godsend, I remembered Elodie’s advice. “I like your tattoos!” I blurted out.
I only thought the class had gasped before. Now the sound they made was like the air escaping from a balloon.
The Vandy tilted her head at me and narrowed her tiny eyes. “You what?”
“I . . . I like your tattoos. Your ink. Your, um, tats. They’re really cool.”
I’d never seen anyone have an aneurysm before, but I was afraid that was exactly what the Vandy was about to do. Frantic, I looked out at the crowd of students until I met Elodie’s eyes. She was grinning, and I realized that I had just made a truly horrible mistake.
“I hope you weren’t planning on having any free time here at Hecate, Miss Mercer,” the Vandy sneered. “Detention. Cellar duty. Rest of the semester.”
The semester? I shook my head. Who had ever heard of detention that lasted eighteen weeks? That was insane! And cellar duty? What was that?
“Oh, come on,” I heard someone say, and I looked up to see Archer glaring at the Vandy. “She didn’t know, okay? She wasn’t raised like us.”
The Vandy shoved a lock of hair off her forehead. “Really, Mr. Cross? So you think Miss Mercer’s punishment is unfair?”
He didn’t answer, but she nodded as though he had. “Fine. Share it, then.”
Elodie squawked, and I took some satisfaction in that.
“Now, both of you get out of my gym and report to Mrs. Casnoff,” the Vandy said, rubbing her chest.
Archer was out the door almost before the words left the Vandy’s mouth, but I was still feeling a little stunned, not to mention hurt. I limped toward the exit, ignoring Elodie and Chaston’s glares.
Archer was already way ahead of me and walking so fast that I could hardly catch up.
“You like her ‘ink’?” he all but snarled when I was finally next to him. “Like she doesn’t have enough reasons to hate you.”
“I’m sorry, but are you pissed at me? Me? I’m the one who had your knee practically crushing my spine, buddy, so let’s check the attitude.”
He stopped so suddenly that I actually walked three steps past him and had to turn around.
“If the Vandy had pulled that maneuver, you’d be at the infirmary right now. Sorry for trying to save your ass. Again.”
“I don’t need anyone saving my ass,” I shot back, my face hot.
“Right,” he drawled before walking toward the house. But then something he’d said struck me.
“What do you mean she has enough reasons to hate me?”
He clearly wasn’t going to stop walking, so I had to jog to catch up.
“Your dad’s the one who gave her those ‘tats.’”
I grabbed his elbow, my fingers slipping on his sweaty skin. “Wait. What?”
“Those marks mean she’s gone through the Removal. They’re a symbol of her screwup, not a point of pride with her. Why would you . . .”
He trailed off, probably because I was glaring at him.
“Elodie,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” I fired back. “Your girlfriend and her friends were really helpful in filling me in on the Vandy this morning.”
He sighed and rubbed the nape of his neck, which had the effect of pulling his T-shirt even tighter across his chest. Not that I cared. “Look, Elodie . . . she’s—”
“So do not care,” I said, holding up my hand. “Now, what did you mean when you said my dad gave her those tattoos?”
Archer looked at me incredulously. “Whoa.”
“What?”
“You seriously don’t know?”
I’d never been able to actually feel my blood pressure rising before, but it certainly was now. It felt kind of the way magic used to feel, only with more homicidal rage thrown in.
“Don’t. Know. What?” I managed to say.
“Your dad is the head of the Council. As in, the guy who sent us all here.”