Lightning brightened the windows, thunder following only a few seconds later. The storm would get harder soon; it was time for me to get back. Disappointment settled heavily upon me as I refolded the letters and put them back where they’d come from. I’d been so sure I would get answers tonight, but instead I hadn’t learned a thing.
Not true, I told myself as I slipped on my raincoat and glanced at the flowerpots. You learned Mrs. Bethany likes African violets. That’s going to be REALLY useful.
I straightened the violets on the windowsill just the way they’d been and left by the front door, which luckily locked automatically. How like Mrs. Bethany to not leave even that to chance.
The wind whipped the rain against my cheeks so that they stung as I ran back toward Evernight Academy. A few windows of the faculty apartments still glowed golden, but it was late enough now that I wasn’t worried about anyone seeing me. I put my shoulder to the heavy oak door, and it swung open obediently without even so much as a creak. Shutting it behind me, I figured I was home free.
Until I realized I wasn’t alone.
My ears pricked, and I peered into the darkness of the great hall. It was a vast open space, with no nooks to hide in or columns to duck behind, so I should’ve been able to see who it was. But I couldn’t see anyone. I shivered; it suddenly felt much colder to me, more as though I were in a dank, forbidding cave than within Evernight’s walls.
Classes wouldn’t start for another two days, so the only ones at the school were the teachers and me. But any of the teachers would’ve immediately started scolding me for being out on the grounds so late in the middle of a thunderstorm. They wouldn’t spy on me in the dark.
Would they?
Hesitantly I stepped forward. “Who’s there?” I whispered.
Nobody answered.
Maybe I was imagining things. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t actually heard anything. I’d just felt it, that weird sense you sometimes have that somebody is watching. I had been worrying about people watching me all night, so maybe the worry was catching up with me.
Then I saw something move. I realized that a girl was standing outside the great hall looking in. She stood, draped in a long shawl, on the other side of one of the windows, the only window in the hall that was clear instead of stained glass. Probably she was my age. Though it was now pouring outside, she looked completely dry.
“Who are you?” I took another couple of steps toward her. “Are you a student? What are you—?”
She was gone. She didn’t run, she didn’t hide—she didn’t even move. One second she was there, the next she wasn’t.
Blinking, I stared at the window for a couple of seconds, like she would magically reappear in the same place. She didn’t. I walked forward to try to get a better view, saw a flicker of motion, and jumped, startled—but I realized it was my own reflection in the glass.
Well, that was stupid. You just panicked at the sight of your own face.
That wasn’t my face.
But it had to have been. If any new students had arrived today, I would’ve known, and Evernight was so isolated that it was impossible to imagine any stranger wandering by. My over-active imagination had gotten the better of me again; it must have been my reflection. It wasn’t even that cold in here, once I thought about it.
Once I’d stopped shaking, I crept upstairs into the small apartment my parents and I shared over the summer, at the very top of Evernight’s south tower. Fortunately, they were sound asleep; I could hear Mom’s snoring as I tiptoed down the hallway. If Dad could sleep through that, he could sleep through a hurricane.
I still felt creeped out by what I’d seen downstairs, and being soaked to the skin didn’t improve my mood. None of that bothered me as much as the fact that I’d failed. My big bad burglary attempt had come to nothing.
It wasn’t like I could do anything about the human students at Evernight. Mrs. Bethany wasn’t going to stop admitting them just because I said so. Besides, I had to admit that she’d protected them, policing the vampire students to ensure they didn’t take even one sip of blood.
But knowing Lucas had made me aware of how little I understood the existence of vampires, even though I’d been born into that world. He’d made me see everything in a different way, made me more likely to ask questions and need answers. Even if I never saw Lucas again, I knew he’d given me a gift by awakening me to the larger, darker reality. No longer would I take anything around me for granted.
After I stripped off my wet clothes and curled up beneath the covers, I closed my eyes and remembered my favorite picture, Klimt’s The Kiss. I tried to imagine that the lovers in the painting were Lucas and I, that it was his face so close to mine, and that I could feel his breath on my cheek. Lucas and I hadn’t seen each other in almost six months.
That was when he’d been forced to escape Evernight because his true identity—as a Black Cross hunter of vampires—had been revealed.
I still didn’t know how to handle the fact that Lucas belonged to a group of people dedicated to destroying my kind. Nor was I sure how Lucas felt about the fact that I was a vampire, something he hadn’t realized until after we’d fallen in love. Neither of us had chosen what we were. In retrospect, it seemed inevitable that we would be torn apart. And yet I still believed, down deep, that we were destined to be together.
Hugging my pillow to my chest, I told myself, At least soon you won’t have so much time to miss him. Soon school will start again, and then you’ll be busier.
Wait. Am I reduced to HOPING for school to start?
Somehow, I have discovered a whole new level of pathetic.
Chapter Two
ON THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL, NOT LONG AFTER dawn, the procession began.