Free A Beautiful Evil by Kelly Keaton Page B

right. Bloodborns had enormous egos.
    Two other guys dropped down beside him, and a girl stood behind his chair, hugging textbooks to her chest. I sat back slowly, setting my pen down and closing my notebook. I regarded them with the slightly bored, uncaring look that I’d perfected years ago.
    I almost smiled. If they thought they could intimidate me . . . Amateurs. Try facing a psychotic goddess of war.
    “Rumor is you’re going after Athena,” the girl said. “Rumor is they let you into the library.”
    Something no one was supposed to know. “And you are?”
    “Anne Hawthorne. My mother is head of the Hawthorne family. I’m to follow in her footsteps.”
    A witch, then. The Hawthornes, Cromleys, and Lamarlieres were the three witch families in the Novem. Anne’s mother, Rowen, was in the Council of Nine meeting when it was decided that I’d attend the school and would be granted access to the library. I didn’t know why the hell they called it a secret library if everyone seemed to know about it.
    “We’re all Novem heirs,” Gabriel said. “So we know things the rest of our families don’t. We’ll be running things soon.”
    The way he said it . . . like a threat, like I was a problem they’d be dealing with one day. Gabriel Asshole Baptiste was playing his own version of Novem head already.
    I shoved my notebook into my backpack. “Look, Gabriel, if you have a point to all this, then get to it.”
    He eyed me for a drawn-out moment. “The way to Athena isn’t in any book.”
    I gave him a “So what?” look.
    “Come on, Gabriel, let’s go,” Anne said, glancing around and suddenly going pale. Sebastian had entered the hall.
    Gabriel ignored her. “I know where you should look.”
    “Where?”
    “The ruins.”
    “I thought the ruins are supposed to be off-limits,” I said, noticing that Sebastian had spotted us, and his mood was black. The tension in the room spiked.
    Gabriel regarded Sebastian as he moved toward us, and then he turned back to me, humor playing on his lips. I couldn’t believe I had ever let this guy get close to me. “The Novem makes the rules. We break them. Isn’t that how it works? My friends and I go there to . . . play.” To hunt. His meaning was obvious, and he meant it to be. “We see her disgusting creatures there sometimes. You might want to have a look, try to capture one of them. Just a thought.”
    “Why are you telling me this?” Because it wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart; I was pretty sure Gabriel would just love to see me go into the ruins of Midtown and never come back.
    “If we scratch your back, maybe one day you’ll scratch ours.” He paused. “You should come to our Mardi Gras party on Friday.” He let his chair fall forward and stood up.
    Sebastian blocked his path. I rose slowly as the air between them crackled.
    Finally Sebastian stepped around Gabriel and headed for me.
    As Gabriel walked away with his cronies, Anne tossed a look over her shoulder, her interest in Sebastian pretty damn clear. The bell rang and students began shoving books into bags and filing out the door.
    Sebastian dropped his backpack on the table. “What the hell did he want?”
    “He said I should look in the ruins to find Athena.”
    “Sounds like something he’d say.” Sebastian was quiet for a long moment. “You want to get out of here and go to Gabonna’s for lunch?”
    “Love to.”
    I gathered my stuff and left Presby, still fuming over Gabriel. He was no different from Josephine and some of the other Novem heads I’d met. I’d faced all nine of them and come away with the realization that most of them lived and breathed intrigue, power, and politics. Even Michel played the game to some degree. I guess you had to if you wanted to hold your own against types like Josephine.
    Power and politics were the reasons Josephine had “helped” my mother and had tried to use me. My curse was a tool to her. To Athena. To a lot of people in the Novem. I