"Stop right there or I will kill you, Xavier Harrington" Isabell Harrington yelled as she jumped over the couch chasing her brother "Catch me if you can, IzyWizy" Xavier laughed cracking the pack of chips open "I swear this is the last one I have" she whined slipping down of the blue couch "The last one is always the best one" He was already munching on the chips and Isabell was helpless in front of him
"You'll be the first one I shoot when I get a gun!"
"I'll do my best to be able to deserve it" He brushed his dark hair with his long fingers sliding them to the back of his ears "I hate you!" Considering Xavier's speed there wasn't much Isabell could do except sit on the couch she just slipped onto and yell or scream or maybe both at the same time "Proud to have the honor" Xavier bowed to her
"When will my children grow up?" Lowren grimaced, walking towards the living room. The wrinkles around her eyes turned to scratches when she tried to widen her little eyes "This monkey stole my snacks again, Mom" Isabell wailed pointing her finger at Xavier who was still eating the last pack of her chips "Tell her to hide them well." He winked an eye at her and mocked a smile
"Enough! Enough! I'll teach him a lesson" Xavier's feet fell back as he located his enemy in his mother's hand and they were moving towards him "Come here, You idiot" she hit the Spatula on the top of his head "Mom I- I was-" One more hit cut his words off "Keep that Tongue in or I'll pull it out" said Lowren, her eyes flickering a ray of her building up anger
"And this is how everything ends. You won't say anything to him and he won't stop stealing my things" Isabell clapped her hands giving applause
"This is not how you should be talking to your mother, Isabell," Xavier said with a hint of seriousness in his tone "I told you to stay quiet" Lowren added another hit and he roared "Ahh!!" Xavier lifted his hand to his head checking for bleeding from the previous hits "You know how he is, Bella. I'll give him a lecture on this" Her eyes gave her brother another annoyed stare "I hope you will" she frowned
"Go and study," Xavier said out of the blue, pointing at the door of her room as he took a seat on the couch along with his mother "Why the hell do you care about my studies, Monkey?"
"If you won't study, you'll be of no good to us" Her mouth fell open in amazement
"I am literally at the top of my class unlike--" Xavier interrupted "Haha, okay okay" he wasn't laughing
Isabell knew that there was obviously no good in talking to him so she decided to get her steps to the room and then her feet stopped when he spoke again "Maybe I am in urgent need of a gun" Xavier's words never surprised Isabell, they were always the same "Lawyers don't get guns, Dummy" Xavier blink once and then twice and one more time
"In Crucial cases, they can" She nodded her head up and down. Xavier didn't tell her a joke yet an evil smile appeared on her face
"Crucial as in your grades, Zavy?" She said leaving Xavier stunned with wide eyes. Her words nearly froze everything and suddenly
"What did you just say, Bella?" Lowren's question moved everything, her head slowly turned towards Xavier who was finding a way to dig a hole in tiles with his eyes "Oh yeah, Mom, the results were uploaded this morning" Xavier squeezed his eyes begging his sister to stop but it was already too late
"And?" Asked Lowren
"And your brilliant boy almost failed" Xavier needed to get into the hole at any cost possible because he could see his death from a few inches away
"His CGPA keeps on flowing down and if he doesn't focus on his studies then my twin will be dropped out of the university soon, Mom" She added the details with worried emotions concealing her voice and it all appeared natural "Is your sister telling the truth, Zavy?"
"It- it's not- not like that, mom" Xavier pulled his body away from his mother, stood up and was about to run "I don–" The spatula sprouted wings as it flew, meeting him at the forehead "Xavier Harrington!" His mother yelled taking some fast steps towards him "Listen-" he jumped over the other couch "Jade- you know the VC's son he- he failed a subject" Their mother never compared her children with others and the only possibility of him making it alive from there vanished "Am I his mother? Why the hell will I care about someone else's child?" The panic spread all over his face as Isabell set her shoes in Lowren's hand "It won't end well, IzyWizy" he yelled hiding behind the couch "See you later, Brother. Have fun" Isabell waved a goodbye to him and went to her room
"Come here, you idiot. How many times have I told you to study" Xavier ran around the living room shouting apologies "I'm sorry, Mom. I swear it won't happen again" his mother didn't seem to accept them when the hits and lecture continued "I'll make sure you won't see the next time"
----
The shouts were still roaming in the air when Isabell closed the door of her room "That was fun" She stretched her arms and moved towards the study table. The tiles were barely visible as there was nothing on them but papers; piles, and piles of case files. The height reached the side of her table "I can't believe the final year will be starting tomorrow" Resting her head over her hands her Hazel hair flowed on the table as a fountain.
A bell from her phone vibrated the entire table causing her to lift her head
Ashley: SoS!!
Isabell: Now What?
She didn't respond as a SoS deserves and that was the reason why after a pause of exactly five seconds, the phone vibrated again as a phone call
"Izzy, that's not how you are supposed to react to an SoS'' Her friend yelled from the other end of the phone
"Your SoS are literally 'what color of lipstick should I pick?' or 'I am getting heels over this new monster I read about" How the heck am I supposed to get curious, Ash?" She could hear Ashley sigh from the phone
"Mythological creatures, Izzy. Mythological creatures, not monsters" she said "Whatever" Isabell shrugged her shoulders "I didn't call you to take offense. It's a big thing" Isabell dragged her laptop on the table and lifted the lid "Like your dog ate your assignment or Steve won in a thumb fight against you?" She swayed her fingers on the keyboard "You know your favorite professor had surgery last week" Ashley asked "Yeah I visited Mr. Conner in the hospital" Isabell opened Chrome while not caring about the conversation much.
