her parents to get her out from underfoot.
Thoroughly irritated now, Shannon cracked open her eyes. She glanced at the room’s only window above her computer desk and saw that it was still dark outside. She might be awake in the middle of the night, but she didn’t get up then.
“Hey,” she protested. “What gives? This isn’t one of those stupid fire drills, is it?”
“No. It’s not a fire drill.” The voice was losing some of its patient quality. The momness was coming through even stronger.
If Shannon had still been at home, the yelling would have started by now, and her mother would be telling her father how impossible Shannon was to deal with. And she would have been blamed by everyone in the family for whatever went wrong for the rest of the day.
“Get up, Shannon. We need to talk.”
That voice—the one so carefully measured it sounded like a military cadence—finally woke Shannon. That voice said she was in trouble.
Shannon hated being in trouble. Well, mostly she hated being in trouble. Sometimes trouble meant that she was getting the only attention she was going to get.
She twisted, shaded her eyes against the light and looked up at Christine Evans, the principal of Athena Academy. Principal Evans was almost fifty years old—at least that’s what the rumors around the school claimed—and an ex-Army officer.
She’d lost her left eye in some kind of accident—everyone in school insisted it had happened in a military engagement and Principal Evans had killed a whole platoon of bad guys—and been appointed as principal of the academy by Senator Marion Gracelyn, the founding mother behind the special finishing school for girls. The principal and the senator had been friends for a long time.
Principal Evans was stocky from a lifetime of military work and a dedication to staying in shape rather than staying thin. Her short-cut gray hair offered more testimony to the fact that she didn’t try to hide things.
Principal Evans wasn’t hiding anything now. She was irritated. Big-time.
Okay. Chill. Buy some time. Shannon levered her legs over the side of the bed to show that she was willing to comply with the request but was too tired to do so immediately. She yawned. She stretched. She rubbed her eyes.
Then she noticed that Tory Patton was standing in the back of the room, near the door. Tory was naturally beautiful. She’d never had to work at it. Gifted with black hair, an olive complexion and green eyes, she turned the heads of boys everywhere she went. And she didn’t even seem to care. It was enough to make Shannon gag.
Great. Tory Patton, one of my rivals. In my room. And I have probably the worst case of bed-head since bed-head was invented.
“What’s she doing here?” Shannon demanded.
Principal Evans ignored the question. “Get dressed,” she ordered. “You’ve got five minutes. Otherwise you’re going in your robe.”
“My robe?”
“Five minutes,” Principal Evans repeated.
“Going where?”
“Start dressing or we can go now.”
Witch, Shannon thought. But that was more a knee-jerk reflex to being awakened in the middle of the night. Normally Shannon got along with Principal Evans all right. Except for a few incidents involving hazing students new to the academy.
She bolted up from bed and dived at her chest of drawers. She wasn’t going to be caught walking around the academy halls in a robe. As usual, she’d worn only a football jersey to bed. She’d told everyone her boyfriend had given her the jersey, but she’d actually stolen it from her little brother.
Tory wore boys’ pajama pants, an academy T-shirt and was barefooted. Somehow on her it looked like an ensemble and a statement. Even underdressed, Tory still looked beautiful.
It’s just not fair, Shannon thought again. Tory hardly had to do anything to look great in the television broadcasting class they were taking together. Shannon, while she was beautiful, still had to work to make it happen.
Arms filled with clothing, Shannon sprinted for the bathroom. Her roommate slept through the whole thing.
Minutes later, dressed in capris, good shoes and a crop top, Shannon walked at Principal Evans’s side. Shannon had her arms crossed to show her displeasure but also because it was cold this time of year up in the White Tank Mountains, where the school was located.
Years ago the campus had been a mental-health and rehabilitation facility for movie stars who’d fallen off the wagon or gotten involved in drugs. Wealthy families had stashed their black sheep there.
The girls at the academy even told stories about serial killers and murderers that had been held in the older sections of the school. That made for some exciting walks late at night. Especially for the younger girls who were brought there for the first time. Shannon had enjoyed hazing the newbies with the stories of murderers loose on the grounds.
Many of the first-timers came there at age ten or eleven. The academy recognized potential prospects and sent letters early. The school was so prestigious that hardly anyone ever turned them down. The fact that the tuition was waived made the academy even more enticing.
On Friday and Saturday nights, after the fall semester started, the newbies usually got the full treatment from some of the other girls. Frightened squeals echoed throughout those older sections. Shannon had particularly enjoyed those times. She loved role-play and she was one of the best because she could always tell what would scare a new girl the most. It was almost as though she had a psychic ability to get inside an audience’s head.
Principal Evans and her staff turned out to be real buzz-kills. They penalized everyone involved in hazing of that nature. Shannon didn’t mind. The trade-off—a few days of detention for delicious moments of seeing a newbie totally wigging out—was worth it. The event was all theater, getting the complete, rapt attention of her victims, then being in the eye of the storm that swept out of administration.
“You still haven’t told me what’s going on,” Shannon accused.
“You’ll know soon enough,” Principal Evans said.
Okay, Shannon thought as they crossed the grounds to the school’s administration building, so you’ve got me beat when it comes to scary-quiet attitude. That’s fine. I’ll let you have that one. There were other ways to deal with adults.
Shannon called tears to her eyes. She could cry on cue. It was one of her best skills, and that little trick had earned her a lot of attention at home until her parents had either figured it out or just stopped caring. She still wasn’t sure which it had been.
She swallowed hard, made her voice tremulous and looked at Principal Evans. “It’s my parents, isn’t it? Something’s happened to my parents?”
Shannon was so good that she almost scared herself. Even though she was convinced that her parents didn’t much care for her, she still loved them. She didn’t want anything to happen to them.
Principal Evans was quiet longer than she would have normally been. Shannon wondered if she’d played the tear card once too often. But Principal Evans went for it anyway.
“No,” the woman said. “Nothing’s happened to your parents. As far as I know, they’re both fine.”
Shannon almost grinned in triumph. Not only had she created some sympathy in Principal Evans, but she’d also learned that her parents hadn’t been called. Whatever trouble she was in—and she honestly couldn’t think of what that trouble might be—it couldn’t be that bad.
However, the trouble was bad. It had to be bad if Marion Gracelyn was there.
The senator had been waiting in Principal Evans’s office. Marion Gracelyn was often at the school, but she’d never been there in the middle of the night, not that