Apparently, my answer had enough of a whiff of truth that he lowered his hand.
I peeked around him, desperate for him to step away and give me an inch of space. It all called for a topic change. I forced my voice to be cheery. “Hey, where’s Mei?”
My feigned innocence seemed to mollify him. “The Guidons are keeping her occupied.”
The words sent a shiver of foreboding up my spine. He’d wanted me to protect her, but now he’d sent her off with the older girls. Was he done with her?
I didn’t want to think of the implications. I could protect her if the Directorate wanted her protected, but once they changed their minds? I couldn’t watch her 24-7—I needed to sleep sometime—and I didn’t think she had the chops to make it on her own, kooky flute skills or not. “I’ve been watching out for her, like you said.”
I mentally assessed. Mei was so much younger than the Guidons. Some of them wouldn’t be able to stop themselves. Amanda had warned me on my first day here—once these girls scented weakness, they became wolves.
“And how is Acari Mei-Ling?” His question might’ve been on topic, but his voice was distracted. He shifted his weight, stepping closer, brushing his thigh against mine.
I inhaled sharply and covered it up with a tiny cough. He’d flirted with me before, but never like this. I’d have taken slashing fingernails over his thigh any day.
“She’s great.” I tried to lean back, but the doorjamb was hard at my back. It was so weird to have this conversation as he was touching me in totally inappropriate ways. “I think if she can survive this first year, she’ll be great.” I was rambling, but anything to keep this exchange on the spectrum of normalcy.
“Have you heard her play?”
“I have. She seeeems”—the volume of my voice spiked as he leaned in to nuzzle my neck—“really talented. She said she can play a lot of instruments.”
He pulled back. “So, you did not find anything extraordinary about her performance?”
How to answer? The urge to protect her overwhelmed me. Being Mei’s guardian had gone from an assignment to something personal. I liked her and wanted her safe.
The vampires knew she had a gift, but did they understand just how hypnotic her playing was? If they were to experience the true potency of her power, she’d never be safe from them.
And then a selfish thought flashed into my head: Once the vampires realized what they had in Mei-Ling, she’d be under scrutiny forever—that meant, as her roommate and guardian, I’d be under even more scrutiny.
I decided to play it cool and downplay her talents. “Sure, yeah. Flute’s not my thing, though.”
Alcántara tilted his head, considering. “Not your…thing?”
I shrugged it off. “It’s kind of shrill, you know?”
His gaze swept along my face, studying me. Finally, he said, “Perhaps she doesn’t need your help after all.”
Oh God. What had I done? Had I given the wrong answer? The only thing worse than vampires having too much of an interest in her would be them not caring whether she lived or died. “I could tell she was good,” I added with quick enthusiasm.
My mind raced ahead. The moment Alcántara left me, I’d need to find her. If she was with a bunch of Guidons, she was probably being eaten alive as we spoke. I didn’t know if Vampire/Watcher bonds were common, or how they even worked, but if Alcántara was somehow connected to someone like Masha and he gave the green light, Mei-Ling was toast.
“Let us forget her.” His intensity flared, like fresh wood catching in a fire that’d waned. He stepped so close, I had to look up to meet his eyes. “Now it is just you.” He brushed the hair from my brow. “And me.”
I strained to listen, hoping I’d hear voices of other girls in the hallway. But it was silent. It didn’t stop me from saying, “She could come back any minute.”
He chuckled. “I’ve ensured we won’t be interrupted. We have been interrupted too many times recently. Too often, another has come between us.”
Heat flooded my face—I couldn’t help it. He was talking about Carden. “What do you mean?”
“You know who I mean.” He pressed the backs of his fingers to my cheek. “Such a pretty blush. It confirms the truth of my words.”
I forced myself not to flinch. “I…I’m just hot, I think.”
His lips peeled into a seductive smile. I saw the glimmer of his fangs and looked away. Looked down. Maybe he’d think I was just being demure.
