Read No Angel for Free Online

eyes narrowed as she studied me. “Why are you wearing a dandelion?”
    “I . . .” My brain stalled. “. . . decided to do a bit of weeding? While I was there? Like, uh, I thought maybe students helped out with the gardening. You know, school pride.”
    The Headmistress was silent for a long moment, while I sweated my entire body weight. “How very civic of you,” she said at last, totally deadpan. “I commend your enthusiasm, Mr. Angelos. Perhaps a bit overzealous, but I shall overlook it on this occasion.” She turned away, and I started breathing again.
    “On one condition,” the Headmistress added, just as I’d nearly shut the door. “I look forward to seeing your map of my flower beds, with the locations of all chrysanthemums clearly marked, on my desk first thing tomorrow morning, Mr. Angelos. Should this fail to materialize, I shall instead expect you to materialize in my office for a detention.” She fixed me with a look that said she knew I was serving up bullshit, and she wasn’t digging in. “I trust it will not come to that.”
    “You bet,” I promised fervently. I retreated into my room, closing the door and collapsing against it with a long sigh. Great. Now I had to sneak out and draw the Headmistress’s garden, wherever the hell that was, or get a detention. Was there anything else that could go wrong on my first day?
    A scatter of gravel hit my window.
    I groaned, hiding my head in my arms in the hopes it might all go away. Gravel pattered against the glass again, followed by the louder clink of a thrown pebble. Before my would-be visitor escalated to half bricks, I jerked the window open. “What?”
    “It’s me!” Krystal whispered from the bushes. “I wanted to ask how things were going. Can I come in?”
    I thumped my forehead against the window frame. “Krystal, I am having a really bad night.”
    “Yeah, I imagine it must be pretty tough for you down here. I mean, it’s tough enough for me , and I’ve had a whole lifetime to get used to it.” Krystal’s flashlight lit her face from below, half-illuminating her sympathetic expression. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
    I started to shake my head, and then stopped as a thought struck me. “Actually, yeah. Do you know where the Headmistress’s house is?”
    “Of course.” Krystal jumped back as I slithered out the window. “What, you want to go there now?”
    “It’s a long story.” I disentangled myself from an over-amorous bush and stepped free of the shrubbery. “Let’s just say I have a mission, and it’s a matter of life and death that I complete it before the morning.”
    Krystal nodded, as if this was a perfectly reasonable explanation for wanting to spend the night lurking around teachers’ houses. Then again, given that this was the girl who wore a pentagram charm the size of a discus around her neck, I could probably just have told her that the fairies wanted me to do it.
    She led the way through the woods to an isolated house that looked like something straight out of a horror movie. “This is it,” Krystal whispered, pointing at the glowering, ivy-covered structure. I had to admit, it did match my impression of the Headmistress. All it needed was to be surrounded by gravestones. As it was, the immaculately tended flower beds seemed kind of out of keeping. “Now what?”
    “Now we search for chrysanthemums.”
    Krystal shot me a narrow-eyed look. “Is this one of those ‘moving in mysterious ways’ things that you can’t explain?”
    “Uh, yeah. You poke around the front, and I’ll cover the back.” Not giving her a chance to argue, I headed around the house.
    A flash of white snagged my peripheral vision, and I had a momentary conviction that a giant albino spider was about to eat my face before I realized it was another pentagram symbol chalked on the stone wall. This one was smaller than the one on the chapel door, but still eye-wateringly weird. The white lines seemed to glow in