The Assassin Game Read online

  I can’t eat my oatmeal; I’m too hyped. I get coffee, playing with that thing around my wrist, the outward mark that they like me now, at least enough to be included, enough to be Killed. Around me, nobody is eating the oatmeal. The overexcitement is manifesting in an oaty war, and Mr. Flynn is threatening to lose his cool, which is considerable.

  A small, neat book bound in the same shiny black leather as the bands is pushed in front of me. I look up. Marcia is standing behind me, doling out the books to the apprentices.

  “Read this; it’s the rule book.” She’s all business. Then she bends down, her long, brown hair nearly dipping into my oatmeal, and whispers, “Come and find me before class. Usual place.”

  I nod, a little too frantically.

  “We have plans for later this afternoon,” she says.

  “Wait a minute,” I say. “Aren’t you going on the bus to the mainland?”

  She shakes her head. “None of us are. Too good an opportunity to get everyone together here.”

  There’s a crash to my right; a yellowed skull has been slammed down on the table. Alex and the rest of the Guild leave, in a flurry of laughter, toast crumbs, and clattering plates.

  “Quietly!” booms Mr. Flynn. “And don’t think you’re too good to clean up after yourselves!”

  “We have people to do that for us, Mr. Flynn, you know that!” Alex shouts back, and there’s more laughter.

  Mr. Flynn shoots him a look, but then the Elders and the Journeymen have gone and it’s too late for a retort. We apprentices are left alone at our table, along with our horrific new friend, the skull.

  “Here it is!” Martin cries, holding up the black book, then remembering the rest of the school around him, he leans in and whispers dramatically, reading from the book. “It says here, a skull means a Summoning is called. All Guild members are required to meet for the Summoning in the Place Most Holy.”

  Tesha picks up the skull with her fingertips and puckers her full lips. “Mmm, date night. Where and when?” she asks the skull.

  “Here!” Whitney, one of the other girls in my year, plucks a rolled up piece of paper from one of the skull’s eye sockets. She turns the paper around to us with a flourish. There’s a number four on it in black ink.

  “4:00 p.m.?” I guess.

  Whitney blinks her big baby blues at me from underneath an artfully ragged fringe of black hair. She has a brother in a rock band and a not-so-secret tattoo, and she thinks she’s hella edgy. “You’re going to go far with that detective work, Cate.”

  “The first Summoning,” thrills Martin. “The Killer will be selected! I cannot wait.”

  “Where’s the Place Most Holy?” I say. “The amphitheater?”

  “Way too public,” says Whitney. “And during the day it’s overrun by the drama crowd, shouting or whatever they do.”

  “Hey, there’s a map!” It’s Emily, a long-limbed, sporty girl who was harvested first, earlier this week. She’s found something at the back of the black book. A very basic map of Skola is inked on the inside cover. “PMH, it says.” She taps a short, teal fingernail. “Hazarding a guess that’s Place Most Holy. Here on West Beach.”

  “The beach?” Tesha says. “Brrrr!”

  “No, the caves.” Martin’s eyes gleam, pupils dark and wide with pleasure.

  “Really?” I say. “OK…”

  “Dangerous,” says Tesha. “But I guess that’s what we signed up for.”

  The bell rings for the end of breakfast. We pocket our books and clean up the Guild’s mess, as Alex predicted. I glance at the clock on the wall—twenty minutes before lessons start, joy of joys. But just enough time.

  I duck out into the corridor and hurry toward the side door, crossing the courtyard of the school’s Main House at pace. Then it’s a quick sprint down by the side of the art studios to the small prefab building that houses the Loathsome Toad—the school’s newspaper. There’s a cluster of pine trees to the rear and a small wooden shed. I walk around to the back, and there, on a big, flat boulder looking out to sea is Marcia. She’s smoking a cigarette.

  “You were the lucky one last night, then?” She doesn’t bother turning around, just runs a hand through her heavy, brown hair. She has the longest hair, and it’s utterly gorgeous, a thick sheet hanging down her back.

