by Claudia Gray
Lucas interjected, “Does that mean I have to become a vampire no matter what?” I fidgeted, unable to wholly conceal my hope. My mother shot me a look that made me go still.
Mrs. Bethany shook her head. “Not necessarily. You might yet live a long life and die of other causes, if that’s the sort of thing you consider cause for celebration. However, soon you’ll find yourself more and more drawn to Miss Olivier, whose lack of discipline has already been made very clear.” Dad took a step forward, like he was going to defend me, but Mom put one hand on his shoulder to keep him back. “Other vampires will find you equally appealing, although the taboo against hunting another vampire’s chosen prey should protect you—for a time. Eventually, Mr. Ross, you’ll find the prospect entices you as much as it does her. You will desire it more powerfully than you can possibly guess. It is a craving no pure human can ever understand. When that time comes, you will probably choose to join us.”
If Lucas was going to lose it, I thought this would be the moment. But he remained calm. “Does that mean I’m sort of…in between? Like Bianca?”
“Not exactly like her, but close enough.” Mrs. Bethany’s prim mouth relaxed slightly, and I realized that she was almost smiling. “You are a quick study, Mr. Ross.”
“I’d like to know more,” he said, seizing upon her approval. “I want to understand these…senses. Abilities. Powers.”
“And limitations, too. Those take root in humans more slowly than our powers, but they will arrive. You cannot afford to forget that.” Mrs. Bethany considered it for a few more seconds, then nodded. “This was not what I intended when I opened the school to human students, but I ought to have anticipated it. I’ll send over some papers that might help you. Old letters, studies, things like that regarding those who have been in your situation and who have chosen to follow our path. Just remember this, Mr. Ross: Our secret is now your secret. The more you learn, the more you belong to us. You can no longer betray the truth about Evernight without also betraying yourself. I will be watching you very closely from now on.”
“I believe you. I’m not going to say a word about vampires to anybody.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “Well, at least not to anybody who doesn’t already know.”
I squeezed his hand, happy and relieved. It didn’t matter what my parents said to us now or how long I was going to be grounded. All that mattered was that the truth was out at last, and Lucas would be okay. And he might—just maybe—be mine forever.
Not until much later that night did I realize that Mrs. Bethany had never told Lucas what would happen if he didn’t choose to become a vampire. She didn’t offer it as an option. I wondered if that was because it was impossible for him to choose anything else—or because he wouldn’t be allowed to choose.
Chapter Fifteen
WITH MARCH CAME RAIN, TORRENTS OF IT, blurring the windowpanes and turning the earth to mud. For the first time, the grounds weren’t available to us as an escape. But for the first time, we didn’t need it. Lucas and I were learning about Evernight now. We were becoming a part of it.
“Look at this.” Lucas pushed one of Mrs. Bethany’s heavy, black, leather-bound books toward me as we sat together in a private corner of the library. The only other sound was raindrops pattering against the window. The book’s pages were brownish with age and the ink had faded, so I had to squint to make out the words. I read as Lucas explained, “They keep talking about ‘the Tribe.’ Some older group of vampires. Is anybody here from this Tribe?”
“I never heard of the Tribe before.” I’d never imagined how complicated vampire lore was; my parents had never hinted at any of this. “But what do they mean by older? My dad is nearly a thousand years old. Surely that’s about as old as it gets.”
“Not if everyone is immortal. There ought to be vampires two, three, ten times older than him. Ancient Romans. Ancient Egyptians. Whoever came before those guys. Where are they? Not here, I don’t think.”
He was right. The oldest vampire at Evernight was probably Ranulf, who had died in the seventh century. Of course, some vampires did die, like, finally die; if you didn’t get any blood for months and months, or even if you didn’t drink blood for a shorter time and then were exposed to the sun—that could get you. My parents had made that clear when I was a little kid who didn’t want to finish her glass of goat’s blood. Everyone’s worst nightmare was fire, which killed vampires even more quickly than it did humans. Despite all those dangers, a lot of vampires should have survived even longer than Ranulf.
