⤠ ≻ ◈ ≺ ⤟

Clementine watched Ian like a starved beast. Every move the boy made sent a shiver of anticipation through his body. His hands ached to grip his neck and choke the life out of him, and all he could think about was watching as that look of realization smothered Ian's face—the understanding that his life was over...and no amount of power was going to save him.

          He had to be careful, though. Ian and his friends had come over to Aldergrove from the New World, a place where they would have received the best of training for something like this. After all, if they were already living in the New World, they and their parents would ensure to do everything possible to get them back there. But they wouldn't be returning—Clementine was going to make sure of that.

          "We have to stop Carmichael," Elliot mumbled, glancing over at Clementine as they both noted down what Professor Quincy was explaining. "They're going to get themselves killed."

          Clementine was over this. He sighed and shook his head. "It's not our business."

          "But they're our friends!"

          He wanted to snap and tell him they were not his friends, but...he had chosen Elliot and his group to blend in with, so he couldn't exactly risk the discord. He sighed again and shrugged. "It's seelie stuff, Elliot. We're not seelies so we can't really get involved. I don't want to piss off these spider people, so if they want to, then let them."

          "You're not hearing me—"

          "Mr Davis," Quincy called, "and Mr Darlington. Is there perhaps something you'd like to share with the class?"

          Everyone stared back at them.

          Clementine scowled irritably at Elliot, who stuttered and shook his head.

          "N-no, sir," he called.

          "Then I'd suggest keeping the chatter until lunch."

          He nodded. "Y-yes, sir—sorry."

          "Where were we? Oh, yes...."

          As Quincy continued with his lecture, Clementine rested the side of his face in his hand.

          "What if it wasn't spider people?" Elliot uttered.

          This kid never knew when to stop, did he?

          "It could have been...I don't know...other...bug people—arachnoids aren't the only species that make web-looking stuff—a-and how do we know that kid that claimed they saw her body was right? How do we know they really saw web? You know what we need to do? We need to find whoever said they saw her and get them to explain to us what the web looked like, and from that, maybe I can decipher if it really was an arachnoid or not. What do you say?"

          Glaring over at him, Clementine scoffed. "You're thinking about this too much—"

          "No, you're not thinking about it enough!" he exclaimed.

          Quincy's ruler slapped the side of their desk.

          The whole class froze.

          Horrified, Elliot looked up at the professor, as did Clementine.

          "This is the second time you two have been gossiping like a pair of socialites—I think you should head to the front of the class and kindly bestow us all with your incredibly interesting conversation, which you deem much more important than the study of this wonderful organism," he uttered, glancing at the rat-rabbit-cat hybrid drawn out in chalk on the blackboard.

          Clementine felt his irritancy become anger. He was trying his best to blend in, and now, because of the very person he'd chosen to hide behind, he was achieving the exact opposite.

          "Well?" Quincy grumbled impatiently, his eyes shifting between them. "Up you go."

          "S-sir, we—"

          "Now!" the professor yelled, pointing his ruler to the front of the class.

          Like a hound with its tail between its legs, Elliot scampered to the front of the class, and Clementine had no choice but to follow...but he liked to think he did so much more gracefully, and with a disgruntled look on his face.

          "Let's hear it, boys," Quincy invited as he strolled over to his desk and slumped down. "Share with us all what you find so fascinating that it can't wait until after class to be discussed."

          Elliot began to sweat like a pig. He tugged on his collar, scratched the side of his face, and as his eyes darted from each of the expectant, amused faces of their classmates, he quivered and desperately glanced at Clementine.

          Was he really going to have to save them from this? He didn't want to, but if he didn't, it might only get worse. "Elliot's obsessing over the rumour about two boys kissing in the bathroom," he announced.

          The class murmured and laughed as Elliot turned bright red.

          "He's spent the entire week trying to find out who it was, and I've been trying to tell him it's a little unhealthy to be thinking about it this much—especially since a whole week has passed."

          As everyone laughed, Elliot turned his head to stare at Clementine in utter horror.

          Clementine looked over at Quincy. "Sorry, sir. I should do a better job at explaining to him that it's really none of his business. What people do is their concern, not his. But he has a habit of trying to get involved with everything."

          Professor Quincy took his eyes off Clementine and looked Elliot up and down. "Is that right, Mr Davis? Do you fancy yourself as a little, amateur detective?"

          The class laughed again.

          "N-n-no—I—"

          Clementine nudged Elliot's side and glared over at him, his expression letting him know that if he didn't go along with this, he'd regret it.

          So, Elliot gulped and shrugged nervously. "I-I...I get too curious—"

          "You obsess!" Clementine exclaimed.

          "No, I don't!"

          "That's enough, boys," Quincy said with a sigh, shaking his head as the class's laughter started dying down. "Both of you can come back here Saturday evening for an hour's detention."

          That anger in Clementine's chest returned—he had to refrain himself from exclaiming, and when he and Elliot made their way back to their desk, he did his best to avoid the gaze of the classmates.

          He wanted to scream at Elliot for being such an idiot, but that would only make things worse. He had no choice but to suck it up and deal with it—for now, at least.

          So, with an irritated scowl on his face, he got back to work, ignoring the whispers that were quite obviously about him and Elliot.

⤚     ♠     ⤙

          Clementine's sour mood grew crabbier as the day went on. In the lunch hall, he sat at his table alone, stabbing at the salad on his plate with his fork. He kept his eyes on Ian, pondering how he was going to kill him. He thought the best course of action would be getting him alone in a library just as he had done with Harrison; he'd summon another blade, stab him through the chest, and hide his corpse in the floor. But just how was he going to get Ian away from his friends?

