I FELT RELIEVED WHEN CLASSES STARTED AGAIN. I’d settled into a melancholy mood that only became worse with time and silence to brood. At least when the hallways filled with students and assignments began piling up, I had enough to do. I could stop thinking about my problems for a while.
Apparently most of the Evernight students had spent a great deal of time thinking about their problems, specifically the problem of attending a haunted school. Several of the vampire students hadn’t returned; those who had muttered darkly about posting sentries in the halls and sleeping only in shifts while a roommate remained awake. I even heard someone speculating about what it would take to perform an exorcism. Yeah, I thought, I’m sure a priest with his crucifix and Bible would be really welcome here.
Human students remained relatively calm about the prospect of a ghost. Even Raquel could deal. “It’s not the same ghost,” she reasoned as she unpacked her trunk, which was mostly crammed with foodstuffs—canned soup, boxes of crackers, and jars of peanut butter. “If it were going to—well, if I were in trouble, I’d know by now. I’d rather deal with this thing than whatever is in my parents’ house.”
“How do you stand it, living there?”
“This Christmas, I spent the break with my older sister and her husband. Their place is fine. My parents think I’m acting out, but they also think Frida is a ‘good influence.’”
I thought about all the stuff my parents would let me do as long as I was with Balthazar. “Hanging around with a good influence helps you get away with murder, doesn’t it?”
We cracked up laughing and then split a candy bar.
Soon it became clear that at least one vampire had spent her holiday vacation worrying about something besides the wraiths—and that I now had a brand-new problem.
“I’ve made it almost thirty years without having to change a flat tire,” Courtney huffed as she pumped the car jack. “If you’re young, hot, and blond, trust me, you can work around it. There’s always some stupid guy happy to help out. Of course, I can see that you might need to know how to do it yourself.”
“Will you just hand me the lug wrench already? We’re not going to get finished any faster if you keep complaining.”
“Snappish.” Courtney’s full lips curved upward into a sneaky sort of smile. “What’s the matter, Bianca? Are you, oh, I don’t know—having some relationship trouble?”
“Things between me and Balthazar are as good as they’ve always been.” Technically that was true. As I knelt on the cold pavement, my wool gloves getting stained with grease, I tried to pay attention to the task at hand.
“I think you think you’re telling me the truth,” Courtney said. “I think you don’t even know where Balthazar’s going without you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Maybe possibly right around New Year’s Eve, I happened to see Balthazar in Amherst. Without you.”
“What were you doing in Amherst?”
“I happen to be familiar with the town, okay? I go there sometimes. So does Balthazar, but apparently to see someone besides his girlfriend. I’d be suspicious if I were you.”
He would have been there looking in vain for Charity. My face fell, and Courtney smirked. She couldn’t have guessed why I was actually upset, but it didn’t matter. Now that she had identified a weakness, she was sure to exploit it. Quickly, I said, “Balthazar goes all kinds of places. It doesn’t mean anything to me. We’re not attached at the hip.”
“Too bad. Getting attached at the hips is sort of the point.” Courtney winked as she thrust the lug wrench toward me. I snatched it and hoped she’d be satisfied with teasing me about the supposed infidelity of my supposed boyfriend. Balthazar and I both needed our masquerade, and we couldn’t afford anyone watching us too closely.
I made up my mind that this trip would be different for me and Lucas, but I hadn’t realized how different it would be.
“I don’t know where exactly we’ll meet up with him,” I said as Balthazar steered the driver’s ed sedan past a small white sign advertising the township of Albion. “He said we’d know it when we saw it, whatever that means.”
“Don’t worry. Lucas is right. Trust me, there aren’t many places he could go.”
Soon I realized what he meant. Albion was even tinier than the small town I’d grown up in: only a handful of streets clustered together, marked with a single stoplight in the center. The houses looked old, and except for a grocery, a gas station, and the post office, there didn’t seem to be anything like a store around. “Pretty slow, huh?”
“It was nicer a hundred fifty years ago, when we stayed here.”
We meant Balthazar and Charity. I watched his face carefully, but he betrayed no emotion.
Balthazar parked the car on a street close to Albion’s one stoplight. A fine snow had fallen earlier that day, and our boots crunched as we walked toward the town center. Hungrily I searched in the darkness for some glimpse of Lucas. I badly needed to see him again, to hold him close, and talk for a long time so that we could reconnect. The intimacy between us suffered while we were apart, and that was what I wanted to rebuild.
