Free Starling by Lesley Livingston Page B

claustrophobia ever since she was a little girl and a game of hide-and-seek had gone horribly awry. At six years old, Mason had thought herself very clever when she’d hidden in the abandoned garden shed on the edge of her father’s rambling Westchester estate. But Rory had seen her pick her hiding spot, and he’d thought it would be a big joke to lock her in and leave her there for a while. Except that … about an hour after sneaking up on Mason and sealing her into the tiny shed with the slid-bar lock, he’d forgotten all about their silly game—mostly because he was already in a car, on his way to a two-day sleepover at a friend’s cottage … a cottage in the Hamptons that had no phone and no way to contact Rory to find out if he’d happened to have seen his baby sister before he’d left. Mason had blocked out most of her memories of the experience, but she’d been told that they still hadn’t found her by the time Rory got back.
    Roth glanced at the window but didn’t say anything. After it had all happened, they told her that Roth was the one who’d found her. She didn’t remember that. She didn’t remember any of it—except as distorted night terrors. All she knew was that Roth never bugged Mason about her claustrophobia, and she appreciated it enormously.
    She dropped her gear bag on the bed and yanked open the zipper. Then she rummaged through her dresser, tossing her makeup bag and toiletries and a couple of favorite T-shirts into the bag, along with her laptop and a few textbooks she needed for homework. The thought of having to go home made her angry and anxious, but if Roth said he’d get her back to school for Monday, she’d go. Roth never went back on a promise.
    She glanced over to where her brother perched on the edge of her desk, arms crossed over his broad chest. The gesture made his arm muscles bulge and Mason grinned a little, remembering how lucky she had considered herself when she was a kid, to have such a big strong brother to take care of her if she ever got into trouble.
    She wondered silently what Roth would have done if he’d been in the gym with her only a few hours earlier. She wondered if he would have fared as well as the mysterious Fennrys Wolf. She felt her cheeks grow hot at the thought of the gorgeous, lean-muscled blond guy, and she looked away from Roth and cast around for something to say before he asked her why she was suddenly blushing.
    “Hey, um … so what’s the deal between Dad and Cal’s mom?” she asked. “They sort of seem like they hate each other or something.”
    Roth frowned faintly. “Yeah. There’s a bit of history there.”
    Mason gaped at him. “You’re kidding. You mean, like …”
    “No, Mase.” Roth shook his head and laughed. “Not that kind of history. Just Gosforth interfamily crap. You know.”
    She nodded. Mason tried to avoid anything to do with it, but it wasn’t easy in a place like Gos. The Gosforth Academy had been founded in the late 1800s by a handful of extraordinarily wealthy, extremely influential “Founders,” men and women who had decided that public schools—even other private schools—just weren’t good enough for their little darlings. Gosforth, they claimed, would be a haven. A super-elite sanctuary, as well as a place of exceptional learning and culture. Mason had always been a little embarrassed by the entire situation and had routinely petitioned her father to let her go to a regular school, with no success.
    Descendants of the founding families had been attending Gosforth for so many generations that there was a whole tangled mess of feuds and bad blood—and alliances and pacts—that no one could really sort out to any great degree. As far as most of the conflicts went, no one could even remember the origins or reasoning behind them. But it still sometimes made picking where to sit in the dining hall difficult to negotiate. Mason did her best to stay out of it all.
    “I don’t know the whole