Wade clamps his hands over his nose, blood already rocketing out, spurting through his fingers.
“Smile, bitch,” I say.
I raise my phone and snap a quick pic of his howling face. Then I hightail it out of there before the rest of the Enforcers wake up and make it something like a fair fight.
I present Ozzy the picture over breakfast. He laughs so hard that tears come to his eyes.
“That was this morning?” he says. “Where is he? I wanna see it in person.”
He looks around the dining hall, hoping to see Wade slumped over his pancakes with a couple tampons stuffed up his nose. No luck—he must still be holed up in the bathroom trying to get the bleeding to stop.
“D’you think it’s broken?” Ozzy asks hopefully.
“I damn well hope so,” I say.
Wade does not appear for our Structural Organization class, though Rocco and Dax must have heard about the retaliation, because they’re glaring at us worse than ever.
I’m going against my usual policy of de-escalation, but I don’t give a fuck. I was a good boy my first two years at Kingmakers, relatively speaking. It’s about time I had a little fun.
“You up for installing that satellite?” I ask Ozzy.
“Yeah,” he says. “I only got one arm though, so you’re gonna have to do the heavy lifting.”
The Starlink satellite dish is small and compact, less than two feet in diameter. It needs a clear line of sight up to the sky, and the higher we mount it, the better. Most of all, it can’t be spotted—it was a fuckin’ pain in the ass smuggling this thing onto the island. The last thing I need is some school employee ripping it down again right after I put it up.
We need it close, so the obvious choice is one of Kingmaker’s six towers. The Octagon Tower in which we have our rooms would be ideal, but it’s packed with male Heirs. Even the attic space is occupied. The Library Tower is out because of Miss Robin. Nobody lives in the attic of the Accountant’s tower—all their rooms are on the lower levels. But it would look strange for Ozzy and me to be traipsing up there with a suspicious package under my arm.
The Dungeon Tower is empty, but the doors are always locked whether there’s a prisoner inside or not—with modern electronic bolts, not the rusty old key-locks I could practically pick with a fingernail. And the Bell Tower was never rebuilt after it was ravaged by fire a hundred years ago. That rickety pile of stones looks ready to tumble down at a moment’s notice—we’d be risking our necks just walking through the door.
That leaves the Rookery. It’s the smallest tower, nestled up on the north end of the cathedral. It’s full of feathers and birdshit, but I think it will suit our purposes.
Ozzy keeps a lookout while I jimmy the lock at the base of the stairs. We slip inside, over steps spattered with dusty white guano. Tiny bits of down float in the still air.
Dozens of homing pigeons used to roost in here. Falcons, too, on the lower levels. The ammonia stench is eye-watering, but it won’t matter. We won’t be spending much time in here. Once we’ve got the satellite in place, we can set up our own private network, unsearchable and undetectable unless you already know its name. Ozzy and I will have lightning-speed internet while lounging around in our dorm room.
Assuming he can get back the use of his hand so he can type again. FUCK Wade Dyer, and Rocco Prince, too.
Ozzy must be thinking the same thing. As I organize the tools to cut a hole in the steeply-pitched roof, he says, “Can’t wait to get this running.”
“Glad I’ve got you to do it,” I say. “I’m not bad with this shit, but you’re so much better.”
“SO much better,” Ozzy agrees, grinning.
“Good thing no girls ever liked you, so you had plenty of time to practice.”
He snickers. “They shouldn’t like me, but for some reason they do. Girls just don’t know what’s good for ‘em.”
“Yeah, neither do guys,” I say, thinking about Zoe again.
She pops into my brain multiple times a day. When I’m around Anna and Leo, Chay and Zoe, I can’t keep my eyes off her. I don’t know what it is. She’s not as loud as Chay, not as flashy as the other girls at school. Lately she’s been dressing like a boy in her oxfords and trousers. Somehow it only makes her sexier. Maybe ‘cause I know what’s under those clothes now. I shouldn’t be thinking about her figure—I was never supposed to see it in the first place. But fucking hell, I can’t forget it. I’ve never seen a body like that, not anywhere.
And it’s not just her looks. It’s the way she doesn’t talk often, but when she does, anything she says is intelligent and well-reasoned. She has this quiet dignity that reels me in, even when I know she’s about the worst possible candidate for a crush.
“Yup, we’re just as dumb,” Ozzy laughs. “I’ve got a real bonehead plan for the weekend.”
“Oh yeah?” I grin. “What’s that?”
“Gonna take another swing at Chay.”
I shake my head at him. ”What’s this, the fifth time?”
“Sixth,” Ozzy says.
“Maybe she’ll pity-fuck you now that you’re a cripple.”
“You think?” Ozzy says hopefully.
I’m sure Ozzy’s planning to make his move at the Halloween party. If Chay’s gonna be there, I wonder if Zoe will be, too? She doesn’t always come to parties because her shithead cousins rat her out to her dad. But if I don’t let the cousins in . . .
“Alright,” I say to Ozzy, “I’m ready to start cutting. You got the safety glasses?”
“Yup,” Ozzy says, passing me a pair. “Pocketed them before Wade flambéed my arm, luckily. ‘Cause, being honest, I wasn’t gonna remember afterward.”
“Yeah . . . well he’s not gonna remember what his nose used to look like either,” I say.
Laughing, we start sawing through the roof.
Ozzy and I are throwing a Halloween party at the old stables. We’re charging a fifty-dollar cover with the promise of unlimited spiked punch. The cover isn’t the money-maker. It’s the metric fuck-ton of Molly that everybody buys once they’re tipsy and dancing.
Throwing a party is all about creating a mood. I hire a couple of Freshman Accountants to make me a thousand black paper bats that hang from the rafters. Then I rig up some spooky red lights, surround the punch bowls with smoking dry ice courtesy of the Chemistry lab, and queue up a killer playlist.
I love music, always have. It does something to my brain. When I’ve got just the right beat going, and a complicated melody on top, I feel like I can think ten times faster, like my mind is going a million miles a minute.
I invite Leo and Anna, informing Anna that Martin Romero and Santiago Cruz won’t make it through the door.
Anna cocks one darkly-penciled eyebrow.
“Is that for Zoe’s benefit? You’ve become so . . . helpful.”
“Yeah. I’m a nice guy.”
“Since when?” she laughs.
“Just tell her,” I say, trying to sound nonchalant. “I never liked those fucksticks anyway. So no loss there.”
I don’t know if Zoe plans to come, but I’m strangely keyed up as the kids start pouring through the door, some of them dressed in the kind of makeshift costumes you can cobble together from shit you happen to have on hand.