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Chapter Three (#ulink_4725e5bf-319a-519a-8dd7-d6e8224aa83c)
BIANCA,
I know it’s been way too long. I hope you haven’t been checking your e-mail all this time hoping to hear from me; my Evernight account got yanked, obviously, and they police our computer use pretty tightly in Black Cross. Besides, I figure they’re monitoring your Evernight account.
But it doesn’t feel like it’s been so long since we talked. Sometimes I feel like I’m talking to you all the time, every second, and I have to remind myself that you aren’t there to hear me, no matter how bad I wish you were.
Hasn’t been much of a summer, to tell you the truth. We went down to Mexico for a couple of months, but it wasn’t beach volleyball and Coronas by a long shot. In fact, half the time I ended up sleeping in the back of the pickup truck. Swear to God, I can still feel the metal ridges against my spine. Not fun.
Lucas didn’t explain why he was in Mexico, or who “they” were who had gone with him. He didn’t because he didn’t have to; I already knew. Black Cross had traveled there on a vampire hunt.
Most of the time, I did a pretty good job of not remembering that the guy I loved was a member of Black Cross. Still, though, it was there, the hard fact that separated the world into two halves: mine and his.
Lucas’s mother had become a member of Black Cross before he was born, and he’d been raised in the group—the only family he’d ever known. He’d been taught since childhood that all vampires were evil, and that killing them was the right thing to do.
But Lucas had learned things weren’t that simple. Although he had fallen for me before he’d learned that I was born to vampire parents, or that I would become a vampire myself someday, learning the truth hadn’t changed his feelings. Nothing had ever surprised or moved me more than the moment Lucas said he still wanted to be with me, that he still trusted me. Even though I had drunk his blood.
If you’re reading this, that means the vampires aren’t searching Vic’s stuff. Obviously, Vic doesn’t know what’s really going on at Evernight or that he’s actually dealing with vampires. That means it’s not fair to keep putting him in danger. A couple of notes every once in a while—that we could probably get away with. But I know that’s not enough for you or for me.
Oh, no. I sat upright, clutching the pages between my fingers so hard they crumpled. Was Lucas about to say that it was too risky for us to stay in touch? That we couldn’t ever see each other again?
If I were a better guy, I’d break it off with you. I know I’m asking you to go against your parents, and with Mrs. Bethany breathing down your neck, even reading this puts you in danger. I ought to be strong and walk away.
But I can’t do it, Bianca. I’ve been trying to talk myself into it for weeks now, and I just can’t. I have to see you again somehow. Soon, I hope, because I don’t think I can stand this much longer.
We’re headed back to Massachusetts soon—not far from Riverton, as it turns out. Looks like a few of us are going to be scouting around Amherst near the end of September. I don’t know how long we’ll be there, but I figure it will be a while.
Is there any way you could get to Amherst the first weekend of October? If so, I’ll meet you at midnight at the Amherst train station—Friday or Saturday night, whichever you could make it. I’ll wait both nights just in case.
I realize that I might be off base here. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other or been able to talk, and maybe you don’t feel the same way anymore. Your parents have had a while to work on you about what a bad influence I am, and if Black Cross freaks you out, I don’t guess I can blame you. Besides, a beautiful girl isn’t going to be left alone for long. Maybe you’re with somebody else now, like that Balthazar guy.
Remembering Balthazar’s gentle flirtation that morning—and the warmth I’d felt in response—made me embarrassed all of a sudden, like Lucas had been eavesdropping and had overheard more than I’d meant to reveal.
If that’s how things are, then—I can’t say I’d be happy for you, because “happy” is not how I’d be feeling. I’d understand, though. I promise you that. Just send word to me in Amherst somehow so I know.
But I feel the same way. I still love you, Bianca. I think I love you more than I did when we said good-bye, and I didn’t even think that was possible. If there’s any chance you still feel it, too, then I have to try.
Okay, I keep reading this letter and feeling like it doesn’t say everything I meant to say. I’m not so good with words. I guess you know that by now, huh? If you come to Amherst, I swear I’ll find the right words to say. Or maybe we won’t need words at all.
I love you.
Lucas
I blinked fast, trying to clear my swimming eyes. The letter shook in my trembling fingers, and my heart felt like a drumbeat beneath my skin. At that moment I could have taken off running toward Amherst, down the roads and over the hills, and been there in minutes—no, seconds—if I’d only known how, maybe I could have shut my eyes and just willed myself there. I wanted it that badly.
