“That explains why you were so eager to fight Piers,” she says with satisfaction.
“I can’t imagine what you must be feeling,” Erin says emphatically. She clasps her hands in front of her in her lap and squeezes them tight together. “Everything they did to you last year … and Piers’ father being involved in the thing with your … you know.”
“You mean my parent’s murder?”
Tears start to well up in Erin’s eyes. I move to comfort her, but Luiza’s ahead of me. She reaches out and wraps an arm around Erin’s shoulders.
Erin’s voice is strangled when she snaps back, “But you can’t go getting expelled!”
“I want revenge,” I say coldly. “All the people who’ve wronged me, they need to pay for what they’ve done.”
“Sure, but Erin’s right.” Luiza says, gazing over at me. “You need to channel that energy into something less physical. The school won’t tolerate you killing someone. And look—if I’m going to become the greatest monster hunter there ever was, I need some competition. If you get expelled, I won’t have any.”
“Hey!” Erin says indignantly, but Luiza just looks back at her and shrugs.
“You’re not cut out for the fighting, mi cantante.”
Erin sits up, letting Luiza’s arm fall away from her shoulders. “Look, Avery. I know it must have hurt to be betrayed by Sawyer, and for the others to treat you like they did … but you can’t fix that by breaking their limbs.”
I stand up and start pacing. “You don’t know how this feels. But maybe physical pain isn’t severe enough punishment for what they did.”
“That’s not what I meant!” Erin says hastily.
I don’t answer her. Sure, it’s not what she meant … but it’s my only option. I know they’re right. I’ll end up killing one of them if I let myself go the way I did with Piers, but I do have to take revenge. I yearn for it. But she and Luiza are right—getting myself kicked out of Saint M is no way to go about that.
I sit down on my bed, my words descending into near incoherent babble.
“There has to be something. Something worse I can do to them.”
Luiza frowns. “This doesn’t seem wise,” she says cautiously.
Erin is trembling, shaking her head. “Avery, no. Whatever you do, it isn’t going to end well.”
“It’s better than me getting expelled.”
“True …” Luiza says hesitantly, but she and Erin share a worried look.
So they don’t like it—so what? How could they understand? I grin wickedly as I scratch Cleaver behind the ears.
I have to come up with a plan. First, where to start?
Chapter Five
Erin doesn’t talk much as we
get ready in the morning. She’s normally a headache of a morning chatterbox. I know she wasn’t thrilled with the way everything went yesterday, and admittedly I’m a little sad when I see her downcast eyes. I don’t want to push away the only friend I have.
“You excited for creature handling today?” I ask tentatively as we leave the dorm.
She glances sideways at me. “Yeah. Are you?”
“Yeah. Especially since the menagerie’s gotta smell ten times better after all the work I did in it yesterday.” I shoot her a grin, and she finally smiles back.
“It does smell a little better,” she says once we actually get to the menagerie. I know she’s only saying it for my sake. I don’t smell anything different. Though, then again, that might just be me.
It’s going to take more than one session scrubbing my skin raw to get the rest of that smell out.
Professor Rodriguez greets us as class begins and takes us to a small habitat that’s full of lush green grass and shrubbery. The bushes seem to mark off smaller enclosures, making a small grid of hedged-in squares across the whole room. The whole class stops at the entrance for him to address us.