by Кристи Кук
“He has a new tattoo,” she said coyly. “Right here.” She indicated a spot just below her left shoulder.
“Wow,” I murmured, suitably impressed. “Do you do that often? Spy on celebrities, I mean?” I’d never really thought about it, but since she could go to anyone, anytime.
“Maybe,” she said with a wicked smile. “Anyway, we really missed you and Kate.”
“Sure you did,” I teased. “How was the weather?”
Cece scooped up her clothes and walked to the closet, dumping them there in a heap. “It was perfect!” she called out. “Warm, but not too hot.
Poor Sophie got a pretty bad sunburn.”
“What?” I let out my breath in a huff. “I called her and warned her!” Because I’d seen it, the very first day of break — a quick vision of Sophie in pain, her skin red and blistered. I’d been trying to coax a vision about Blackwell, but somehow I’d gotten Sophie instead. “Why didn’t she wear sunscreen like I told her to?”
Cece winced. “I think she forgot to reapply. Anyway, she’s fine now. How was Atlanta?”
“It was great,” I said, which was entirely true. It had been nice to spend some quiet time with Gran. We’d had lunch at the club, lounged by the pool. My seventeenth birthday had come and gone, celebrated quietly with Gran and Lupe, who’d made me my favorite cake — red velvet with buttercream frosting. I’d hoped to see Whitney while I was there, but our breaks coincided and she’d gone to the beach with her family. Still, all in all, it had been a nice trip. Relaxing, even.
“Well, it looks like you got a bit of a tan yourself. I swear, you were so pale you were starting to look like a vampire.”
My heart skipped a beat. But then I realized she was just kidding; the word “vampire” was just a figure of speech to her.
“Anyway,” Cece continued, “next time you have to go to Saint Bart’s with us. Promise?”
“I promise,” I agreed, just because it seemed like the right thing to say.
Cece sighed, collapsing back on her bed. “It’s good to be back here at the ’Haven, though, isn’t it? I mean, it just feels so much safer here.”
My skin prickled all over. “What do you mean, safer?”
“I don’t know. Just that here we’re free to be ourselves. I mean, what happens when we all go off to college?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I just wish I’d come here sooner.”
“Yeah, I wish you had too,” Cece answered. “Hey, you want to go to the café for a little while? I’m starved, and dinner’s not for another hour.”
“Sure.” I was mostly unpacked, and hungry — all I’d gotten on the plane was a tiny bag of pretzels. “Want to call and see if everyone else wants to meet us there?” Kate and Sophie and Marissa — the whole gang. I’d missed them, I realized.
A half hour later, we were all tucked into a booth in the back, laughing and chatting. We decided to skip dinner altogether and had sandwiches there instead, followed by coffee and thick slices of cheesecake drizzled with strawberry sauce and whipped cream. I took a sip of cappuccino and watched my friends over the rim of the mug, warmth spreading through my veins.
Yeah, Winterhaven was probably the best thing that had ever happened to me. In less than a year’s time, I felt like I’d finally found myself, found the friends I’d have for life.
And Aidan. well, I’d had plenty of time to think about him over the break. I wanted him back, wanted our relationship the way it was before I flipped out about the whole Isabel thing. The only question was, did he want me? I had to know, had to try.
“Hey, earth to Violet,” Sophie said, waving a hand in front of my eyes. “You’ve got that dreamy look on your face again. A penny for your thoughts?”
“I’m not sure they’re worth that,” I said, laughing. “I was just thinking how glad I am to be back, that’s all.” Which was partly true. I had been thinking that, before Aidan crept into my thoughts.
“I’m glad to be back too,” Kate said. “It took me two full days to remember that I had to actually get up and walk across the room to pick up my purse or my keys or whatever.”
“My God, you are so lazy,” Marissa said with a snort of laughter.
“Yeah, well, it becomes habit,” Kate protested. “It’s difficult having a gift that’s so hard to hide.”
