Reality Bites - Wattys 2018 Shortlist

Chapter 42 - Growing Pains

Eddie went back to his workout. I really should join him, but instead and I thought I'd go seek out Abe to find out more about the security breach at St. Vladimir's. Much as the visit to the Academy had been fun, and I would always treasure the look on Kirova's face when she found out Abe was my father, when you came back down to it, there were still a bunch of Strigoi hunting me. They were taking it seriously enough that they had infiltrated my school to find out where I'd be.

Taking the stairs up to the third floor, I stuck my head into our suite. Dimitri was still sleeping, so I shut the doors and headed up to the fourth floor. I first tried the small sitting room but there was no answer, so then I tried the larger one. Mom was the one to open the door. By the looks of it, she and Abe had been having coffee and reading the paper.

"Come in, Rosemarie," Mom said fondly.

"Hi Mom, hi Baba," I greeted them, flinging myself down onto a couch opposite where they'd been sitting.

"Afternoon Rose," Abe said. "Fancy a Turkish coffee? I've just been reintroducing Janine to them," he laughed.

"Sure," I smiled, reminding myself to sip not gulp this time. Abe poured me a coffee, sitting it down in front of me.

"So I suppose you want to know what we discovered about the security breach at the Academy?" he said, correctly guessing the reason for my visit.

"Yeah! Way to spring it on me like that!"

"Sorry," Abe said. "We'd only confirmed the information a few hours before we left, and in my experience, the way to get the most believable reaction in a situation like that is to get an authentic one. You looked shocked because you were!"

"So was I the only one who didn't know, other than Alberta?"

"I didn't know," Mom admitted.

I had to admit, that did make me feel better!

"Dimitri didn't know either then?"

"Not a chance I was going to tell him," Abe said. "We needed the person caught and questioned. Your young man has a hot temper when it comes to you. Couldn't risk him stepping in and the perpetrator ending up with a broken nose, cheekbone and beaten so badly they could barely talk now, could we?" he said with a wicked glint in his eye.

What the?! Oh, how freaking embarrassing. Abe obviously did know about the Nikita situation. I was going to murder Pavel!

"So who was it?" I asked, eager to move the conversation along.

"A Guardian called McKay. From the junior campus. He's been questioned and admitted everything. He had a gambling problem and was promised his debts would be wiped if he put a transmitter on the phone lines. That's as much as he knows, though. We're not sure, yet, who was receiving the transmissions. It wasn't a powerful transmitter, but the signal was strong enough to reach outside the school grounds in a few places. However, we can't rule out that the information could have been broadcast to someone within the school grounds to act upon. In any case, when you left the reservation, Guardian Alto did his morning update to base, telling them that he'd done a handover to Dimitri and that your next check-in would be at the Yosemite campsite just after sundown. We believe that's the information they acted on."

"They're really coming for me, aren't they Baba?"

"It looks that way sweetheart. But don't you worry – we're going to keep you safe."

Mom came and sat next to me on the sofa, putting her arm around me.

"I know it's a lot to take in Rosemarie. We're all here for you."