One Kind of Wicked: A Reverse Harem Academy Series (The True and the Crown Book 1) Read online

  One Kind of Wicked

  May Dawson

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  35. An Excerpt from Two Kinds of Damned

  A Note From May

  About the Author

  Also by May Dawson

  Chapter 1

  Tera

  The smell of rain almost overwhelms the stench of garbage as I head back to the rooming house, and the thin handles of the heavy plastic bags I carry bite into my fingers. My shoulders ache, but I walk with my head held high. It’s the way I was raised.

  I’m going home today.

  The filthy sidewalk and the buildings that close around me are all gray. I bet in Avalon, the sunrise floods the sky with pink and orange above the trees. Avalon is still half-wild in a way things aren’t here. Vibrant cities stand bordered by forests, and the air carries the scent of wildflowers.

  Or maybe that’s all bullshit. Maybe I remember home like someone who’s been exiled for five years. I don’t trust my memories anymore, and I sure as hell don’t trust my feelings.

  Someone cries out down the street like they’re being hurt. I let the bags slide down my fingers, making sure the handles aren’t knotted around my hands. I need to be able to drop the bags and run.

  I’m not stupid; I don’t get involved. Anyway, it’s probably just one criminal going after another. Someone’s probably getting what they deserve.

  Almost home. I’ll get into my room, close the door, and finish packing my bags, and the sound of that anguished voice will fall away.

  The cry echoes down the lonely street. Goddamnit, I know that voice. Granny. She’s called good morning to me on my lonely trek back from the night shift every day in that whiskey-soaked voice. She always tells me, “You be careful out there! Be smart!”

  My default setting may not be smart.

  I take off running toward the cry. Staying away from the opening of the alley between the boarding house and the brick apartment building next door, I drop the grocery bags against the wall. I’ll be back for you later. My job at the twenty-four-hour grocery stinks, but the haul of dented cans and expired bread has been good for me. And for everyone else in the boarding house.

  When I turn around the corner, two teenage boys—what the hell are they doing up so early?—are at the end of the alley with Granny. One of them flicks a lighter over and over. They’re threatening to light her shopping cart on fire. She’s on her knees, blood smeared across her cheek, begging them to stop.

  My fingers tighten into a fist. I wish I had a wand. I wish there was magic in this world so it would matter if I had a wand.

  But I always find another weapon.

  I run past the entrance to the alleyway. The boys are so intent on Granny that they don’t even notice me. Just yesterday, Mrs. Estes complained about the piles of basura other tenants left behind. I nodded politely—while walking away because I didn’t see anything in the trash I could resell—but I noticed there was a shovel leaning against the faded brick façade.

  I grab the rough wooden handle and head back down the stairs. I feel a hell of a lot better with the weapon in my hand, even if it isn’t much of one.

  From behind the boys, Granny’s eyes fix on me. I can’t read her face. It’s hard to tell if she’s grateful to see me or afraid. She needs this trouble to go away. I usually make more trouble.

  The boys turn, finally realizing there’s someone behind them. They’re young, twelve or thirteen. Too young to be so bad, but hey, my world exiled me at that same tender age for my sins.

  The first one holds the lighter. The flicker of flame dies as he lifts his thumb. It’d be a small victory, except he slips it into his pocket and puffs himself up, ready for a fight.

  “What are you looking at, bitch?”

  My chest is tight with anxiety, but that doesn’t stop me from shaking my head. “You’ve got a devastating wit, don’t you? Leave the old woman alone.”

  He glances back at Granny. My chest tightens even more at the sight of her wide eyes and the blood trickling from her nose; I want to bash these kids in the head so badly. I choke my grip up on the shovel, resting the sharp metal blade against my shoulder.

  “This is a woman?” he asks me skeptically, and his buddy exhales with laughter. But there’s wariness in their eyes.

  “If you walk away,” I say, “I’ll give you ten bucks. Or you can stay here and see if I’m actually capable of kicking your asses.”

  Frankly, I have no idea if I can kick their asses either.

  “You think ten dollars means anything to me?” he asks.

  Ten dollars sure as hell means something to me, so maybe. I take a step toward them, and the two of them turn and run for the back of the alley. They hit the fence and start to climb.

  I’m feeling pretty smug. Then Granny points behind me, and I turn.

  There’s a taxi cab parked across the mouth of the alley. I don’t think they’re scared of the color yellow, though.

  It’s the driver, standing behind his door with a shotgun braced in his shoulder, who probably scared them off.

  I didn’t think it was possible, but my heart rate spikes a little higher.

  “It’s for me,” I tell Granny, looking back. “Don’t worry. Hey, I brought some stuff from the store—I left it on the sidewalk. Take it, okay?”

