Terrence scoffed as he plunked down in one of the other chairs. With his mocha skin, artfully spiked black hair, and stunning hazel eyes, he was easily one of the best looking guys I had ever seen. He looked at Michael. “Whatcha up to, Mike?”
“Nothing,” Michael mumbled. He gathered up his laptop and stood timidly. “Um, I have some stuff to do. Talk to you later.”
I watched him hurry from the room, feeling bad that we had scared him away. “He doesn’t seem to fit in here much. He’s an orphan too, right?”
Terrence nodded, wearing a sympathetic smile. “Yes, poor kid.” I gave him a hard look, and he quickly added, “Oh I don’t mean it that way. I have nothing against orphans. He’s just never gotten over losing his family.”
I was afraid to ask, but I did anyway. “What happened to them?”
“What else? Suckers got them. He and his brother were living with their mother in Atlanta when our people found them. But the same night they went to get them, the suckers went after them. Only Michael got out. His mother didn’t make it, and the warriors couldn’t find Matthew. The suckers took him.”
“How old was his brother?”
“Matthew was his twin, and they were seven when it happened.” Terrence sank back heavily in his chair. “They never found Matthew, and Michael still believes his brother got away. No one can convince him otherwise. He spends most of his time searching the Internet, looking at missing persons websites, public records – stuff like that.”
“That’s awful.” I’d lost my dad to a vampire, but at least I knew he was dead and I didn’t have to go through life wondering what had happened to him. I’d spent ten years just trying to understand why he was killed, and I could not imagine how hard it would be if he had gone missing like Michael’s brother.
The three of us sat in silence for a minute before Terrence asked, “So, Sara, what did Tristan say to you today?”
“Tristan?” The only Tristan I knew of was Lord Tristan, who sat on the Council of Seven and ran Westhorne. He’d been away on Council business since I got here, and I had yet to meet him.
Terrence shook his head like I had asked who Michael Jackson was. “You know, Tristan, the head honcho? He showed up in training today.”
“Oh . . . which one was he?” I resisted the urge to bury my head in my hands. Callum had wiped the floor with my butt in front of Lord Tristan? After that exhibit, the man must be wondering why Nikolas had wasted so much time trying to bring me in.
Both boys snickered. “He would be that one,” Josh informed me. I looked through the doorway, which gave us a clear view of the main hall, and saw the blond man from this morning talking to a red-haired woman I recognized as Claire, who had shown me around on my first day here. I felt heat rise in my neck. “Oh, him. He didn’t say anything to me. He was talking to Callum.”
The boys looked disappointed that there was nothing more to it, but Josh quickly switched gears. “We heard some things about you, and we were wondering if they were true.”
“And what would that be?” I asked warily.
“Is it true that you actually hung with a pack of werewolves?”
At the downward turn of his mouth, irritation shot through me. I knew the history between werewolves and the Mohiri, and I was well aware of how the two races felt about each other. But Roland and Peter were like family to me, and I would not listen to anyone put them down. “Yes, I hung with them all the time. I even slept at their houses and ate with them. In fact, my best friend is a werewolf.”
Josh put up his hands. “Touchy. Okay, we get it; the wolves are off limits.”
Terrence leaned in. “We heard a lot of other stuff, too.”
“Such as?”
“Did you really kill some suckers?”
“And fight off a pack of crocotta?” Josh asked.
“And rescue a baby troll?”
I looked at their eager faces and shrugged. “Yes.”
“Yes to what?” Josh asked impatiently.
“Yes to all of it. Only there were three young trolls and I didn’t rescue them alone. I did fight one crocotta, but it probably would have killed me if one of my friends hadn’t killed it first. And I did kill a vampire.” I had killed two vampires if I included the one Remy held for me, but Eli was the only one that mattered to me.
“No way!” exclaimed a new male voice, and I looked up to see that Olivia and Mark, two other trainees, had joined us. I hadn’t spoken to Mark much, but Olivia and I had talked a few times and she seemed nice. Olivia was pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way with long dark hair, a smattering of freckles, and a sweet smile. Mark reminded me of a grunge rocker with shaggy blond hair that fell into his eyes. He didn’t smile as much as Olivia. I had noticed they hung out together a lot, and I wondered if they were a couple or friends like me and Roland.