Just as we stepped to the corner, I heard, “There you are.”
I turned around, beaming. “Lucas?”
Lucas jogged toward us, in a heavy parka and knitted hat that made him almost unrecognizable. He opened his arms for me, and I ran right into them. His nose was cold against my cheek. “Hey, angel,” he murmured.
“You always see me first. You sneak up behind me every time.”
“And you love it.”
“Mmm-hmm, I do.” I kissed him on the cheek, then on the mouth. “But someday I’m going to surprise you.”
“Good luck trying.” Lucas hugged me even more tightly. Despite the layers of clothes between us, the embrace was enough to make me warm inside.
“I have a secret to tell you.” My anticipation made my heart leap; I so hoped he’d be happy about this news. “I know why Mrs. Bethany invited human students to Evernight.”
“Really? Why?”
I told Lucas about the deduction Balthazar and I had made about Mrs. Bethany’s attempt to track ghosts, expecting him to share my satisfaction. Instead, his smile slowly dimmed. Confused, I said, “Come on, Lucas. This is huge. This is what you’ve been trying to find out for almost two years! Can’t you use this to show up Eduardo? Or do you think I’m wrong?”
“No, I’d bet cash money you’re right. When I applied to Evernight Academy, we used old Professor Ravenwood’s address in Providence, and she always did talk about the ghost in the basement. She was getting pretty senile before she died, though, so I didn’t put much stock in it. Guess I owe her an apology at her graveside.”
“Then this is it. You can go back to Black Cross and tell them what we’ve learned. You’ll complete your mission. That’ll get Eduardo off your back, right?”
Lucas sighed. “I wish. The thing is, Eduardo’s not going to like it. Some Black Cross cells deal with ghosts pretty regularly, but we almost never do. So another group of hunters would probably take over the investigation.”
“But you still got the answer, and now you know no humans are at risk.”
“You don’t know Eduardo. The guy doesn’t care how well-defended the school is, or how it’s the one place vampires never attack humans. He hates it. He wants to wipe it off the map. This looked like his excuse. Now he’s just going to have to turn it over to someone else.”
“That means—you won’t have as many reasons to come back to this area. It’s going to be even harder for us to be together.” All my efforts had only made things worse. I hung my head.
Lucas took my face in his hands. The coarse wool of his gloves felt scratchy against my cheeks. “We’ll find a way. We’ll always find a way. You have to believe that.”
The lump in my throat kept me from replying except with a nod. Lucas kissed me hard, as if that alone could tie us together.
Balthazar cleared his throat.
I took one step back, belatedly realizing how awkward this had to be for him. Lucas would take this as a cue to be snide, I thought, but he surprised me. “Okay, moving on. Balthazar, I think your sister is here in Albion, right now.”
“You’ve seen Charity.” Balthazar lifted his chin, readying himself.
“Earlier today. West side of town. While I was driving in, I saw her walking along the road, out near the woods. Wheeled the truck around right away, but it was like she’d vanished.”
Balthazar nodded. “I think I know where to look.”
Lucas squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry, but you know we have to get on this.”
“I know.” I was actually sort of excited about it. If we could finally reunite Balthazar and Charity, they’d both be so happy. My time with Lucas could only be sweeter if I knew that we’d accomplished our goal and helped somebody else.
We ended up taking Lucas’s truck, even though it was a tight squeeze with all three of us in the front seat. I felt a little uncomfortable wedged between Lucas and Balthazar, in more ways than one. Balthazar was in the same state of mind that I recognized in Lucas, the kind of determination that demanded action, not reflection. It was strange to see this sameness in them—a hard, driven core that was simultaneously compelling and intimidating.
But I could see the differences between them, too.
“Don’t pull a weapon unless I say so,” Balthazar said as we rumbled along a winding side road that led into a field. “If she’s in Albion, she’s probably alone.”
Lucas’s hands gripped the steering wheel like he was holding it in front of him as a shield. “I’m keeping a stake on me. Sorry, man, but I’m not going in there unarmed.”
I saw the angry flash in Balthazar’s eyes and quickly asked, “Should Lucas and I even be there? I mean, wouldn’t you have better luck talking to her alone?”
“Maybe. Still, I’d like her to see you, so that she knows we’re friends. It might help, later on.”