“Hey,” Sophie said, “not to change the subject, but are any of you taking the SAT prep course that starts this week?”
I’d almost forgotten about the upcoming SATs. Patsy had sent in the money for the prep course just before spring break. “I am. Do you know who’s teaching it?”
“No idea.” Sophie shook her head, leaning forward in her seat. “Don’t look now, but Dr. Hottie just walked in.”
“Dr. Hottie?” I asked, resisting the urge to turn around and look at the door.
“He teaches senior-level science classes,” Cece whispered beside me, “and he can’t be more than twenty-six. Fresh out of grad school.”
“What’s his real name?” I whispered back in confusion.
“Dr. Byrne,” Sophie said. “As in, Byrne-ing hot. Get it?”
“C’mon, I gotta turn around,” I pleaded.
Cece nudged me. “Oh, go on. Just be casual.”
Totally casual, I thought, twisting my torso in my seat. The so-called Dr. Hottie stood just inside the door, chatting with a couple of students. I’d seen him around before, and they weren’t kidding. He was definitely hot.
“Hey, you’re blushing!” Cece said, and I quickly turned back around, feeling the heat in my cheeks.
“He only teaches really advanced classes,” Kate said with a sigh. “So I have no chance of getting him next year.”
“Oh, you better believe I’ll be taking his class. I’ll fill you in,” Sophie offered with a naughty smile.
Kate nudged Marissa in the ribs. “Hey, you’ve gotten awfully quiet. Don’t tell me you don’t appreciate the finer points of Dr. Hottie?”
Marissa looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Yeah, I’m just. I don’t know, something feels weird all of a sudden. Sort of off. I can’t explain it.”
I studied her face, my heart accelerating when I saw something that looked like fear in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “I don’t know that anything’s wrong,” she said at last. “But something’s definitely not right. I think I want to go back to my room.”
Suddenly the gaiety was gone. In silence, we gathered up our things and headed out into the cool night.
Not five minutes later it happened — my vision tunneled, my ears hummed. Next thing I knew, I fell to my knees on the concrete sidewalk. I vaguely heard my friends calling my name, felt someone tugging on my arm.
But it was too late; I was already gone, back down the rabbit hole.
24
Mirage
I was in Manhattan — Central Park. It was dark; the sun had just set. I could see the city’s lights all around the park’s perimeter. There was a fountain about a hundred yards away, yet the area was strangely empty. A lamppost stood to my left, throwing an eerie yellow light across the pavement.
Two women lurked in the shadows. Beside the fountain two men were talking — Julius and Dr. Blackwell, I realized with a start. I moved closer, knowing I needed to hear. “. an all-school assembly,” Dr. Blackwell was saying. “Everyone else will be engaged, and you can have him then.
I’ll summon them to my office just as the assembly gets under way — him, and the Sâbbat.”
“Excellent,” Julius said. Though I couldn’t see his face, I could hear the glee in his voice.
“But afterward the Sâbbat stays with me,” Blackwell warned. “I won’t have her harmed.”
Julius nodded. “That was our agreement.” So it was a trade— me for Aidan. But what did Blackwell want with me?
“Violet, oh my God!” It was Sophie, trying to pull me to my feet.
“It’s okay,” Cece said soo
thingly. “She’s okay. This is what happens when she has a vision.”
“I think she’s hurt,” Kate said. “Oh, shit, she’s bleeding!”
My knees burned, and so did my palms. I must have fallen, I realized. Scraped my knees and hands on the sidewalk. I tried to get up, stumbled, and fell back down again. Something was wrong. My vision began to tunnel again, pulling me back in.
Nothing like this had ever happened — usually it ended, and that was it. But this. my friends’ voices sounded far away. The humming in my ears grew louder, then faded away. It felt like an iron band was wrapped around my chest, and I struggled for air, struggled to fill my lungs.
Aidan. I needed Aidan. I had to tell him what I’d seen. I needed him to pull me out of this before it sucked me down for good.
“Aidan,” I managed to croak. “Get him. Please.”
