“Are you?” I asked. “Because I’ve never hurt anyone, ever. I would never hurt anyone, ever. Are you sending teenagers to murder people like me?”
“Of course not,” Mustache said.
“Want to switch places and tell me that while you’re strapped to a lie detector?” I asked.
The principal sighed, and she leaned forward. “January, your condition is exceedingly rare. It’s so rare that we haven’t even heard of a dhampir in a hundred years.”
“Are you sure that’s not because you’re killing them all?” I asked.
“We are sure,” she said, but she noticeably did not offer to switch places. “The fact of the matter is, if you do not enter Blackburn, your father will find and kill you. We do believe that if the vampire stalking you were able to ascertain an invitation to your home last night, you would not be sitting before us today. You need us to protect you and your mother, Cleo —”
“She’s my grandmother,” I snapped. “Her name is Chloe, and she’s my grandmother. It’s hard to pretend that you give a shit about me when you can’t even remember that detail, Mr. Roberts.”
“We will protect your grandmother, January,” the principal said, not missing a beat. “And, in exchange, we will need you to keep your condition a secret. We will provide you a steady supply of blood and a private room.”
“And what’s to stop Justin from telling people?” I asked.
“Justin Roberts has gone to great lengths to protect you,” the principal said. “But he can’t protect you from your father and his vampires. If he doesn’t know this already, we will impress the information on him. And, Justin will also know that Blackburn will protect and stand behind you only if you protect us by keeping your condition a secret.”
“And I have to move into the school?” I asked.
Principal Chambers smiled and nodded. “We have a small boarding house. You will find a lot of familiar faces there. Your friend Susie and Richard both live there, along with Patrick, Michael, and Charlie.”
“I have a dog,” I said.
“Your dog is welcome to continue living at our house with your grandmother,” Mr. Roberts said with a beatific smile.
“No, they barely know each other. And, I wouldn’t put that responsibility on my grandmother; Bailey stays with me. And, I want you to put a serious security system around my grandmother’s house. I get that having me live with her will put her in danger, but she needs to have constant security.”
“Henry will walk her home every night. We will double our patrols,” George Roberts said. “These aren’t a problem. And, we’ll find a way that you can keep your dog at the dorm.”
The principal looked at George Roberts abruptly. “We will?”
A silent, meaningful message passed between them before they broke eye contact to regard me.
“We do have a kennel for dogs. They are working dogs. We’ll figure something out, January,” Principal Chambers said. Her gaze lifted, and she waved a hand. Immediately, the grips on my shoulders released, and the men to either side of me let go of my wrists.
“Are you ready?” the principal asked.
“For what?”
“Your initiation. The oaths will come later, with the others, but for now, we would like to settle this matter.”
Did I have a choice?
If I wanted Nana and me to survive, I didn’t. I swallowed.
The purple-haired girl lifted a hand, closed her eyes, and whispered a stream of words. Then, her eyes snapped open, and she sat back.
“Well, that’s settled. You are now forever a student of Blackburn Academy and a member of the Hawthorn Group. And . . .” the principal paused to look at her watch, “Your Academic Trial will be starting in fifteen minutes. We’ll let you go so you can make it in time.”
The fuck?
Yanking the lie detector strap off my hand, I looked between them. “You want me to head out of this and go take my Academic Trial?”
My adrenaline had been running so high that my eyes were drooping and stomach clenching.
“Yes. We need it for records. We’d planned to schedule you further out, but it seems you’ve made other arrangements,” Principal Chambers said as she stood. “We’ll be expecting a high performance, so there’s no embarrassment or uncomfortable questions as we hand you a scholarship. Depending on your academic score, your Character Trial will be adjusted to put you into tenth place. We want to minimize the questions arising from your performance. Unfortunately . . .” Her gaze darted over to Mr. Roberts, “someone thought it wise to invite almost every local member of the Hawthorn Group to participate in your trial to test your skills. So, there will already be too many questions arising among many of the parents of Blackburn students that will no doubt trickle down.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Justin waited in the crowds of students of Building B as I came out of the Academic Trial. He gripped his hair, looking a little like he was trying to rip off his own head. The students streamed out of the narrow doorways, and his eyes searched the crowd until they found mine. The anxiety visibly drained from his face as I crossed the distance and threw my arms around him.
I felt his sigh before his arms wrapped around me and squeezed me to him. “You okay?”
I closed my eyes and reveled in his warmth. He was safe; he was here. “Aside from feeling like a complete idiot and having my whole world flipped upside down, and then taking a three-part academic exam, I’m fine. How are you? What happened today?”
“My father woke me up and informed me in no uncertain terms of our new situation.” His hand rubbed down my back. “Can we just get the fuck out of here?”
“You don’t have to ask me twice,” I said, taking his offered hand. As we walked out, I glanced back at the screen above the warehouse.
My name, January Moore, sat in tenth place. I had a twenty for Athletic Trial, a ninety-seven appeared beside my Academic Trial, and in my Character Trial, the score ninety-two vanished, to be replaced with eighty-nine. They’d probably keep adjusting my Character Trial score as the rest of the scores rolled in. I could care less about my score. Charlotte got a lot wrong, but she was right that those assholes didn’t have a right to judge my character.