But then I felt cool pressure under my chin. His fingertip, tilting my face up to his. “Hot indeed, querida.” The naughty way he said it implied so much more than just my temperature.
These attentions, this intensity, it was like he’d suspected my interests lay elsewhere, and his response was to force the issue with these creepy lingering touches and suggestive words.
Alcántara had flirted with me before. I once thought he might kiss me, in the library, what felt like so long ago now. But his bizarre wooing was different now. There was something in his eyes that hadn’t been there before our mission. Or rather, something was missing from the look he was giving me, like he was a snake viewing me through glassy, bottomless eyes. Teasing me. Trifling with me.
He cupped my cheek. His other hand remained gripped on my waist. The feel of his fingers curling into the soft flesh of my torso was the only thing reminding me to keep breathing. “There have been certain…elements thrown between us.”
He began to lean down.
Oh God, oh God, oh God. The words keened in my brain. There was no calm mantra now. Oh God.
This was it. There was no escaping. I was pinned between the door and Alcántara’s cold, hard body.
“I have met obstacles,” he whispered, his mouth so close I felt his lips brush mine. “But no longer.”
And then he kissed me, and it wasn’t like kissing Carden, not at all.
Alcántara’s kiss was studied, methodical. Conscientiously thorough. I waited to experience some emotion—desire, longing, any sort of tingling whatsoever—but I didn’t feel a thing.
And it wasn’t just because we weren’t bonded. Alcántara’s kiss was different from Carden’s because Carden could kiss. He’d been my first, so I hadn’t realized it before. But now, kissing Alcántara, I knew. Carden…just…wow.
But I knew better than to spurn the affections of a vampire, particularly one whose fangs were right there, and so tried to sense what Alcántara wanted me to do. Technically, his kiss was fine, but something about it was coldly precise. Passionless compared to Carden’s all-consuming touch. His lips were cool, and as much as I tried to follow his lead, I felt how my movements were just as stiff and studied in return.
He pulled away. Compared to my kiss with Carden, the contact had been brief. With Carden, I’d fallen into the kiss, into him, from the instant my lips had touched his.
“I thank you for the small intimacy, mijita. It was most illuminating.” Alcántara gave me a tiny half bow. “I will bid you good night,” he said, his voice chilly and polite.
The keening in my mind hitched up a notch, but this time my panic was for an entirely different reason. Had I been too reluctant? Or worse, had he sensed Carden? Detected our bond?
I wouldn’t know, because the Spanish vampire swept me aside and was out the door before I could shut my mouth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Last night, I’d been lucky. Lucky the Guidons hadn’t eaten Mei-Ling for a midnight snack. Lucky that Alcántara hadn’t torn me limb from limb when he sensed whatever it was he’d sensed in my kiss.
He’d left, and Mei-Ling had been sitting on the floor outside the door, curled into herself.
“Mei.” I was still shaky and weirded out from Alcántara’s kiss, and it took me a moment to register that she was there and relatively unscathed.
She looked up at me. “Are you okay?”
“Me? How about you?” A welt was rising on her cheekbone, and it made my blood boil. I recognized Masha’s whip in that m
ark. Anger focused me, wiping away the remnants of Alcántara’s surreal and creepy touches. “What did they do to you?”
“It’s no big deal.” She stood and brushed herself off.
I could see that it was, in fact, a big deal. But I knew Mei, which meant I knew not to press the issue. Instead, I asked, “What are you doing out here?”
“They told me not to go in.” She glanced at the door as though a dozen vampires might spring out. “You know, while he was in there with you.”
I glanced down the hall, the lights dimmed for curfew. “You could at least have waited in the lounge.”
She shrugged. “I wanted to be close…just in case.”
“In case…” I’d thought I knew Mei-Ling, but apparently I still had much to learn. “In case I needed help?” My shoulders slumped, I was so completely touched by the sentiment. Though if Alcántara decided he wanted me dead, how anyone could help was beyond me.
