ReVamped by Lucienne Diver Read Free Book Online Page A

his glower particularly effective.
    “You’re smiling,” he accused me.
    I gave him a blank look.
    “I was talking about the events of last night, saying we’d have a counselor on hand to deal with the shock and grief. You were grinning like an idiot.”
    There was something ugly in his tone, but I guess I could understand that.
    “What were you thinking about, Ms. Belfry?” he asked, eyes trying to burn a hole through my head. But I’d done hand-to-hand combat with creepy psycho-psychics before the Feds ever found me and was not going to be intimidated by a Podunk professor. “Perhaps you can share with the class.”
    “Coffee,” I answered. “But if I had enough to share with the class, I wouldn’t be daydreaming about it.”
    The class laughed, breaking the tension a bit but pissing off Richardson, who turned away, muttering something about brain-dead kids and how he might as well mark us all absent, just like our minds.
    I almost made it to third period before Ulric ambushed me in the hall outside art class, which Agents Stick and Stuffed had arranged for me, apparently not realizing that I hadn’t progressed beyond stick figures. (In their defense, I was fabu with a color wheel.) Lily and Bella were with him. “We’re ditching to visit Bram at the hospital. You with us?”
    I looked at each of them. Bella was staring at her toes. Lily was looking back at me, some kind of plea in her eyes, but I had no idea for what. I debated what to do. On the one hand, I was worried about Bram and up for any excuse to ditch class. On the other … at the rate I was going—or not going—to my classes, I might be kicked out of school before I had the chance to figure out what the heck was going on with these people. I didn’t think the Feds would look kindly on me flunking my first mission, and I wasn’t anxious to find out how they might go about terminating my services. Plus, there was the whole hospital-hives deal. I should probably stay behind.
    Yeah, probably, but when had I ever done the smart thing? Besides, this might be my only chance to question the jerky jocks while they were stuck in hospital beds hopped up on pain meds. I just hoped they weren’t still upset about their butt-whupping. It’d just break my heart if they popped their stitches trying to get at me. Of course, a broken heart wasn’t exactly fatal in my line of work.
    What would Kim Possible do? I asked myself. Sadly, I knew the answer to that. Orderlies and antiseptic wouldn’t scare her. She’d follow the leads.
    “I should probably make it to my afternoon classes at some point,” I waffled, one last time.
    Lily let out a breath. “Good, you can stay here with—”
    “But I think we should all stick together,” I finished.
    “—me,” Lily trailed off. “What? Why?”
    “In case there’s another attack,” I answered her. “Safety in numbers and all that.”
    Ulric gave Lily a shark’s smile. “You’re outnumbered, Lil. Come on, time to face your fears.”
    “Hospitals give me the heebie-jeebies,” she said as an aside to me.
    “Oh, sing it, sister,” I answered. “But this is for Bram. Maybe hearing our voices will help somehow.”
    “Bella’s anyway,” Ulric said. “Her voice could probably make the dead sit up and take notice.”
    “Don’t say ‘dead,’” Bella ordered.
    “What? I meant that in a good way.”
    “Uh, guys, if we’re going to go, now would be the time.” Lily was looking past us down the hall. Instinctively, we all turned to see a woman in a pinstriped pants suit—the principal?—coming at us with two men who practically screamed detective .
    “Well, they’ve got our names and faces. We might as well get it over with—” I started.
    Bella bolted for the emergency door at the far end of the hall.
    “Damn!” Lily and I cried.
    We all took off running after her.
    “Bella!” Ulric called, but she’d hit the push bar on the exit door and burst out into the sunlight before we could