My head on my hands above the table, I'm staring at an apple. I feel queasy, uneasy, a little sick. Maybe it's just the memory of Lauren's smile.
Across from me is Alicia, cradled in Cade's comforting arms. And all I have is my green apple.
Things seem duller and muted after our visit to Mason and dear, sweet, poisonous Lauren. I'm running a lower than normal temperature today, though no one will able to tell; but it's like I'm running the opposite of a fever.
It's odd, I've never been sick, not since Dean saved my life. Okay, I've feigned sickness a few times to have my way with my parents, but it has never been more than an act.
Sebastian walks towards my table, carrying his signature bag. Before he passes, his eyes lock onto mine. He exits the cafeteria, but his message was well received.
Cade knows about Alicia and me. He has always been a supportive boyfriend. With him, Alicia's heart is safe. My heart though, after yesterday, was scavenged from vultures, sewn together Frankenstein-style, and replaced with the hope that it will function as normal. I can literally feel my heart pulsing half-heartedly. I guess I'm supposed to say No pun intended, right?
'Don't bend, Claire,' Alicia tells me. She knows Sebastian has summoned me like he is my alpha. Cade kisses Alicia on the middle of her head.
I pick the apple and follow after Sebastian. His scent guides me to the gym, which is unlocked and empty. I close the door after me.
'You took your time,' Sebastian grates.
'I apologize if I don't know how a blackmailed person is supposed to act,' I say innocently.
Sebastian rushes angrily at me with a pointed finger. 'Don't joke with me, Claire!' He explodes. His finger stabs the air mere inches from my face.
His volatility catches me by surprise. 'Then why me, Sebastian? Why are you so persistent?' I ask softly.
'You humiliated me!'
I spread my hands in a placating gesture. 'Apologies?' I offer.
'You still think this is a joke,' Sebastian scoffs. He declines my apology, which is not incredible. He begins to walk backwards. I am supposed to follow.
The gym is dark, but that is no problem to me. I follow Sebastian. My feminine instincts, inherited from all the women before me, warn me that following him further into a deserted place, an athletic boy who is carnally interested in me, is dangerous.
I smile. I'd like to see Sebastian try to force me. He must know people will hear if I scream. Will he drug me? I sniff the air but there's nothing out of place.
As exciting as the paranoia is to my wolf side, it proves unnecessary.
'I want a public apology for the public humiliation. You get down on your knees and beg. Before the entre school.'
I stop in my advance. Yeah, Sebastian knows I'm not going to do that. Especially not after begging Mason and Lauren on my knees. I fear if I even try, the wolf part of me will rebel. Besides, I have my polished pride, inherited from Olligrander with his senses as a bonus.
'You won't do it?' Sebastian growls. 'Then I have a better offer for you.'
With his hand, he pulls on a string. A sheet descends from the ceiling. It is a blown up picture of Mason and me. This one is different; his hands are on my butt, which have moulded themselves in the red, leather miniskirt to his touch. That moment was the height of our passion that first kiss in the public library. A tongue is slightly visible, and Mason's half-lidded eyes are red. Naturally, it looks like a barely perceptible trick of the camera, difficult to miss. But to wolf eyes, it will be as clear as a full moon in a night sky.
I can't deny that the picture fills me with longing. I suppresss the urge to touch my fingers to my lips where his lips have met mine, or to clutch my oddly beating heart.
Sebastian gives his demand. 'Give me what you gave him. Whatever you gave him, I want it. You come to my place. Saturday.'
I turn from the picture to Sebastian's face. His eyes are pitiless. I turn back to the picture. Sebastian has me where he wants me, but for an altogether different reason. I know about gossip. It will burn like an inferno, it may leave embers behind; but when it has burnt down all in Its path, it will die out.
Gossip is only as good as it is fresh.
All the pictures Seamus took are going to trend for months, for I know who took them. That was why he was leering at me the morning I found the envelope of pictures in my locker and CLAIRESLUT! written all over them. But eventually, though no one will truly forget this Claire scandal, it won't be a topic anymore.
Actually, the problem is just that the pictures will go viral. How long it trends for won't matter, but that the Imperials not see it. Or blood will boil.
Considering the issue of Dean's transgression, the likelihood that an Imperial will stumble upon the pictures is a perfect percent.
And the shrouded Imperials, with their love for secrecy, won't forget.
I know about blackmail too. If I give in, I have to continue giving in. Whatever happens on Saturday with Sebastian won't be the last of it.
According to feminine instincts too, Seamus will want his own fair share of the spoils. Heck, the VIP ring will want a CLEARSLOT, emphasis on the last word.
The tears show up one by one. I feel mournful. If this isn't a calamity, I don't know what is.
I shouldn't be giving Sebastian the satisfaction, but I'm suddenly sapped of strength. 'Please, remove the poster,' I croak, notwithstanding that I'm helplessly staring at Mason's red eyes with teary vision.
Sebastian is a little startled by how easily I break. 'You are not really as tough as you make yourself seem, Claire.' He yanks down the poster and knocks my shoulder aside as he passes.
I turn backwards hastily. 'Sebastian, I'm sorry,' I sob.
'Forget the apology. You will do anything I tell you.'
With cold smugness, he rolls up the poster and exits the gym.
I feel very cold. The apple I don't remember still holding drops from my hand with a thud and rolls off. I sit on the gym floor, hugging my knees to myself. On an abrupt, angry impulse, I find myself running to one of the windows, which I throw open. The sun is bright and warm as it spills inside. Taking its quiet invitation, I open my infrared vision to its bright glare. The ball of fire explodes, washing my vision in a blinding burst of yellow, then white. I stare a few more seconds until the white becomes black and my retinas are fried. I cut off the infrared vision.