Justin had pulled his truck straight up to the building, not even bothering to find a parking space. We ran through the heat, climbed in, and drove out of there like someone was chasing us. Justin didn’t slow until we were on the freeway heading north.
“I can’t leave the country, Justin, if that’s what you’re still planning,” I told him as I reached between us and took his hand.
His fingers laced through mine. “Yeah. I get that now. I was trying to get you to your mother’s visiting hours.”
“What?” I whispered. I had already called days ago to tell my mother I wasn’t going to make it to this one because I was testing to get into a new school. “I guess I could surprise her.”
“We definitely don’t have to go if you don’t want to. I will have no complaints if we head back home.” His eyes heated a little at the suggestion, but the heat dissipated as he continued, “I just thought you wanted me to take you out there on Saturdays.”
The idea of going to see my mother made me feel so many things. She was a mess of a human being, but at the bottom of it all, I missed her stupid face so fucking much. I swallowed hard and nodded. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
Hope Springs Recovery Center sat twenty minutes north of Brightside. It looked a little like a religious school from the outside, with a church to one side of the parking lot and a long one-story structure. But inside, the area looked halfway between a hospital and a jail. Justin stuck with me as security checked me in, bringing out a German shepherd to sniff us that was about half as big as Bailey.
“Do you want me to come inside or stay?” Justin asked as the guards beeped us in.
“Would you come?” I felt pathetic even asking it, but I really wanted him there with me. “Is that
okay?” I asked the security officer behind the desk.
The man waved us through, and the big glass doors beeped again. We headed through two sets of security doors and to a second desk with health care staff in scrubs behind it. The woman there paged my mother’s room, and three minutes later, my mother came rushing out.
“You came!” she called as she headed down the hall toward me. Her hair was brushed, and paint covered her front. She stopped next to a patient as she passed them standing in the long, wide hallway. “Jeanie, my daughter’s back.” My mother pointed down to me. “She came to see me. Look.”
A woman with short hair gave me a wave, and I waved back.
My mother crossed the rest of the distance and wrapped me up in a hug. Her arms were still wiry and thin, but she felt strong. “I thought you were going to take a test to get into some richie-rich school.” She leaned back and ran her fingers through my hair, combing it back behind my ears. “You decided not to go?”
“No. I’m in. I just finished early,” I said.
Her eyes widened, but a moment later, she turned toward Justin, who was still holding my hand. “Justin, how are you, honey? Is she actually going to introduce us after all of this time?”
I stared between my mother and Justin for a second. “What the hell?”
My mother patted Justin’s arm. “Oh, honey, don’t be mad. It was our little secret because I knew you’d find some way to throw a fit about it.”
“Um, yeah. Thanks, Mom. Can you tell me what’s going on now please?”
My mother shook her head. “So, he might have dropped off groceries twice a week before going back to hang out with you. It wasn’t that big of a deal.” She slashed her hand through the air. “Don’t make a big deal out of it, honey. Let’s just move on with our lives. But it really means something to me that you’re finally okay with him meeting me — I know, I know it’s been hard, and I . . .” She trailed off. “I am so happy to see you both. Do you want to say hi to my friends? And, then we can grab something to eat.”
My mother had a lot to complain about her facility, but she also seemed to be friends with every health care professional and patient. She hugged me and grinned, and when I told her that Justin had extracted all of her work from the old house and it was hanging on our walls, she lectured me for fifty minutes on conservation. Justin didn’t say more than “yes, ma’am,” and “no, ma’am” through the whole thing. By the time two hours had elapsed, I was ready to spend a week away from her.
I had intended to ask her about my father. I’d intended to say a lot of things, but as per usual with my mother, she had so much to say that everything flew out of my mind.
“I’m glad she’s here,” I said as we pulled away from the parking lot in Justin’s truck.
“You think it’s going to help her?” he asked.
“Oh.” I shook my head. “I don’t know. What I meant is that any vampires that are after me couldn’t get to her here.” As soon as we were on the highway, I asked, “You delivered groceries to my mother for a year?”
Justin didn’t reply, but he worked his jaw back and forth.
“And you said nothing? Were you ever going to say anything?”
His eyes slid my way, and a smirk crept onto his lips. “Not if I could avoid it.”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” I shook my head, but when he offered me his hand, I threaded my fingers through his. “Thank you,” I whispered as we took the exit off the highway. “I really should have questioned why our cupboards had such consistent stock.” And, subsequently, my stress had been way lower than usual. My mother must have made him a list because we had the same items as always on our shelves.
We arrived at the house just as it was getting dark, and as we drove down the hill, music pumped through the air so loud it rattled the truck. “Fuck. I told them not to come over.”
“Want to come hang out at my place? My nana is chill, and I think she’s out anyway.”
Justin pulled up next to the garage and parked. He sat in his truck for a minute and stared out the windshield. “I really just want to kick all of them out and tell them to fuck off for the rest of the summer. But I’m also not planning to leave you alone here.”