Balthazar guided us to a small house on the outskirts of town—if you could even call it part of the town any longer. The old house looked like it would hardly be big enough for two rooms, and the chimney in the center of its ramshackle roof was missing several bricks at the top. Lucas turned off the headlights a couple of minutes before he stopped the truck about a hundred yards away. He walked around to the truck bed and grabbed two stakes, one of which he held out to me. Balthazar said nothing. Though it felt incredibly strange to hold such a thing in my hand, I took it. Lucas’s warnings about Charity’s gang had gotten to me.
This far out of town, the silence was almost complete. The wind had picked up, blowing small flecks of snow and stinging ice against our faces. Clouds hid the moon and stars, and the night was so dark that I thought I wouldn’t even have been able to see the little house if its roof hadn’t been gleaming white with snow.
“No tracks,” Lucas whispered, his voice so low that it almost didn’t carry over the wind and our crunching steps in the ice. “Either she hasn’t been here later today, or she got here right after I saw her—”
“—and she hasn’t left.” Balthazar studied the dark windows, but I doubted even his vampiric vision would allow him to see anything. “We’ll find out.”
At the front steps we paused. Balthazar took them alone and put one hand on the doorknob. For a long few seconds, he remained completely still, and I realized I was holding my breath.
Then he pushed through and stood inside for only a moment before saying, “She isn’t here.”
“Dead end.” Lucas kicked at the snow, his jaw clenched.
“I didn’t say that,” Balthazar replied. “Look.” He bent to the side, doing something I couldn’t glimpse, and then a candle flickered into light.
When Lucas and I walked inside, we saw that somebody had been staying in the house recently—somebody with a very bizarre sense of homemaking. A once-beautiful lace coverlet, stained with dirt and blood, lay atop a mattress on the floor. A perfect, scrollwork brass headboard leaned against the wall above it; spiders had spun cobwebs between the curls of brass. The candle Balthazar had lit sat in a holder atop a small table that was covered in wax of a dozen different colors; incredible amounts had dripped all over the surface, run down the legs, and puddled on the floor. One oval of purple wax surrounded a woman’s shoe, a delicate, rhinestone-encrusted pencil heel with long straps that had been caught in the wax when it dried. Empty gin bottles lay on the floor and were stacked in the corners, and the fireplace was filled not with wood but with broken bits of glass, piled so high that it had to have been put there on purpose. The pile glinted in the candlelight, the colors of the glass—brown, clear, blue, green—blazing with their own unearthly form of flame.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Balthazar,” Lucas said, “but was your sister always nuts?”
“Tactful as ever.” Balthazar knelt by the heap of broken glass. “Honestly, though, there was always something—different about Charity. She isn’t insane, and she never was, but she was never contented, either. Never moored to the earth. Once she got upset about something, or with someone, she’d never let it go. It was like she couldn’t think about anything else, not while whatever it was still bothered her. I was the only one who could ever talk to her when she got that way.”
“Whatever is going on with your sister these days, it’s more than her holding a little grudge,” Lucas said. “This place does not say ‘mental health’ to me. Plus, she’s hanging out with the wrong crowd, and that’s putting it mildly.”
I thought about all the strange changes I’d already sensed in myself and how unnerving they could be. How much more frightening would it be to fully change, to be suddenly ripped from life into lifelessness? And I’d been bracing for the change ever since I’d been born, and knew that probably I would be able to choose my time. Charity had been tied up in a stable, watching her brother being tortured, knowing that her parents had been murdered—that would be more than enough to make anyone angry or unstable forever after.
Is this the way it happens for most vampires? I shivered.
“I’m not asking you to excuse the people Charity’s spending time with.” Balthazar never looked up from the pile of broken glass.
“I bet you want me to let them off scot-free, though,” Lucas said.
“Don’t pretend you’re judge and jury. You’re only the executioner, and you decide guilt based on what we are, not what we do.”
“How is this about me instead of about Charity’s crazy-ass friends?”
At first I wanted to make them stop arguing, but then I realized it might be better for them to hash it out now. The sooner they were done with their bickering, the better. I ignored them and knelt by the side of the mattress. One of the stains on the dingy lace coverlet was in the shape of a hand.
“You don’t have a brother or sister, do you, Lucas? If you did, you might not be so dense about understanding this.”
“If I had a brother or sister who was hanging around with the Manson family, I think I’d be pissed off at them, not at the cops trying to catch them.”
“Still pretending you’re a cop?”
