Free House of Korba: The Ghost Bird Series: #7 (The Academy) by C. L. Stone Page A

on his couch. Was it because anyone could walk in at any moment? Did North say something to him that made him back off?
    But here I was next to him, my head on his arm and my thigh brushing his. Maybe it wasn’t Silas throwing signals at me that he wanted to kiss me. Maybe it was in my head because I was nervous being in his house for the first time. I’d been in his lap before. He’d been close to me. I wasn’t scared until I was here at his house.
    But then why did North feel he needed to spy on us and zap Silas?
    One of our phones started to rattle against the concrete behind us. Silas turned to check over my head at them. “It’s yours, Sang.”
    I puffed out a breath. “If it’s North, I’m tempted not to answer.” I turned to hang over the edge and grab my phone. I leaned against the wall, reading the name.
    I pushed the button. “Luke?”
    “Why is North yelling at me?”
    “I don’t know,” I said, while at the same time feeling Silas’s hands on my back, doing something to the shirt I was wearing. The material was sticking to my body, so I thought at first he was straightening it. When I looked back, he was staring at my butt. I reached around, trying to cover the word scrawled across my hips, but he patted my hand away, pulling the shirt up higher over my waist as his fingertip trailed over the lettering.
    “Well,” Luke said, distracting me from Silas, “it’s something about you. He said you were mad at him and hung up on him. He just snapped at me for not tying my shoes.”
    I made a number of surprise, how-dare-he noises into the phone. It was unfair of North, who started this, to be yelling at Luke. “Tell him to stop.”
    “What?”
    “Tell North I said don’t yell at you.”
    There was a shuffling noise on the phone. Luke’s voice was muffled as he started talking to North.
    Silas’s palm fell onto the small of my back. I turned around and his hand remained on me as I looked up at him. He was grinning proudly, and mouthed, “Love the shorts.”
    I gulped back my heart, trying to focus.
    “North just threw a mug at me for calling you about it.”
    “Would you give him the phone, please?”
    “He doesn’t want it.”
    Who was ignoring who now? I eyeballed Silas, who was tilting his head down at me curiously. “I think it’s time to zap him,” I said.
    Silas lifted a brow. “Are you sure?”
    What other choice did I have? I nodded. “Maybe it’ll calm him down.” It was a strange idea, but North needed someone to fight back with, and if he wouldn’t fight now, then he needed a little nudge. If it wasn’t supposed to hurt that much, then maybe it could work.
    Silas grunted, turned to get his phone and pushed at the screen. “I have you for less than an hour and we’re already in the middle of shit.” He found North’s app, pushed it to open the screen, revealing four different colored squares. He pointed to the green one. “You want to do it?”
    I twisted my lips, holding up a finger. Silas held up the phone while I hovered my finger over the green button. “Luke,” I said into my own phone. “Run for cover.”
    “What are you doing?” Luke asked.
    I pushed the green button, cringing when I did. I knew how badly it hurt and I didn’t want to do that to North, but he was acting crazy.
    From my phone came a string of curses in the distance from North. Luke hollered back at him, something I couldn’t understand. Luke breathed heavily into the phone. “What did you do?”
    “I zapped him back.”
    “What?”
    “Is he still yelling?”
    “Yes,” Silas said, as he held his own phone to his ear. Silas moved to sit back in the tub, putting an arm behind me. I sat back, putting my head on his shoulder as I half listened to Luke scuffling on the phone and Silas talking to North on the other side.
    “North,” Silas said, “no, she’s fine. Stop yelling at Luke. Stop yelling at me.”
    “Swap phones? “ I asked him.
    “Yeah,” Silas said, handing the phone off