Eating lunch had been impossible.

Fitness class unending.

Today’s slew of Lilac barbs particularly excruciating.

All day, two images replayed on an obsessive loop in my mind: the canvas-wrapped body of the girl who’d died in the pool, and the thick black wet suit that hung in my locker like a skinned marine mammal. Did the wet suit mean I was going to have to go underwater? Hold my breath till bloody foam came out of my mouth? Was I to face something that would claw me enough to bring bits of gore floating to the water’s surface?

“Why can’t we do like normal people and swim in the pool?” I asked Ronan for the umpteenth time. “I like the shallow end. Our lessons have been going great.” Amazing how the threat of a nighttime swim in the frigid North Sea could make a pool seem infinitely less detestable.

I stared out the car window. Though the March sun set later than when we’d arrived in January, come late afternoon it always faded and the sky dimmed to a dull gray. “It’ll be dark soon. Isn’t it dangerous? Shouldn’t we do this during broad daylight?”

“It won’t be pitch-dark for hours yet.” Ignoring my tone, Ronan buckled his seat belt with that calm detachment he’d perfected and put the car in drive. “And even if it were dark, it’s a good exercise. You won’t face ideal conditions in the real world. Best not get used to them now.”

“Doesn’t this send me from, like, zero to sixty? What happened to the noodle and my little blue kickboard?”

Abruptly, he pulled the car to the side of the gravel road. “The fighting will begin soon, Annelise. And then these girls will be your competitors in more than just the classroom. Do you truly want them to see you thrashing about in the shallow end?”

Fighting. Girls had died already, and yet Ronan was telling me the challenges hadn’t even begun yet? I tried to work some moisture back into my dry mouth. “Um, I’d rather they see my wet suit and think I’m a badass. . . .”

“That’s the way.” He popped back into gear, turning onto a road I hadn’t seen before. We bounced over a rocky trail rough and rutted enough to knock me back against the headrest.

Despite the madly jouncing SUV, Ronan elaborated in his typically cool Ronan fashion. “It’s impossible to re-create natural conditions in a pool. Variables like temperature, wind velocity, currents, riptides . . . Visibility issues like murk, flora, black water—”

“Okay, stop.” I put up my hand. “You’re freaking me out. Let’s just start by mastering my float; then we can work our way up to murk. Which, by the way, I don’t believe is a word.”

I think he actually smiled. Too bad I was too panicked to savor it. It seemed we really were driving to a cove, with me really wearing a wet suit. There was no stopping any of it.

He hit a huge pothole, and I grabbed the looped leather handhold on the door. “How come I have to do this as a special study? Am I the only person who can’t swim?”

“No, you aren’t the only one who can’t swim.”

I waited for him to elaborate. Which, of course, he did not. “Well, why don’t these other mysterious nonswimmers have to wear wet suits and go to Crispy Cove, too?”

“It’s Crispin’s Cove, and the other Tracers tutor as they see fit.”

The wet suit was riding up my backside in the most unpleasant way, but there was no chance I’d be working out any wedgies in front of Ronan. I did have some pride.

Putting it on had been a humiliating and demoralizing chore. It was heavy, it was daunting, and it had the most maddening up-the-back zipper, which had taken me ten minutes to master. At first I’d fantasized about asking Ronan—perhaps in my best sultry-starlet purr—if he’d zip me, but reality had found me hopping and grunting with one arm behind my back instead.

I plucked at the thighs, using the bounce of the tires to scooch back in my seat in an effort to free myself from my impromptu neoprene G-string. No luck, and it made me churlish. “Well, why doesn’t Lilac have to swim in subzero water?”

“Your wet suit will keep you warm. And Lilac has her own special study.”

I sat upright, my mood brightening at once. “What’s Lilac’s weakness?”

Ronan turned onto a road even bumpier than the last. “Everyone is assigned a special study. None of them is your business.”

This was. If I was ever going to best von Slutling, I had to find her Achilles’ heel. I remembered the elementary German workbook I’d spied on her desk. “It’s some language thing, isn’t it?”

Ronan stared ahead, refusing to answer.

“Hmph.” There went that conversation.

I stared out the window into the growing dusk, surlier than when we’d set out. I was trapped on this island, trapped in a too-tight wet suit, about to be trapped in freezing, black water. It put me in a complaining mood. “It’s so dark here.”

“Enjoy it. You won’t realize you miss the darkness until it’s gone.”

“I doubt that.” I chafed my arms. We were in the middle of nowhere, and the prospect of vampires running amok in the steely half-light turned my skin to gooseflesh.

“We’re close to the pole. Just as there are months of mostly darkness, there will come a time of near-constant twilight. They call it the Dimming.”

The word sent a shiver across my skin, even as a lightbulb went on in my head. We were near the Arctic Circle. Summer would be here before I knew it. Come June, there would be a sun that never set in a sky that was rarely bright. “The land of the midnight sun,” I muttered. “And that’s why vampires like it?”