“I’ll project to him,” I heard Cece say. “If he can’t hear me, then we’ll send Kate once I know where he is.”
“Hurry, Cece!” Sophie said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but her pulse is way too fast. She’s having some kind of fit or something.”
“We can’t just stay here!” someone shouted. “We should take her to the infirmary.”
“No!” someone shouted. Definitely Marissa. “Aidan will know what to do.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, felt the ground sway beneath me. I felt the hot trickle of blood run down my leg, felt particles of cement abrading my hands. Aidan, please, I called out with my mind. Please, help me.
My friends’ voices were back. “Oh, God, Cece looks dead. I hate it when she does this. C’mon, Cece, make it quick.”
There was a loud gasp, and then Cece spoke. “He’s in a classroom, a chemistry lab—”
“Go, Kate!” someone yelled.
“Violet?” Aidan. Had Kate found him, or had my telepathy summoned him there? I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know how much time had passed. I opened my eyes and his face swam into focus, but then I had to close them again, because everything went fuzzy.
“I. I don’t know what’s happening,” I said, my voice a hoarse whisper. “It keeps trying to drag me back under.”
I felt Aidan’s cold fingers on my face. “Hey, c’mon, Vi. Snap out of it. Stay with me, love.”
He cradled me on the sidewalk, my head against his chest. I felt his lips in my hair, on my temple. My blood stirred, and I felt myself swimming back to full consciousness, felt the band around my lungs loosen and disappear.
Suddenly the black edging my vision disappeared entirely. Sounds were normal now; I could breathe again. “What happened to me?” I gasped.
“A vision. What did you see?” Aidan asked.
“Not here,” I murmured, looking up at my friends’ panicked faces.
“Do you want me to. you know, check you out?” Sophie offered.
“No, I’m fine. Really.” I rose, Aidan holding me by the elbow. “Whatever it was, it’s passed now.”
Cece glanced from me to Aidan, then back to me again. She nodded to herself, as if satisfied that I was in good hands. “We’ll meet you back at the room in a little bit, okay?”
I just nodded, watching them all walk away.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked Aidan, knowing full well we weren’t going to travel the normal way.
“To my room. Take my hand and close your eyes, okay?”
I closed them, all right — as tightly as I could. A few seconds passed, a hum and a pop, and there we were, inside his little room. The door swung shut behind us, and I heard a bolt slide into place before he led me to the narrow little daybed and sat down beside me.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” he asked, stroking my hair.
And then I remembered — the blood! I leapt up and ran for the door, my heart pounding. “Aidan, you’ve got to let me out. My knees and my hands — I. I’m bleeding.”
He was beside me in an instant, reaching for my hand, drawing me back toward him. “Let me see.”
I shook my head so wildly it felt like it might snap right off my neck. “No way. Don’t you remember the last time?”
“Look at me, Violet. Look at my eyes. My teeth.” He raised his upper lip. “I’m fine. I just took the elixir, not an hour ago. It’s just a few scrapes, nothing serious. I can fix it.”
I took two steps away from him, back toward the door. “What do you mean, fix it?”
“What do you think, that when I leave a victim lying on the street, I leave the puncture marks visible? Imagine the panic that would cause,” he said with a laugh.
“But. but I saw the marks you left on that junkie’s neck,” I stammered.
“I fixed those while you were passed out cold on the sidewalk.”
“You mean just left me lying there, and—”
“It only took me a few seconds, I promise.”
I just stood there, blinking in confusion, more afraid than I wanted to admit.
“Please don’t be frightened of me, Violet. I can bear just about anything but that. Come here.” Again he reached for my hand, and this time I let him take it. He pulled me back to the bed and made me sit.
Kneeling before me, he gently pushed up the legs of my bloodstained khaki capris — my favorite little Abercrombie & Fitch lowriders, ruined now — till my knees were exposed.