  “Are you all right, Tera?” she asks me in her gravelly voice.

  I shrug. I don’t know yet. I’m taking a wild chance on the thing I want most, and hoping it leads me home, not to being dumped in a trash bin somewhere in this city where I’ve never belonged.

  “Here’s hoping.”

  “Be careful out there.” Her eyes are worried as she limps toward me.

  “You’re hurt.” I swing the shovel down from my shoulder and lean it against the wall. “I should’ve…”

  “Be smart out there.” She interrupts my vengeance fantasy.

  “What are the odds, really?” I ask, more of myself than anyone.

  She grabs me in a hug goodbye. She’s so much taller than me that her chest presses against my cheek, enveloping me in the scent of cigarette smoke and old laundry. But it doesn’t matter. I hug her back.

  This world is a terrible place. But it has its rare moments of beauty too.

  Chapter 2

  I toy with the door locks in the cab, popping them open and closed. The last time I was in a car, it was a cop car. I’d been in a fight that was completely not my fault, and unfortunately, I was not successful in convincing the policeman of that fact. That time, I definitely couldn’t pop the lock.

  “Ready to go home, Tera Donovan?”

  “Ready,” I say
, although hearing my last name always gives me an ache.

  He hits a button on the dash. The locks pop into the down position. I try, but I can’t pry them up again with my thumbnail. The windows go dark; the driver must still be able to see, but I can’t. It’s as if night suddenly descended.

  I lean forward so quickly my nose almost bumps the mesh screen. “Do you have magic working here?” Magic doesn’t work Earthside. I’ve tried.

  “Sorry, security measures to protect the portals. Sit back and enjoy the ride.”

  Right. I can definitely enjoy the ride. Especially with the doors locked. I twist the strap of my backpack in my lap. I have a rolling suitcase and a duffel bag that my new friend carried down the stairs of the boarding house for me. It smelled like wood rot in the house, and it was quiet—everyone who doesn’t work nights was sleeping—yet I’d felt for a moment like I might miss that place.

  But I would never stay here if I had a chance to go home. My acceptance letter is in my backpack, ready to show them in case I arrive at the Corum University of Magic only to hear there’s been some kind of mistake. I’ve been locked away on Earth with no way to find a portal, so I also had no way of applying to Corum.

  My acceptance package is a mystery, and I don’t like mysteries. But I like being exiled less. I’ll take any way home I can find.

  The sense of having made yet another terrible decision worms through my bones as the driver parks the cab. The windows brighten, but the day outside is not as bright as when we began driving. I press my nose against the glass. The light filtering into the garage is dim, leaving the cement columns and rows of cars in shadow. The sky beyond the raw beams is gray and overcast.

  When the driver opens my door, I slide out into the cool, damp garage. He pops the trunk and pulls out my bags.

  Rain drones steadily on the sidewalk outside, washing out the view of a flat gray building and a few dumpsters outside. That doesn’t give me much of a hint about our location. I’d give anything to be able to find my way between Avalon and here.

  He snaps his fingers at me. “Let’s go.”

  I follow him to a stairwell. The rain is even louder here, pounding against the exterior wall, and the wind rustles around the building. Summer’s just ending, but the sudden storm has made it cold, and I shiver through my thin sweatshirt. We climb up, up, up. My calves burn.

  He opens a door to a deserted hallway, then unlocks a door into an unused office space. There’s a lobby with one abandoned sterile leather couch, and at the end of the lobby, two long windows look out over the gray city. A third window is boarded up.

  “Two windows for suicide and one window for the trip home,” he says.

  That’s a really calming thing to say. Good thing I’m not already keyed up. “That’s the portal?”

  “You came here, didn’t you?” he asks, his voice curt.

  I don’t remember much of the trip from Avalon What I remember is all sensation: my throat hoarse from screaming, my hands cuffed for the first time, the terror wild in my chest like I would never catch a full breath again.

  None of these memories helped me map my way back home. I used to run away from my foster home to walk the streets at night, hoping I’d find a clue to lead me to a portal. It took a long time for that hope to curdle.

  “I’m not jumping out of a seventh-story window,” I tell him.

  “Those two,” he says, pointing to the ones on the left, “Are actually the eighth-story windows. The one on the right has a terrifying two-foot plummet to the floor of the train station in Dorian. You might twist your ankle if you’re a klutz.”

  I stare at him. I want to believe, but I’ve already taken leaps of faith—that is to say, I’ve been really stupid—to get in this man’s cab and to follow him to this abandoned space where no one can hear me scream. Jumping out of a boarded window is epically stupid. Even by my standards.

  He carries my bags across to the window and drops them. Briskly, he turns latches at the edges of the warped, gray wood and pops the shutter off before leaning it against the wall.

