“Moron!” Brook’s eyes shone with a dangerous glint behind her glasses. She marched out of the class. I followed her.
We went down the hallway toward the staircase.
“He likes you,” I said.
“Yeah, sure,” Brook growled.
Sheila turned out to be the exact opposite of Ashlyn. Where Ashlyn’s picture showed a petite cutesy girly-girl, Sheila was muscular. Not manly, but really cut. We caught her in the locker room, just as she was going out to play volleyball. It’s not often you see a girl with a six-pack.
She sat on a wooden bench by the small wooden room inside the locker room that said sauna on it. I wondered what the heck sauna meant. It was a first-class locker room; the floor was tile, three showers, two bathrooms, “sauna,” large lockers. The clean tile smelled faintly of pine. Special locker room for special snowflakes.
“I don’t know why Ashlyn pulled this stunt.” Sheila pulled on her left sock.
“Was she worried about anything?”
“She did seem kind of jumpy.”
“Did she have a problem with Lisa?”
Sheila paused with the shoe on one foot. “Lisa the Dud?”
Okay, so I didn’t like Lisa. But if they called me that, I’d get pissed off really quick, too. “Lisa who senses Ashlyn’s ‘presence.’”
“Not really.” Sheila shook her head. “One time someone left a paw print on Ashlyn’s desk. She got really upset.”
“What kind of paw print?”
“Wolf,” Brook said. “I remember that. She scrubbed her desk for ten minutes.”
“How big was the print and when did this happen?”
“Big,” Sheila said. “Like bowl-sized. It was about a week ago or so.”
Prints that large could indicate a shapeshifter, a werewolf, possibly a werejackal or a werecoyote.
“If anybody had a problem with her, it would be Yu Fong,” Sheila said.
“He is the only eighteen-year-old sophomore we have,” Brook said. “He’s this odd Chinese guy.”
“Odd how?”
“He’s an orphan,” Sheila said. “His parents were murdered.”
“I thought they died in a car accident,” Brook said.
“Well, whatever happened, happened,” Sheila told me. “For some reason he didn’t go to school. I heard he was in prison, but whatever. Anyway, he showed up one day, talked to Master Gendun, and got himself admitted as a student. He tested out of enough credits to start as a sophomore. He’s dangerous.”
“Very powerful,” Brook said.
“Uber-magic,” Sheila said. “You can feel it coming off of him sometimes. Makes my skin itch.”
Brook nodded. “Not sure exactly what sort of magic he has, but whatever it is, it’s significant. There are three other Chinese kids in school and they follow Yu Fong around like bodyguards. You can’t even talk to him.”
“And Ashlyn had a problem with him?” Somehow I couldn’t picture Ashlyn deliberately picking a fight with this guy.
“She was terrified of him,” Sheila said. “One time he tried to talk to her and she freaked out and ran off.”
Okay, then. Next target—the mysterious Yu Fong.
? ? ?
THE SEARCH FOR the “odd Chinese guy” took us to the cafeteria, where according to Brook, this uber-magic user had second-shift lunch. Brook led the way. I followed her through the double doors and paused. A large skylight poured sunshine into the huge room, filled with round metal tables and ornate chairs. At the far wall, the buffet table stretched, manned by several servers in white. Fancy.
The students picked up their plates and carried them to different tables. Some sat, talking. To the right, several voices laughed in unison.
To the left, a wide doorway allowed a glimpse of a smaller sunroom. In its center, right under the skylight, grew a small tree with red leaves, all but glowing in the sunshine. A table stood by the tree and a young guy sat in a chair, leaning on the table, reading a book. He was too old to be called a boy, but too young to be called a man, and his face was inhumanly beautiful.
I stood and stared.
I’d seen some handsome guys before. This guy . . . he was magic. His dark hair was brushed away from his high forehead, falling back without a trace of a curl. His features were flawlessly perfect, his face strong and masculine, with a contoured jaw, a tiny cleft in the chin, full lips, and high cheekbones. His eyebrows, dark and wide, bent to shield his eyes, large, beautiful, and very, very dark. Not black, but solid brown.
I blinked, and my power kicked in. The guy was wrapped in pale blue. Not quite silver, but with enough of it to dilute the color to a shimmering blue gray. Divinity. He was either a priest or an object of worship, and looking at him, I was betting on the latter. Glowing like this, he reminded me of one of those celestial beings of Chinese mythology they made me learn about in my old school. He looked like a god.
“That’s him,” Brook said. “And his guards.”
Two boys sat at a second table a few feet away. “I thought you said there were three,” I murmured.
“There are—Hui has algebra right now.”
I scanned the two guys sitting next to Yu Fong—plain blue—and let go of my sensate vision. His face was distracting enough. I didn’t need the glow.
“I’ll go ask him if he’ll talk to you,” Brook said.
“Why don’t we go together?” They took the pecking order really seriously in this place.
Brook compressed her lips. “No, they know me.”
She made it about two-thirds of the way and then one of Yu Fong’s guards peeled himself from the chair and blocked her way. Brook said something, he shook his head, and she turned around and came back to me.
Of course, it was a no. And now they knew I was coming.
Well, you have to work with what you’ve got.
I raised my hands and wiggled my fingers at the uber-magic guy. He continued reading his book. I waved again and started toward him, a nice big smile on my face. I’ve seen Kate do this, and if I didn’t screw it up, it would work.
The first guard stepped forward, blocking my path. I gave him my cute smile, looked past him, and pointed to myself, as if I was being summoned over and couldn’t believe it. He glanced over his shoulder to check Yu Fong’s face. I drove my fist hard into his gut. The boy folded around my fist with a surprised gasp. I slammed my hand onto his head, driving his head down. Face meet knee. Boom! The impact reverberated through my leg.
I shoved him aside and kept moving. The second bodyguard jumped to his feet. I swiped the nearest chair, swung it, and hit him with it just as he was coming up.
The chair connected to the side of his head with a solid crunch. I let go and he stumbled back with the chair on top of him. I stepped past him and landed in the spare chair at the table.
The uber-guy slowly raised his gaze from his book and looked at me.
Whoa.
There was a kind of serious arrogance in his eyes, a searing intensity and determination. Living on the street gives you a sixth sense about those things. You learn to read people. Reading him was easy: He was powerful and arrogant, and he imposed control on everything he saw, including himself. He had been through life’s vicious grinder and had come out stronger for it. He would never let you know what he was thinking and you would always be on thin ice.
I touched the surface of the table with the tip of my finger. “Safe.”