“Okay,” Isidor shrugged. “What do you want me to do?”

“Use the laptop to Toogle for any information on Ravenwood School.” I said. “Find out its history. We all used to know Doctor Thaddeus Ravenwood and he was a friend of your father’s. See if you can’t find a connection between Ravenwood and this school.”

“Do you think it might be connected to my father in some way?” he asked me.

“I don’t know what to think,” I told him honestly. “But have a look and see what you can dig up on McCain.”

“No worries,” Isidor said, booting up the laptop.

“And if you come across any pictures of werewolves wearing sparkling gloves, try not to get too excited,” Potter said, getting up from the table and heading for the door.

“You’re so funny,” Isidor sighed.

“I know,” Potter smiled without looking back. “It’s one of my many charms.”

I crossed the kitchen, and pecking Isidor on the cheek, I said, “Keep safe.”

“Why, are you expecting trouble?” he asked, cocking the eyebrow with the piercing.

“That copper, Banner knows that we’re staying here,” I explained. “I’m not sure that I can entirely trust him.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Isidor said, suddenly brandishing his claws and fangs. “I know Potter thinks I wander around with my head up my own arse, but I can look after myself.”

“Want to know a secret?” I whispered.

“What?” he whispered back, his fangs and claws disappearing.

“Potter was cut up real bad when you were murdered back in The Hollows,” I told him, leaving the room.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Kayla

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Sam whispered as the Greys led us back through the maze of winding corridors to our rooms.

“Like what?” I whispered back, checking out the burns on the palms of my hands.

“The way you stood there and got zapped without even making a sound. I mean, you took some pain there!” Sam said, heading up one of the narrow, winding staircases.

I tried to hide my hands from him, but I knew he could see the inflamed skin and the liquid-fat, which had started to congeal and harden between my fingers.

“Doesn’t it hurt?” he asked, wincing just at the sight of them.

“Not really, I can’t feel anything,” I told him.

“Are you crazy?” Sam said, as the Greys led us higher up into the gloom of one of the school’s many turrets. I couldn’t help but wonder about McCain and wanted to question Sam about him, but he wouldn’t stop going on about my hands.

“Crazy - how?” I asked.

“This whole thing is crazy!” Sam said.

“Oh,” I replied, starting to pick away at some of the scabs that had already started to form on my hands.

“Is that all you’ve got to say?” Sam whispered, keeping one eye on the Greys who walked only a few feet ahead of us. “We’re living in a prison run by a bunch of freaky-looking hoodies, there’s search towers and sirens, a sadist for a headmaster, and I’ve just witnessed the new girl get her hands fried without so much as a whimper and all you can say is ‘OH’!”

I lowered my hands and looking at Sam, I said, “What do you want me say? I thought you were the one who said I’d get used to being at Ravenwood.”

“Look, Kayla,” Sam said, “I was ball-crapping ya, okay? You ain’t ever gonna get used to this place – you just kinda look away – pretend it’s not happening – it’s all just a bad dream. But what I saw today wasn’t no bad dream. I was wide awake and I had that Grey prodding me in the back with that sizzle-stick just to remind me.”

“To be honest, I’m not too bothered about my hands,” I said. “Okay, so I didn’t feel anything – maybe I was in shock or something. I don’t know. But what does bother me is how McCain...” But before I’d a chance to say anything more, one of the Greys stopped outside my bedroom door and was shoving me inside.

“I’ll catch you later, Kayla,” I heard Sam shout as he was thrown into his room next to mine. The Grey slammed my door shut with such force that it rattled in its ancient frame.

I pressed the side of my head against the door and listened to the sound of the Greys’ robes whispering over the stone floor as they made their way down the corridor. When I was happy that they had gone, I went to my bag, which I had stuffed beneath the rickety-looking excuse of a wardrobe that lent against my bedroom wall.

