The Tiny Curse: Werewolf High Book 2(16)

"Psst," I said to Nikolai. "Hey, I have a business proposition for you."

"Sorry," he said. "I can't hear you over the smell."

It was kind of hard going, but I managed to climb up onto his arm, scale up to his shoulder and flick him on the ear.

"Look," I said. "I know you've got a bit of a thing for my roommate, Hannah."

I couldn't see his expression because I was sitting on his shoulder, but his neck grew a bit pink.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he muttered. "Shut up."

"It's okay, she's very cute and nice and probably too good for you. You  know she thinks you're a dickbag though, right? How about you help me  out and I change her mind about you?"

I left out the bit about how she wasn't speaking to me and probably  thought I was the #1 dickbag in the world. That was just a temporary  thing and therefore not relevant.

"What do you propose?" he asked.

*

It wasn't getting into the Red House that was the problem, Nikolai had  my keycard out of my bag and the security wasn't half as tight as for  the Golden House. It was that Nikolai Volkov was very recognizable.  Especially when wearing a mustard-colored top hat. Nobody said anything,  but there were stares and whispers, and as he made his way down the  hallway to my door, people were gathered in doorways, peeking out. I  heard the snickety-click or more than one photo being taken. When he  leaned against my doorjam, the whispers broke into outright muttering.  He knocked on the door with one knuckle and waved nonchalantly to the  people gathering in the hall.

"Don't spook them," I whispered. "You don't know how ferocious they can be."

We waited a moment for Hannah to open the door but there was no answer.

"You can't just sneak in with them all watching," I whispered. "It's too suspicious."

He banged on the door with his fist. "Come on, babe," he called out,  loud enough for everyone to hear. "Don't be like this! Don't throw away  everything we have!"

The crowd seemed to creep forward, closing in on us.

"That is the opposite of helping," I told him. "Also, make sure they  know you're talking to Hannah and not me. The last thing I need is more  rumors."

"Hannah!" he called. "My baby turtledove!"

I snorted but luckily Nikolai was banging on the door loudly enough to  cover the noise. He seemed to be really getting into it, actually. A bit  too much, even.

"You know I can't live without you!" he wailed, clutching at the doorframe. "Don't leave me like this!"

His dramatics were only egging on the crowd. This was going to be all over the internet within minutes.

Then it started.

"You are my sunshine," Nikolai sang. "My only sunshine."

The crowd immediately began to back off. Wow, with all of the Volkov  fortune, Nikolai could not buy a tune. Within seconds, the hallway was  clear. I envied them their ability to run away, clutching at their ears.

"Works every time!" Nikolai said, chuckling as he swiped the keycard and  opened the door. "Woah, people actually pay money to stay in these  rooms? That's criminal!"

"Don't be a jerk and help me find my stuff," I told him, then directed  him to my side of the room, telling him which things I needed and which  weren't important. I got him to log into my desktop computer and send a  message to my brothers to say I was sick and couldn't talk for a few  days.

"You know, you could hire someone to be your errand boy," he said as he  typed. "I am actually far too busy and important for this kind of  thing."

"Oh, put a sock in it, loser, and watch your spelling. What's the point  of your fancy education if you can't tell 'then' from 'than'?"

"My charms are beyond spelling and grammar," he said, hitting send.

"There are no charms beyond spelling and grammar," I told him. "Come on, we should go before she gets back."         

     



 

Just as I said it, the door began to open.

"Quick, hide!" I hissed.

Nikolai did this elaborate drop and roll under the bed that nearly  knocked me unconscious but managed to hide us in time. I didn't know if  anything would happen to him if he was discovered inside our room, but  there would definitely be questions asked, and we didn't have any good  answers for them.

Someone walked into the room, slamming the door shut behind them. I  could tell just from the footfalls that it wasn't Hannah, she walked  very lightly and this person was a clomper.

