Read Online House of Korba: The Ghost Bird Series: #7 (The Academy) by C. L. Stone - Free Book Online

others, and the guilt was overwhelming. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, and I knew I needed to trust the boys, but this wasn’t normal.
    Silas’s face tilted again, his lip brushing across the crest of my cheek. “Tell me.” His voice was strained now, pleading.
    As I contemplated what he meant, an arrow of pain struck me in the chest, hard enough that my eyes blacked out. I fell back into the couch. My hand sought out my breast where I’d been shocked. I couldn’t breathe and thoughts emptied out of my head except confusion. “Holy... bejeezus... ugh,” I gasped out, gripping at the device that I realized had emitted the shock.
    “Shit, Sang, are you okay?” Silas called to me, his hands reaching for my shoulders. His eyes were wide, horror-stricken. He got on his knees on the couch, hovering over me. “Sang?”
    I coughed, yanking out his cell phone. The screen was glowing. “What...” I panted, still short of breath. The shock was gone, but the area on my breast tingled.
    “Fuck. I forgot you had that,” he said. He took the phone from my hands, but continued to hover over me. “What?” he barked at whoever was on the line.
    I cupped a palm over my breast to ease the sting. “Ow,” I breathed, still clutching at my chest. What happened? Did his phone shock me? It felt familiar, but not as strong as a zap from a stun gun.
    Silas’s face went dark and he moved off of me to sit back on the couch, listening to his phone. He grunted, handing it off to me. “He wants to talk to you.”
    “I don’t know if I want it,” I said. “It shocked me. I think it’s broken.”
    “Just talk to him,” Silas said, frowning.
    I moved slowly but trusted him enough to take the phone. “Hello?”
    “Sorry,” North’s voice powered through to my ear. “What the hell was his phone doing in your bra?”
    “Wait...wait...ugh...what?” The shock had left my breast tingling and feeling weird and the questions I wanted to fire back at him weren’t formulating properly.
    “Don’t put his phone in your bra. In fact, don’t hold his phone. And tell Silas to back off if he’s scaring you,” he ordered.
    “How did you know it was in my bra?” I countered, finally finding the words.
    North fell silent.
    “North?” I demanded.
    Silence.
    Something clicked in my brain. “Were you watching us?”
    “It’s a good thing I was.”
    “There’s a camera on us now? I thought they were for emergencies.”
    “I was making sure you were okay.”
    “I’m with Silas,” I said. Didn’t he trust him? Wasn’t that enough? “Did you shock me? These phones can shock you?”
    “I thought it was in Silas’s pocket.”
    “So you were trying to shock Silas.”
    “He deserved it.”
    “Why in the world do you have shocking phones? And why are you watching us? And that was mean. I can’t believe you’d do that.”
    “He’d do it to me.”
    “I don’t care. Don’t shock. No more shocking. That hurts.”
    “Sang,” he bellowed into the phone. “I will shock who I want if I think they need it. Don’t let Silas intimidate you. Tell him to back off if you’re uncomfortable.”
    “I’m uncomfortable with someone watching us without saying they’re going to do it and trying to shock other people, North.”
    “Don’t make me come over there.”
    “Ugh,” I grumbled, and I moved the phone from my face, hitting the button to end the call. I tossed it to another part of the couch, falling back and putting my hands on my face.
    My phone started buzzing in the other cup in my bra, scaring me that it might actually shock me, too. I quickly pulled it out of my bra, tossing it over with the other one. I caught North’s name on the screen, but I ignored it.
    “Your phone isn’t set to do that,” Silas said. He had a knee up on the couch, sitting back on his heel, looking solemn and uncertain.
    “Why is yours set like that?”
    “It’s the emergency line,” Silas said. “When it rings through and it’s on