Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Anora and Detention

Lunch begins differently today—no Lennon or horde of zombie students. Instead, I stop by my locker to exchange books and head for detention.

“Hey.” Shy’s voice startles me, and I drop my books. I attempt to avoid eye contact as I kneel to get them and shove them in my bag, but Shy stoops to my level and helps. I glance at him and find he’s watching me. “Sorry to scare you.”

“You didn’t scare me.”

Lie.He scares me, but not for the reason he thinks.

As I stand, I hit my head on my locker door. The pain is jarring and brings tears to my eyes.

“Are you okay?” Shy moves toward me but falls back, as if unsure what he meant to do. I’m unsure of what he meant to do too.

“Fine,” I say between my teeth and slam my locker door shut.

“Do you need me to get an ice pack?”

“I said I’m fine,” I say with a little more force than I intend, but Shy doesn’t push. I press shaky fingers to the sensitive spot on my head—they come away clean, no blood. Shy still stands in my peripheral, hands in his pockets, staring.

“So…do you want to have lunch today? I thought maybe we could sneak off campus or something.”

I gape at him, surprised by his suggestion. It’s the first time I’ve really looked at him head-on since he approached, and it’s a mistake. When my eyes meet his, I can’t stop my brain from short-circuiting. This boy is teenage heartthrob handsome. His hair is messier today, like maybe he ran out of time getting ready this morning, except instead of looking like a complete slob, he somehow looks…sexier.

God, I hate this reaction to him. This has never happened to me before.

“Are you asking the right person?”

That makes him chuckle, but the humor doesn’t touch his eyes. “You are Anora Silby, right? No one walked in and stole your soul?”

Those words make me shiver.

“I can’t. I have detention.” Then, because I feel like I need to offer an explanation, I say, “I was late to trig.”

Shy frowns. “Didn’t I warn you? Mr. Val…?”

“Is a prick? You did.” So did Thane. Seems everyone is in agreement.

He smiles again, almost sadly, disappointment evident in those eyes, as vivid as morning light breaking through a dark horizon. “Maybe tomorrow, then?”

I don’t have the heart to tell him I’ve been given two days of this purgatory.

I start to leave when he stops me. “Oh, hey. I learned something interesting about you yesterday.”

Oh no.

“You did?”

“Your mom works for mine,” he says.

“Really?”

“Yeah… I thought you said your mom moved here for a job.”

“It fell through.”

I’m proud of that lie. It’s smooth; not a flicker of the uncertainty I feel on the inside manages to make its way free, and yet as Shy watches me, I start to waver in my confidence.

It is just my luck Mom would end up working for one of my classmates’ parents. Also my luck that he would be a boy who listens to what I’m saying. I wonder if Shy intended to catch me in a lie.

“Maybe that was for the best. Mom’s happy to have her.”

I smile. “I’ll let her know.”

“See you around.” The smile he gives me as he steps back pulls at my heart, and as he walks away, it unravels at my feet, like it too is made of thread.

I walk into the detention room and Coach David is there, eating a sandwich and scrolling through his phone with his earbuds in. He barely glances up as he takes a giant bite and tips his head toward the desks in the classroom. You’d think an alternative school would have a fair number of students in detention, but I’m the only one here.

I move toward the back of the room and slip into a seat, riffling through my backpack for a notebook to sketch in. I start to draw a map of campus as Coach David chews loudly, occasionally laughing at something on his phone.

As I recall the places I walked on my first day, I mark the possible locations my coin could be on the map. The thing is, I’m not really sure what could even happen if someone did find the coin. I’ve been collecting them, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing with them, beyond a feeling deep in my stomach that they shouldn’t just be in a box under my bed, that no one should have access to them. The thread and the coins have been given to me for a reason. If only I knew what it was and how it’s tied to everything that’s been happening over the past few months.

Before I captured her soul, Vera said they would come for me. The feeling of being hunted has been with me ever since I made that first coin. Only here, at Nacoma Knight, it’s so much worse.

I look down at my map and realize I’ve doodled ravens all over it. They look like the ones on my coins.

Coach David stands and pulls out his earbuds. “You okay on your own, Silby? I gotta hit the head.”

Gross.“Yeah. I’m fine.”

After he leaves, I stare at the map, my eyes growing heavy as I trace the pattern of ravens. The lines blur, and then I feel someone touching my hair. I turn quickly to find that I’m no longer in detention but in the wood, my eyes level with a chest covered in black armor, threaded through with gold. My gaze shifts upward, and I meet a pair of dark eyes—Shy, I think, though this isn’t him. It’s someone slightly older, different, but he feels so much like Shy that my heart squeezes with recognition. I know this man.

One of his arms tightens around my waist while the fingers of his other hand skim over my cheek, then he leans forward to kiss me. The press of his mouth to mine ignites a liquid fire in the bottom of my stomach. It fills my veins like my blood and burns hotter as his tongue slips inside my mouth. It’s then I realize that I’m holding onto him too, and my fingers tighten against his armor, which is not metal at all but strange and flexible. I pull him closer, our bodies aligning in a familiar way, and I want to lose myself in him, but he breaks it off too soon.

He stares down at me, and we hold on to each other.

“Come,” he says, touching my cheek once more before stepping away. “Charon waits.”

I hold out my hand to take his offered one, and for a moment, I think I see a thread form between them, gold and silver spooling from our palms.

“Silby,” Coach David says, jarring me awake. “Pack your stuff up. Detention’s over.”

I sit for a moment, dazed by the dream.

Every touch and every emotion was so real—I could still feel them—each soft caress and press of his lips and the acute desire that had not ceased even now that I was awake, all inspired by the hands of the man who felt like Shy but wasn’t.

With a few minutes to spare before art, I deposit my books at my locker and start across campus, hoping for the third time today to retrace my steps and investigate the places I marked on my map. On the way, I try to shake the strange dream from detention, but it swirls around me like a thick cloud, only confusing me more.

As I move slowly past buildings, I watch my feet, searching for a gold gleam in the tangled grass. I’m not even close to Hollingsworth when I hear my name—or at least half of it.

“Miss Silby!”

Is there a rule against using first names here?

I look up to find Mr. Seth strolling toward me; a leather satchel hangs on his shoulder. Without the classroom setting, his juvenile features scream at me—oversize glasses, patchy stubble covering a round chin, and acne splattered across an oily forehead. His presence brings a wave of shame, and all the anxiety of yesterday washes over me. Even the smells are back—the metallic tang of blood, the rancid odor of vomit, the unclean scent of musk.

“Looking for something?” he asks.

“Oh…no.” I shake my head.

“I hope you feel better today.”

“Uh, yeah. H-how did you know I wasn’t feeling well yesterday?”

Thankfully Mr. Seth takes my confusion for surprise. “Mr. Savior suggested you were probably ill from lunch.”

Shy.Just hearing his name reminds me of that kiss in my dream and makes me feel exposed and embarrassed. I look down. How will I face him now?

Mr. Seth continues, “I’d like to make a request that next time you feel unwell, you excuse yourself and go to the nurse’s office.”

I nod. “Of course.”

Mr. Seth smiles. “Heading to class?”

“Yeah.” My voice is small, breathless—full of disappointment, missing another chance to search for the coin. The wind pulls at my skin and my hair as if to drag me away, toward my purpose, but I resist and follow Mr. Seth to Hollingsworth.