Lucy
I was officially a student of Helios-Ra Academy.
Weird.
Christabel was okay. I’d wanted to visit her myself, but I didn’t have a car anymore and Mom needed to get to work. I had to trust everyone’s assurances that Christabel really was fine, especially since she wasn’t ready for the temptation of humans yet. She was at the Drakes’, recovering and learning about her new life. Or death. Whatever.
And I was learning to be a vampire hunter.
My mom pulled away from the school only after making me promise for the third time that I would double my sun salutations, meditate at least once a week, and come home to visit as much as possible. She was a little teary. It was nothing compared to the guilt trip I’d gotten from Nathan. And I still hadn’t talked to Solange, but Nicholas swore she was sorry. He also swore we’d find a way to see each other. Vampires weren’t exactly a regular occurrence on campus, even if they were treaty vampires. But Quinn and Hunter managed, so we would, too.
It was late afternoon and the sun was already behind the mountain, making the crisp autumn day crisper and filling it with blue shadows. Students jogged around the track and poured in a steady stream between the dorm and the library and gym. According to my schedule, this was a break between classes, which would resume at eight o’clock and go on until midnight. I was already on a similar schedule, staying up late to hang out with Nicholas.
I had a map and my room assignment and a belly full of butterflies. I wasn’t nervous around vampires, even when they were cranky. But this school was already making my palms sweat. I was behind and I sided with the vampires—most of the time.
This should be interesting.
I forced myself to ignore two girls who stared at me and then started whispering the moment I passed them. I heard “Drakes” and “princess.” The path was lined with birch trees and led me to the dorm’s front doors, which looked like something out of a medieval cathedral. They were solid oak with metal hinges and narrow pointed windows on either side.
Inside, it looked like the old house it had once been over a hundred years ago, before modern additions and stampeding students. The staircase looked original, polished wood with a carved banister. I dragged my stuff toward it. There were doors everywhere, leading to bedrooms and common areas. A guy in a baseball cap ran past me, yelling something back to his roommate and nearly knocking me over. He stumbled to a stop, dropping his Frisbee.
“Sorry! Hey, you’re the new girl.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “Is it that obvious?”
He shrugged. “Not a lot of us here. And you scream hippie.”
“Guilty,” I said, unoffended. I was wearing my mom’s favorite crystal, after all, and wraparound sandals with my patched jeans. Plus, my parents were legendary in Violet Hill.
“I’m Malcolm,” he introduced himself. “You must be the famous Lucky Hamilton.”
I winced. “It’s Lucy and, oh God,” I groaned. “What are they saying about me?”
“That you were there when Hope tried to take down the Drakes.”
“She’s was a bitch.” I paused. “Please tell me she’s not your aunt or something?”
“Dude, no.” He looked curious. “I heard your boyfriend’s a vampire. Is that true?”
“Um, yeah. It is.” I lifted my chin, prepared to fight for Nicholas’s honor.
“Too bad.” Malcolm said, teeth flashing white in his dark face when he shot me a grin that looked almost disappointed.
“Malcolm!” one of his friends yelled through the open window. “Let’s go!”
“They want this.” He lifted the Frisbee. “See ya around, hippie.”
I started up the stairs feeling a little better. He seemed nice. And with Hunter and Chloe, I now knew a total of three people. I could do this.
And then a cluster of girls sneered at me.
“Your boyfriend’s really a vampire?” one of them asked. “God, this place used to have standards.”
I looked her up and down doubtfully. “If you say so.”
Then I marched up the stairs while they whispered to each other. My room was on the second floor, down the hall and wedged into the back corner. Number 207. I knocked before going in.
I’d kind of hoped my roommate would be out so I could acclimate on my own. No such luck. She was sitting at her desk, wearing an ironed school T-shirt and the regulation cargo pants. There was an identical outfit folded neatly on the bare bed. Gah. School uniforms. I’d forgotten about that part.
“Hi,” I said cheerfully, determined not to let the end of the freedom to dress myself bring me down. “Are you Sarita?”
“Hi.” She smiled back at me. “Lucky?”