  “I was?” I perch beside her on the rock, the smoke piercing my nostrils and making my eyes water. She proffers the cigarette in my direction, and I shake my head as I invariably do. She looks at me, her down-turned hazel eyes smiling, an amused dimple twitching in her olive cheek.

  “You got to go face down in the doo-doo.”

  I huff. “Martin and Tesha swore they wouldn’t tell!”

  “Relax,” Marcia says. “They didn’t say a word.”

  I frown at her. “So how—”

  “Guild knows everything, darling,” she purrs, her voice rich and low, with only the slightest hint of her Spanish homeland. “Soon as you accept that, the happier you’ll be, young apprentice.” She winks one heavy-lidded eye, trying not to smile. “But what a trial!” She takes my hand and squeezes it. “You must forgive us. It was very tough.”

  I clench my jaw, remembering the taste. “It was crappy, Marcia.”

  She nods, serious. We look at each other. We scream. She hugs me.

  “I’m in!” I yell, rocking her from side to side. Her long hair covers my face, smelling sweet and spicy.

  “Of course you are!” she says, giggling. “My lovely, we are going to have a ball!”

  We tip and roll off the rock, screaming some more, then picking ourselves up, still laughing.

  “Oh!” I fling my head back to the sky, letting the relief run through my body. “I really didn’t believe it was going to happen. I am so stoked!” I can be truthful with Marcia. She’s probably the only one. With everyone else there’s an element of cool that has to be maintained. I beam at her. “And there’s a Summoning this afternoon! The Killer will be selected, right?” I delve for the book and flash it at her. “Is this your work?” I ask.

  She tilts her head. “Some of it. Rules don’t change that much year to year, but you’ve got to write them down in a new and exciting way. And sometimes there are little twists.”

  “Hmm.” I flick through the book. “I bet there are. Nice font, by the way.”

  She laughs. “Thanks, sweetie. Thriller was getting so predictable, come on…” Her mouth forms a pretty pout.

  “So, the Summoning is in the caves?” I shake my head in wonder. “That’s where you’ve been hanging out every autumn term?”

  “No.” She stubs out the cigarette and flicks it to the grass, exhaling a dragon blow of smoke from her red lips. “This is new for us too. The oldies always used to meet there, back in the beginning, but then Ezra declared it out of bounds.”

  I nod. “Because it’s too dangerous? Because of the tides?”

  “Tides and tunnels and sinking sand.” She shrugs. “Plus they used to drink and play dumb games.”

  “Oh, I see,” I say, smiling. “And there’ll be absolutely none of that with us.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “It’s a place we won’t be discovered, won’t be disturbed. That’s the main thing.” She frowns at me. “Speaking about fun and games, have you had a chance to talk to Daniel yet? Properly.”

  Instantly my excitement is dulled.

  “No.”

  Marcia sighs. “Did you see him over summer break?”

  I say nothing.

  “Message him?” She rolls her eyes. “Anything at all?”

  “Don’t start!” I groan at her. “He hasn’t talked to me either. It takes two to tango.”

  “Hmm. I don’t think that’s what you two were doing at the pool last term…” She tuts at me.

  “It was just a stupid kiss!”

  “Maybe.” Marcia
shrugs. “But it’s up to you to tell him you’re not interested.”

  “Why?” I moan.

  She looks at me closely. “Because he is.” She puts a hand on my arm. “Interested. In you. Like that.” I look down, embarrassed, but she goes on. “You owe him the talk at least. He’s a good friend, Cate. And let’s face it, you don’t have that many.”

  “Thanks!” I snap. But I can’t exactly argue. She’s right on both counts.

  She gets up. “Come on, we’re going to be late.” She grabs her huge tote bag. “Ah! I cannot wait for you to see the cave. It looks so spooky! Spooky!” She elongates the Os as she swings the bag over her shoulder and heads up the path back to relative civilization again. “See you later.”

  “Any tips?” I shout after her.

