Kissed by Claw and Fang novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Two Guides

The Dean makes Juniper guide both transfers; Rhys is warm, Lucian cold; her night shift ends with her car gone from lot C.

Nobody on the quad said a word.

I looked from the boy on my left to the boy on my right and did not understand either of them.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Mine what?"

The tall one in the canvas jacket opened his mouth, shut it, and rubbed the back of his neck.

"Mine to, uh, help," he said. "With the hand."

"He means he'd like to help with the hand," said the one in black, without looking away from my sleeve.

His voice was low and level.

"Step back, please," he told the crowd, and the crowd actually stepped back.

The tall boy pulled a red bandana out of his back pocket.

He held it out, and when I did not take it, he wrapped it around my palm himself.

His fingers were so warm that I nearly pulled away.

"Rhys Kendrick," he said. "I'd say nice to meet you, but I just watched you get filmed in a parking lot."

"Juniper," I said. "Nice to meet you too, I guess."

"Lucian Ashgrave," said the other one.

He had not moved his hands out of his coat pockets, and he was still keeping a careful yard of air between us.

"You should have that looked at," he said.

"She's fine," said a voice behind me.

Preston had climbed back into the picture, phone raised.

"Hey, new guys. Welcome to Wintermere. She's our charity case, I'm her ex, and we're streaming."

Rhys turned his head and looked at him.

It was not a long look.

Preston lowered the phone an inch at a time.

"Turn it off," Rhys said pleasantly.

The red dot went out.

Preston walked backward into the crowd with Brielle at his sleeve, and I swear he did not know he was doing it.

The Dean found us three minutes later.

He was a tired man with a lanyard, and he looked at my bandana and at the two strangers and sighed.

"Miss Pengelly," he said. "A word. Gentlemen, you too."

His office smelled like old paper and burnt coffee.

"These are the Kendrick and Ashgrave transfers," he told me. "Their families are major donors. Both of them have asked, in writing, just now, in my hallway, for you as their campus guide."

"Both of them," I said.

"I have a stipend," he said. "Three hundred dollars a week."

I thought of my car and my forty-one dollars.

"I'm not a tour guide," I said. "I have a nine o'clock."

"It would only be mornings and afternoons," the Dean said.

"And evenings," Rhys said.

"Not evenings," said Lucian.

"Nights are for sleeping," I said, and bit my tongue.

Neither of them said anything to that.

I took the job.

I would like it noted that three hundred dollars was the only reason.

The tour took until two.

Rhys talked the whole way.

He said the library looked like a church that had lost a bet, that the cafeteria's soup was a crime, and that he had once eaten a whole pizza in a moving truck.

I laughed twice before I could stop myself.

Lucian spoke only when a fact was needed.

"The east wing was built in 1891," he said at the old chapel.

"The clock tower runs four minutes slow."

He gave the dates and resented it.

"You've been here two days," I said.

"Eleven hours," Lucian said.

Rhys grinned at me over his shoulder, and Lucian pretended not to notice.

I noticed something else, though.

At every doorway, one of them held it open.

At every staircase, one of them stayed behind me and one stayed ahead.

By the third building I had stopped being able to tell who was guiding whom.

"Do you two know each other?" I asked at the science hall.

They answered together again.

"No."

"Never," said Lucian, a half second later.

At six I walked to the night cafeteria and put on my apron.

Larissa Iselin was already at the sink with her glasses fogged and a ladle in her fist.

"I saw it," she said, instead of hello. "The fountain, the speech, the whole thing. Four hundred people and you called them out about the heater."

"Please don't," I said.

"Also two hot guys," Larissa said. "Are they real? Who's the cold one? Can I have him?"

"I don't think anyone gets him," I said.

I scrubbed pans until two in the morning, and for eight hours, I did not think about my palm.

At two I put on my coat, said goodnight to Larissa, and walked out into the cold toward lot C.

Under the one working lamp, between a white van and a snowbank, there was a rectangle of dry asphalt.

It was the shape of a Honda.

My car was gone.

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