CHAPTER 6
ZEPHYR
She’d been going for a while. It was already getting old, this little hissy-fit of Biba’s. Any other piece of ass, and I would not be tolerating such a tirade. But Biba was different.
She didn’t come home the night before, and again, with any other girl, I would not have especially cared. With Biba, I was stewing. Fall term was not starting the way I’d wanted it.
First, Biba straight-up iced me on my offer to share my room. Didn’t she know that basically any other girl at Stormcloud would give their left tit for that offer? Then she started fraternizing with Brant again. I mean, I put a hold on my disagreements with Theo at the end of last term. Circumstances were fluid at that time, what with some masked fucking maniac trying to slash my girl’s throat on the last night of classes. And I’ll even grant you that Theo was instrumental in saving Biba from that asshole, so I came into this year prepared to give him complete immunity despite his counterproductive, holier-than-thou attitude. All he had to do was steer clear of me and Biba, but he couldn’t even manage that.
Then there was the one-two punch of the last twenty-four hours. First, Biba disappeared, which sent me into a fucking spiral. All I could do was picture was her with Theo Brant’s pathetic little pecker in her mouth. Made me sick. But then she showed up tonight, and the story she told was somehow even worse.
“Dean Schmidt,” she said. “He’s got me in his crosshairs. He believes this Detective Soglio’s charges against me.”
“That’s bullshit. Even Schmidt isn’t that stupid. I’m going to set him straight.”
She stopped me before I could walk out.
“You can’t.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“He said he wouldn’t allow you and the guys to bring the Kings back to Stormcloud.”
I could feel my face burning.
“That insolent prick,” I fumed. “He said that? Well, fuck that—he doesn’t have the power to stop us.”
Even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t accurate. I mean, there weren’t a lot of people who could mess with Arvo, Sol, and myself, but Schmidt was one of them. He had the resources and connections to bring actual heat, and whatever pain I wanted to inflict on that white-shoe, tweedy little shit, I had to keep him calm for the time being. There were plans already in motion: scores to be settled, wrongs to be righted. Schmidt was in for a world of hurt, but not just yet. I had to let him think he had the upper hand.
It wasn’t gonna be easy, though. My head was pounding, I was so pissed at the thought of the Dean in his natty suit acting tough when I wasn’t in the room. I had half a mind to cold-cock him in his office the following day.
I had to force that thought from my mind, though. Biba was already on to the other thing she’d come to tell me. It was the thing I probably should have acted more concerned about. Some asshole at the school had fingered her for Gail Monfort’s murder.
Oh, yeah, apparently Gail had been murdered—at least according to some flatfoot detective in the village.
“Who would do that?” Biba yammered on. “Like, who would hate me so much that they’d give a false report to the police?”
The answer seemed obvious to me.
“You think it might be the same fuckers that tried to stab you last June?”
She turned back to me, fuming. “Is that supposed to be funny, Zeph? They want to arrest me.”
“Don’t be over-dramatic.”
“They said they wanted to arrest me. They fucking tried to get Schmidt to let them take me in.”
“I’m sure the detective likes you for this crime. Cops always want to bring someone in, even if it’s not the criminal. It makes them look busy.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Stop worrying, for one. You’re gonna give yourself an aneurysm. Leave this to me. I can make it go away.”
“That’s not the point,” she all but screamed, tears of frustration forming at the corners of her eyes. “They won’t stop, okay? They’re going to keep coming at me. I know it. I can’t lean on you to fix these things all the time.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t rely on you to—”