students filter in and find their seats, the whole front of the room looks like an eggplant exploded—or, more accurately, about a thousand eggplants.
The House of Usher has nothing on this place. Edgar Allan Poe, eat your heart out.
I turn to my left to share the joke with Hudson but realize he didn’t walk in with me.
Uncle Finn is on the stage already, but nobody else is, despite there being eight intricately carved (big surprise) chairs set up in a row directly behind the microphone and sound system that my uncle is currently messing with.
I have to laugh as I watch him, because here in the middle of this auditorium that looks like a horror story waiting to happen, my uncle is doing the same thing that every high school principal or vice principal in the history of high schools does before a schoolwide assembly. The abject normalcy of the whole thing amuses me, but it also makes me just a little homesick.
Not necessarily for the life I used to have but for the girl I used to be. Normal. Human. Average.
I mean, in my head I’m the same old boring Grace I’ve always been, but at Katmere Academy, I’m abnormal. An anomaly. Someone to be stared at and whispered about. Most of the time, I ignore it—I mean, I’m the girl mated to Jaxon Vega while Hudson Vega lives in her head. And, oh yeah, I have a pesky habit of turning to stone whenever I want.
Honestly, who wouldn’t stare?
“Let’s sit over there,” Macy says, pointing to a couple of empty seats near the very front. “I want a good view of this mess.”
I’m not normally a very front-of-the-room kind of girl, but of the things I feel like I might have to argue about today, where I sit doesn’t even blip on the radar. Besides, at least this way I’ll get a good look at Jaxon and Hudson’s parents.
“No!” Hudson’s shout reverberates in my head, so loud and vehement that it actually brings me to a stop, eyes wide, as I look around, wondering what kind of attack I should brace for.
But everything looks normal—or as normal as it gets at Katmere Academy, considering a group of witches is bouncing a ball all around the auditorium using nothing but a few flicks of their fingers.
What’s wrong? I demand, my heart beating out of control.
“Don’t sit up front. Don’t get anywhere near them.”
Near whom? I ask, again looking around for a threat I have yet to recognize.
“My parents. They would love for you to sit that close so they can get a good look at you.”
I feel like that’s normal, under the circumstances, I tell him with a shrug. And I want a good look at them, too.
Macy’s gotten a little bit ahead of me, since Hudson’s shout stopped me in my tracks, and I weave around a couple of groups of students in an effort to catch up to her.
“Damn it, Grace! I said no!”
Excuse me? I ask, shocked and more than a little annoyed. Did you just order me not to do something?
“You can’t trust them,” he tells me. “You can’t just put yourself up there in front of the king and queen and think nothing’s going to happen.”
We’re in the middle of a crowded assembly! I shake my head in amazement. What are they going to do to me?
I wave to Gwen, who is sidling up to Macy, already sitting in the front row. I’m still seven or eight rows back, so I skirt around a few students in an effort to weave my way to them.
“Anything they want! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. My father is the head of the Circle because he has killed, literally, everyone who might possibly be any kind of threat to him. And he has done that continuously for two thousand years. Do you think for one second that he’s going to hesitate to kill you, too?”
In the middle of a school function? Sure, he’s going to try to kill me with my uncle, all the Katmere Academy teachers, and the entire student body looking on. Not likely. So will you please chill out and let me take an effing seat?
I move down a couple more stairs and then freeze, not because I want to but because my feet won’t move. At all.
I start to panic, wondering what on earth can be wrong, but then it hits me. Don’t you dare! Hudson! Let me go right now!