“Mom and Dad say some people get lost,” I murmured. “That they lose track of time and humanity altogether. Evernight Academy was built so that vampires wouldn’t fall into that trap. Do you suppose that’s what my parents meant? Maybe the Tribe is all the vampires who get lost. They’re hermits and recluses, with no connection to humanity.” The thought made me shiver.
“Is this creeping you out?”
“Yeah, a little.”
Lucas brushed his thumb across my cheek. “You want us to take a break?”
I realized that I did, kind of. “I ought to study history. It’s hard enough to get As when you’re being graded on a curve alongside people who actually witnessed about half the events in the book. Now Mom’s being tougher on me than ever.”
“Go ahead.” Already he had turned his attention back to the book of vampire lore. “I’ll be right here.” Lucas didn’t lift his head from the book for the next hour, and when I bundled up my things to go downstairs, he let me leave without him so that he could keep working until the moment the library closed. (There was no taking the book back to his room; we agreed that Vic might be oblivious, but he wasn’t stupid, and leaving the real vampire information out where Vic could see it would be crazy.)
Every once in a while I asked myself if Lucas could have any other reason for immersing himself in Mrs. Bethany’s books. But I always pushed the thought away almost instantly. Mostly I encouraged him, thinking that he was getting closer to becoming a vampire—and staying with me—forever.
Not that everybody liked that idea, of course. Courtney had kind of chilled out after I bit Lucas for the first time, apparently figuring that I was now “in the club.” However, she didn’t want Lucas in the club with us, which meant that after news of the second bite spread around the school, she was in high bitch mode.
“Can you imagine hanging around with that guy for a hundred years?” she complained loudly to Genevieve in Modern Technology one day, while Mr. Yee was in the corner patiently explaining something to the perpetually bewildered Ranulf. “I mean, eww. One school year of Lucas Ross’s attitude is too much. If he thinks I’m going to acknowledge his sorry existence in a couple of decades, when he’s trying to suck up to all the people he put down here, he can think again.”
Balthazar, who had been attempting to program the microwave that provided the lesson for the day, casually called, “Hey, Courtney, refresh my memory. The other day, I was thinking that I’d seen you in French Indochina, but then I realized that wasn’t quite right. You were changed—what—fifty years ago?”
“Um.” Courtney suddenly became really interested in the tip of her ponytail. “About that.”
“Wait, no. Not fifty.” Balthazar’s forehead furrowed, as if the microwave had deeply confused him, although I could see he’d already figured out the controls. “It was—no, not the seventies either—1987, right?”
“No!” Her cheeks were pink now. Genevieve stared at her friend; she hadn’t heard this before and looked appalled. Courtney retorted, “It was 1984.”
“Ohhh. 1984. Three years earlier. Way after the French left Indochina. My mistake.” Balthazar shrugged. “Forgive me, Courtney. The decades sort of run together for those of us who’ve been around awhile.”
I pretended not to overhear, but I couldn’t help smirking as Balthazar triumphantly hit Start and the microwave started nuking a cup of blood. Age meant status: Anybody who hadn’t even lasted half a century yet was a newbie, so all
Courtney’s posturing was completely blown. Lucas and I belonged at the school every bit as much as she did—
—which felt weird, but was true. Perhaps we would return here in forty years, or four hundred. Maybe we would come back to learn about how human life had changed and revisit the place we’d first met. It still spooked me to think about the vastness of the years that stretched out in front of us both. I got a little scared every time I thought about how much I might have to adapt to a world that could change as much as it had changed for my father since the Norman Conquest. The feeling that came over me was a lot like the fear of heights—so far to fall.
But when I thought about facing those years with Lucas by my side, I wasn’t afraid.
The worst storm of all blew through about the middle of March, a Saturday night so windy that even the thick antique glass of the school’s windows rattled in the frames. Lightning lit up the sky so often that sometimes, for a minute or more, it looked like daylight outside. With absolutely everyone trapped inside, every single common room was packed. Fortunately, a few friends and I had a way to escape.