“Maybe you shouldn’t watch,” he said, looking up, his eyes meeting mine. His weren’t red, thank God, so I guessed I was safe. Still, I could see hunger in his gaze — something that looked a little like lust, and a shudder worked its way down my spine.
What is he going to do to me? I had no clue, but whatever it was, my eyes were staying open.
“Okay,” he said, his voice deeper, rougher than usual. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He smiled then, a slow, sexy smile, and I watched in horror as his canine teeth elongated, if only slightly.
And then his tongue came out of his mouth, and he licked my wounds — literally. Once, twice his tongue made slow, soft strokes against my bloody, raw skin. Goose bumps erupted all over me, and it was all I could do to sit still. I clamped my mouth shut, grinding my teeth, trying to keep from making a sound.
Whatever he was doing, it felt like nothing I’d ever experienced before, and I didn’t want him to stop — ever. He finished with my right knee and moved to my left, repeating the slow, sensuous licks before he reached for my hands and did the same to my hypersensitive palms. Every once in a while he’d pause and glance up at me questioningly, as if he were testing my response. The look in his eyes — the heat, the tenderness, all blended into something indescribable — stole away my breath. By the time he finished, I was reduced to a quivering mass on the bed, panting and squirming.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly, rising from his knees and sitting beside me on the bed. “Do you need to lie down?”
Yeah, I do.
“Here,” he said, lifting me up and laying me back against the pillow. I closed my eyes and took a deep, calming breath.
“I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
I glanced down at my knees, at my hands, and gasped. The blood was gone, the scrapes were gone. Everything was just. gone. My skin looked perfect, totally unblemished. As if nothing had happened.
“Okay, love,” he said, brushing back a stray lock of hair from my flushed cheek. “Now you’ve got to tell me what happened.”
Taking a deep, steadying breath, I told him.
“And that’s everything?” he asked, lying beside me now, his arm tucked around me, my cheek resting on his chest — I could hear the faint thumpthump of his heart, his vampire heart, pumping the infected blood throughout his body. “Nothing else?”
“Nothing else. And then there was that weird reaction afterward, like the vision kept trying to suck me back into it, but couldn’t quite do it. That’s never happened before.”
“That almost frightens me more than the vision itself,” Aidan said.
I took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly, trying to calm my racing heart
. “The next all-school assembly is Friday. Five days from now,” I clarified.
“It’s coming, Aidan. Whatever it is, it’s coming.”
“It would seem that way.”
I bit my lower lip, steeling myself for what I knew I must say. “We’ve got to tell them. There’s no other way.”
“Tell who?”
“My friends. Cece and Sophie and Kate and Marissa. All of them. We need them. Maybe Jack, too.”
“We can’t tell them, Violet. It’s impossible for me to do so. It’s against the laws of my kind.”
“You told me about Blackwell,” I shot back.
“Yes, and I paid a price for it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, an uncomfortable lump in my throat.
“I was sent to the Tribunal for that little slip,” he answered, his voice hard. “I suppose it was Blackwell himself who turned me in.”
“The tribunal? Like a vampire court or something?”
“Something like that, except there’s no pleading your case. Punishments are simply handed down. My sentence was three days of torture.”
“They. they tortured you?” I stammered, my stomach lurching uncomfortably.
He just shrugged.
“What did they do to you? I. I thought it was impossible to hurt you.”
“My body will heal itself when injured,” he explained. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel pain. Especially when an. injury. is repeated over and over again, every time it does heal.”
Hate and revulsion welled up inside of me. More than anything, I wanted to harm the vampires who had harmed Aidan.
But this was a war, and we needed an army. “Well, there aren’t any laws preventing me from telling them,” I said. “Are there? Would you be held accountable if I did?”
“No,” he answered. “I wouldn’t. I guess you could call that a loophole.”
Thank God. “We need their help, then.”
“What are you suggesting?” he asked.
“A plan, that’s what. With everyone’s gifts combined, we can turn the tables on Julius and his allies. Lead them into our own trap.”
“Blackwell would never allow—”
“Blackwell is the enemy, remember?”