“Just Lucy.”
She frowned, checking a list in an uncreased folder next to her keyboard. “It says Lucky Moon Hamilton.”
“They even put my middle name in there? Were they trying to mortify me?” I dropped my knapsack.
“It’s school policy,” Sarita replied, puzzled.
She was scarily organized, between that folder and the perfectly sharpened pencils in a cup with the school logo on the side. Her bed was neatly made with military precision, and her shoes were lined up at the foot. There was no music playing and no posters on her side of the room at all. I was planning on plastering the wall over my desk with Jensen Ackles and Johnny Depp. My mom had already put together a box of Nag Champa incense for me, and I’d glued rhinestones on all my boring black binders.
Sarita was going to hate me.
I ripped open the garbage bag serving as the suitcase for my sheets and dumped them on the bed. My fleece blanket was printed with Jack Sparrow’s face. He stared at Sarita rakishly. She smiled weakly. I pulled out my laptop and set up my Ganesha statue on my desk next to it for good luck.
She blinked at his elephant head. “What’s that?”
“My dad gave it to me. He’s an Indian god.”
“Oh.”
“He likes candy.”
“Oh.”
Silence pulsed between us. My roommate thought I was a freak. I was just scared she was going to force me to make my bed every morning.
This was going to be even harder than I’d thought.
“That dresser over there is yours,” Sarita offered finally, politely. It was pine and dented all over. “And the closet there. There’s a kitchenette around the corner, and the common room is by the stairs. That’s where the TV is.”
“Okay, thanks.”
The room was small. Between the two beds, two dressers, and two desks, there wasn’t a lot of room left. I liked to dance around when I studied. That might prove difficult.
“There’s a study curfew from four thirty to six thirty, when everyone’s supposed to be quiet,” she felt compelled to add. “And lights out by one thirty a.m.”
“Are there a lot of school rules?” I asked cautiously. I had a feeling she’d know.
“They’re all for our benefit,” she said. “And you get demerits or detention if you break them.”
“What’s standard detention?” I asked, laughing. “Because I have a feeling I’m going to need to know.”
She actually looked scandalized. I didn’t know sixteen-year-old girls who were learning to stab pointy sticks into undead creatures of the night could even be scandalized.
“It’s usually kitchen duty,” she finally answered. “I’ve never actually had a detention.”
Of course not. I shrugged. “Well, I’ll let you know what it’s like.”
She swallowed. “Um …” She trailed off uncomfortably. “Vampires aren’t allowed on campus.”
Clearly my reputation preceded me here, too. All I needed was for her to find the condoms my mother had undoubtedly snuck into all of my bags.
“That’s fine. I don’t think my boyfriend would like it much here, anyway.”
Her eyes went so wide they nearly bulged. It was probably wrong of me to find that amusing. Or to want to take a photo of Nicholas with his fangs out and wearing a black cape lined with red satin and then hang it over my pillow in a heart-shaped frame.
Before my warped sense of humor could alienate her completely, there was a knock at the door. Hunter poked her head in. “Hey, guys.”
Sarita straightened in her chair, as if Hunter were a teacher. And as if she hadn’t already been sitting sword-straight before. “Hi, Hunter. Can I help you with something?”
Hunter smiled. “Just want to borrow your roommate.” She met my gaze pointedly. She looked serious. Vampire serious. I knew the expression intimately. “I need her help. Right away.”
“Sure.” I leaped to my feet, probably a little too eagerly. It was definitely a bad sign that whatever crisis was brewing seemed like more fun than sitting here in an awkward silence with my straightlaced roommate. One minute down, eight more months to go.
“You know Lucky?” Sarita asked.
“Sure, we train together.”
“Malcolm said there was a hippie in the building.” Chloe grinned over Hunter’s shoulder. “I wanted to call an exterminator.”
I grinned back. “We’re like cockroaches. You can’t even spray.” I grabbed my bag. “Bye, Sarita.” I closed the door behind me. “What’s going on? Also, good timing.”
“Come down to our room,” Hunter said quietly. “It’s more private.”
