Olive is nowhere to be found. Maybe she left. Maybe Jasper chased her off. Maybe she went to get help … doesn’t matter. I need to get back to the school. I need to get out of here before Jasper gets loose again.
Because if he does, I finally understand what that strange look in his eyes was.
Because if he gets hold of me again tonight, Jasper is going to kill me.
Chapter Fourteen
Fight back.
That’s what the nurse told me—but this, this, is not what she had in mind. I know that.
The night around me is oddly quiet and serene once the shouts have faded behind me. Outside of that alleyway, it’s just another peaceful night in the village.
Fortunately for me, it doesn’t take long for me to flag down a cab.
It pulls over reluctantly at first, the driver peering suspiciously at me through the glass until he finally relents and unlocks the doors to let me in.
“Bleakwood, please,” I wheeze, handing money to the driver.
He says something in German, but I don’t understand. He seems concerned. I probably look horrible. I just shake my head and throw the rest of Rafael’s money at him.
“Mein Deutsch ist nicht gut,” I mumble, dragging myself into the backseat. It’s one of the only phrases I can speak reliably. He tries to say something again, but I just keep repeating, “Mein Deutsch ist nicht gut” until he gives up and drives off.
The ride takes a bit, but soon enough I’m at Bleakwood. I don’t know if I paid him the right amount of money, and frankly, right now I don’t care.
There at that moment in the alleyway, I thought for a moment that Jasper was going to kill me.
I saw it in his eyes.
I should be terrified, but even now, as the shouts fade from my brain just as they did from my ears, all I feel is angry.
An all-consuming anger as a thought echoes through my brain from earlier.
Enough.
I’ve had enough.
I burst angrily into my dorm, startling Rafael. He sits up and pulls his covers up to his chest in a single, frantic tug.
“Geez, Alex,” he snaps as I storm in. “Warn somebody, will you?”
Normally, I’d be embarrassed, but I have no room for it tonight. I strip his suede jacket off and throw it onto his bed.
“You need to back off,” I say, the gravel in my voice coming out on its own as a warning.
“Uh … okay?”
He picks up his jacket and eyes it, and me, suspiciously. “So … what’s all this about?”
He gestures to the rest of me, which while a little unkempt, looks surprisingly less wor
se for wear than I expected. Less worse for wear than I would have been, had Heath and Beck not suddenly grown a conscience.
Somehow, this thought just makes the ire raise in me even more.
“The Brotherhood found me on my date and started pushing me around,” I say through gritted teeth.
That’s an understatement.