Kissed by Claw and Fang novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Lot C
Preston films Juniper climbing out of her car and posts it to the school; she answers in front of the quad, and two transfer students smell her blood and both say, "Mine."
At six in the morning I was brushing my teeth with bottled water in the back seat of my car.
Lot C was empty except for me and a security truck that never came by before seven.
That was the whole reason I had picked it.
I spat into a coffee cup and checked the mirror on the sun visor.
My braid had gone flat on one side from the door.
I pulled on my thrift-store peacoat over yesterday's sweater and reached for the handle.
A phone flashed in my face before the door was fully open.
"Say good morning to Wintermere," Preston Gale said.
He was holding it sideways, grinning, and the red dot in the corner was lit.
Brielle Sutton stood at his elbow in her cheer jacket with two other girls behind her.
"Oh my God," Brielle said, so loudly that it carried across the whole lot. "Juniper Pengelly really does live in there."
I had dated Preston for five weeks in the fall.
He had dumped me in front of his friends the day he saw the blankets in my back seat.
Until now he had only told people it was a rumor.
"Turn it off," I said.
"We're live," Preston said. "Four hundred people are watching you climb out of a Honda."
The count in the corner said 412 and went to 430 while I stood there.
My face went hot.
I did not say any of the things I had practiced for months in the dark.
I pushed past him and walked toward the main quad, because it was the only direction they would not expect.
They followed, of course.
By seven the quad was full of students on their way to class, and Preston's phone was still up.
"Wintermere's own scholarship case," he announced. "Folks, she showers at the gym."
Someone laughed.
Then someone else did, and then it spread.
I stopped at the edge of the old stone fountain in the middle of the quad.
My hands were shaking, so I climbed up onto the rim to stop them.
From up there I could see every face.
"Yes," I said.
The laughing dipped, because they had expected me to cry.
"Yes, I live in my car," I said. "It's a gray Honda with a broken heater, and I'd like it noted that it's very clean."
A few people snorted, and not at me.
"I have a full scholarship and two jobs," I said. "I wash dishes until two every night and I shelve books before my nine o'clock."
"Which of you has done that?" I asked.
Nobody answered.
"Anyone?" I said. "Preston? You can hold the phone with the other hand."
Somebody in the back actually whooped.
Preston's smile slipped.
"That's pathetic," Brielle said, and stepped up beside the fountain. "Nobody wants your sob story."
"Then you can stop filming it," I said.
Preston lunged at me.
He wasn't trying to hurt me, only to take back the crowd.
He swung the phone at my hand to knock me off balance.
My own phone was in my fingers, cracked since August, and his case caught it with a crunch.
The screen glass split under my thumb and opened the heel of my palm.
I looked down.
Blood ran down my wrist and dripped onto the stone.
Three drops, bright red against the gray.
Something strange happened in the quad then.
The wind stopped.
Not slowly, and not the way it does at the end of a gust.
It simply quit.
Every pigeon on the grass lifted off at the same time.
At the east gate, a tall boy in a canvas jacket froze mid-stride with a duffel bag on his shoulder.
He lifted his head, and his face went completely white.
At the west arch, a second boy in a black wool coat stopped walking so abruptly that a girl bumped into his back.
He did not turn around to apologize.
He was staring at the blood on my wrist, and his pale eyes had gone dark all the way across.
I pressed my sleeve to the cut.
"Ew," Brielle said, backing off the fountain.
"Do you want a bandage," Preston said, with a smile like a dare, "or should we sell tickets?"
Neither of the two strangers was looking at him.
They were moving toward me from opposite ends of the quad, and the crowd moved out of their way without knowing why.
The tall one was faster.
The one in black was so smooth that I never saw him take a step.
They arrived at the fountain at the same instant, one on each side of me, close enough that I felt the heat of one and the cold of the other.
They looked at each other across my legs for a long second.
Then each of them looked up at me, and said the same word at the same moment.
"Mine."
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