I put my hand over the bloodstain. When Charity and I had walked side by side, she had taken my arm. Despite her height, her hands were tinier than my own. This bloodstain was larger, so much so that my fingers looked like a child’s by comparison.
“She doesn’t stay here alone.” When I said that, Lucas and Balthazar stopped arguing and stared, almost as if they’d forgotten I was in the room. “Look at this. Somebody else has been here recently. Somebody a lot bigger. A man, probably.”
Balthazar didn’t seem convinced, but Lucas smiled. “Leave it to you to see it.”
Proud of myself, I eagerly looked around the room for some other proof of the second vampire, but nothing instantly came to mind. The bizarre collection of clutter was more unnerving now, though. Charity on her own was strange, but you’d think someone else—anyone else—would be saner. That he might impose some order. Instead, he lived here in this decay.
Balthazar said, slowly, “Not alone.”
“Tell me, Balthazar, what bothers you more?” Lucas started going through the drawers, which seemed to be empty. “That baby sister has a sex life, or that her lover is apparently drinking blood?”
“Think about what I just said.” Balthazar rose to his feet. “If Charity brought anyone here, then she would’ve brought everyone here. Her entire gang. Her tribe.”
“The tribe?” I’d read oblique references to vampire tribes. I didn’t know much about them, but they didn’t sound good. I should have connected the gang with the idea of a tribe before now. “Like, they’re all here in town? Right now. And—and coming back here?”
Lucas and Balthazar shared a look, and then Lucas grabbed my arm. “You’re going back into Albion,” he said. “Balthazar and I can handle this.”
“What? No, I don’t want to leave you.”
“He’s right,” Balthazar said. “This is going to be more dangerous than I thought. You’re not a fighter, Bianca.”
“I’ve learned a lot.” I refused to budge when Lucas tugged at my arm.
Balthazar shook his head. “Fencing class doesn’t count.”
“Bianca, think,” Lucas said. “How often do me and Balthazar agree on anything?”
I hated it, but they were right. My powers wouldn’t compare to those of a full vampire. Lucas’s wouldn’t either, but he had been trained for fighting since he was old enough to walk. If this turned into a full-fledged battle with a group of vampires, I would be out of my depth. That moment, I resolved to learn as much as I could, to become strong; I never wanted to be asked to leave for my own safety again.
But that was for the future. For now, all I could do was go.
“Do you want me to take the truck back into town?” At least, I thought sourly, I’ve learned how to drive. “Or I could wait down the road.”
“Town’s the only place safe,” Lucas said.
Balthazar nodded. “Lucas should take you back, then return. And we’d better hide the fact that we’re here.” He leaned down and blew out the candle. The room went dark.
That’s when we realized there was light outside the window.
“What—” I silenced myself instantly. Whatever it was holding the light outside (another candle? a flashlight?) didn’t need to hear me, too. None of us moved, and I strained so hard to hear that I could feel all my muscles tensing. Lucas’s hand tightened around my forearm. He and Balthazar shared a look. Balthazar put one hand on the doorknob and visibly braced himself; in the dim light I could see both fear and hope in his face.
He opened the door. Instead of twenty crazed killers lunging at us, we were met only by a frigid blast of wind. Squinting into the dark, I saw Charity.
She wore mismatched boots and a long, threadbare coat of gray wool that had been patched and mended in dozens of places. Her fair hair hung loose, blowing in front of her face. In one hand, Charity held a flashlight; her hands were sheltered from the chill only by thin, fingerless gloves. “Balthazar?” she said in a small voice, more childlike than ever.
“Charity.” Though he had sought her for so long, Balthazar seemed unable to go to her and unsure of what to say. “Are you all right?”
She shrugged. Her dark eyes alighted upon Lucas. “Strange company you’re keeping.”
“I’m off duty,” Lucas called, a smirk on his face. I didn’t think joking was very appropriate and swatted his arm. He glared at me but shut up.
“The girl I understand,” Charity said. “She’s so much like poor Jane.”
Balthazar’s face went pale. “Don’t say that name.”
Who was Jane?
“You’ve been following me.” She took one step backward and let the arm holding the flashlight drop; the illumination now only shone on her feet and the deepening snow on the ground. “I want you to stop it.”
“I’ll stop if you’ll come home.”
