Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 447(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 447(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
When I finally managed to peel my eyes open, a scream erupted. I was in so much shock at what I saw that it took me a moment to realise the scream had come from me. I stood in an empty classroom, and the floor was covered in blood. A few feet away from me was a body, familiar dark hair fanning out from a limp, lifeless form.
“Fuck,” I whimpered, still with the object clutched tightly in my hand. I glanced down and saw it was a dagger. A dagger covered in blood. A jolt shot through me as I approached the body and knelt, pushing the hair from her face and confirming my suspicions.
Belinda.
From the looks of it, someone had stabbed her several times in the gut, and she’d bled out. Someone had killed her and wanted to make it look like I was the one who did it.
I started trembling. A sick sense of fear and dread filled me. I was standing there with the blood of a girl I was known to dislike all over me.
Suddenly, I felt a presence before a faint, whispery voice asked, “I-is t-that m-me?”
My head shot up, and there was Belinda. Well, an incorporeal version of her, at least. She stared down at her lifeless body.
“Yes,” I replied quietly.
Belinda’s ghost looked up, her attention going to the blood on my hands and the knife I was still holding. “Did you kill me, Darya?” She sounded so small, so vulnerable. So unlike her usual self. Then again, she wasn’t her usual self. She was dead.
“No!” I was quick to deny it. “It wasn’t me. Someone set me up.” My senses were overwhelmed, but I managed to pick up the slight scent of her ghostly presence. It was similar to what I’d smelled in the woods and at the funfair, but different somehow. I started to believe that whoever had been watching me wasn’t a ghost, as my mother had theorised, at least not in the usual sense.
They were very much alive, and if my suspicions were correct, they’d dressed up as a caretaker, spiked my water bottle in the cafeteria, waited for me to pass out, then planted me there with a dagger in my hand after brutally murdering my classmate.
The next time I looked up, Belinda’s ghost was gone. The classroom door burst open, and several armed members of the Guard filed in.
“Hands in the air,” one of them roared at me, and I complied immediately, still clutching the murder weapon. Why the hell hadn’t I dropped it?
“This isn’t what it looks like,” I said as he approached me from behind and deftly extricated the weapon from my hand before enclosing a pair of handcuffs around my wrists.
“I’m sure it isn’t,” he said with derision.
“Who called you?” I demanded. “Who tipped you off? Whoever it was is clearly the one who framed me.”
“You should stop talking,” the officer said. “Unless you want to incriminate yourself further.”
A large crowd stood outside the classroom. Mainly members of the Guard, but a few teachers and students. They stared at my bloodied state with horror in their eyes. For all they knew, I’d just brutally murdered one of my fellow students, and it wasn’t the first time I’d been on the scene when someone was killed in school. I was still haunted by images of Mr Williams when he was murdered in his classroom by Vasilios’s partner in crime, the vampire demon Sven.
How on earth would I fix this? How would I prove my innocence? My mind raced until it finally hit me.
The water! Whatever substance they used to knock me out must still be in my system. They could test my blood and prove my water had been spiked.
“Someone put something in my drink,” I told the officer escorting me to the exit. “I lost consciousness, and when I woke up, I was lying on the classroom floor with blood all over my hands.”
“You’ll be given a chance to tell your version of events when we get to the station,” he replied gruffly. The lack of empathy in his voice told me he didn’t believe a word that came out of my mouth. I had, after all, been caught red-handed holding the murder weapon.
We reached a van, and the doors slid open. I peered around, hoping to catch sight of Peter or Grace or Rebecca, anyone who I could tell to call my parents. I was so scared, and though I considered myself a grown woman, at that moment, all I wanted was my mum and dad.
Tears filled my eyes as they lowered me into the van. The door slammed shut, and the engine started. Half an hour later, we reached The Hawthorn Guard headquarters, where I was promptly brought to a holding room. The officer who’d cuffed me initially set me down on a chair and then left the room. I swallowed the thick lump wedged in my throat when I heard the lock click.