The Healing Power of Sugar: The Ghost Bird Series: #9 (The Academy Ghost Bird Series) Read Online Free Page B

since it happened, although he was always nice to me when we did talk, like today.
    The silence continued. Kota went on. “If we don’t know, maybe one of us should ask him.”
    “I don’t think he wants to talk to me right now,” Gabriel said. “I’ve tried a couple of times, but whatever he’s got bottled up, he’s keeping to himself.”
    “He sure as hell won’t talk to me,” North said and then sighed. “I’ve been pushing at him to get his head together and he’s been fighting back, like how he fights me on everything lately.”
    “You may need to back off for a while,” Kota said. “Whatever he’s going through, you don’t want to push him too far.”
    The problem was, without North being able to talk to him and Gabriel bowing out, I wasn’t sure who else could get through to him. I didn’t have a chance to talk to anyone personally about where everyone else stood on this. Maybe Victor, although he’d had to spend more time at home in the last week, with an upcoming concert happening for a charity event.
    It couldn’t be Kota, and I wasn’t totally sure how the others would talk to him about the issue. It left only one person, and since Luke hadn’t talked to me about it yet, I wasn’t sure he would. “Maybe...I should talk to him,” I said.
    North made a last swipe at my face with a dry paper towel. “That might be a good idea.”
    “I just worry if it’s a guy problem, that he’s not going to explain it to her,” Kota said. “Or he’s just going to tell her it’s no big deal when it really is. Or maybe it’s some assignment in the Academy he’s not sure about and doesn’t know how to refuse.”
    “It’s either her or Mr. Blackbourne,” North said. “Personally, I think she should give it a go first. Mr. Blackbourne’s busy.”
    Out there somewhere was a fake Sang in a blond wig, along with another Academy guy, sometimes it was Nathan or Kota, and sometimes it was someone else, running around ahead of Mr. Morris and other teachers, and Mr. Blackbourne followed them for extra protection. This was to keep Mr. Hendricks’s spies busy while Mr. McCoy was scouting a fake Academy school. It was meant to distract them all and allow Mr. Hendricks to feel like he had an advantage over us now.
    Mr. Blackbourne had to stay away from the real me and the rest of us, though. We were lucky we hadn’t had any unusual cars or any other activity for the past week. All of the spies were in downtown Charleston with the fake Sang and Mr. Blackbourne.
    We couldn’t keep up this charade forever. Tomorrow, I’d be back at school, and so would Mr. Blackbourne.
    If we couldn’t subtly draw them out, we’d do it loudly, according to Kota, relaying what Mr. Blackbourne had told him. If this was the subtle part, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know about the louder version. I didn’t even know what it really meant, but whenever I heard a door open or a car passing by, my heart raced. Kota watched the street, as did the other guys, and we waited, either for orders as to what to do, or a sign that Mr. Morris or someone else had returned and had given up the chase.
    Until then, we had a bit of breathing room, but it was like waiting in the lounge right before you went in to see a doctor, on the edge and uncomfortable.
    Kota sighed, sitting back as he touched the corner of his glasses. He corrected one of his sleeves of his sweater, which had fallen around his wrist, and adjusted it back up his arm. His eyes shifted back and forth, probably calculating a plan of some sort. “Sang might be the best one for this, at least for now.”
    There didn’t seem to be an alternative. I was pretty sure I knew the reason Luke was so distant. In a way, it was my fault. I was the one caught in the middle. We’d gone out to look for answers, answers North had already sought out, only to find more problems. Problems we weren’t ready to face.
    “I can do it,” I said quietly, not totally confident, but not having