  She turns around, frowns. “For Daniel?”

  “No!” I shake my head. “For the Game.”

  She laughs and sets off again. “Don’t get Killed!”

  I stay on the rock. “But what if it turns out I get to be the Killer, Marcia? Ever think what would happen then?”

  This stops her sure enough. She turns around and blinks at me, face suddenly serious. “Then I would be afraid. Very afraid.” She does a little salute, laughs, and then turns, her hair swaying after her.

  “You and me both,” I mutter.

  Chapter 3

  Big things on my mind and none of them are Daniel.

  It’s not like I don’t feel for Daniel. I know what it’s like to lust and lose someone; it sucks. I had that scene with Alex. Well, same but different. With Alex, we had that one make-out sesh, and then he expected me to come back for more, and remarkably, I didn’t. I wanted to, I’ll admit it, but he’s messy with exes and way more in love with himself than with anyone else. He’s also Popular, Hot, and A Great Kisser, but I just knew I shouldn’t go there, not again.

  To my terrified delight, Alex actually chased me a little afterward, which was a first for him, as far as I know. He turned the charm on again, and guess what: I didn’t bite. He tried to act casual, but I think it rocked his world that I said no. Not something he’s used to hearing.

  And me? I was shaken up by the whole thing so much I ended up kissing one of my best friends on the rebound. Daniel. Ever accommodating. Now I’m terrified he might think we’re something other than friends. Since we’ve been back at school, Daniel and I have only said hi, smiled, done the pleasantries. I hope he doesn’t expect that we’ll soon be whispering sweet nothings.

  We won’t. I like him as a friend, but I don’t really fancy him. He’s not bad to look at in a wiry, hipster kind of way. Scruffed-up hair, chocolate eyes. What’s more, he’s funny, he’s clever and quixotic, and he keeps my brain ticking over. On the flipside, he’s just too intense, and let’s face it, he has issues.

  If I was a social pariah when I was first at Umfraville, Daniel was the bug on my boot. Actually, he was probably the bug in the field in another county, he was so absent. It’s your classic story of musical genius, I suppose. Crazy parents, prodigious kiddo, hours locked away raking a bow over strings. Zero socialization. School happened, and bullying came with it. His parents weren’t rich and he went to some inner-city place with hundreds of kids. He was picked on, beaten up, humiliated, the full works. He says music got him through, and it certainly got him out. He won a scholarship to a private school, but the bullying didn’t go away; his tormentors just had posher accents this time. I suppose some people are always victims. The way he tells it, this stuff follows him around. The truth is, when he was at the Lausanne, he had a mini-breakdown, and one of his teachers gave his parents a good talking-to. They pulled him out and sent him to Umfraville, in the hope it would give him some normal. Yeah, well.

  He’d been here a term or two and Marcia interviewed him for the Loathsome Toad. The two struck up a friendship. She likes collecting loners and losers; she collected me, after all. And through her, Daniel and I became friends. Last term at the summer party, with end-of-term recklessness and the ache of rejecting Alex, Daniel and I became more.

  Anyway…Marcia flits between different social groups, and last year, she dragged Daniel into the Game. I was sore at the time, because she didn’t get me in too. But she said they’d only give her one choice of new member, and it had to be Daniel, because he needed it more. Now I’m in the Game, we’ll all be in each other’s pockets whether I like it or not.

  Oh, hell. I have to speak to him. Soon.

  But today, there is only the Game.

  It is usually the law of the universe that when you have something to look forward to, time moves abominably slowly. It’s always tough having school on a Saturday; it seems to go against the natural order of things. Saturday mornings should be for kicking back with several bowls of cereal and crappy kids’ TV, lazily texting your mates to sort out the wheres and whens for meeting later in the day. But for the last three years here at Umfraville, I haven’t been able to have the lie-in. I haven’t been able to have the texting either, but I’ll get to that later.

