“Oh. Well. I can’t do it.”
I lifted my head. “What?”
“Christian and I volunteered to help out with the elementary kids’ carnival. I’m going to paint faces, and he’s going to make balloon animals.”
“Someone would actually let Christian—never mind. Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. You want to send me off—on my own—to risk my recently salvaged reputation in order to win some disgusting abomination candy as a birthday present for your boyfriend, whom I can’t stand.”
“That’s not true. You like him more than you’ll admit. And you secretly like the risk too.” A mischievous smile spread over Lissa’s face. She knew she had me. “And most important, you’re my best friend and a good person.”
A good person? I wasn’t sure about that sometimes. But I was her best friend, and it was hard for me to tell her no, especially when I could read her feelings. She was so full of hope, not to mention pure, uncomplicated affection for me—and for Christian. And who could turn down that angelic face? The wings were overkill.
“Okay. I’ll win this stupid scavenger hunt for you. But I may have to do it on my own since I’ve pretty much blown any chance of getting a team.” Eddie walked by just then, almost as though the universe really did think it owed Christian an act of kindness. “Hey!” I called. “Do you and Mason have a third yet?”
Eddie stopped and tilted his head to the right. “He’s asking Charlie Hunt right now.”
Sure enough, there was Mason on the other side of the room, five steps away from Charlie’s table. I jumped up and sprinted across the cafeteria, nearly knocking three people over in the process. Mason had reached the table and was opening his mouth to speak when I grabbed his sleeve and jerked him away. He stumbled, and someone who wasn’t a nimble dhampir would have dropped his tray.
“Mason, I need to be on your team,” I blurted out.
He stared at first, dumbfounded, and then slowly began to grin. “I knew you hadn’t lost your edge.”
As classes wrapped up that day and the carnival neared, I had two tasks. One was not to overthink what kind of crazy things I’d have to hunt down tonight. The organizers wouldn’t release the list until the carnival started, to make it harder. No one would have all day to plan strategy or even just swipe one of the classroom items while the school was still open.
My other job was to figure out a costume.
I hadn’t planned on wearing one tonight, though I had intended to go to the carnival. I mean, people had said a lot of outlandish things about me over the years, but only a fool would think I’d pass up a bunch of free candy. I’d wanted to just duck in, play a few games, and then slink back to my room, but now I had to look committed. Most of the teachers would be busy chaperoning and running the carnival, but they all knew the scavenger hunt was taking place. Some would be specifically tasked with locating players, and all would be watchful. I needed to blend in with the rest of the innocent fun-seekers.
An Internet search for “half-ass costumes” turned up a solid hit in about five minutes. I donned black skinny jeans and a black turtleneck and then wavered on wearing a jacket. We were actually having unseasonably warm weather, with temperatures in the fifties and no snow. Still, my clothing choices were tight and thin. That meant more maneuverability for daring deeds, though, so I skipped a coat and moved on to assembling the rest of my costume. That involved stealing a marker and a bunch of guest name tags on my way out of the dorm. By the time I reached the central quad—where the upper school’s carnival was taking place—I was covered in HELLO, MY NAME IS … stickers with all sorts of different names written on them.
Christian looked me over, puzzled, when I met up with him and Lissa. “What are you supposed to be?”
She had on the full angel costume now, a vision in silver and white. Christian was, unoriginally, dressed up like a devil that really liked polyester. They’d never get me to admit it, but they actually looked pretty adorable.
“I’m an identity thief,” I explained, pointing to the different tags. “Get it?”
“Did you just come up with that five minutes ago?” he asked.
“It’s more work than it looks like,” I countered. “I had to think up a lot of names.”
Christian leaned forward to read. “‘Vladimir. Mitzy. Amelia Earhart. Kip. Gandhi. Mary Sue.’”
Eddie strolled up to us, dressed as Batman. A figure draped in a white sheet with cutout eyeholes walked next to him. “Geez, Mason,” I said. “And here I just got accused of a last-minute costume.”
Mason pulled the sheet up over his head. He too wore dark clothing underneath. “Are you kidding? I’ve been planning this for weeks.”
