“I can narrow it down. But there’s no pattern—never has been, with Charity.”
“Still, it’s a place to start.”
“Always looking at the bright side.” The corner of his mouth lifted in an unwilling smile. “Yeah. It’s a place to start.” After we pulled up in the lot on the far edge of the grounds, I opened my car door to get out, but Balthazar didn’t move at first. I hesitated.
“Thanks,” I said. “For tonight. It meant a lot.” Balthazar lifted his hand to my face. He didn’t touch me, but his fingertips were close to my mouth. “Your lips are swollen.”
“Huh?” Now that he mentioned it, my mouth did feel puffy and sore.
I realized it was from the hungry kisses Lucas and I had shared. “Oh.
Does it look—is it too—”
“It’s fine,” Balthazar said lightly. His eyes were shadowed. “Anyone who noticed would assume you’d been kissing me.” Fortunately, I didn’t have much time to brood over the separation between me and Lucas. Finals week approached, and the humdrum tasks of papers and exams demanded their due. In some ways, burying myself in schoolwork was a comfort.
My dark mood lingered, no matter how many essays I wrote for Mrs.
Bethany or how many calculus practice exams I took. Nobody really noticed though, because the entire school remained on edge. Though the window in the great hall had been repaired—again with clear glass in-174
stead of stained—it remained deserted, even on rainy days when the on-ly alternative was a cramped dorm room. Rumors spread, becoming more absurd by the day.
“I heard that the haunting is part of a voodoo curse,” Courtney proc-laimed one day from her shower. I was washing my hair a couple of stalls down. “Voodoo is totally and completely real, and some loser dro-pout from last semester decided to curse this place by ruining the best party of the year for all the cool people.”
I would’ve liked to tell Courtney just how stupid she was being, but I didn’t really have a better explanation yet.
As finals week began and the tensions increased, I realized one curious element of the school’s fears about the ghost, something I wouldn’t have expected: The vampires were the ones who were most afraid. The human kids were on edge, too, but they mostly seemed to take it in stride.
That didn’t make sense to me. Okay, vampires might be more likely to understand that the wraiths were real and appreciate the potential danger. But I hadn’t heard any of the human students scoffing at the idea of ghosts—not that anybody could doubt something supernatural was going on after what happened at the Autumn Ball.
“Isn’t it sort of weird,” I ventured one day while Vic and I were studying together in the library, “how more people aren’t freaking out?”
“About exams? Trust me, I’m freaking.”
“No, not exams. About the—the thing. You know.”
“The ghost?” Vic didn’t even look up from his anatomy textbook.
“Yeah, the ghost. You’re really casual about living in a haunted house.”
“I’ve always lived in a haunted house.” Vic shrugged. “I got over the creepy part a long time ago.”
ow I found myself wondering if this was all we could ever have: furtive meetings and smuggled letters, a few moments of passion stolen amid weeks and weeks of loneliness.
And someday he would grow old—even die—and leave me here alone forever.
Lucas pulled up in front of the movie theater just as patrons started coming out. Amid the older couples and a few laughing teenagers, one shape stood out from the rest—Balthazar, tall and saturnine in his long black coat.
“I should go.” I turned back toward Lucas. “Where will we meet up next time?”
“January, I think. There’s this one town—Albion—Charity goes there a lot. At least, that’s what the reports say. Guess that’s where Balthazar would be willing to take you.”
“He’ll do that, definitely. Second Saturday in January? Eight P.M.?” He nodded. “Where?”
“Center of town. Trust me, it’s a small town—we can’t miss each other.” He cupped my cheek in his hand. “I love you.” I nodded, too choked up to speak.
Lucas drew me closer and kissed my forehead. “Hey. No crying now.”
“I won’t.” I breathed in his scent. If only I could somehow keep him with me all the time, every moment, so that he was never any farther away than this. “Christmas morning, wherever you are, think about me.