“Aye, that’s why. It enables vampires to move about, imagining the sun on their skin, but without risk of discomfort.” His voice was laden with some heavy emotion that told me he spoke of more than just the loss of suntans and his daily dose of vitamin D. “So appreciate the darkness now, Annelise, because you’ll miss it come the Dimming.”

“Fine. I’ll start missing it tomorrow. How about that?” My heart rate spiked as a gently lapping cove came into view. The gunmetal sky was darkening rapidly now, pressing down on water the color of night. He pulled to a stop beside a jagged boulder, casting the car into cold shadow. I clung tight to my buckled seat belt. “But for now, it’s too dark for my taste.”

“Annelise.” He turned to face me. Dramatic shadows accentuated his stubble, the cleft in his chin, the shock of hair on his brow, like he’d become a charcoal drawing. “There is no putting this off. You must learn. And you must open your mind to the night. It, too, has lessons to teach. There’s a Chinese proverb. ‘Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.’ ”

“Thanks, Obi-Wan. I’ll remember that as I drown.”

He raised his arm, and I bristled, wondering if he dared try one of those touches again. I held my breath, but the moment passed.

Instead, he pointed to the shore. “Go stand by the water. Dip your feet. I need to put on my wet suit.”

“You’re coming in, too?” I knew instant relief. Though, thinking about it, it was obvious he couldn’t let me go in the sea alone. My panicked brain just hadn’t gotten that far.

Then another fact struck me. It meant Ronan and I would be in the water. Together. And he was graduating from swim trunks to a wet suit. A skintight wet suit.

He gave me a quiet smile. “I’ll not let you drown, Annelise.”

As shocking as it seemed, I truly believed him. Mustering a smile, I nodded and turned toward the water.

Large, softly rounded stones lined the shore, and I clambered over them. Venturing in the growing darkness, balancing on rocks, and even the naked feel of the wet suit—it all made me feel free, like I was a child again. Or, rather, like the child I’d never been. My youth had been strip malls and parking lots. But in the dark, in this place, Central Florida was a surreal and distant memory.

I hopped off the last of the big rocks and reached the water. Tentatively, I edged closer and closer to the quietly lapping waves. I wore a pair of skintight booties, and I scuffed them over the rounded pebbles of the shoreline, marveling at how the thick neoprene protected me from the elements.

Twilight had turned the sky a flat, slate gray. I inched closer, straining to see. Elsewhere I’d spotted crashing waves, but enormous rocks bracketed Crispin’s Cove on either side, sheltering it from the larger surf.

“Ready?” Ronan materialized from behind a boulder.

I tossed off a mirthless laugh. “I was born ready.”

Slipping a hand under my elbow, he began to usher me in.

“Wait, wait, wait.” I dug in my heels. The water was completely black. “I’m not ready.”

Taking my shoulders in his hands, he turned me to face him. “And that’s your first lesson: You never will be. Now come. All I ask tonight is that you work on your floating. Can you do that?”

I suspected I could, but with his hands on me, I didn’t trust the feeling. I frowned at my shoulder. “You’re making me think I can do it, with that hoodoo touch of yours.”

“Look at me, Annelise.” His voice was deep and commanding, and I couldn’t help but raise my eyes to his. My shoulders and neck grew warm and tingly, my brain muzzy. I felt like a melting pat of butter.

Abruptly, he pulled his hands away, and I was instantly chilled. “That was my ‘hoodoo touch.’ ”

“Oh,” I said meekly. The memory of his touch seared through the fabric of my wet suit. I rolled my shoulders to erase the sensation. “Do you promise not to do that again?”

“The only thing I can promise is that you’re more capable than you realize, and your mind more formidable than most.”

“Because I’m so smart?”

“Because you’re so stubborn,” he snapped.

I laughed, thrilled for once to be something other than the weird genius girl. Even if it meant I was the aggravatingly willful one.

He reached for me again, cradling my head in his hand. There was no supernatural burn, just the warmth of a guy’s touch. “I think you’ve spent a lifetime selling yourself short. Don’t underestimate your ability to discern illusion from reality. You, Annelise, are one of the most cunning, one of the bravest young women I’ve ever known.”

Emotion clutched my throat. For the first time in my life, I felt seen. Understood. Nobody had ever paid attention before. Never had I known such concern. I’d spent my life feeling isolated and alien and friendless. It was a shock to realize how much I’d been wanting someone to care for me. To give a shit.

He tucked my hair behind my ears, and though my body thrummed hot, I shivered. “Now, tell me,” he said. “Do you think you can float?”

I didn’t know what it was about Ronan’s attentions, but he made me feel stronger, like maybe I was a better person than I’d realized. “Yeah, I guess I can do that.”

He led me into waist-high water, and the wet suit felt strange and heavy, like a wall of cool was pressing in on my body from all around. With an arm around my shoulders, he eased me onto my back. “Relax now. Imagine your belly reaching to the sky.”