Say what you wanted to about St. Vlad’s, but the school sometimes did try to make up for being out in the middle of nowhere, Montana. The carnival was a pretty serious affair, and I realized I’d been a little jaded in dismissing it so easily. They’d hauled in Skee-Ball and Whac-A-Mole machines. Booths held all sorts of other games, everything from ring-toss to darts-and-balloons to archery. Mr. Colfax was guessing people’s weights. Students had already lined up in front of a dunk tank, and Guardian Kolobkov climbed up its ladder with grim resignation. An entire pavilion held materials and space for pumpkin carving, and everyone who wanted to enter the costume contest had to get their pictures taken. Orange lanterns were strung around the booths, and tents cast a magical glow. Heat lamps ringed the area, boosting the mild temperatures. There was even live music—although, unfortunately, it was just from Jesse Zeklos’s crap cover band, Dagger Fang. What the hell was that supposed to mean, anyway?
And the food … there was food everywhere. Cotton candy and funnel cake. French fries and corn dogs. Candy for prizes. Candy simply given away by passing teachers. Honestly, why would anyone even want to compete for the scavenger hunt’s contraband? The carnival was packed with all sorts of goodness.
But no dark chocolate bacon truffles. Lissa watched me intently, and the bond buzzed with her wondering if I would come through for her. I gave her a small nod and turned to the other dhampirs. “Well, we’d better get started on our pumpkin-carving entries. Right, guys?”
“And Christian and I have to go over to the lower campus,” said Lissa.
I’d forgotten she was volunteering at the younger students’ carnival. Some of the activities were the same. Others weren’t. They couldn’t have darts or bows, for example, but they did have pony rides, which I thought was totally unfair.
“Try not to corrupt anyone,” I called as Lissa and Christian walked away hand in hand.
Mason turned deadly earnest as soon as they were gone. “The lists are coming out in fifteen minutes. We’ve got to be ready to work on strategy.”
“Fifteen minutes sounds like enough time for funnel cake,” I said.
Apparently, everyone else thought it was time for funnel cake too because there were twenty people in line for it. Eddie shifted restlessly from foot to foot as we waited and finally couldn’t take it anymore. “I don’t want to miss it. I’ll go get the list from Camille and meet you back here. Save me some.”
“He’s pretty worked up about this,” I noted. “He must want that cheap-ass wine pretty badly.”
Mason laughed. “No, he wants Raptorbot.”
“What?”
“One of the bootleg movies. I guess it came out a while ago, but he never got to see it because … well, you know. Because we’re here. Anyway, he wants to catch up before the sequel comes out. That one’s called Rampaging-something, I think.”
“Huh.” The delicious scent of funnel cake was heady. Only two people stood ahead of us now. “I never took Eddie for a movie fanatic.”
“I think it’s one of those so-bad-it’s-good things. If you want to check it out—after we win—we can set up a secret screening this week.”
I caught the suggestion in his voice. “With Eddie?”
“With you and me. By the time we’re done with the hunt, we’ll probably have
sneaked into every part of campus tonight. Finding a quiet dark room after that’ll be a piece of cake.”
“Oh, hey. On the topic of cake—looks like it’s our turn.”
I stepped ahead so I wouldn’t have to see his reaction to my dodging the invitation. It wasn’t the first time Mason had dropped something like that on me. He liked me and wasn’t shy about it. Me? I liked him too. A lot. In fact, I liked him better than any of the other guys in my class. The problem was, when I thought about a private movie screening in a dark room, it wasn’t someone from my class who I wanted to curl up with.
“Nice ghost costume, Mr. Ashford. And Miss Hathaway … will you enlighten me?”
In an image I’d never be able to blot from my mind, Alberta—captain of the campus guardians—smiled at us from behind the funnel cake counter. She wore an apron and chef’s hat and had smudges of powdered sugar on her face. I had to blink a few times and remind myself that this was the same deadly woman who’d faced down two psi-hounds.
“I’m an identity thief.”
“Ah. I see. ‘Zeus.’ ‘Marilyn Monroe.’ Who’s ‘Chet’?”
