Free The Thief by Aine Crabtree Page B

want to be rid of us.” He paused for a moment, and
then a grin spread slowly across his face. That was the smile that
meant they were about to do something dangerous, something outside
the box, and it almost made her grin as well. He was a very
difficult person to stay angry with.
    “ You know what would drive
her crazy?” he said, as the light changed and the car inched back
into motion.
    “ No,” she said, trying to
maintain a solemn expression.
    His eyes flicked to her and back to the
road; they were glittering. “If you did really well.”
    “ Be serious.”
    “ That is what she’d hate,”
he said emphatically. “Rin Umino’s idea of power is thinking that
she and her pet students are better than everyone else. I’m a
little...ah...notorious...in their circles. That makes you
notorious by association. If you really want to stick it to
her...follow the rules and destroy them doing it.”
    “ We’re destroying
them?”
    “ Metaphorically.”
    “ Less
interested.”
    “ Come on, it can’t have been
that bad.”
    “ She called me a monster.
One of her ‘pets’ tried to interrogate me about the bracer. My
notebook is soaking wet. They’re making me take extra English
classes, they won’t let me speak Japanese,” she said, and then
added. “And no one talked to me.” That last was a lie, she realized
as soon as she said it. Jul had tried. Several times. She frowned
in recollection.
    “ That’s more like it,” he
said. “First day of school stuff. Then I say things like, tomorrow
will be better, and that maybe you should try talking to other
people if they’re not talking to you first, and we can fix your
notebook with a hairdryer. Wait, do we have a hairdryer? Honestly,
extra English sounds like the worst part.”
    “ Why is that?”
    “ Because I know your English
teacher,” he said, distracted as they pulled into the parking lot
of the cafe, noting two cars there.
    “ Who’s that?” Camille
asked.
    “ I was hoping you could tell
me,” he said, bringing the car to a quiet stop. He rolled down the
windows and turned off the engine. “Can you hear them?”
    She concentrated. She could hear the wasp
buzzing around the back of the car. The engine cooling down. The
wind in the trees across the lot. She closed her eyes. The heat
radiating off the shingles. The motorcycle two miles away. The two
people arguing inside the church/cafe. Her senses were unusually
dulled. She should have been able to hear them crisply from this
proximity, but instead she had to strain to pick out their
conversation. Voices new to her, but she could place them.
    “ You don’t need to be here
for this,” a man was saying.
    “ You’re going to try to run
him off, and I’m not going to let you do that again,” a woman
replied.
    “ You think I had anything to
do with the last time? You’re fooling yourself.”
    “ It’s Tailor and Miller,”
Camille murmured. She could almost smell them, underneath the harsh
exhaust smell that permeated the parking lot, and the fragrance of
shaved wood and fresh paint that flowed out of the main door.
Tailor smelled like old books, coffee, and iron. Miller smelled
like oranges and acetone.
    “ You’d do anything to get
rid of him, John. For the hundredth time, I’m not
stupid.”
    “ And for the thousandth
time, Charlotte, I’m flattered you think I have any influence over
that walking disaster,” Tailor snapped. “Gabriel left because he
was done with us, not for any other reason. Not you, not me, not
Simon or Kyra. He was bored, so he left.”
    “ They, ah, they’re...”
Camille filed the comment away. “They’re having an argument. About
you. Tailor said you’re...a walking disaster?”
    “ From his perspective, I’m
sure I am,” he said coolly. “I guessed it would be them, I just
wanted to be sure.”
    “ I can’t hear them very
well,” Camille admitted. “Can something interfere with
that?”
    “ Hmm,” Gabriel remarked.
“Call it...one of the