"Yeah, the room's empty," the person said. They sounded as if they were  on the phone, but that wasn't possible at Amaris, there was no cell  signal. But that wasn't even the strangest thing. It was a male voice, a  deep and unpleasant voice and one I recognized.

Astor.

"There's no way she made it all the way back here. I told you, there's  no way she got out of the bamboo forest alive. I put the whammy on her  good."

I felt cold all over and a little bit like I was going to vomit.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll look, but it's pointless …  Fine, look I'll meet you  tomorrow night like we arranged and we can talk about it then …  Yeah, at  7PM at the pool, I won't forget."

There was some shuffling, and the sound of Astor moving through the  room. Nikolai shuffled forward so that we could see what Astor was  doing. He went over to Hannah's side of the room and started going  through her drawers. He seemed way too interested in her underwear  drawer. Actually, that was the only thing he seemed interested in. It  had sounded like he was there to look for me, maybe to finish me off for  good, but unless I was hiding in the crotch of Hannah's panties, he  wasn't going to find me. The big creeper.

I had no idea what Nikolai was thinking, or how we would get out of  this. I knew that if it came down to it, Astor was no match for Nikolai,  but I really wanted to avoid any sort of physical altercation.

"We have to get out of here," I said, so quietly it was barely a breath.  I wasn't sure Nikolai would hear, I could hardly hear myself, but I had  to rely on his super senses.

He gave a little twitch of his head that was probably supposed to  signify something, but I had no idea if it was agreement or not. Before I  could clarify, he moved. He was faster than the wind and just as  unseen, grabbing my stuff and speeding us out of there before Astor even  looked up from his panty paradise. Oh man, I hoped he didn't move onto  my pantie drawer next. Probably not, I didn't really give off the pretty  lace and silk underwear kind of impression, and that was obviously what  he was into. Plus, he intended to finish me off, so I was probably safe  from his panty sniffing.

As soon as we got clear of the building, Nikolai burst into laugher.

"Did you see that guy sniffing those panties? Oh, that was classic! What a pervert!"

I was less amused. Well, only slightly though, because I'd known Astor was a jerk but now I knew he was a panty-sniffing jerk.

"Did you miss the part where he was the one behind the spell?" I asked. "And not working alone. We need to tell the others."

But man it bugged me that I'd been outsmarted by Astor, of all people. The panty-sniffing jerk.





Chapter 11


I'd thought maybe the others would rub it in, that I'd been cursed by a  jerkhead like Astor, but they were surprisingly sympathetic. Even  Tennyson Wilde didn't comment on it.

"He should be easy enough to blackmail or cajole," he said. "I'll have  my people look into his background and I'll speak to him tomorrow.  Hopefully this will be resolved quickly and efficiently."

"If we can trace his phone records then we might find the person behind  it all as well," said Althea. "You can't go and confront him at the  pool, it's obviously a trap."

"We should steal his phone," I said. "He was obviously talking to them  through an app because there's no cell signal here, so if we stole his  phone we could access all his contacts."

"We won't need to," said Tennyson Wilde, dismissing me. "It will be  easier to confront them at the pool. Even if they know we are coming we  have the advantage of numbers." His word seemed final and nobody else  argued with him.

As they all drifted off to bed, I got to thinking. I'd been so sure it  had been Fatima. Maybe I was wrong about other things too. I'd assumed  the bullying and the curse weren't related, or only arbitrarily so, but  things kept cropping up to make that seem unlikely. Sam had left me his  tablet, so I opened up Facebook and searched for the fake Lucy account.  Olivia and Charlotte had said I'd posted on the day I was shrunk.  "Taking a small vacation" it said. I didn't know the exact time the  spell took hold but the status was posted around the same time. The  wording could not be a coincidence, surely. The person behind the  cyberbullying, was at least tied to the magic somehow, if not the one  behind everything. I'd underestimated Astor, and I didn't think he was  the one ultimately responsible for everything, but I should be careful  about underestimating the real villain.