The Chosen Read Free Page A

in superadvanced math. Because you’re
stupid,
” Paul said dryly.
    Chloe shrugged, choosing not to answer. “Kim’s going to help me out later with French.”
    “Kim can speak French?”
    “Flawlessly. It’s kind of eerie.” Of course, watching the Mai girl with the big cat ears and slit eyes and fangs do
anything
normal was eerie, but for some reason conjugating verbs and reading aloud from
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
was particularly disturbing.
    “Are you going … uh … there?” Paul asked, meaning to Firebird. She suspected that if he ever actually used the word
Mai,
he would whisper it, the way her grandmother said the word
homosexual
.
    “No, I don’t think so. We’re going to get a cup of tea or coffee,” Chloe said, shoving her notebook into her book bag and putting the pen behind her ear.
    “You don’t like going back there, do you?” Paul asked.
    He was absolutely right. When Chloe was first taken there, it seemed like such a haven—not only were they protecting her from the Tenth Blade assassins, but Alyec, Olga, and Sergei introduced her to a whole new world. They helped find out who her biological mother was. They supported her and took her in …
    … and kept her there. Everything she did, she had to do with them. She couldn’t even leave by herself “for her own protection.” It was only toward the end that she began to think of them as a cult.
    Individual members were fine, like Alyec and Kim, one of her newest, closest friends. And Igor and Valerie were harmless, even if they bought into the whole philosophy of the place.
    It was Sergei she didn’t want to think about.
    There was no
proof
that he’d sent members of the Mai’s warrior class, the kizekh, to kill her mom. On Chloe’s one real escape from Firebird, while they were “protecting” her from the Tenth Blade, Amy and Paul had told her that they thought something weird was going on at her house—like that her mom was never there anymore. As soon as Chloe realized her mom had been kidnapped, Kim had volunteered her particularly feline talents to search Chloe’s house for clues. The girl with the cat ears had not only sniffed out traces of humans from the Order—but also the presence of Mai. What had they been doing there? If it was just to watch and protect her mom, surely Sergei would have told her … wouldn’t he?
    Kim had darkly hinted that Chloe wasn’t the first Mai raised by humans whose human parents had “disappeared” in order for the orphan to be brought back into the fold. But even if Sergei hadn’t been planning to actually kill her mom, he also refused to rescue her from the Tenth Bladers. When Chloe finally decided to “fix” everything by offering to trade herself for her mom, both sides showed up at the Presidio—along with Kim, Alyec, Paul, and Brian—for a royal showdown that ended in Chloe losing one of her lives.
    Sergei had let out a shot, but Chloe still wasn’t sure who the bullet had been meant for. Had it been really aimed at Brian and not her mom? Could it have been meant for Chloe? Sergei had taken her in and treated her like a daughter, lecturing her, playing chess with her, eating dinner with her, and doing other dad things that she had never gotten from her real father or the adopted one who took off when she was little. And there was the whole being-the-One thing she didn’t want to deal with, either. It would effectively mean usurping Sergei’s leadership of the Mai, which wasn’t something Chloe particularly wanted to do or even talk about.
    “Yeah, I’m a little off the whole kitty-kennel thing right now,” she admitted.
    “I don’t blame you. Hey, did I tell you I’m going to audition to spin at the fall formal?” He held up some twelve-inch records and waved them excitedly.
    “You’re going to make them dig up a turntable?” Chloe asked dryly. They started toward
The Lantern
’s office, the school newspaper Paul sort-of worked on so he could get access to their