Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape) (Volume 3) by Marion G. Harmon

do?
    Maybe. Probably. Meanwhile, I had to go see a judge and jury. It was going to be so much fun.

Chapter Six: Grendel
    Teenage superheroes are huge — in comics and on TV. In real life? Not so much. Forget child-endangerment laws; want to know why kids with superhuman powers make adults twitchy? Just imagine the daily life of any high school. Remember the angst, the drama, the hazing, the pranks, the insecurity and attitude, rivalries and one-upmanship? Remember what it was like for you ? Got it? Now add superpowers.
    Yeah, now you’ve got it. Hillwood Academy.
    Brian Lucas, aka Grendel.
    ----
    “Brian Lucas, Her Royal Highness requests your presence!”
    I rolled over and up off the bed, nearly stomping Nox before I’d woken enough to realize I didn’t need to maim somebody. Two years of Hillwood Academy pranks had turned me into a light sleeper. I growled at the doll and he sneered back — neat trick for a foot-tall ball-jointed toy made in Japan.
    “When shall you attend her?”
    Sitting back on the bed, I retracted my claws to push dreads out of my eyes. I held one up and squinted at it. I needed to dread-ball and wax soon.
    “Did someone break into the lab again?”
    Now he just looked insulted. “No one would dare, and we wouldn’t need you .”
    “Right.” On both counts; the last student who’d tried to raid the lab on a dare had disappeared for three days while Ozma wore a new hat. Todd never remembered those three days, and she promised to burn her next hat.
    When it came to psychological warfare, the princess took no prisoners.
    “Then you can tell Her Highness that I’ll see her after breakfast and before first period.”
    “She — ”
    “Tell her, Nox.”
    “As you wish, monster.” He dodged my kick, not that I’d been trying, and disappeared back into the vent he’d come through. With two students on campus who could shrink , forgetting about Nox and Nix, you’d think the school would invest in more secure air conditioning.
    Nox’s wake-up had put me a few minutes ahead of the alarm, and I used it to work on my dreads before heading down to the dining room. Latisha had convinced me to style them back from my face, almost like cornrows so they stayed off my forehead and hung down my shoulders and back. The locks were so long they hung almost to my pecs now, nearly a mane, and she considered that progress.
    “Nice.” She grabbed one and sniffed when I sat down with a full breakfast tray beside her, smiled back at the stares she got. Nobody touches the hair was one of the best-known laws of Hillwood. She’d made it Nobody touches the hair except Latisha . It worked for her; most Hillwood kids at least talked about wearing the cape after graduation — she talked about hairstyling, and since her mom was a world-famous celebrity stylist, she’d do better than anybody here.
    She eyed my stack of bleeding steaks. “Plan on doing a lot of morphing today?”
    “Nope. But Her Highness calls, so you never know.” I grinned around fast-growing fangs.
    She sighed and reached across the table to snag a double handful of napkins. “Then I’m gone, sugar. Tuck your tie in your shirt and use some of these.” Planting a kiss on my cheek, she rose and sashayed away, paused at the door to toss a final finger wave. It was my turn to grin back at stares. I even put a little Nox-sneer into it.
    Yeah guys, you just wonder and weep .
    Nobody else tried to talk to me, not that I could talk back with a mouthful of serious fang. I finished fast and flexed my jaw to dial my pearly whites down from their breakfast time shark-like size. Pushing Nox’s buttons was always fun, but if Ozma had sent him to get me then something was up; with still half an hour until class, Stanniger Hall was empty, echoing as I took the stairs up to her lab three at a time.
    “Normal” students don’t rate their own labs, and lots of us would rather be anywhere but Hillwood; two years ago, Ozma had demonstrated that she