“Yeah.” She gave me a flicker of a smile.
I scanned her, standing there in her gray Acari uniform tunic and leggings. “Do you even have your flute?”
She shook her head.
I considered the situation. Mei-Ling had been kidnapped here against her will. I was bonded to a vampire who was going to be staked because another vampire decided he stood in the way of a goal. Oh, and apparently, I was the icing-on-the-cake part of that goal.
I was embroiled in a game that was far more complicated than the girl gladiator torture they’d subjected us to in the first semester.
I shooed her into our room, shutting the door behind us. There was work to do, and I didn’t waste any time. “Okay, lesson one. Always have that flute. We’ll make a special holster or something. You need a way to tuck it in your pants without anyone seeing. It won’t break, will it?”
“No,” she said, sitting on the edge of her bed, not taking her eyes from me. Her attention was avid, but not in a slavering, I’ll-do-whatever-you-tell-me sort of way.
I appreciated the trust. It made me want to help her all the more. “That’s good,” I told her. “You’ll have enough to occupy you with lesson two.”
“What’s lesson two?”
“I’m making you a better weapon than just a damned flute.”
She raised a brow, giving me a sassy look. “I think it’s more than just a damned flute.”
She’d sounded amused, but when I replied, I was more serious than ever. “Yeah, but can it pierce a heart?”
She looked appalled. “I can’t pierce someone’s heart.”
I had no patience for her revulsion. “First of all, it wouldn’t be someone’s heart. It’d be something’s. And, if it were your life or theirs, you bet you could do it. But first, you need a stake.”
I’d been thinking about this since the day Ronan had revealed his handmade stakes, slim but lethal, hidden beneath the sleeves of his sweater. One of those stakes had saved my life, killing the Draug that would’ve killed me. And now I was going to make some for myself. For us.
“Where will you get a stake?”
I stood at my bureau, sad but resolved. Because the trouble was, you needed wood to carve a stake. And the only wood I had was my shuriken box. “Stakes—plural. I’m gonna make them.”
“You’re making us stakes?”
I opened the drawer. Pulled it out. I hated to do it. I’d not received many gifts in my life, and this had been one of them. Even though it came from a bunch of vampires, it was impossible not to appreciate the gorgeous antique, stained a deep red. The wood had been notched and pieced together by hand. Someone had spent much time carving a crane, etched in black on the lid. “Yup. Hopefully I can get a few out of this.”
“Oh, you can’t,” she exclaimed, seeing the box. “That’s too beautiful.”
“Then they’ll be some mighty pretty stakes.” I set aside the throwing stars, wrapped in a swatch of dark velvet. I’d tucked my pencil rubbing of the runes in there, too, and pulled it out, sliding it under my clothes instead. It was a weird compulsion, keeping this memento, but somehow the snippet of ancient Viking graffiti served as a reminder of how banal humanity actually was. How banal it was supposed to be.
I held up the empty box, studied it. And then in a violent motion, I began to wriggle the lid free of the base.
Mei leapt to her feet. “You’ll ruin it.”
I swung my back to her, holding it out of her reach. “Better the box than us.” The hinges slowly gave way, and then my arms jerked as the lid ripped free.
I got to work, popping off the edges of the top and the sides. I’d use it all. “Hopefully, we’ll each get two good stakes out of this. Maybe three. They’ll be crude, but sharp enough.”
I began to sharpen the chunks of wood, using the edge of one of my throwing stars. It reminded me of peeling potatoes.
She sat next to me, enthralled. “What are we going to do with them?”
“You’re not going to do anything. You’re going to learn how to protect yourself, so you can keep yourself safe if anything happens to me.”
“What’s going to happen to you?”
Deep in thought, I swept the edge of my shuriken along the stake, working methodically. Lethal points were gradually emerging from the blunted, splintered ends. “The vampires in charge want Car—Master McCloud dead, even though I’m certain he’s innocent. There’s more going on with this island than Watcher training.”