“Home? Where is home? We lived here once, but that was a long time ago.” Charity brushed strands of hair from her face, the kind of confused gesture people make when they’re struggling against tears. “Don’t even think about asking me to come back to Evernight. You know how I feel about that woman.”
Lucas and I shared a look.
Balthazar stepped off the front steps, and Charity skittered back a couple of steps in the snow. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve thought she was afraid of him. He said, “We could find somewhere else. Something else you and I could do. All that matters is that we’re together. Charity, I miss you.”
She stared down at the icy ground. “I don’t miss you.”
It hit Balthazar so hard that he flinched. I put one hand on his shoulder; it was the only comfort I could offer. Lucas watched me but said nothing.
“You remind me of too much,” Charity said. “You remind me of what it felt like to be alive. To think of sunlight as something you could enjoy instead of something you could bear. To breathe and have it change you, refresh you, awaken you—instead of just churning on and on, some old useless habit that taunts you with what you used to be. To sigh and feel relief. To cry and let your sadness pass, instead of having it all bottled up inside you, forever and ever, getting more and more jumbled until you don’t know who you are any longer.”
“I know who I am,” Balthazar said.
She shook her head. “No, Balthazar. You don’t.”
“At least promise me you’ll leave the tribe.” His voice broke with the strain of surrender, and my heart ached for him. “As long as you’re hanging around with them, you’re not safe from Black Cross.”
Charity glared at Lucas. “While you’re hanging around with Black Cross, you’re not safe from my tribe. So try taking some advice before you give it, Balthazar. And get out of here now.”
“Charity, we can’t leave it like this.”
Fear hit me so hard I nearly reeled. “She said now.”
Both of them glanced back at me. Lucas said, “What?”
I knew before I knew, sensed it as deeply as I’d sensed anything. “They’re here. Watching us. I think we’d better go.”
Charity smiled at me. “You’re much too smart to be hanging around with a vampire hunter. You’ll probably get out alive.”
Lucas turned toward the small grove of trees a couple hundred yards away, and his eyes narrowed. “Get to the truck.”
“Not yet.” Balthazar’s eyes widened in dismay as Charity began walking off in the direction of the grove. “Give me one more chance to get through to her.”
“Truck,” Lucas repeated. I could see how badly he wanted to fight, but he remained focused on protecting me. “Now.”
Instinct told me to run. But other instincts—my vampire instincts—told me that running prey was somehow more inviting. I forced myself to walk slowly toward the truck, and I grabbed Balthazar’s arm so that I could pull him along. Lucas kept his stake at the ready as he edged toward the driver’s side door.
My belly sank as I glimpsed, behind Charity, the footprints of at least half a dozen people. I knew that somewhere nearby they were watching us. I imagined that I could feel their eyes upon me, and, as the wind rustled through the ice-stiff trees, I thought I could hear faraway laughter.
Balthazar started walking faster. “We’ll be all right,” he said.
“I’m not so sure,” I said, but then we were in the truck. The two doors slammed shut on either side of me, and Balthazar and Lucas shoved down the locks at the same moment. “Let’s hurry, okay?”
Lucas turned the key and spun us out of there. As we turned, the headlights washed over Charity, who stood in the field, watching us go. The lights caught her eyes so that they reflected, just like a cat’s.
“She thinks I’ve turned against her.” Balthazar’s big hands were braced against the truck’s dashboard.
“You’ll get to talk to Charity again,” I said. “You know you will. Once you do, she’ll understand.”
“Charity will understand why I’m hanging out with a hunter from Black Cross? Then she understands more than I do.”
“It’s going to be okay,” I promised him again. Lucas glanced sideways at us, then stared resolutely at the road.
The snow now was falling faster and thicker. By the time we had reached the center of Albion, drifts had begun to form around the tires of parked cars. “Maybe you guys shouldn’t drive back tonight,” Lucas said. “Call the ’rents. Tell them you can’t travel on the roads like this.”
“We’ve got another hour or so at this rate. That’s enough time for us to get back.” Balthazar turned up the collar of his coat as if he could already feel the chill.
I knew that if I asked Balthazar to remain, he would, and I wanted to stay longer so that Lucas and I could have a few minutes alone together. If we managed to convince my parents that we shouldn’t drive until the roads were cleared in the morning, then we’d have hours and hours—while poor Balthazar waited nearby. That would be awkward for me and worse for Balthazar, who looked miserable enough already. He needed to go back to Evernight Academy soon.
