All Chapters of CHASED BY FOUR MATES AT WOLFORD ACADEMY: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

ElviraI didn’t sleep. I didn’t even try to.I sat on the edge of my bed in the dark with my sleeve pulled down over my wrist. The clock on Daphne's side of the room said ten past four. Nobody had turned on a lamp.The floorboard by the east window creaked. Katty was standing on it. She stared at the boards by the glass, her tail twice its size."Elvi." Daphne sat up in her bed. Her hair was already in its bun. "You came in at two.""Yes," I said, letting out a breath"Three minutes past two, to be exact." She pushed her blanket off. "Remember house rule four. That nobody goes out at night without telling the rest of us.""I am sorry.""Sorry is not part of the rule. The rule is you tell us." Her voice cracked on the last word. "Then you tell us when you come back, too.""Daphne," Lexa said from the dark. Her glasses were already on. "Let her say it now."I told them the short version of it. The stairs. The room. Two sleepers and an empty cradle. I didn’t tell them what the wall said,

XavierI had decided to be certain of one thing that day, and that thing was a number.Sir Albert usually held the autumn Flame Gauge test in Room 68 every year. Students stood at the brass plate in pairs. One person would place a hand flat on it, while the other logged the readings in a book. I had logged for Gideon last year. His needles had settled in nine seconds.This year Sir Albert had paired me with Elvira.I knew he had done it on purpose. I didn’t know why. I stood at the side table with the pen uncapped and the log open to a clean page. I didn’t look at her face. I looked at the gauge.It stood against the far wall in a glass case with a brass face. The room smelled of polish and old paper. Seven needles lay on the dial. Six of them were at rest. The seventh had been stuck high since the Friday he tested her in his office, pointing at the top of the dial. Everyone had stopped looking at it. I had not."Miss Giamatti," said Sir Albert. "Your hand, please."She stepped to the

ElviraFounders' History class was being held in Room 14. I took the desk by the wall. It put a cold plaster corner at my left shoulder. It also put my left arm where nobody could see it.I had pulled my sleeve to the knuckles that morning and pinned the cuff with a hair clip. The ring around my mark was silver at its edge now. It didn’t fade when I covered it. I could feel it against my skin, cool and steady. It had felt that way since the cellar.Professor Marchetti taught standing up. He was a tall man with a close grey beard and a voice made for large halls. He never used notes. He said notes were for people who did not trust the story."Today we recite," he said. "The Founding, as it was given to the first class. You will not write. You will listen."The room sat straighter. Recitation day was an old Wolford habit, and nobody argued with it.I didn’t mind. I had asked the day for quiet, and here was an hour of it. Through the window I could see the grounds crew on the east path,

ElviraI woke up in the middle of the night.It stood in front of my face in the dark. I watched it rise and thin out. It took me a few seconds to understand that the room was cold enough to show it.I sat up. My blanket slid off my knees and the air bit through my sleeves.My window was white.It wasn’t on the outside of the glass. I knew that at once, because I could see the courtyard lamps through the thin clear patch at the top. The frost was on my side. It spread from the bottom of the pane in long, even lines, and it had reached the latch. When I touched the glass, my fingertip came away wet and numb."It isn’t outside," I said aloud. My voice came out small.My heart began to beat hard; it was hard enough that I could hear it. The ring on my wrist was awake. I didn’t look at it, but I could feel it.I swung my feet down from my bed. The floorboards were icy and slick. Frost lay across the floorboards in one long stripe, from the window to the door.A low sound came from the hal

ElviraDaphne laid the map across the sofa at six in the evening and placed four mugs at its corners to hold it down.The map was a sheet of white drawing paper as wide as her arms. She had ruled the floor plan of our dorm in pencil. Every door and window was in it. Six small circles were drawn in chalk; each one was marked with a number. On top of the paper she had laid a sheet of tracing film, and on the film she had drawn the frost."I drew these the three times the frost came," she said. "I took photographs each time before we mopped. Then I traced them from the prints."She stepped back. Her glasses were still crooked."Look."I looked. The frost lines ran across the film in thin blue pencil, three long stripes. Each one began at a numbered circle and ended at a window or a wall. Every circle had a line. Every line began at a circle."They all start at the hissing spots," Lexa said. She sat cross-legged on the floor with her chin on her knees. "All of the frost. Every single time