“Okay, how can you have this much Duke Ellington and no Dizzy Gillespie?” Balthazar demanded of my father. He sat on the floor cross-legged, going through the albums to find music for us to listen to. I could’ve grabbed a few CDs and the player from my room, but that would’ve meant leaving my place beside Lucas on the sofa. Lucas had his arm around my shoulder, so I wasn’t budging.
“I used to have some Dizzy,” Dad said. “Lost that in a fire in sixty-five.”
Patrice, who sat primly in a nearby chair, sighed. “I had a terrible fire in 1892. It’s horrifying.”
“I would’ve thought you wouldn’t mind the chance to shop for a whole new wardrobe,” Lucas teased. Everyone sort of looked at him. “What did I say?”
“Fire is one of the few things that can kill us,” Mom explained, arms folded in front of her chest. She and Dad were still wary of Lucas, but they were trying to make the best of things. Like Mrs. Bethany, they had rationalized that the more Lucas knew, the less likely he was to make another terrible mistake. “That makes fire scary stuff.”
Lucas’s expression clouded, and for a moment I had no idea what he was thinking or feeling. Mostly I was pleased because Mom had said “us,” like Lucas already belonged.
Then Lucas said abruptly, “We were wondering about this the other day, actually. What are the other ways? That vampires can die, I mean?”
“Well, let’s see.” Dad clapped his hands together, like he had to work to remember this after a millennium. “Pretty short list, actually.”
“Stakes,” Lucas said firmly. “That’s what they show on TV, anyway.”
“Idiot box.” Patrice obviously thought television was too newfangled to merit her attention. But she was willing to talk to Lucas about being a vampire. I hoped she might open up a little, the way she had to me about her life in New Orleans, but so far she had mostly stuck to hard facts. “Stakes ‘kill’ us, but only temporarily. Once the stake is pulled out, you’ll be fine again in no time.”
Balthazar put a Billie Holiday album on as he added, “You just have to make sure you have a friend who can dig you up and take care of that.”
“It’s pretty much fire and beheading.” Mom ticked these two options off on her fingers.
“And holy water?” Lucas asked.
“Hardly.” My father didn’t bother to hide his contempt for Lucas’s suggestion. “I’ve had holy water thrown at me a few times. If there’s any difference between that and rainwater, I never felt it.”
Lucas looked skeptical, but he simply nodded. “Okay. Sorry, I know these are stupid questions.”
“It’s a lot to absorb,” Patrice said. From her, this was extremely charitable, so I gave her a smile as I leaned my head against Lucas’s shoulder. Sheets of rain washed against the windows, a constant whisper of noise beneath Billie’s croaky singing.
Mom must have noticed my snuggling a bit with Lucas, because she quickly tapped my father on the shoulder. “Okay, Adrian. We’ve hung out long enough. I’m sure the kids would rather talk without us.”
“Kids? Save that for the classroom. We’re almost exactly the same age!” Balthazar laughed. He was right, which was incredibly weird to think about. “You should stick around.”
“I don’t mind.” Patrice shrugged.
Lucas and I shared a look. We kind of did mind, but in an ideal world, Mom and Dad would’ve taken Balthazar and Patrice away with them so we could make out on the couch. That wasn’t going to happen.
Doing her eerie maternal-telepathy thing, Mom sighed sympathetically. “I guess there are times when no amount of privacy from the parents is enough, huh?”
“Evernight is definitely a challenging place to date,” Lucas agreed. Balthazar acted really interested in the Billie Holliday album cover all of a sudden.
Remembering how I’d shot Balthazar down, I cast about for any way to lighten the moment for him, then remembered a funny story I could tell. “Hey, at least it isn’t as bad for us as it was for your great-grandfather-whatever. Right, Lucas?” Lucas gave me a blank look. His face went pale, like I’d said something scary. Surely he was thinking about the wrong thing.
“Is this a family anecdote?” Mom asked. “Those are usually the best kind.” Everyone was listening now.
