Bleeding Violet Read Online Free PDF Page A

usual.”
    “Contained?” Wyatt said. “Is that why everybody’s over there crying over a glass statue?”
    But the green woman ignored him. “Wyatt even made you earplugs,” she told Cowboy, “but are you people satisfied? No.
Now
you want him to play Sir Galahad and slay dragons for you.”
    “They ain’t anything like dragons, Shoko,” Wyatt said, refusing to be ignored. “Besides, I done it before.”
    “And you see what’s happened?” said Shoko, slapping her hand against the counter. “Now they want you to do
everything
for ’em.”
    “I’m not doing
everything
. Just this one thing. And if I don’t do it, who the hell will? The Mortmaine have bigger fish to fry, and these guys can’t do what we do.”
    But Shoko wasn’t impressed. “It’s not our responsibility.”
    “What about Ed?” asked one of the women by the statue.
    “Do we look like we’re in the storage business?”
Shoko shrieked.
    I sidled away from her.
    “Have his people come for him!”
    “
Does
he have people?” Wyatt asked in a more reasonable tone.
    “I already called his wife,” the woman began, but the rest was lost in tears.
    “And stop puling!” said Shoko. “The transy’s keeping it together better than you are.”
    The sudden silence again caught my attention, and I looked up from my completed forms to find them watching me.
    “She probably don’t even know what’s going on,” said the mascara-streaked woman defensively. “And never mind that she’s Rosalee’s daughter.”
    Wyatt’s and Shoko’s mouths dropped in unison. They drew together, argument forgotten in their astonishment. “
Our
Rosalee?” Shoko flipped her hair out of the way to get a better look at me. “But she’s so …”
    So what? So disgusting that words failed her?
    I took the forms Cowboy had printed for me and huffed out of the office.
    “Wait!” Cowboy called. “Your earplugs!”

Chapter Five
    It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.
    I let the soothing mantra run a loop in my brain as I entered my first-period geometry class. The teacher, Ms. Harrison, a friendly-looking woman with a tattoo of a dodecahedron inked onto the nape of her neck, was dressed in black like her students.
    Like everyone at the school but me.
    With the black rain gear stashed in my locker, I stood out in my purple dress like a bird of paradise among crows.
    It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.
    “Hey there,” Ms. Harrison greeted me.
    “Hello. I’m supposed to give you this.” I handed her my schedule.
    Ms. Harrison took it and smiled at me, which I appreciated, even though she was just a teacher.
    “Class, we have a new student. Hanna Jarva …” She looked up from the schedule, turning to me for help.
    “Järvinen. The J makes a Y sound.”
    “What an unusual name!”
    “It’s Finnish.”
    “I
wondered
about the accent,” Ms. Harrison said, signing the schedule. “I would’ve guessed Russian. You hear that, class? Hanna’s joining us all the way from Finland. How cool is that? Sweetheart, why don’t you take the empty seat next to Carmin? Carmin, watch her while I get her a book and some earplugs.”
    A boy sitting near the back of the room with cobalt blue glasses and hair as red as his name gave Ms. Harrison a thumbs-up before she disappeared into a closet near her desk.
    The gaze of thirty pairs of eyes swept over me like a chilly waft of air.
    I walked to my desk, feeling as though I’d been thrust into the spotlight and now needed to do something—act, sing,juggle, and quickly—before I got booed offstage. I smiled, looked everyone in the eyes, let them marvel at my prettiness. Everyone wanted to be friends with pretty people.
    Everyone except Ms. Harrison’s geometry class.
    I was smiling so widely my ears hurt, but no one smiled back. I intercepted leers here and there, but mostly the kids had this look of unholy anticipation, like a pack of hyenas sizing up a lone gazelle.
    I stopped smiling and sat.
    “What’s