A sharp sting swells at the back of my eyeballs, but the blindness rapidly fades away. The yellow glow of the sun returns and my full eyesight at its heels. My eyes are suddenly too dry for tears.
The sun bomb.
Olligrander told me to practice with this trick for a particular reason, but I've found that it can be applied in many ways.
A stuffed Claire Benning sits through the rest of school. I catch sight of Sebastian and Seamus and Theresa—the cheerleader who is always the pair's shadow—a few times, but I can't bring myself to look them straight in the eye as I normally do.
On the way home, Alicia asks for a full account of what transpired with Sebastian.
'He wants an apology,' I answer tersely.
'Did you give him one?' Alicia takes her eyes off traffic to spare me a mildly long glance. 'Please, tell me you did.'
'I did.'
'Are you just telling me what I asked to hear or you actually did?'
'That apology was my best.'
'He didn't accept it?'
'He wants a big apology before the whole school. I get on my knees and all that insanity.'
Alicia's eyes go a wee wide. Like a pair of lenses, through her eyes, I can see the ring of bodies, three-people thick, crowded around Sebastian and me the millisecond I kneel before him. I can see their mouths moving in jest, hear their mocking laughter. The flashes from their phones momentarily leaves me blinded like several sun bombs going off at once.
'No, you are not going to do that.' Her face turns again to me. My face warms with the intensity of her attention. I slightly turn my body toward the window. 'Claire, the apology isn't really the problem, is it?'
I look down at my nails. The varnish has been scraped off, something I had been doing without consciously knowing it. I have to take a moment to arrange my thoughts, but I tell Alicia about the poster. I make sure the part about Mason's faintly glowing red eyes sinks in.
'Keeps getting better,' she mutters under her breath.
'How do you think the Imperials will react when they learn a mortal has Mason's pictures?' She asks after a pause.
I groan and slam my head into the headrest. 'Mortals, Alicia, mortals. You know how Seamus is almost a professional photographer?'
'Wow,' Alicia chuckles joylessly. 'Seamus took the pictures Sebastian is blackmailing you with. And Sebastian wants to humiliate you before the whole school.'
'Either that or I go solo to his house on Saturday,' I respond.
'So that is what has got you looking pale,' my best friend says after a long stare at me. 'Something tells me Sebastian's parents won't be home come Saturday.'
'Is that a guess?' I scoff sadly.
A pissed look crosses Alicia's features. 'And it's going to be your first. This is not how any woman should relinquish her virginity. You are not going to Sebastian's place on Saturday. But the pictures...' She is practically thinking aloud now.
'They go viral and all hell breaks loose,' I finish for her.
She whistles. 'Sebastian has you in the perfect dilemmatic position without even knowing it. If he uploads those pictures though, Augusta Lycaone will be knocking on all our doors before a fortnight.'
I have told Alicia about Mason's origins, and how his mother is one of the seven ruling Imperials, respected and revered, even among the seven. If she so much as howls, the entire global werewolf population will jump.
For millenia, the Imperials have emphasized secrecy...and are still looking for opportunities to emphasize it.
'If only that Olligrander had a cell phone like everyone else!' I moan. To Alicia's perplexed expression, I say, 'I sent him to Europe to deliver Sebastian's pictures, not on the Imperials' doorstep but somewhere they would find it eventually.'
'To get back at Mason. But it will be the way the Imperials know about this problem sooner,' Alicia breathes in understanding.
'Yes, Alicia. And when they come hunting for answers, they will discover Sebastian and Seamus. Then every Imperial and the lycans, the true werewolf families and all their packs, will be here.'
It will be the perfect human disaster.
What I don't consider is that the Imperials could already be around us, because of Dean's crime. But I realize it soon enough.
My thoughts turn to Sebastian's demand, the one he knows I will likely yield to. Surely, it can't be that bad. I can pretend I am willing when he tells me to lie back against his bed when that time comes. I can reassure myself that it is what I want, he is who I want not Mason; that all along, I have always wanted my first time to be with the one who wants me. Sebastian will continue to summon me like an alpha, because he will never be satisfied for long. My body will make sure of it, even if I don't want him to want me anymore (this is simply one of the natural security measures of the female werewolf body for keeping a mate or a lover, by making every act of intimacy more novel than the last.) Then maybe Sebastian will be so taken in that he won't let Seamus have a piece of the cake; but wouldn't that cause a disaster? It—
My heart twists. The pain is acute, like the night Dean unintentionally summoned the whole pack because his mate was slipping away; yet different. This time, all the pain is focused in one region: my heart. The agony locks my breath in my lungs.
'Who is that?' Alicia—oblivious to my suffering—asks. Her voice is so soft and buttered with astonishment that, despite my pain, I glance at her then out the windshield.
A towering, reedy figure in a crumpled, black suit is standing in the middle of the road. Honking, cursing drivers swerve out of his way and chaos begins to descend. We are still several cars away but our eyes zoom in on him.
His steely, gray eyes are locked on our car.
'The Huntsman,' I exhale in shock and fear.
'The what?' Alicia bellows, properly alarmed at his unwavering attention on us.
'The Huntsman,' I repeat. Vanessa's memories triple-comfirm it. This is the lycan who is the Imperials' personal messenger and single bounty hunter, with a legacy covering millennia on his resumé. His orders come directly from the jaws of the Imperials themselves. Only then do I realize that the Imperials are already with us.
Traffic ahead has braked into a chaotic standstill. Alicia has had to brake and stop too, the nose of her car to the rear of another. 'Do you know this clown?' She shouts over the blare of horns and curses.
'Not until now!' I shout back.
'What?' Her confusion is obvious.
'Vanesaa's memories,' I respond. I have told her about that business too.
We both stare, transfixed, out the windshield as the Huntsman begins to take slow, inevitable steps towards us.