“And you think if you throw Master Alcántara off stride, you’ll get one step closer to uncovering the truth?”
I stopped carving, amazed. “Wow, you really are going all Nancy Drew on me.”
“I prefer Buffy references.” She gave me a sly grin. “And I want to help.”
Ironically, it was the grin that turned my stomach, stopping me. My hands froze in midair. She should’ve been grinning with friends at the mall, not smiling with me over this macabre endeavor. “I can’t let you help me. I mean, you could die, Mei.”
She grew serious. “I know.”
“Why help? And why me? I mean, we just met. Seriously, I’m just a messed-up seventeen-year-old who’s trying to go down swinging. I am so not worthy of your help.”
She looked away, thinking, and I expected an adolescent response. But what I got was something far wiser.
“My grandmother used to tell me not to be afraid,” she said. “She said the only thing in this world that we should fear is standing still.” She met my eyes once more, her expression hard and focused. “The vampires ordered the Tracer to kill my boyfriend. They would’ve killed my family if I hadn’t come. I must not remain still. Evil has been done to me. I can lie down and take it. Or I can stand up and take revenge.”
I looked at the crude stakes in my lap. “But this could get you killed.”
“I can take action, help you figure out what’s going on in this crazy place, and maybe get killed instantly. Or I can sit here, doing what I’m told, waiting to get killed eventually.” She gave me a wry look. “I prefer just ripping off the Band-Aid, thanks.”
My mind went back to my creepy run-in with Alcántara. Something had shifted in his lizardy eyes, telling me he might’ve been done with Mei-Ling. It gave me a chill, but I thought her assessment was probably right. From now on, she would simply be waiting for her eventual death. And it wouldn’t be a long wait.
I gave her a quiet smile, then looked down to continue my carving. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I began to explain the situation, but my roommate interrupted me almost immediately, and I guess I understood why. The phrase “There’s a Draug keeper I need to spy on” wasn’t something you heard every day.
I gave her one of my stars to help with the carving, and as we worked, I told her about Draugs and about the keeper and about the dire warnings I’d heard about the other side of the island.
I hoped she was right and that she wasn’t helping me in vain. That this actually would be one step toward unraveling the mystery
of the island. Because I really liked my peculiar, unpredictable young roomie, and it would devastate me to lose her as I’d lost Amanda and Judge.
When Mei spoke again, her question was the last one I’d expected. “Is this about that vampire you like?”
I froze. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, come on,” she said at once. Then she laughed, and I realized I’d never heard her laugh before. It was a high, tittering sound that made me smile despite myself. “You may be able to use your brashness to manipulate and confuse other people, but it doesn’t fool me.”
“Wait.” My hands dropped to my lap. “Full stop. My brashness?”
“Yes,” she said, trying not to smile. “Arrogance seemed too harsh a word.”
“Wow.” I gave a little breathy laugh, amazed at this study of my character. “Well, thanks, I guess. So, you’re saying I’m—what?—brash? And that I use it to confuse people?”
She shrugged. Her eyes didn’t budge from me, and they were unflinchingly honest and steady. “Maybe cocky is the better word.”
I laughed nervously. “I like your style, Mei-Ling. Very Mei-the-Merciless.”
“See,” she said, not to be interrupted. “Just like that. You’re dismissive and pretend to be careless, and it confounds people. Nobody ends up seeing the real you. Then they either fear you or hate you, or they just help you, hoping you’ll help them someday.”
I had been smiling at this bizarre evaluation, but that last statement gutted me. I was reminded how Josh had offered his help, claiming an alliance with me was only smart. “You think people help me because they fear me? That just kind of completely bums me out.”
She put a tentative hand on my arm. “Not all of us. Not those of us who really know you. We really like you.”
I shook my head, unsure what to make of it all. “You’re way too much, Mei-Ling.”
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