I turned on the dome light, as his glow was increasing as the sky darkened. “So . . . how about I come with you?”
He peered over, his eyelids narrowing. “You might get caught up in the bullshit. They might say that you’re the reason I kicked them out.”
“Um. I would own that. Did you invite them over? No. They’re being assholes. I could care less about my reputation. I already have friends at Blackburn Academy, and they’re not going to look down on me for doing the right thing. Seriously, Justin, if you can go hang out with me and my . . . very complicated mother in rehab all day, I can deal with your friends and any bullshit that they stir up.”
He didn’t look entirely convinced. “You sure?”
I leaned in and kissed him. It was just a soft touch of my lips to his, but my butterflies were rejoicing. “I’ve got your back, okay? You don’t have to deal with all this shit alone anymore.”
I let out Bailey for a pee, and when I tried to put her back in, she clung to Justin’s leg like I was trying to wrench her away from the love of her life.
“My dog is obsessed with you. It’s getting a bit much,” I said as I hooked on her leash. It looked like Bailey was coming with us.
Justin reached down and scratched behind her ears. “The feeling’s mutual.” He shot me a smirk. “I’ve actually just been coming around so I could hang with your dog.”
“Don’t say that where she can hear you. She’s going to start laying down in front of my door and blocking me in my room when you come over or something.” As we headed into the dark, new motion sensor lights blared out, shocking the crap out of me as they illuminated the space up to the nearby trees. Obviously, the Robertses already were adding security precautions. As we walked, Justin called a couple of numbers, ordering taxis and safe rides to his house. From the sound of his call to Safe Ride, their vans visited the Roberts Mansion regularly.
When we rounded the pool house, Justin turned to me. “I’m going to switch off the music inside. Mind waiting out of the spotlight? I don’t want you to get any heat for this.”
“I’m here as support team only.” I crouched down by Bailey, thinking that it was probably better if she didn’t get too enmeshed in the crowd anyway. She was a party queen, and she might attempt to yank off her leash to go roaming.
Justin crouched down across from me and gave me a quick kiss before standing and diving into the crowd. The party was probably forty-strong, with high schoolers dancing and drinking from plastic cups. A line of bathing-suit-clad partiers waited for their turn at a mini-keg sitting in ice. The all too familiar stank of spilled beer and cigarettes wafted through.
Several girls and a guy came over and surrounded Bailey, petting her and asking me questions. Bailey ate up the attention, rolling around and nuzzling people when they dared to stop stroking her.
A tall, muscular guy stepped up to glare down at us. “What the fuck?”
The crowd petting Bailey fled like someone yelled “Fire!”
The vaguely familiar guy towered over us, and I had to admit that he was seriously intimidating. He should have been good looking with sharp features, short cropped brown hair, a cleft chin, and big brown eyes, but he immediately struck me as a very ugly person. He jabbed a finger down toward my dog. “This isn’t a fucking zoo. And, you’re not welcome at this party. Get that dirty mutt out of here before I kick you and your dog out, with my boot.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
My heart climbed into my throat, and it took everything in me not to punch this new guy in the crotch, which would have been easy to do from this position. There was no way that I was going to go back into the darkness with Bailey alone while vampires were stalking me, but there was no way in hell I was risking Bailey here either.
I stood
slowly and stepped between the guy and my dog. The guy looked ready for violence, and the only option was diffusing this situation. So, I managed to keep my voice very reasonable as I said, “Justin Roberts invited this dog and me here. He loves this dog. If you kick Bailey, there will be some serious consequences.”
I kept eye contact with the guy for thirty seconds to make sure he knew I wasn’t bluffing. My vague threat wasn’t what was going to keep him from violence; it was the chance that I had a connection with Justin.
“Hey,” a familiar voice called from a little way ahead. When I peeked back, Char had sat up from her position on a guy’s lap as she straddled him on a lawn chair. I hadn’t even noticed she was five feet away. From the tousled state of her hair and her bruised lips, she had clearly been locked in a heavy make-out session with a guy who I immediately recognized as Spineless Corey.
“You should leave Bailey alone, Mitch,” Char said through a giggle. “That’s January, Justin Roberts’ girlfriend, the one who is my best friend. He’s going to be really mad at you if you mess with her.”
Mystery solved on who let that one spill. Not that it was much of a mystery. I couldn’t even be annoyed right now. I was too relieved for her unexpected back-up. I would take allies from anywhere if it stopped this guy from attacking Bailey.
“That’s bull,” Corey said, as he smiled up at the terrifying asshole, his eyes a little droopy. “Justin poured a beer on that chick’s head and tried to kick her out. She’s the housekeeper’s kid. Definitely party crashing.”
“And she’s also Justin Roberts’ girlfriend, Corey. Mitch, please leave her alone.”
“Not worth it.” Mitch threw up a middle finger over his shoulder and headed into the party.
“Don’t worry. Everyone hates Mitch Holter,” Char said while Corey kissed her neck. “I’ll call you tomorrow. I want to know how you did on the trials.” She turned and sucker-fished onto Corey.
A Bite at the Cherry: A High School Vampire Bully Romance (Blackburn Academy Book 1) Page 22