Darklight, Tome 3 : Death and the Girl He Loves

SAME DAY, DIFFERENT DEATH

The Bedford Fields Academy pitched itself as one of the most prestigious private schools in North America, promising a stellar education and a future brighter than an exploding supernova. Or something along those lines. In reality, it was a last-ditch effort for rich parents with kids who’d been kicked out of every other institution in the free world. The boarding school was insanely expensive, but those parents with unruly children and money to burn would pay anything for the illusion of a good education. They took their public guise seriously. Keeping up the pretense of good parentage took effort. And trust funds. And the school kept the children out of their hair. For that, they would pay extra.

I didn’t know that when I started at Bedford Fields, of course, but a pretty blonde with too much eyeliner and too few scruples explained the rules and regulations of the school in the bathroom while cleaning her nails with a switchblade. She’d lifted the knife from a vendor while on vacation with her family in Cabo San Lucas the summer before, and she made sure to mention how she’d honed the blade to a razor’s edge for ease of penetration. She then proceeded to ask me why a redheaded short chick with pasty white skin dared to enter her domain. I had no idea if she meant the school or the bathroom. Either way, that was my first day and my introduction to life sans everything I’d ever known. It went downhill from there.

First of all, the reality of winter in the North was a complete shock to my system. I couldn’t get warm, even bundled in seven layers as I was then. Second, I’d started school in the middle of the semester, thus I was behind in almost every class they’d assigned to me. And third, I apparently had an accent, a fact that some of the more irritating students reveled in teasing me about.