“Just a random name I thought up. They can’t all be celebrities.” I turned around and pointed to my back. “You’re on here too.”
“I’m flattered. I hope identities are the only things you plan on stealing tonight.”
Her smile remained, but those eyes were shrewd. She might have been assigned to funnel cake duty, but Alberta was no fool. She knew what went on during the carnival, and she also knew that dhampirs took part in the scavenger hunt much more than Moroi did. Who could blame us? We were literally trained to seek danger. For all I knew, the campus guardians had crunched all sorts of data about student personalities and analyses of past hunts to calculate the suspects most likely to participate this year. And yeah, statistically speaking, my name being at the top of that list wouldn’t exactly be a surprise.
“Guardian Petrov, the only thing we plan on stealing are the hearts and minds of the costume contest judges,” Mason told her.
“And a few extra helpings of funnel cake,” I added. “We’re getting some for our friends. Like, a whole bunch of friends.”
Whether she believed that or not, Alberta loaded us up with deep-fried deliciousness. “You should go get your picture taken right now,” she said as we started to walk away. “There’s no line.”
“Picture?” I asked.
She pointed. “For the costume contest.”
“Right. Hearts and brains.”
“Hearts and minds,” corrected Mason. “We’ll go over there right now, ma’am. Thank you for the helpful tip—and for sharing your outstanding culinary skills.”
“Suck-up,” I told him when we were out of earshot.
“Did you see her face? She doesn’t trust us. There’s probably a deep-fried tracking device under all this powdered sugar that we’re about to swallow. Besides, I really do want to enter the contest.”
“You think you can win with a sheet?”
“It’s retro.”
We let Abby Badica take our picture, and after I’d given yet another explanation about my costume, we finally headed off to a grassy patch of the quad just beyond some of the carnival games. We’d barely sat down when Eddie came jogging up to us with a piece of paper. After checking for spies, we huddled over the note to read it as we munched on the cake.
20 — ONE SET OF BOXING GLOVES
5 — CASE OF CHOCOLATE PUDDING
25 — FOYER PORTRAIT OF A PAST HEADMASTER
25 — GUARDIAN JACKET
20 — TEACHER’S FORMAL ROBE
15 — ONE VOLUME FROM THE SLAVIC CULTURE ENCYCLOPEDIA SET
35 — ONE OF MR. DWIGHT’S TIES
5 — SNORKEL MASK
50 — HEADMISTRESS KIROVA’S CAT EARRINGS*
5 — DRAMA DEPARTMENT WIG
5 — ONE MARACA
40 — ONE OF GUARDIAN BELIKOV’S CDs
30 — COPY OF MISS FEDIN’S NEXT ALGEBRA QUIZ
45 — QUEEN TATIANA’S MESSAGE OF BLESSING*
45 — GUARDIAN COJOCARU’S COLOGNE*
Eddie let out a low whistle. “They aren’t messing around this year.”
“Are you kidding?” I asked between bites. “Apparently, this is amateur night. We should’ve let Lissa and Christian take this down to the lower campus for the kids to do.”
Beside me, Mason scoffed. “Okay, Captain Confidence. What’s your strategy?”
“The five-pointers aren’t worth our time. The earrings are impossible—I heard Kirova’s home tonight—so they’re off the table. The other starred one-of-a-kinds are what we want. We grab those and a couple of the mid-levels, and we’re done. The headmaster portraits are around the corner from the queen’s blessing, so we can get one of those on our way out. This’ll be an hour, tops. We’ve just got to get the jump on everyone.” I finished off an enormous chunk of funnel cake and wiped powdered sugar off my hands. “Then we can come back and eat some more.”
Mason produced a key ring from his pocket. Veterans of this game usually tried to acquire keys and access cards in advance of the list. It usually resulted in a campus-wide lock change the next day. “The cologne might be off the table too. I’ve got the main building, rec building, and guardian building. Sorry, no cards.”
That was unfortunate. Access cards would get us into more rooms within the buildings. “Hey, I’m impressed you got the guardian building,” I said. That wasn’t an easy key to steal.
