I hugged her close for a minute before reluctantly putting her down.
“Go on now, Allegra. Ask Mimi to help you find the secret note,” I told her. “And I promise I’ll see you on Friday.”
“Okay.” She rushed back up the stairs and barreled into the house shouting, “Mimi, Mimi, Katy left me a note! Help me find it!”
I grinned, knowing she would hunt all morning if need be, to find the heart-shaped piece of paper I had hidden in the bottom drawer of her dresser. It simply said, “I love you, Allegra!” on it but it would make her happy—especially since she was beginning to be able to read and should be able to sound it out herself. I had been doing the “Hooked on Phonics” program with her on the weekends and it was really paying off.
“Well…you certainly have a way with her.” Mrs. Breedlove shook her head, as though mystified by the connection I shared with her daughter.
I wanted to tell her it wasn’t hard—all Allegra wanted was someone to love her and cuddle her and read to her sometimes. All she needed was a little bit of affection. But Anastasia Breedlove—like most Nocturnes—was reserved and aloof. It was as though her emotional temperature echoed her body temperature—and both were about ten degrees colder than what I considered normal.
I thought of my own mother and how she had sung to me and played with me and read to me—telling me with every word and gesture how much she loved me. It made me sad that Allegra didn’t get that from her own mom, but at least I was there to provide it to her.
I mentally blew a kiss to my little charge as I climbed into the passenger side of Mrs. Breedlove’s sleek black Mercedes and buckled my seatbelt.
I’ll see you soon, Allegra, I thought to her.
I didn’t know how wrong I was.
4
Ari
Kaitlyn seemed tired that morning, her slim shoulders drooping in our History of Magic class—the only class I now shared with her, since she had somehow gotten out of going to PE every morning. I wasn’t sure how she had done that and I had mixed feelings about it.
On one hand, I was glad for her, that she no longer had to endure dressing out and showing her scars in the t-shirts and gym shorts we were required to wear. Coach Vasquez was a Drake and, like many of my people, she was completely unbending when it came to following the rules. She had forced Kaitlyn to dress out, like everyone else, despite the shame and pain it so obviously caused her.
So I was happy that the little human no longer had to endure something that made her so uncomfortable. Also, though Pedro Sanchez had been expelled from Nocturne Academy, his two cohorts, Felix Gomez and Lupe Romero, remained. They were what my mother would have called, “low class.”
Their beasts were common green dragons with no flame at all that hardly deserved the name Drake. Though their sires had made a fortune in the human world—enough to send their sons to the prestigious Nocturne Academy—they had no standing in the halls of my own Sire.
So of course Sanchez, who was supposed to be a hidalgo or nobleman among our kind, immediately attracted them. The fact that he was willing to acknowledge and lead them despite their thuggish ways said as much about him as it did about them.
And the fact that what he led them in was the practice of bullying those who were weaker than him said even more.
When their leader had been expelled, Gomez and Romero had blamed Kaitlyn, just as Sanchez did. But they also knew she was under my care and the care of my Drake.
Neither dared to come against me openly, but I knew enough about them to think that if either one of them had a chance to hurt her without my knowing it, they would certainly take it. It was one reason I was still on high alert, even though Sanchez himself was gone.
Yes, it was a good thing that Kaitlyn was no longer in my first period PE class, I told myself.
But I couldn’t help missing her, even as I told myself she was safer away from Gomez and Romero. Seeing her first thing in the morning had lifted my heart and reassured my Drake that she was all right. Now I had to wait until third period to be near her—if you could call sitting three seats down and one row to the left near her, anyway.
I finished my test and brought it up to the teacher’s desk to place face-down on the slowly accumulating pile. Ms. Eventide was a Nocturne with sharp green eyes and a pale face. She nodded as I put down my paper and turned to go back to my seat.