"An assistant professor is replacing him for three months" Ashley sounded a mixture of excitement and fear "And since when are we interested in assistant professors?" She searched for the Throne of Demon on a tab. A couple of articles appeared and they were all from a year ago. She kept on clicking the refresh but nothing new appeared.
"He is horrible" Isabell's fingers stopped
"Horrible as in murder or as in drugs?" She asked casually "Horrible as in I won't let you live in peace and I'll haunt you in your dreams" she explained casually, "So you mean we don't have a job and we gonna be afraid of new professors this year?"
"Let me tell you exactly why should we be absolutely frightened of him" Isabell nodded, she was listening "His name is Sebastian Lightwood; S for scary, graduated from Harvard Law School and just finished his LLM, and now to the shock of the most shocking parts, he is twenty-six-year-old and-" Ashley was interrupted by a now interested voice of Isabell
"What the heck did you just say? Twenty-six?" She almost yelled
"Exactly the hell-" The yell cut in once again "He is three years older than us and he is an assistant professor?" her voice went louder this time and her brown eyes opened wider "Yes and on top of that, he is awful. A friend of mine from another university told me that he convinced the professor to fail students if he didn't like them and his favorite hobby is to humiliate students in research" Her words made Isabell pause for some seconds
"You're joking right?" She laughed, nervously
"Now you're believing me?" Her expression stayed in place "I need to search everything about this Sebastian until we meet him tomorrow. I gotta go, Izzy" Ashley hung up "Ash! Ash! Wait! Ashley" Isabell called but Ashley was already gone.
Isabell stayed on the table staring at the box of stationery, thinking about many things at the same time but the thing that needed to be okay right now was an uneven pencil casually standing in the box, she removed it
----
"MOM!" She yelled as the morning knocked on the large window of her room because the clock just told her it was Eight forty-nine in the morning and the same clock didn't ring when it was time to wake her up
"Mom!" She screamed again jumping off the bed and rushing towards the living room "Why didn't you wake me up?" She asked, Lowren was standing in the kitchen making breakfast "Well I never knew I was supposed to. I mean your alarm wakes you up not me" She said confused somehow "It didn't ring" She said matching the voice of her mother "It didn't ring" she repeated, not knowimg the reason
"Someone turned my alarm off" She said puzzled and when she looked around for an answer and her eyes located Xavier in a corner of the kitchen dying from the silent laughter
"Xavier Harrington! YOU PIECE OF SHIT!" the silent laughter converted into shouts of laughter as he ran "Revenge, this is what you call it, IzyWizy" Her feet moved to chase him but Xavier was already at the door of his room
"You are already late, Sissy. Have Fun" He closed the door of his room
"Fuc–"
Isabell remembered she couldn't curse in this home even though she just cursed but it wasn't that type of curse, and she stopped noticing her mother's broad gaze on her
"This is wrong, Mom. You know I have never been late for the university and now literally on the first day of the year" Lowren took some steps towards her "I'll have a serious talk about this with him. He will never do it again," she said patting the back of her hair
"But Mom, I'm already late and I can not make it to class till Nine" There was mist of water on the top of her lashes "I'll pack the breakfast for you, and can take the car too, Zavy will go with his friend" Isabell nodded slightly "Get ready for your first day, My baby" she nodded again
----
On her way to the university, she checked the phone for a brief moment, Fifty unread messages and ten missed calls appeared on her lock screen
Ashley: You won't believe what I found about Sebastian.
Ashley: He is–
Ashley: Bever mind I'll tell you at the university tomorrow
Ashley: Good Morning ready for the bang?
Ashley: Bestie You dead?
Ashley: Babe it's 8:45
Ashley: where are you
Steve: Everything okay Izzy?
Steve: Where are you
There was no way she could read them in one minute that she gave herself for breakfast while sitting in her car, she just turned the phone off.
Parking her car Isabell rushed to the class, she didn't mind the gazes from the surroundings on a twenty-three-year-old girl running on university grounds.
The wooden door was right in front of her eyes
no teacher is crazy enough to be punctual on the first day of class
She tricked herself into believing that she was safe
Her feet stopped at the closed door of her classroom
"It's a prank, right?" She laughed but she never replied yes to herself. Isabell held the handle
A squeaking sound opened the door to a hushed room. She didn't recognize this professor, Mr. Conner was old. He had white hair and he usually wore a smile on his lips but this face was young, pale and emotionless. Isabell might have forgotten a minor detail about taking a carton of her favorite Cranberry juice and a fruit basket to the hospital last week.
Despite of oddity she never stopped looking at him because she had to admit the perfection in the sharpness of the man's jawline and the sharp eyes that wore eyebrows as crowns or maybe the brown waves in his hair.
But why are those dark eyes staring at me? She asked herself just after a second of zoning in. The man had stopped teaching and was looking at her. Isabell took a couple of steps to get to her empty seat in center front but suddenly she heard something a deep voice said. Isabell slowly twisted her head around
"Get out of my class," the man said
"Huh?" She wasn't expecting the first lecture of the year to start with those words
"I don't bear latecomers," he said
Is he talking to me? No there is no way but there is no one standing other than me and there is absolutely no one late other than me too. "GET OUT!" The man yelled once again.
It's you, Isabell.
His shout made her legs to tremble and without having another conversation with herself she took quick steps towards the door and didn't dare to look back. She closed the door and the strange man was gone from the front of her eyes but her heart never left her ears