“One of Lucas’s ancestors came to Evernight, a great-grandfather or something around a hundred and fifty years ago. Come on, you tell it better!” I elbowed Lucas, but now his body was totally tense, as rigid as a board. He had said the story was a secret, but that had to be a joke, didn’t it? A story more than a hundred years old couldn’t be a secret. Maybe Lucas thought it was embarrassing, but I couldn’t see why he’d be ashamed of something that didn’t really have anything to do with him. “Anyway, he came here to study. He got into a duel with one of the other students, maybe over a girl, and they fought right in the great hall. That’s how that one stained-glass window was broken—did you know that? Neither of them died, but they expelled him, and…”
My voice trailed off as I saw that my parents and Balthazar had all gone completely still. They were staring at Lucas. His fingers were digging into my shoulder.
The only other person in the room who looked as confused as I felt was Patrice. “They let humans in before?”
“No,” Balthazar said sharply. “Never.”
“You had an ancestor who was a vampire?” I was astonished. “Lucas, you never knew this? Is that even possible?”
“I don’t think that’s what we’re dealing with.” My father stood up slowly. He wasn’t a very tall man, yet something about the way he loomed over us on the sofa was incredibly intimidating. “I don’t think that at all.”
“A hundred and fifty years ago.” Mom’s voice shook. “That was when…the one time that they…”
Dad never took his eyes off Lucas. “Yes.”
Then he grabbed Lucas by the throat.
I screamed. Had Dad gone crazy? Suddenly Lucas pushed his arms through my father’s, prying him off, and then Lucas’s fist smashed into Dad’s nose. Blood sprayed out, wet drops hitting me across the face.
“Stop! What are you doing? Stop!” I cried.
Everything after that happened so fast. Balthazar pulled me away from the fight, hard, so that I stumbled and fell onto the floor. He threw a punch at Lucas, too, but Lucas ducked it. Patrice wrapped her arms around me, screaming loudly, and because of that unable to move. My mother slammed one of the wooden dinner chairs onto the floor so forcefully that it broke. I thought at first that she was trying to get the guys’ attention, to figure out what the hell was going on, but instead she took one of the chair legs in her hand as a club and swung it into the small of Lucas’s back.
He shouted in pain, but instantly he spun, broke Mom’s grip, and left her clutching her hand. Dad and Balthazar were both on Lucas, trying to fight him as one, but he was as fast as they were, blocking every blow. I remembered
the pizza parlor and the fight there. As formidable as Lucas had come across then, that had been nothing. This was how he could really fight—powerful enough to fend off two vampires at once.
I was strong enough to fight with them, but I didn’t want to fight my parents for Lucas, or Lucas for my parents, not until I understood what the hell had just happened.
“What are you doing?” I shrieked. “Stop it, everyone, stop it!”
They didn’t stop. My father swung at Lucas’s gut, and when Lucas dodged it, he seemed to fall backward—but he was faking, crouching to grab the chair leg my mother had dropped. Immediately Dad and Balthazar edged backward, and I realized Lucas now possessed a stake. Maybe he couldn’t kill either of them forever with that alone, but he could take them out of commission.
Patrice screamed in my ear as Lucas plunged the stake toward Balthazar’s chest. Balthazar leaped backward, only barely avoiding the blow. I could see a cut along his cheekbone, crescent shaped from Lucas’s fist. Then, to my horror, Lucas focused on my father. He was actually trying to stake Dad.
“Lucas, don’t!” I pleaded. “Mom, tell him to—Where’s Mom?” She seemed to have vanished while I was distracted by the fight.
“She’s run downstairs for help.” My father’s words came out in a growl. “Mrs. Bethany will be here soon, and then we’ll get this taken care of.”
Lucas only hesitated for a second. “Bianca, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Lucas?”
His eyes met mine. “I love you.”
And then he ran, out the door, down the steps. At first all of us were too stunned to do anything, but then Dad and Balthazar took off after him. I turned to Patrice, who still huddled next to me on the floor. “Do you understand any of this?”
“No.” She ran her hands over her smooth, plaited hair, as if she could erase her earlier panic by fixing her own appearance. Nothing else mattered to her.
Though my legs shook, I got up and rushed after them, stumbling down the steps. I could hear Balthazar’s shouts echoing against the stone: “Stop him! Stop him now!”