“Yeah, but getting anything from there is almost as impossible as Kirova’s place,” Eddie pointed out. “The guardians are all in and out of there on patrol tonight.”
“We don’t really need any of those items anyway,” I said. “I’ll go back to our dorm and get the cologne. Maybe Cojocaru keeps his jacket in there too.”
Mason shook his head. “How are you going to pull that off? His room’s right by the front desk.”
“Are you doubting my edge already? Let me worry about Cojocaru. You guys get over to the main building before everyone’s there and it’s too hard to sneak around. You know they’ll be patrolling it. Get the blessing and a portrait and then either the quiz or tie. Whichever’s fastest. I’ll meet you by the chapel, and we’ll see what we’ve got.”
I jogged back across campus, over to dhampir housing. There were fewer of us on campus, and dhampir staff and students shared the same residence hall. When I entered the dorm, I found the same attendant on duty from earlier. He looked me over and narrowed his eyes.
“Did you take those name tags from here? Mine are missing.”
“Nope,” I lied. “This is my personal stash. A bunch of people wanted to copy my sweet costume, though, so maybe they took them.”
“What is your costume?”
That voice came from behind me, and I jumped when I turned around and saw Mason. Well, it seemed like Mason at first glance, seeing as the figure standing motionless in the corner wore a white sheet with cutout eyes. But there was no way Mason had beat me back here. Also, Mason didn’t have a woman’s voice.
The ghostly sentinel lifted the sheet and revealed Guardian Mertens. “Just me.”
“Geez,” I said. “No offense, Guardian, but that’s pretty creepy, just standing there like that. Are you waiting for someone?”
“Just hanging out. Taking in the costumes.” She kept her tone and posture casual, but I knew better. She was on guard for scavenger hunt players, and her position put her right between the lobby and the hall containing the teachers’ residences. I could even see Guardian Cojocaru’s door from here—which meant she could too.
I smiled back. “Well, good luck finding one better than mine. I’m an identity thief.”
“Does that tag say ‘Jesus’?”
“It’s Spanish.” I backed up toward the stairwell. “Forgot something in my room. I’ll see you around. Have fun scaring people.”
I glanced back once when I reached the stairs and saw she’d put the sheet back over h
erself. I couldn’t make out her real eyes but knew without a doubt she was watching me.
Her presence was a complication, but it didn’t mean this plan was dead in the water. I’d hoped to steal a master key card from the front desk, but even if I pulled that off, I could hardly enter Guardian Cojocaru’s room with Guardian Mertens right there. Ground-floor windows were pretty impervious from the outside, something I knew from past experience. I could always break the glass, but one thing the scavenger hunt usually managed was mayhem without a lot of permanent damage. If that ever changed, security would get a lot worse at future carnivals. The school might even call off the carnivals, and that’d be a damned shame since it wasn’t like I was going to find funnel cake anywhere else in the middle of the wilderness.
I’d wanted to do everything quietly tonight, but it looked like quiet wasn’t going to cut it.
I reached the next floor, walked to the far side of the building, and then headed down a back staircase. Around the corner from it, a door labeled EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY loomed before me. I stared back at it, did a few calculations, and then kicked it open. Immediately, the alarm blared. I stuck around only long enough to push the doorstop down before tearing back up to the second floor. As I ran to the front staircase, I could imagine Guardian Mertens sprinting in the opposite direction beneath me. I hoped the desk attendant followed. Everyone was jumpy tonight.
I took the steps down two at a time and found the lobby empty. Rose Hathaway triumphs again, I thought. I leapt over the front desk and peered around for likely key card locations. They’d have a supply on hand for anyone who got locked out. I poked around and found a suspiciously locked drawer, just as the alarm went quiet. Crap.
No—wait. A small set of metal keys lay near the attendant’s coffee cup. The guy hadn’t brought them to check out the alarm. The mystery drawer opened with the third key I tried, rewarding me with an envelope labeled MASTERS. I snatched one of the key cards from within it, put everything back to its previous state, and then raced over to Guardian Cojocaru’s door. The card admitted me, and I slipped inside before anyone returned.
Vampire Academy: The Untold Stories Page 9