A ripple of unkind laughter followed her remark and I felt my cheeks getting hot and red. Great, this was just what I needed this morning—another dose of Mean Girl hazing.

I didn’t understand why Morganna wouldn’t just leave me alone. But once someone like her decides she’s got it in for you, there’s not much you can do but just keep your head down and try not to attract her attention.

Which was why having Bran O’Connor for a lab partner was such a liability.

As I got settled in my seat, I saw that Bran was looking at me. I didn’t think I’d ever been this close to him before, even though he was also a Norm—a regular human with no magical powers—like me. Maybe because he didn’t live at the school like most students—he stayed with his family and commuted to Nocturne Academy every day. He also wasn’t a Frostproof lifer like me—meaning he didn’t grow up in our crappy little town here in Central Florida.

In fact, he had just transferred here at the end of last semester, but that was long enough for the beautiful people, (Morganna and her crew) to label him a “troll” and dismiss him as nothing more than an ugly little guy taking up too much of the available oxygen.

“It’s all right—just ignore them,” he murmured and I got my first surprise—his voice did not match his body. At all.

It was deep and smooth like dark chocolate melting on the back of your tongue. The kind of voice that sends tingles and chills through your whole body, just to hear it. Hello, ASMR hottie. Or he would be if his body matched that voice.

I looked at him in surprise—or tried to. But somehow my eyes kept sliding away from his face. Frowning, I tried again with the same result. I got only a glimpse of his awful skin, lank hair, and no-color eyes before my own eyes just kind of slid to the side and I found I was staring over his shoulder.

Weird.

See, this is what I meant when I said it was hard to look at him. It really was—my mind somehow didn’t want to let me study him too closely.

Well, maybe it was a psychological thing. I knew having him for a partner was going to make me the butt of more of Morganna Starchild’s jokes, so I subconsciously didn’t want anything to do with him.

Yeah—that had to be it.

“Okay, people,” said Mr. Barron, interrupting my train of thought. “Today we’re going to start with an easy lab, just to get our toes wet. This exercise is called ‘Measuring Heart Rate Accurately’ and it only has two requirements—a partner with a pulse and a watch. Everybody good?”

Several of the girls complained that they didn’t wear watches because they always just looked at the time on their phones. Most places in the Nocturne Academy castle cell phones don’t even work—the magic interferes with them. However, Mr. Barron’s classroom was one of the rare exceptions where you could actually get a signal.

It didn’t matter though because Mr. Barron had a strict no-phones policy in his classroom. He had one of those clear plastic shoe holders hung over the back of his door, only instead of shoes, the rectangular pockets were full of phones. They were numbered and everyone had to turn off their cell phone and slip it into a pocket at the beginning of class. No exceptions.

Woe to the hapless student who tried to keep his or her phone, or who forgot to turn their phone off, or at least on silent. Mr. Barron was pretty easy going about other things but he was death on cell phones ringing or beeping in his classroom. He said he could remember when everybody couldn’t get hold of you any time they felt like it and it was a much “better and simpler time.”

My own phone was in pocket seventeen, down near the bottom of the shoe/phone holder since I was late. It sat there in its plain green case, staring at me mutely from across the room. It wasn’t far from a glittery pink rhinestone case with fluffy feathers sprouting from the top. That one belonged to Morganna Starchild—no surprise there.

Morganna was one of the girls complaining most vociferously about needing her phone because she didn’t have a watch. But if she thought she was getting it back in the middle of Mr. Barron’s class she was sadly mistaken. Instead, the Biology teacher picked up a battered cardboard box and started handing out rusty, antique looking stopwatches to people with their hands up.

“You have a watch?” Bran asked me. His deep voice was still freaking me out.

I pulled back my sleeve and displayed the modestly pretty silver watch my mom had gotten me for my last birthday. It wasn’t an expensive brand but we didn’t believe in luxury items in my house—we couldn’t afford to since it was just Mom and me. The watch was pretty, though, and I wasn’t ashamed to let him see it.

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