          He eyed each of them. Connor Massimo, the tall, lanky buzzcut kid sticking to Ian like a fly on manure, his eyes shimmering in the sunlight; Horace Radcliff, the dark-skinned boy trailing behind with a nose as sharp as a knife. Clementine watched the three of them head over to the table at the back of the room, where they sat with two other boys and a snotty-faced girl. He'd not seen her with them before, but since the discovery of Molly, it wasn't surprising to see even Ian and his group expanding.

          Elliot slumped down in the seat beside him. "I can't believe this," he grumbled.

          "Detention after only a week," Stanley snickered, shaking his head as he, Carmichael and Bernard sat down, too.

          "No, what I can't believe is that you set me up like that!" Elliot exclaimed, glaring at Clementine. "Do you know how embarrassing that was?!"

          "I do, actually." He rolled his eyes and looked down at his food. "It's your fault it happened."

          "My fault?!"

          "You were the one talking constantly!"

          Elliot glared at him.

          Clementine wasn't interested in arguing with him, though. Elliot and his friends had been the ones to tell him more about Ian, and he was hoping to expand his knowledge so that he might make his plan more effective. "You know anything else about Ian and his friends?" he asked them.

          "Why are you so interested in them?" Elliot grumbled, pouring sugar into his coffee.

          "Just curious," he said with a shrug.

          "Radcliff's dad and Connor's mom are apparently seeing each other after Radcliff's mom died or something," Bernard mumbled, seasoning his chicken with pepper. "They're on the Great Council—they govern pretty much everything over in the New World."

          "And Ian? Clementine asked.

          "Uh...." Bernard shrugged.

          "No one really seems to know too much about him," Carmichael mumbled. "Only son, sickly parents, no other family. All the people he hangs with are pretty shady."

          "Who else does he hang around with? I've only seen him with them," Clementine mumbled, glancing over at Ian and his group.

          "I don't know," Carmichael mumbled, eating his sandwich.

          "If you're trying to get in with them, you should just go over there," Elliot grumbled jealously. "Maybe you can tell lies about them in front of the whole class."

          With a deep sigh, Clementine shook his head and started eating his salad. He should be careful. Not only did he need to find out what he could about Ian and find possible leads that would direct him to other Ravenblood here, he also needed to ensure he didn't give away what he was up to. His over-interest in Ian could paint him as a suspect after his imminent disappearance. He was convinced Elliot wouldn't tattle on him, but...after his stunt in biology, he wasn't so sure.

          It was time to change the subject.

          "You find anything else out about Molly?" he asked, looking at Carmichael.

          "We don't need anything else," Stanley uttered. "Charlotte gave us all we need. The second we see Frederick and his friends leave, we're going after them."

          Clementine glanced around the room. "Which one's Frederick?"

          "That freak," Bernard growled, nodding over at a trio sitting on the floor under a window.

          Black hair, black eyes, skin as white as paper. Clementine had never seen anything quite like them before. They moved their fingers around as though they were weaving webs; they rolled their heads on their shoulders, their eyes darting around the room as if they were following flies. They were pretty much what he would have expected a spider-person to look like.

          "The long-haired girl is Nicolette and the one next to her is her sister," Bernard muttered.

          "I think they're together," Stanley mumbled. "Arachnoids usually stick together in groups with only one guy."

          "You think all three of them killed Molly?" he asked.

          "Yeah. Like I said, no alibi, Frederick loves to talk about how he's killed dozens of us. It's them," Carmichael said firmly.

          Stanley then patted both Carmichael and Bernard's shoulders. "Hey, look—look!" he uttered, nodding over at the arachnoids. "They're getting up."

          "This is so stupid!" Elliot whispered anxiously.

          "Let's go, come on," Carmichael muttered as they watched the three black-haired kids slink out of the dining hall.

          "Guys!" Elliot insisted, but they ignored him, abandoned their lunch, and followed the trio out of the hall.

          Elliot immediately shifted his gaze to Clementine. "We have to do something!"

          "I already told you," he grumbled, sipping from his orange juice, "I don't want to get involved."

          "B-but—"

          "If you're so worried, you go and try to stop them, but they're pretty adamant, Elliot. They're not going to listen."

          "Please!" he insisted. "W-what if they mess up? That's going to paint targets on all of us!"

          Clementine opened his mouth to argue, but Elliot actually had a point. If Carmichael and his friends failed to follow through with their plan, it would cause a whole lot more trouble than if they didn't. Both he and Elliot would be pulled into the conflict because in the week that had passed, pretty much every student had seen the five of them hanging around together. If there were more arachnoids than just Frederick, and Nicolette and her sister, then surely, they'd all come after the five of them. Clementine didn't need that to happen, and his only options were to completely remove himself from this little group of kids...or help.

          He felt the safer option was to back off, but...he couldn't exactly afford to be alone right now, either. He needed cover and Elliot and his friends were perfect...or had been up until now, at least. But he was smart—at least he liked to think so. No one had found Harrison yet and he was certain no one ever would. So, if Carmichael and his friends killed those arachnoids, he could do just as good a job at hiding their bodies too, right? And that way, his cover would be preserved.

          But what if something went wrong? What if—

          "Come on!" Elliot suddenly insisted, breaking his train of thought.

          Clementine didn't want to cause a scene, so as Elliot snatched his arm and started pulling him towards the door, he followed, trying to ignore his growing fear that this wasn't going to end well at all.

⤠ ≻ ◈ ≺ ⤟

♠ Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed the chapter! ♠

♣ What was your favourite part? ♣

♥ How do you feel about the characters? ♥

⤠ What do you think will happen next? ⤟

♞ Got any questions? ♞

♦ Let me know! ♦