Instead, the tie between us was fragile; we were connected only by smuggled sheets of paper and a promise to meet. That was all we could have, because probably Lucas was right about the e-mail monitoring. For all her prim, old-fashioned ways, Mrs. Bethany stayed on top of every technological development that might help her remain in total control of the school. No doubt Mr. Yee had set it up so the headmistress could read every e-mail in the school accounts.
Even being connected only through the mail seemed miraculous now, as I held Lucas’s letter in my hand. He had folded the pages within a greeting card, an unusual one—no message inside, and the photo on the cover was one of the constellation Andromeda. Lucas would’ve had to buy this someplace like a science museum or a planetarium. He remembered how I loved the stars.
Laughter across the grounds made me look up. Courtney and a few of her friends were strolling together at the edge of the lawn, snickering at some of the new human students. She made sure to point. Last year, I had been so intimidated by her. Now she seemed as insignificant as a buzzing fly at a picnic.
However, her presence reminded me that most of the vampires at Evernight knew about Black Cross and about Lucas. The card I held in my hands was evidence that I was communicating with “the enemy.” I would have to destroy it, and soon.
At least Lucas had chosen an image that I could always see for myself, one that nobody could take away.
“That’s Andromeda,” I said to Raquel, pointing up at the night sky.
We were hanging out on the grounds after dinner—our regular dinner, that was. We’d made tuna fish sandwiches in our dorm room; after Raquel was in bed, I’d have to find a way to take a few swigs of the blood I had in a thermos in my dresser. Day one, and my mealtime situation was already complicated, but I’d just have to figure it out.
“Andromeda?” Raquel squinted upward. She had on the same faded black sweater that she’d worn threadbare last year. “That’s from Greek mythology, right? I remember the name, but I don’t remember anything about her.”
“Sacrificial victim, Perseus to the rescue, Medusa head, yada yada.” Vic walked up, hands in his pockets. “Hey, do you guys know my roommate?”
My eyes went wide as I turned my head from the stars to focus on the figure by Vic’s side. “Ranulf?”
Ranulf held up one hand in a sheepish wave. His soft brown hair was still in the same bowl cut it had been in the year before—and, probably, the thousand years before that. Modernity was a very foreign concept to him; every single class was a challenge for him to even comprehend, much less absorb. And Ranulf was the male vampire chosen to have a human roommate? What could Mrs. Bethany have been thinking?
“Hey, Ranulf.” Raquel didn’t stand and offer a hand to shake, but for Raquel, even speaking to a stranger was being pretty friendly. “I remember seeing you around last year. You seem okay. You know—nonferal. Not like Courtney and her bitch patrol.”
Clearly Ranulf didn’t quite know what to make of that. After a moment’s hesitation, he simply nodded. At least he’d learned how to bluff.
“Checking out the stars, huh? Vic flopped down beside us on the grass, his usual lopsided grin on his face. “I forgot you were into that.”
“If you’d ever seen my telescope, you’d never forget.”
“Big?” he asked.
“Huge,” I said with relish. My telescope was one of my proudest possessions. “I kind of wish I’d hauled it down here tonight. The sky’s incredibly clear.”
Vic lifted one finger to the sky as if painting a little squiggle. “And that’s Andromeda, right?” I nodded. “You see it, Ranulf?”
“Shapes in the sky?” Ranulf ventured as he hesitantly sat down with us.
“Yeah, the constellations. You need us to point them out to you?”
“When I look at the sky, I do not see shapes,” Ranulf explained patiently. “I see the spirits of those who died before us, watching over us for all time.”
I tensed, expecting the others to freak out or start asking Ranulf questions he couldn’t answer. But Raquel merely rolled her eyes, and Vic nodded slowly as he took it in. “That’s deep, man.”
Ranulf had to pause to think up an appropriate reply. “You are ‘deep’ also, Vic.”
“Thanks, dude.” Vic punched Ranulf’s shoulder.
Fighting back laughter, I rolled onto my back to look up at the stars. Mrs. Bethany hadn’t chosen Ranulf to room with a human; she’d chosen Vic to live with a vampire. Apparently she’d realized that Vic didn’t sweat the small stuff and so would simply blow off any of his roommate’s weird habits.
Once again, she’d proven how insightful she was—and how well she understood all of us, even Vic. It made me glad that I’d already destroyed Lucas’s card and letter. I’d wanted to hang on to them forever, but it was too dangerous. Besides, I still had the stars.
I traced the image of Andromeda over and over again in the night sky. October seemed a thousand years away; it could never have been near enough.
