Conspiracy Boy (Angel Academy) Read Free Page B

twitch, until eager strands of gold light throbbed around my chest.
    “Omelet,” he murmured again, pressing his forehead against mine. “Don’t you get why I avoid you? Why I send Marcus to deliver your assignments? Why I want you to stay away from this thing with Lisa?”
    I shivered at his touch as light threads spilled into the air. I did get it. When he worried about me, stuff happened. Weird stuff. Powerful stuff. And if anyone saw that we were bonded, they’d try to separate us again. Because I was too dangerous. We were too dangerous.
    Eyes shut, I leaned closer, my hands tracing up the bumpy indents of his ribs. He’d lost weight since the last time I’d touched him, and his body felt different. The same layers of lean muscle over bone, but harder now, more wiry.
    “So don’t go back to school,” I urged. “Let’s run away.”
    “To where?”
    “Alaska.”
    “What’s in Alaska?”
    “No clue,” I whispered. “Find out with me.”
    Jack dropped his hands but left his forehead pressed to mine. “Until you turn eighteen, I’ve got no claim on you. The Council of Elders would strip us both of our rank, assuming your father didn’t kill me first.”
    I opened my mouth to tell him I didn’t care—that Dad could come live with us in an Inuit hut if it meant being together. Away from the Guardian Elders. Away from the Immortals. Away from Lisa and her stupid civitas terrena Post-it.
    I’d just begun to formulate the wish when something shifted and the air got quiet.
    Unnaturally quiet.
    I can’t really explain it beyond that—it was just a heavy, weighted silence that seeped through my skin and rested at the bottom of my stomach.
    “Jack, what—?”
    The words had barely formed before a crack of lightning ripped across the sky, making it bleed pure white. In the space of a heartbeat, Jack twisted me behind him.
    “Shields,” he ordered.
    I summoned the protective channel between my fingertips and tossed it at the air in front of us.
    Before either of us could speak, Lyle’s voice spilled across the rocks from the parking lot. “Sir, I think we have a breach.”
    “A breach?” I asked, tightening the channel in my hand. My blood fizzed with the taint of the Crossworlds. “Is that like a rift?”
    In silence, Jack drew a Magic 8 Ball key chain out of his jeans pocket and pressed it into my palm, drawing some of the Crossworlds poison off me. “Go wait in the car. You’ll be safe there.”
    Through the darkness, I cast a doubtful glance at the dilapidated blue Gremlin Jack had bought last October. As much as I loved the guy, I had to disagree with the word “safe” being applied to it. I might take issue with the term “car,” too. Rust covered the bottom half so thickly you could barely tell its original color, and the top looked like it’d been chewed by a demon. Which, to be fair, it probably had.
    Jack had made it only a few steps toward the docks when a series of sharp thudding sounds rang out and I turned. Immediately, I could tell something was wrong.
    Several things, actually.
    The first was that the sky, instead of calmly existing like a sky is supposed to, now swirled in angry funnels.
    The second was the river. Only moments ago it had been a lovely shade of sludge flecked with white froth. Now it blazed purple fire.
    But the last thing—the thing that left me wanting to curl up in a corner and suck my thumb for an hour—was Lyle. On the ground. Facedown in the water.
    Utterly still.

Chapter Three:
    Down the Rabbit Hole
    “Lyle!”
    Blood spilled out of a cut on his forehead, staining the moonlit shore a deep scarlet. Tentative waves lapped at his pale body. Apart from the cut above his brow, I didn’t see any marks on him. But given the bizarre damage our enemies could inflict, that meant very little.
    Jack dashed toward the water at a full sprint, sword drawn and ready. “Get Lyle,” he ordered me, “and stay down.”
    I ducked as a chunk of stone flew through the