I did relax. A little. Until he let go of me, and my feet plummeted to the bottom.

He righted me at once, patiently bracing his hand along my spine, his strong fingers careful at the nape of my neck. “Again. Unclench yourself. You’ve done it in the pool—this is no different.”

I’d puckered my lips shut, but water, frigid and briny, still found its way into my mouth. I nodded tightly, grunting in a way I thought sounded very agreeable, considering the circumstances.

“Does that mean you’re ready?”

I tensed, lifting my head in alarm. “I’m not doing it yet?”

He gently pushed my forehead back down again. “I’m going to let go again.”

The moment he did, my feet dropped like cement blocks to the bottom. Instinctively, I caught myself, coming to a standing position.

“Annelise Drew.” Ronan’s tone was stern. He lay me back in the water, a little more roughly this time. “It’s not much more than a meter of water. Relax. Breathing helps.”

“I am breathing,” I said through gritted teeth. I was doing all I could to keep my head above water. But still it gurgled in my ears and up my nose, making me panic.

“No, I don’t think you are. You must let your head drop.”

“Can’t you use your googly eyes on me? You know, convince me to be a good swimmer or something?”

“You must do this on your own.”

A wave lapped over my face and I flinched, and Ronan’s hand slipped. Oh, God. Was that Ronan’s hand on my butt? I froze, projecting my mind through the thick fabric of my suit.

That was Ronan’s hand on my butt.

This had the unfortunate effect of petrifying my entire body. I felt my legs drifting down like a couple of dead logs.

Ronan’s calm demeanor finally wavered. “Och, Ann, don’t be such a wretch.” He sounded impatient, exasperated, and maybe a little amused.

But rather than feeling chastised, I was flooded by a longforgotten memory. It was my mother, calling me Ann. I’d never remembered that before. I could hear her voice so clearly, almost like she was in the water, too, whispering in my ear. It was a gift that warmed me, calmed me.

Nodding, I loosened my neck just a little, finally relaxing. “Okay. On my own.” I shut my eyes, becoming aware of the gentle lapping sounds of the tide, and it soothed me. Inhaling deeply, I opened them again to the most magnificent sight.

A light was beginning to pulse low on the horizon. It was bright green and swirling, like some childish god had splattered a bucket of lime paint across the sky. I gasped. The aurora borealis.

“You see them? The northern lights?”

“Yeah,” I managed. They humbled me, amazed me, left me speechless.

“Did you know that you’re floating?” Ronan’s white smile glowed eerily in the dark.

I realized then. I no longer felt his hands on me. I giggled, but it made me sink a little and so I stilled, blanking my mind as much as possible. My stomach bobbed back to the top, making me feel like a bit of kelp floating in the sea. The water in my ears, in the corners of my eyes, no longer bothered me.

If I could learn to float, I could do anything. I would learn to swim. Maybe even to fight. The award would be mine.

I thought about Ronan, wondering what training he’d endured, why he’d chosen the life he did. What was his background? And, more important, why was he only a Tracer? Though they did seem stronger and sharper than most regular people—a by-product of drinking the blood—why wouldn’t someone choose immortality? “Why don’t you want to be a vampire?”

There was only the lapping sound of the water, and I thought he wouldn’t answer, but finally I heard him utter, “Unbearable.”

“Why?” My voice was a whisper.

“Because life would be only that, forever. To watch person after person perish while I lived on? A life of grief and loss. Unbearable.”

“You sound like you know. Like you’ve experienced a loss.”

“Aye, I have. As will you.”

If it was so horrible, I didn’t understand why he’d chosen to stay. Or why he’d continue to bring girls like me to the island. “If this life is so bleak, then why are you even helping me?”

Though hard to see in the dark, it seemed he stood straighter, tenser. “Someone has taken an interest in you.”

My heart fell. That was the only reason? It freaked me out to think someone out there was watching me. But worse, I’d convinced myself Ronan was helping me because he wanted to. Because of me. “Oh,” I said quietly, cursing the dopey teenage melancholy in my voice.

“And I confess . . .” He shook his head, as though regretting what he was about to say next. “You remind me of someone.”

An old girlfriend? A lover? “Who?”

Abruptly, he turned his back on me. I dropped like a stone and righted myself, scrubbing the water from my eyes.

“That’s enough for today.” Ronan strode back to shore, his shoulders lurching from side to side, knees lifting high over the surf, getting out of the water as quickly as possible. Away from me. “Weather is coming. We need to get back for the evening meal. You must drink.”

A higher-than-usual wave slapped at the backs of my thighs and I stumbled, awkwardly finding my footing. Whatever illusions I’d harbored about a regular guy helping a regular girl learn to swim were shattered with those three words: You must drink.

It was so aberrant, so repellant to take something that’d once flowed in another’s veins and absorb it into your own. But what alarmed me wasn’t the thought of having to drink that ropy, viscous fluid. It was that I couldn’t wait to get back for it.