I took out the iPod and hurriedly typed a message to Kiera. Met McCain for the first time this morning, I wrote. I wanted to tell her about how he had Tasered me, but I decided against it. I didn’t want to see Potter smashing down the school walls – not just yet, anyhow. I needed to find out more about Ravenwood before that happened. I’ve made a friend called Sam, I wrote. Seems okay – pretty hot as it goes! I’m going to try and get him to tell me more about Ravenwood and what’s going on here. I will update you later. Kayla X

I kept hold of the iPod just in case Kiera got right back to me. But before I’d the chance to find out, I heard someone outside my door. I threw the iPod back into my bag and kicked it back beneath my wardrobe. My bedroom door opened a gap, just big enough for Sam to creep inside.

“I’ve got to get outta here!” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Escape?”

Shaking his head, Sam said, “Not escape, I’ve got nowhere to go. I mean just get out of Ravenwood for a few hours.”

“What, right out of the school grounds?”

“Yeah, why not?” Sam said.

“I can think of one good reason,” I told him.

“What’s that?”

“This place is like a fortress! I’ve only been here five minutes and even I can see that. Besides, even if we did get past the Greys, the searchlights, and all that razor wire, where would we go? What would we do?”

“I dunno – anything!” Sam said. “I’ve been shut up in this place for months now and I know it’s not going to be too long before I’m matched with a wolf and then things will never be the same for me again.”

“How does the whole matching thing work?” I asked, sitting on the edge of my bed and watching him cross my room to the window.

“You mean you don’t know?” he asked, sounding shocked.

“No, not really,” I said shaking my head.

“Where have you been your whole life?”

Not wanting him to grow suspicious of me because of my lack of knowledge of how the world now worked since being pushed, I said, “I mean how does it work here?”

“Every Friday night, McCain holds the matching ceremony in the chapel at the back of the school,” Sam started to explain, silhouetted by the milky winter light which poured in through the window behind him. “McCain watches us – studies us – as he looks for suitable students to be matched with the juvenile wolves who arrive each Friday evening. As far as I understand it, each of us are chosen carefully to make the right match. It has more to do with our personalities than how we look.”

“How come?” I asked him, needing to know as much as possible about how this whole matching thing worked.

“Just like us, I guess each wolf is different,” Sam said. “Each one has a different personality. If they’re gonna spend the rest of their lives looking like a human, it makes sense, I s’pose, that they feel comfortable in that skin. From what I can figure out, the wolves are looking for teenagers who will succumb to the wolf that takes them other. I’ve heard that if the human host is quietly strong – rebellious by nature - then it’s harder for the wolf to take over their soul and take complete control.”

I thought of the fight I had witnessed that morning and said, “So someone like Pryor wouldn’t make a good match?”

“How do you mean?” Sam asked me.

“Well he seems like a rebel – someone who rocks the boat – stronger willed,” I explained. “I guess a wolf would have a job trying to crush his soul once inside him.”

“Yeah, perhaps you’re right,” Sam said thoughtfully. “Maybe that’s why he’s such a jerk, like it’s some kind of act so he isn’t matched. But if that’s what his game is, it could backfire on him.”

“Why?”

“Because the wolves want to match with as many of us as possible,” Sam said. “Remember they only get to pull this crazy shit every five years and only in one town at a time, and they only get six months to do it. Those of us who aren’t matched get to go home – back to our families. See, Pryor can kick off as much as he likes, but McCain will just beat it out of him – break him. There are very few kids who aren’t eventually matched.”

“Does it scare you?” I asked Sam.

“Does the thought of being matched scare you?” he shot back.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. I really didn’t know how I felt about matching as I believed it really had nothing to do with me. I’d come from another place – another reality. But now that Sam had asked me the question, I realised now that I was living at Ravenwood, I ran the risk of being matched just like he might be.

“Like me, you’ve probably just grown up accepting the fact that one day it might happen to you,” he said. “A bit like getting cancer, I guess, that’s how I came to see it. The odds weren’t in your favour, but you just prayed that you’d never get it.”

“I guess,” I said, pretending I’d had similar thoughts while growing up. In a way I felt like I was tricking him. Sam seemed like a nice guy, and I really didn’t understand what it must have been like to grow up knowing that one day you ran the risk of having your soul taken by a werewolf. I’d had to grow up coming to terms with the fact that I was a half-breed and that had been bad enough, but whatever I turned out to be, I was still going to be Kayla. I was never going to lose my identity – have my soul taken away from me. “Don’t you hate your parents for letting them take you?” I asked him.