It was all good, or as all good as it could be. Except for the last item on the list. That was what made my stomach do a flip-flop.
CMD 101
Combat Medicine
MWF 9–12
Tracer Judge
MUS 103
Intro to Medieval Musicianship
TTh 3–6
Master Dagursson
COM 201
Expeditionary Skills Training
MWF 3–6
Watcher Priti
IND
Independent Study in Fitness
TTh 7:00
Tracer Ronan
Yasuo leaned over my shoulder. “Is that seven a. m. ?”
I flinched away, feeling grumpy. “What else?”
Yasuo shrugged. “Trainees have classes after dark. ”
I peered hard at him over the sheet. The guys who were brought here as vampire Trainees kept much of their instruction pretty secret. Yas didn’t talk about it a lot, but I got the sense that few survived the transition into full-fledged vampire.
I’d seen what could happen to Trainees who didn’t. They turned into mindless flesh-hungry Draug, lurking in the shadows off campus, waiting for people stupid enough to break the rules and stray from school grounds, or for those of us punished and dropped far from school grounds—whichever came first.
Not that being an Acari was such a cakewalk. Training to become a Watcher was intense, and first-year Acari were subjected to humiliation, torture, and, oh yeah, death.
So I totally wouldn’t have put it past them to schedule late-night classes.
Emma leaned around Yas to give me an encouraging smile. “Beats seven p. m. , I guess. ”
I didn’t smile back, though. Em was my bestie on the island, but she was currently sitting closer to Yasuo than she should’ve been. I was sure their knees were touching under the table. I didn’t care how crushed out they were on each other—playing kneesies and footsies was not the brightest thing. Vampires didn’t seem to hang with any relationships beyond the ones that revolved around them.
Yasuo grabbed a corner of the paper and tilted it his way. “Did you make him mad or something?”
“Who, Ronan?” I asked, knowing the answer was very complicated. I did, in fact, make Ronan mad all the time. But I got the sense it was because he cared about me.
If I angered him, chances were it was because I’d done something reckless. I’d pulled a few idiot maneuvers in my time on the island—rule breaking, back talking—and though some of it had been necessary, some of it had been just plain stupid.
But Amanda’s death had sobered me. That, and my bond with Carden—I was in such a panic over our bond being discovered, I vowed to keep a low profile this term.