knees, counting pennies.” She waves the postcard at me. “You know this is the closest you’ll ever get to travelling, unless you serve a decent witch family and they allow you to travel with them.”
Her words hit a spot deep in my heart. Servitude could be my way forward, if I don’t skill up in the next two years. My throat thickens as I fight to retort and can’t speak.
Beside me, I sense Matt’s anger growing, and when I grab his hand the same energy as the night backstage spreads. “No,” I whisper. “Don’t touch her.”
He doesn’t speak or look at me, and I grip his hand harder trying to communicate with him. The words ‘okay but the bitch doesn’t get away with this’ whisper in my mind and I stare at the side of his head.
Did I hear Matt’s thoughts?
Something tears and I jerk my head back around to Katherine. She rips the postcard into pieces, eyes on me the whole time before sprinkling them on the floor.
“Pick that up. I’ll give you 10p.”
The tears pricking my eyes when I rush from the room aren’t from her words, but the sheer nastiness that Katherine would destroy something she knows is important to me.
One day, this girl will learn a hard lesson, because someone will snap.
10
AMELIA
The only thing I want right now is alone time, and I know where to go.
Jamie has family connections to the headmistress, and he has access to a small cottage at the edge of the grounds other students don’t—the old groundsman’s cottage from when the place was an asylum in Victorian times.
Jamie comes here alone normally, occasionally Ash and Matt join him. But, like me, he enjoys solitude and an escape from the academy occasionally. Also, like me, he lives far from home and this is an escape on the weekends other students head home. Only a few stay around campus at weekends and holidays, including Katherine, despite living closer to her parents’ estate than I do to my family in Scotland.
With the key Jamie gave me, I gather up my favourite fluffy blue blanket and a book, not forgetting a bag full of snacks, and leave Walcott house for a quiet Sunday afternoon.
I’ll deal with the Katherine issue later, once I’ve calmed down.
What do people achieve from belittling others the way she did me? The girl has issues herself to think treating people that way is okay. But, she’s a vampire and a lamia. They’re never the kindest individuals.
A sofa, small table, and TV squash into the lounge room in the cottage with a small kitchen behind a door at the rear of the room. Upstairs are two empty bedrooms, occasionally used by visitors to the academy. They only fit single beds—you’ll never find dignitaries staying here.
I snuggle into my favourite spot on the sofa—midway between the fireplace and TV—and drag the blanket over my knees. Switching my phone off, I drop it on the table and pick up my copy of The Bronze Horsemen. The sweeping romance captivated me and dragged me into a world I never knew existed from the first page, and I don’t find as much time to read as I’d like. The book shocked me that humans can be as cruel to each other as they are to supernatural, but I’m always sucked in by the romance in a book.
I lose myself again, munching on chocolate cookies, when a light rap on the door distracts me. Jamie, I bet. Did he notice I snuck away with his key?
But when I glance out the window, I spot Matt. He sees me and waves, before lifting a small plastic bag he holds in one hand, and a pizza box in the other.
“Are you going to let me in?” he calls when I stare at him as if he were an apparition. After the disastrous kiss last night, I’m surprised he wants to come near me at all.
Or has he come for more? I inwardly slap myself. Sure, because all guys love a girl who runs away like a kid when he kisses her.
I open the door and Matt immediately thrusts the pizza box at me. “I hope you like Hawaiian.”
My heart thuds in my ears as I look between the warm box in my hands and the tall guy wandering in without an invite.
Closing the door, I follow him. He’s sitting on the sofa with the bag on his lap. “Do you know how long I’ve waited for someone to deliver