Chapter Four (#ulink_9ff5ccc9-4321-5935-be3a-ed5b7242a004)
AFTER THE FIRST RUSH OF EXHILARATION PASSED, I had to ask myself—How was I going to get to Amherst?
Students weren’t permitted to keep vehicles at Evernight Academy. Not that I had one to keep here in the first place, but I couldn’t borrow a ride from a friend either.
“Why aren’t the students allowed to have cars?” I asked Balthazar in a low voice as he walked me to my English class on one of the first days of school. “A lot of people here have been driving cars as long as there have been cars to drive. You’d think Mrs. Bethany would trust them behind the wheel.”
“You’re forgetting that Evernight was around even before the automobile.” Balthazar glanced down at me, in one of those odd moments that reminded me he was almost a foot taller than I was. “When the school was founded, everyone would’ve had horses and carriages, which are a lot more trouble to store than cars. Horses have to be fed, and their stalls have to be mucked out.”
“We have horses in the stables.”
“We have six horses. Not three hundred. It’s a big difference when it comes to feed—”
“And mucking out stalls,” I finished for him, making a face.
“Exactly. Not to mention that there were a lot of hurt feelings when people got hungry and snacked on other people’s transportation.”
“I bet.” Poor horses. “Still, it’s not like anybody would be in danger of chowing down on a Toyota. And there’s plenty of room around here where people could park. So why hasn’t Mrs. Bethany changed the rules?”
“Mrs. Bethany? Change a rule?”
“Good point.”
Mrs. Bethany presided over her classroom like a judge presided over a courtroom: peering down at everyone around her, dressed in black and unquestionably in charge. “Shakespeare,” she said, her voice ringing throughout the room. Each of us had a leatherbound edition of Shakespeare’s complete works in front of us. “Even the least educated of you will have studied his plays in some context before now.”
Was I imagining things, or had Mrs. Bethany looked at me when she said “least educated”? Given the smirk on Courtney’s face, maybe I wasn’t imagining. I shrank down in my desk and stared at the book’s cover.
“As you are all familiar with Shakespeare already, you might justifiably ask—why here? Why again?” Mrs. Bethany gestured as she spoke, and her long, thick, grooved fingernails reminded me of claws. “First of all, a deep understanding of Shakespeare has been one of the foundations of Western cultural knowledge for centuries now. We can expect it will remain so for centuries to come.”
Education at Evernight wasn’t for college prep, or even just to make you smarter or happier. It was meant to carry its students through the impossibly long lives of the undead. That lifespan was something I’d tried to imagine ever since I was a little girl and first learned how I was different from the other kids in kindergarten.
“Second, these plays have been interpreted in a number of different ways since they were first written. Shakespeare was a popular entertainer in his own time. Then he was a poet and artist whose works were meant to be read by scholars, not enjoyed by the masses. In the past one hundred fifty years, Shakespeare’s plays have reemerged as drama. Even as their language becomes more foreign to the modern ear, the themes speak to us strongly today—sometimes in ways Shakespeare himself could perhaps not have guessed.”
Although Mrs. Bethany’s voice always set my nerves on edge, I couldn’t help feeling encouraged that we were going to concentrate on Shakespeare this year. My parents were huge Shakespeare buffs; they had named me after a character in The Taming of the Shrew, telling me that they’d been certain any name from Shakespeare would be familiar for hundreds of years to come. Dad had even gone to see him act in a few plays, back in the days when William Shakespeare was just one playwright among many fighting for audiences in London. So I’d memorized the dirge from Cymbeline before my tenth birthday, seen Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet on DVD about twenty times, and kept the sonnets on my shelf. Mrs. Bethany might give me a hard time this year, too, but at least I’d be prepared for anything she could throw my way.
Again, she seemed to have overheard my thoughts. Strolling beside my desk, where I could smell the lavender scent that always seemed to surround her, Mrs. Bethany said, “Prepare to have any preexisting assumptions you may hold about Shakespeare’s works challenged. Those of you who think you can learn all about it from modern film adaptations would be well advised to think again.”
I mulled the potential need to reread Hamlet until class was dismissed. As we all filed out of the classroom, I saw Courtney sidle up to Mrs. Bethany, saying something in a low voice, obviously hoping she wouldn’t be overheard.
Mrs. Bethany wasn’t having it. “I will not reconsider. You must resubmit your report, Miss Briganti, as yours was inadequate.”
“Inadequate?” Courtney’s mouth was a perfect O of outrage. “Finding out how to get into the best clubs in Miami—that’s, like, really important!”