“We’ll go now,” I said to Lucas. “It’s better this way.”
Lucas stared at me, his expression shifting from disappointment into something harder to read. “Maybe it is.”
Neither of us knew quite what to say after that.
Balthazar, apparently too dazed to notice the tension between me and Lucas, opened the truck door. A gale of frigid air whipped into the cabin, blowing my hair in my eyes. Lucas already had turned his attention back to the road like a man plotting a getaway. When Balthazar held his hand out to steady me in the snow, I took it. “Good-bye, Lucas,” I said in a small voice.
Lucas leaned over to shut the truck door behind me. “See you one month from tonight. Amherst. Town square. Usual time. Okay?” Then he sighed once and gave me an uneven smile. “Love you.”
“I love you, too.” But for once, those words didn’t make everything okay.
Balthazar and I were both in such a terrible mood in the following days that I suggested we pretend that we were having an argument. Walking around together pretending to be a happy couple—neither of us could do it. But after a week, we could pull ourselves together, pretend to make up.
That left me with more time on my own, though, and anxiety welled up to fill every spare second. Thinking about how Lucas and I had parted made me feel seasick inside, like the ground beneath my feet wasn’t steady any longer.
Vic noticed me brooding and tried to soothe my spirit by teaching me chess, but I was too fretful and distracted to keep the rules straight in my head, much less think about strategy.
“You are totally off your game these days,” he said to me one afternoon, as the two of us sorted through the weekly shipment of foodstuffs. The human students apparently never noticed that a lot of their classmates didn’t ever show up for these; people were too busy gleefully grabbing the stuff they’d ordered—boxes of pasta, packages of cookies. Vic put two bottles of orange soda in his canvas bag. “And I can’t help noticing that Balthazar is also one mopey dude right now.”
“Yeah. I guess.” Feeling awkward, I stared down at Raquel’s list. I’d volunteered to pick up her order along with mine.
“Balty came to our last classic film festival—Seven and The Usual Suspects. The theme was Kevin Spacey: Before the Fall. Awesome double feature, right? But Balthazar stared at the corner the whole time.”
“Vic, I know you mean well, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
He shrugged as he selected a few cans of soup. “I was only wondering if this had anything to do with Lucas.”
“Maybe. Sort of. It’s complicated.”
“I guess Lucas is the kind of guy girls don’t get over. Stormy, broody, all wild and stuff. Me, I can’t do that bad-boy thing,” Vic said. “Mine is a more mellow path. Lucas, though—”
“He’s not doing a thing. He is who he is.”
Quietly he said, “I know that. And I know you two aren’t over. Tough for Balthazar, but I gotta call it like I see it.”
I hoped he was right, and that hope lifted my spirits. “You’re a lousy matchmaker, Vic.”
“Not as lousy as you. Seriously, me and Raquel?”
“That was more than a year ago!” Once we were done laughing, we went back to our “shopping” and stocked up. I wasn’t exactly in a good mood as I returned to my dorm room with my bags, but I felt better than I had in a long time.
Raquel turned out to be in the middle of one of her larger, messier art projects. This collage covered almost half our dorm room floor and smelled strongly of fresh glue and paint. “What is it?” I said, tiptoeing around damp newspaper and brushes.
“I call it Ode to Anarchy. See how the colors are in a constant state of collision?”
“Yeah, you can’t miss that.”
My halfhearted praise didn’t put a dent in Raquel’s enthusiasm. Paint striped her forearms, and she’d even gotten some orange in her hair, but she just kept grinning down at her work in progress while munching on a cookie. “You can walk around it, right?”
“Yeah, but I think tonight it might be better if I crashed with my parents.”
“Will they let you do that?”
“Not all the time, but I don’t think anybody will care about one night.”
My parents turned out to be excited to see me. They’d once been very careful about the amount of time they’d let me hang out with them, worried as they had been by my refusal to get to know the other vampires at Evernight Academy. Now they were confident that I was growing up the way they wanted—and their door was open to me whenever I liked.
That had seemed natural to me before, but no longer.
“Dad?” I asked, as we changed the sheets on the bed in my upstairs room. “Did you always know I’d eventually be a vampire? A full vampire, I mean.”