  “If they wanted you dead, you’d be dead,” he reminds me.

  Actually, why they—whoever they are—want me alive and home in Avalon is another thing I’ve been panicking over. It’s easier to understand when people want me dead.

  He’s not a very nice man, but I guess that makes him a fitting conduit back into the world I lost. The way I came here wasn’t very nice either. “Are you supposed to be comforting?”

  He checks his watch. “No, I’m supposed to be picking up my next fare in twenty minutes cross-town.”

  I edge toward the window.

  He grabs the handle of my suitcase and starts to drag it, then grunts. “This thing is a real piece of shit, huh?”

  “How do you feel about being stuck on this side?” I ask. “Driving people like me to the portals?”

  “I think this whole place is a real piece of shit.” He grabs my suitcase by its broken handle and one of the wheels, pulling it up to side-eye it as he rests the edge on the window. “No big deal if this thing does plummet eight stories. It can’t be any worse off.”

  “That holds all my earthly goods!” I rush to grab my duffel bag, slinging it over my shoulder along with my backpack.

  “I’m sorry.” He lifts his hands off the suitcase. It teeters on the window ledge before it drops over the other side.

  He kicks a stepstool across the room, nudging it underneath the window with his toe. “Let’s go.”

  He holds a hand out to me, looking impatient.

  “I’ve got it, thanks.” I smile at him so it won’t sound quite so much like I think he might be a murderer. I climb onto the stepstool and lean over the edge, trying to see what’s on the other side. I hope I’m about to stick my head into Avalon, that I’ll see a polished wooden floor two feet under my nose and hear the bustle of a train station. Instead, I poke my head into a cloud, thick and foggy and damp when I breathe in. I try to peer through the cloud, but I can’t see a thing.

  “Shouldn’t I be able to see this two-foot drop?”

  He grabs my legs. I scream and twist back for the window, kicking out at him. He raises my legs even with the ledge as I grab frantically for the window ledge. My fingers scrape across splintering wood.

  “Sorry,” he says. “But I’ve seen people like you refuse to jump before, and like I said, I’ve got another fare.”

  He shoves me through.

  Chapter 3

  My head slams into something, and I tumble over in a pile. As I scramble to my feet, I get the general impression of a polished—and painfully hard—wooden floor, and people gawking at me. My palms ache from trying to catch myself, but I brush them off on my jeans before turning to look at the portal; it’s nothing but an unlatched window swinging shut now.

  My backpack’s burst open, and my books and my sunglasses and wallet and sweater are strewn around in the small roped-off area where I stand. A brass sign hanging alongside the rope says, ‘Please stand back. Portal. Exit Only. See Portal Master for details.’

  There was no please when I went through a portal last time.

  Someone clears their throat behind me. I turn as I bend down, scooping up my lost personal belongings to throw them back into my bag before I’m hustled out of here.

  Polished black shoes wait patiently. The toes hover just under the red velvet rope.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” the man in the polished shoes says.

  I look up from the shoes at crisp navy-blue pants, a matching blue jacket with silver buttons, and a ruddy-cheeked, kindly face under a peaked blue cap. He holds out a paper packet to me. “Your tickets for the train to Corum.”

  He seems a lot nicer than the guy on the other side. But, Earthside doesn’t bring out the best in anyone.

  “Thanks.” I stuff my sweater into my backpack, zip it up, and sling it over my shoulder as I stand.

  “I’ll walk you to your train.”

  A few people have
stopped on the other side of the rope, watching us: a woman with a little boy in her arms and a pair of sandy-haired children with freckles across their upturned noses. Farther past them, other people are less blatantly curious but still watching.

  I look up again, at the window which is now closed, looking absolutely every-day and ordinary.

  “Thank you.” I want to take in everything, but there’s no time. I follow the portal-master as his shoes click across the wooden floors.

  The busy sounds of the station swirl around me. A stand in the corner sells newspapers—God, I could stand to catch up with a newspaper after five years away—and hot coffee, which smells fresh and bitter all at once. The station is filled with light from enormous circular glass windows above the train tracks. There are just two tracks, running north and south, through the station.

  He turns on his heel at the edge of the track. A train whistle blasts in the distance.

  “It should be only a minute or two now.” He shakes the paper packet at me.

  First, my hands were full, and then I’d been distracted by my wonder at being back in Avalon. I forgot about my tickets. I take the envelope from him quickly and flash him an apologetic smile. My thumb brushes against his hand when I take the package.

  He flinches before he tucks his hands into his pockets, nodding as if nothing has happened.

  Anxiety burns like familiar poison in my stomach. My smile freezes on my face as I turn away and study the tracks. Outside the station, I glimpse green trees, a bit of sunny sky.