  I can’t really complain too much. Last year I had math and double French on a Saturday, which licked the sweat off a dead man, but this year I have it cushy: triple art. I love art; I get lost in it. Three hours always rushes by. Full immersion. There’ll be no thinking about Danielgate or how my parents haven’t called or wondering if I’ll eat a proper tea tonight or sacrifice it for a guilty chocolate bar and a flatter stomach. With art, I just exist in the work, and it feels good.

  And my art crew is pretty easygoing. Sure, we have some full-on prodigies here—like, kids who have exhibited in London and New York, and not just on their parents’ fridges—but they’re cool. Loony but chill. And Mr. Flynn is our teacher, which is most wonderful.

  OK, I’m going to just preempt the Mr. Flynn thing with you, because I know what you’re probably thinking. Rest easy, folks. Before you go having those thoughts that something inappropriate is going on in my head about Mr. Flynn—or, yuck, something is going on in his head about me—don’t even. We have a strictly platonic relationship. Granted, it’s a little more than student-teacher, and we’re both fine with that. I think Ezra and some of the other staff might have something to say about it, and I know my parents would freak if they knew that we’re friends, because adults have filthy minds about these things. Actually, kids do too. My friends have given me grief about it, it’s true. Marcia teases me more than anything. Daniel is more hard-line, but I think that’s because he’s jealous. Face it, I’m too boring to be major news within the general populace. And Mr. Flynn would back off wholesale if he thought we were seriously being gossiped about.

  So, this is it: we hang out with each other sometimes. As I said before, he was the first person I felt any kind of connection with here, the only person who talked to me like I was someone. It started with me stopping by the studio to work in my spare time, but then there was nothing unusual with that. Most of the kids who are serious about art practically live there. But then I was working on a project with driftwood, and so Mr. Flynn would take me to where the best stuff washes up and help me lug it back from the beach to the studio in his bucket-of-bolts car. We talked about art and music and movies and London. We found out that we both laugh at the same things and are randomly freaked out by pomegranates. But mostly I bonded with him because he listened to my nonsense and insecure babble and because he kind of got me in a way that nobody here does. Oh, I know it sounds utterly boyfriend/girlfriend-y, and as if I have some loser-type of crush on him, so you’ll just have to trust me. He’s old anyway. Eighties kid. Thirty-five or forty, I don’t know. Yes, he’s fit. But in that way your mum would like. When I started being friends with Marcia and Daniel, Flynny and I kind of dialed it down, but he’s still my favorite teacher, no doubt.

  According to the clock, I get to the lesson five minutes late, which is skillful, considering I was loitering with Marcia just down the path from the stu
dio. Mr. Flynn is in full flow when I enter, outlining the things we’ll be covering in the upcoming term. He has an air of agitation about him. He arrived back to school a week late this term for reasons unknown. The rumors were varied—a split with his girlfriend, the death of a parent, or most juicily, an arrest. The kids are nothing if not imaginative here. I’ll get the truth from him at some point probably.

  He doesn’t comment on my tardiness to class as I slip into my place in the studio and quietly begin unpacking my stuff. I’m glad to be home. And this is home.

  The next three hours fly by, and when the bell for the end of school sounds, I’m floating so high above myself that it’s a real effort to come back down to earth. But then I do, and I get that lovely excited feeling of having something even better to look forward to. The Summoning! As I gather up my belongings and glance out of the window for Marcia, Mr. Flynn walks by my table. He nods to the Guild’s band on my wrist.

  “You’re involved with those shenanigans this term.”

  I smile pleasantly as kids file out past us. “Do I detect a hint of jealousy?” I say, sotto voce.

  He eyes me, face set. “Would I jump at the chance to be in your shoes? Er, no, Cate, I would not. Whatever devilry unfolds over the next few weeks is sure to be nothing but hard work for everyone else.” Then something in him relaxes a little. “But I hope you enjoy it.”

  I fling my remaining things into my bag and stand up. Much as I like the chat, I have places to be. Everyone else has left by now, mostly to catch the bus back to the mainland.