“Under some dubious standard of importance, I suppose that may be true. You may not, however, submit your report in the form of phone numbers scrawled on cocktail napkins.” With that, Mrs. Bethany swept out of the room.
Courtney stomped after her in a huff. “Great. Now I have to type.”
I wished I could’ve told the story to Raquel, who loathed Courtney as much as I did and would probably be in a crummy mood after our first day at the school she hated so much. Instead, we just hung out in our dorm room that evening, talking about pretty much anything except what had happened in classes.
Unfortunately, that whole night, Raquel only left the room once. Her bathroom trip gave me enough time to gulp down about two swallows of blood, not nearly enough. I became hungrier and hungrier, and finally I insisted that Raquel turn off the lights early.
Once she finally seemed to have fallen asleep, I kicked off the covers and slipped out of bed. Raquel didn’t stir. Carefully I withdrew the thermos of blood from its hiding place. Tiptoeing into the hallway, I glanced around to make sure nobody else was up either. The coast was clear.
I considered my options before I hurried down the hall toward the stairwell. The stone stairs were chilly at night, particularly considering that I was only wearing boxer shorts and a cotton camisole. But the cold was one reason nobody was likely to come that way in the dead of night and find me drinking blood.
Lukewarm, I thought with distaste as I took the first swallow. I’d nuked it earlier that day, but even the thermos couldn’t keep it piping hot forever. Didn’t matter. Every coppery mouthful flowed into me like electric power. Yet it wasn’t quite enough.
I wish the blood were hotter. I wish it were alive.
Last year, Patrice used to sneak out all the time to catch squirrels on the grounds. Could I do that? Just, like, chomp into a squirrel? I’d always thought I couldn’t. Every time I’d pictured it, I’d thought about the fur getting stuck in my teeth. Blech.
When I thought about it now, it felt different. I didn’t think about the fur or the squeak or anything like that. Instead, I thought about that tiny heart beating so very fast, as though I could feel that thrum-thrum-thrum against the tip of my tongue. And it would sound so good when I bit down and all those little bones snapped, like popcorn popping in the microwave—
Did I just think that? That’s disgusting!
That is, I thought it was disgusting—but it didn’t feel disgusting. It still felt like a live squirrel would be just about the most delicious thing on earth, short of human blood.
Closing my eyes, I remembered what it had been like to drink Lucas’s blood while he lay beneath me, clutching me in his arms. Nothing could compare to that.
Something crackled down in the stairwell.
“Who’s there?” I said, startled. My words echoed. More quietly, I repeated, “Who’s there? Anybody?”
Once again, I thought I heard it: a strange crackling sound, like breaking ice. The crackling came closer, as though it were traveling up the stairs. Hurriedly I screwed the lid back on my thermos, so that no human student would see me drinking blood. I ducked into the hallway and tried to figure out what could be causing that sound.
Had a girl sneaked out of the dorms for a snack, just like I had? The sound was a little like the popping noise ice cubes made after they were dropped into water. Then I stifled a giggle when I wondered if it was a guy instead, sneaking up here to visit the girl he liked. Maybe it wasn’t even a person. It could just be an old building reacting to the deepening autumn cold.
The crackling came closer. The air around me instantly went colder, as if I’d just opened a freezer door. My hair stood on end, and goose bumps appeared on my arms. My breath looked foggy, and once again I sensed that somebody was watching me.
Farther down the stairwell, I saw a wavering light. It flickered like a candle, but the light was a brilliant blue green, the color of a swimming pool. Ribbons of illumination rippled across the stones. It looked eerily like Evernight was under water.
By now I was shaking from cold, and I lost my grip on the thermos. The moment it clattered to the floor, the lights vanished. The air around me warmed again instantly.
That was not a reflection, I thought. That was not my imagination.
So what the hell was it?
The door nearest the stairwell swung open. Courtney stood there in a hot-pink nightshirt, her blond hair messy around her face. “What is your damage?”
“Sorry,” I mumbled as I ducked down to grab my thermos. “I had to sneak out to eat. I—I guess I lost my grip.”
Eventually I would have to tell somebody what I’d just seen, but Courtney was the last person I would take into my confidence. Even admitting that I’d done something as simple as dropping a thermos made her roll her eyes.
“God, just catch mice like a normal person, okay?” But instead of slamming her door, she shifted from foot to foot, then said, “I guess that does suck.”
“—dropping my thermos?”
Courtney scowled. “Sneaking out to eat. You drew the short straw when it came to roommates.”