When my phone vibrated I expected it to be Nathan with another guilt trip, but the text was from Hunter.
Cameras and bugs in the halls. Act normal.
Hidden cameras and microphones? What the hell had I gotten myself into?
“Shit, they roomed you with Sarita?” Chloe said conversationally as I slipped my phone back into my pocket. “Classic Helios-Ra room assignment.” She shook her head. “They do it on purpose.”
“They do? Why?”
“To teach us how to get along with people and to see how we do under stress,” Hunter explained.
“Please.” Chloe snorted. “It’s because they’re just plain mean.”
“Sarita’s not so bad,” Hunter said. “She’s just … organized.”
“Anal,” Chloe corrected. She shot me a pitying look. “And I’m pretty sure she’ll tattle. For your own good, of course.”
Hunter wrinkled her nose. “You’re probably right about that.”
“But hanging out with Hunter will give you a buffer,” Chloe assured me. “Sarita has a serious case of hero worship for her.”
“She does not.” Hunter rolled her eyes.
“She does so.”
“Even though you have a vampire boyfriend?” I raised my eyebrows. “She seemed pretty strict about that. And I’ve only known her for about five minutes.”
“She thinks they’re just ugly rumors,” Chloe said. “The saintly Hunter would never defile herself that way.” She smiled slowly. “Then again, Sarita’s never seen Quinn.”
Hunter poked her.
“What? He’s pretty.”
The hallway seemed deserted, the dorm more quiet than it had been when I arrived. Even the lawns were empty. “Where’s everyone?”
“At dinner.” Hunter waited for Chloe and me to step into the room before shutting the door and pressing her ear against it. Chloe was already at one of her laptops, entering in a password.
“Okay, so what’s up?” I asked when Hunter crossed the carpet, satisfied that no one had followed us. She flipped on their stereo anyway to muffle our voices. Solange and I used that trick all the time after Logan and Nicholas turned and we wanted to make sure they weren’t eavesdropping on us.
“Chloe intercepted messages between some of the hunters who hide out in the mountains,” Hunter told me in undertones. “One of them was flying his bush plane and found the burned remains of a maze near an abandoned ghost town.”
I exhaled suddenly. “That’s where they kept Christabel.”
“I know,” Hunter said grimly. “There’s at least six of them going in pretty much now. They want to take out all the Hel-Blar and anything that moves.”
“Shit, they don’t know about Saga and the council treaty thing,” I exclaimed. “If they go in looking for a fight, they could start a civil war between the tribes. No one would believe the Drakes weren’t involved!”
“What do you want to do?”
“We have to tell Christabel.” I fumbled for my phone. “When she was sick, she muttered about Aidan. He saved her life, ironically. We can’t just let him get ambushed!”
“I already texted Quinn and Kieran,” Hunter said while I copied my message to Christabel to Nicholas and Connor. I didn’t copy Solange. Usually she’d be a lethal sword in the fight, but right now she was a live grenade. She might blow us all up.
Plus, I was holding a grudge.
I could admit it to myself, if to no one else.
“Can you get ahold of Hart? Have him call it off?”
“He can’t be officially involved in vampire politics, treaty or no, any more than Liam could be involved in League business,” Hunter said. “Besides, it’s a hunter’s right and duty to take out Hel-Blar. Not to mention, Aidan essentially killed your cousin.”
“Turned her. There’s a difference.”
“She wouldn’t have been in danger if he hadn’t kidnapped her. Anyway, they’re out of range by now,” Chloe said.
“It’s a different world,” Hunter said apologetically. “We’re not trained to save vampires from themselves.”
“If there’s a civil war, everyone will be involved,” I argued.
“I know,” she agreed calmly.
“And the Drakes won’t be up and out for another hour at least,” I said, frustrated.
“It’ll take us that long to drive to the maze,” Hunter said, reaching for her knapsack. I knew it was full of weapons and hiking supplies. She was prepared like that. “They can meet us there.”
Chloe unplugged her laptop. “Ready.”
I blinked. “You’re going? Both of you?”
“Of course. We’re all going,” Hunter said. “Don’t be stupid.”