“Of course.” He kept his eyes on his work, in this case a neat hospital corner. “Once you grow up and take a life—and you know we can find a decent way to handle that—then you’ll complete the change.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Honey, it’s going to be okay.” He put one hand on my shoulder, and even his crooked, oft-broken nose couldn’t disguise the gentleness in his expression. “You’re worried about it, I know. But if we find someone who’s already dying, not even conscious anymore—you’d be doing them a favor. Their last act will be giving you immortality. Don’t you think they’d want to do that for you?”
“I won’t know, because I won’t know them at all, will I?” How had I ever found that idea comforting? For the first time, it struck me how presumptuous it was, and how callous it was to assume that I had the right to end a life, even one at its conclusion, for my own convenience. “But that’s not what I mean. You keep saying, when I kill. When I kill. What happens if I don’t?”
“You will.”
“But what happens if I don’t?” I’d never pressed for this answer before; I’d never felt like I had to. Now all those unasked questions were weighing down on me at once and getting heavier all the time. “I just want to know what the alternative is. Isn’t there somebody who would know? Mrs. Bethany, maybe?”
“Mrs. Bethany will tell you exactly what I’m about to tell you, which is that there’s really only one choice for you to make. I don’t want to hear you talking like this again. And don’t say anything to your mother—you’d upset her.” Dad took a deep breath, obviously trying to calm himself. “Besides, Bianca, how long can it be? You were eager enough for human blood last year.”
That was as close as my father had come to mentioning Lucas in months. I felt my cheeks flush red.
“I’m not naive. I realize you and Balthazar must have drunk each other’s blood by now.” He said it sort of quickly; maybe he was as embarrassed as I was. “You have to be close to being ready to drink and kill for real. I know you’re getting hungrier just from your appetite on Sundays. If you’re anxious about it, I don’t blame you. Just don’t let your anxiety drive you to this kind of crazy talk. Have I made myself clear?”
I couldn’t speak, so I just nodded.
Not long afterward, I turned out my lights and tried to talk myself into going to bed. But not only was I confused by my conversation with my father, I was also starving.
The power of suggestion at work, I thought. Dad had mentioned my appetite, and now I was hungrier than I’d been in a very long time—this, despite the fact that I’d drunk a full pint at dinner.
Well, at least I didn’t have to sneak a thermos from under the bed. My parents’ refrigerator held all the blood I needed.
I tiptoed down the hallway, past my sleeping parents, into the kitchen. My bare feet padded softly against the tile floor. Instead of turning on the lamp, I relied on my night vision and the sliver of illumination that widened as I opened the fridge door. Although some real food for me was on the lowest shelf, mostly the fridge was laden with bottles and jugs and bags of blood. Carefully I took one of the bags in my hand; I usually didn’t drink these, because they were hard to get—treats that my parents needed more than I did. They contained human blood.
Maybe my father was right. Maybe my craving for blood had become so acute because I hadn’t had any human blood for so long. Maybe that was what I needed now. If Dad tried to yell at me for taking his stash, I’d point out that he’d kind of suggested it.
I squeezed a bag into a large mug, then nuked that in the microwave. Though the timer chimed loudly enough to make me flinch, my parents didn’t awaken, and I hurried back into my room.
The heated mug made my fingers sting, but the rich, meaty scent of the blood overwhelmed my discomfort, my worries, and pretty much everything else. Quickly I lifted the mug to my lips and drank.
Yes. That was it—what I’d needed, bone deep. The heat swirled down into the center of me, warming me from within. Human blood did something to me animal blood never did—it made me feel exhilarated, connected, and strong. I clutched the mug with both hands, gulping the blood down so quickly I could hardly breathe. I felt as though I were swimming in the warmth of it. The rest of the world was cold by comparison—
Wait.
I lowered the mug and licked my lips clean as I took stock. The air in my room had suddenly become much chillier. Had one of the windows blown open? No, they were all still shut, and covered with frost. But had they been covered with frost a few minutes ago? Just before I’d gotten up for the blood, I’d looked at the outline of the gargoyle outside the window, but now he was invisible behind a curtain of filmy white.
When I exhaled, my breath made a puff in the air. I began to shake. A bluish glow flickered behind the window, and then I heard a tapping on the glass. Like fingernails. Fear gripped me, but I couldn’t turn away.
I went to the window and started rubbing my bare hand across the frost. The cold made my skin sting, but the frost melted into cloudy swirls, through which I could see. A girl stared back at me, about my age, with short, pale dark hair and hollow eyes. She looked completely normal—except for the part where she was almost transparent. And floating outside my tower window.
The wraith had returned.