by Claudia Gray
“Most priests can’t make holy water,” Eduardo agreed. Disturbingly, he sounded like he was enjoying this. “Most preachers of any faith aren’t true servants of God. But those servants do exist—as you’re about to find out.”
Dana squeezed the trigger and sent a jet of water toward the teachers. Mr. Yee and Professor Iwerebon immediately yelled and fell back, as if they had been sprayed with acid.
“That’s it!” Kate cried. But even as Dana fired again, the next jet of water failed to make its mark. The air was growing so hot that the water was evaporating right away.
The timbers overhead creaked ominously. I could hear Professor Iwerebon shouting in pain and Mr. Watanabe coughing hard from the smoke. The floorboards beneath my feet were beginning to feel hot. I no longer wondered which side would die; I wondered if we all would.
“I’ll go!” I cried. “I’m going out!”
“Bianca, don’t!” Lucas’s face was painted in firelight, red and gold. “You can’t go!”
“If I don’t go, you’ll die. All of you. I won’t do that.”
Our eyes met. I had never imagined saying good-bye to Lucas before; it had seemed like there couldn’t be a good-bye, not for us. He wasn’t just part of my life—he was part of me. Leaving him was like cutting off my own hand, sawing through sinew and bone, bloody and horrible and terrifying.
But for Lucas, I could do anything that had to be done. That meant I could even do this.
“No,” Lucas whispered, his voice almost inaudible above the crackling of the flames. The Black Cross group were edging toward the center of the room, creating a circle of defense. “There’s got to be another way.”
I shook my head. “There’s not. You know it as well as I do. Lucas, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
He took one step toward me, and I wanted to fling myself into his arms and hold him at least once more. If I did that, though, I knew I’d never be able to let go. For both our sakes, I had to be strong.
“I love you,” I said, and then I turned and ran toward my parents.
My father’s hand closed around my arm as he and my mother pulled me outside. The door swung shut behind us. “Bianca!” Mom embraced me tightly, and I realized that she was crying. Her body shook with each sob. “My baby, oh, my baby, we didn’t think we’d ever see you again.”
“I’m sorry.” I hugged her back while grabbing my father’s hand in one of mine. I could see his bruised, black-eyed face over her shoulder. Instead of the anger or hurt I’d imagined, there was only relief in his eyes. “I love you both so much.”
“Honey, are you okay?” Dad said.
“I’m fine, I promise. Just let them go. Please. For me. Let them go.”
My parents both nodded, and if Balthazar disagreed, he didn’t say so out loud. We all made our way toward the front of the meetinghouse. Thick smoke from the ceiling billowed upward in a dark, coiling pillar. A driver in her car on the nearby street was already shouting into her cell phone. The fire engines would be here soon.
As we stepped onto the sidewalk, the three of us still huddled together with Balthazar following closely, Mrs. Bethany hurried toward us, her long black skirt flapping behind her. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “Guard the back! Don’t let them out!”
“No!” I cried. “You can’t do that. You can’t just kill them!”
“It’s what they’d do to us,” Mrs. Bethany rasped, her dark lips twisting in an unnatural smile.
Mom took a deep breath. “No. Let them go.” Dad shot her a look, but he didn’t object; he just kept holding my hand.
“You heard me.” Stepping closer, Mrs. Bethany fixed her black eyes on me, the way a hawk does before swooping down upon its prey. “Do you question my authority? I am the headmistress of Evernight!”
It was Balthazar who answered her by casually slinging his crossbow back upon his shoulder so that it just happened to be aimed straight at Mrs. Bethany. He wasn’t threatening her, exactly, but it was very clear that he wasn’t going to back down. As she jerked upright in shock, Balthazar drawled, “School’s out.”
Mrs. Bethany scowled, but she said nothing and didn’t make another move, not even as we heard the ruckus in the back driveway that could only have been the members of Black Cross making their escape. I closed my eyes tightly and wished for the sirens of the fire trucks, so that I wouldn’t have to hear Lucas’s footsteps as he ran away from me forever.
“Your parents say you were abducted.”
Mrs. Bethany stood behind the desk in her office, the one in the carriage house at Evernight. I sat in front of her in an uncomfortable wooden chair. My clothes were filthy with soot and rumpled. I was chilled to the bone, exhausted, and hungry for both food and blood. The day’s last rays of sunlight filtered orange through the windowpane. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since my world fell apart and the truth about Lucas came out. It felt like a thousand years.
“That’s right,” I said hollowly. “Lucas demanded that I come with him.”
She pulled the gold locket around her neck back and forth, back and forth on its chain, so that I could hear the faint metallic clicking. Unlike me, Mrs. Bethany was completely poised and collected, and the frilly lace at her throat remained crisp with starch. But she smelled like smoke, not lavender. “Curious, that you couldn’t defend yourself. You are, after all, a vampire.”
Am I? I wasn’t even sure of that anymore. I said only, “He’s in Black Cross. He has some of our powers. He outfought my father and Balthazar at once. What chance did I have?”
“Now you know how to answer difficult questions with more questions.” Mrs. Bethany sighed heavily, and for the first time, I saw a glint of dark humor in her gaze. “No longer the shrinking violet, I see. At least you’ve learned something this year.”
I remembered what Lucas had told me the night before: Mrs. Bethany had changed centuries-old rules in order to invite human students to Evernight. He hadn’t been able to learn why, and I couldn’t guess. As I looked at her, I knew only that she was older, stronger, and more devious than I’d ever imagined. Yet I wasn’t afraid of her anymore, because I knew even Mrs. Bethany was vulnerable.
If she had allowed human students at Evernight, there was something she needed, badly. That meant she had a weakness, and that made her no different from the rest of us. I could face her now, knowing that.
Without asking permission to leave, I rose from my chair. “Good night, Mrs. Bethany.”
Her dark eyes glittered dangerously, but she simply waved me off with a flick of her fingers. “Good night.”
That night, my parents fussed over me like they hadn’t since I was a little girl—finding me snuggly socks and soft pillows and microwaving a glass of blood to body temperature for me. I didn’t have to ask if they really thought I’d been abducted by Lucas; they were smarter than that. I knew they didn’t really understand, because any sympathy they might have had for Lucas was clearly obliterated by their hatred of Black Cross. But even if they didn’t agree with my choices, they could forgive me for them. That was more than enough to remind me how much I was loved. They even piled up in bed on either side of me, with Rosemary Clooney on the record player in the other room, and told me old stories about the way the wheat fields in England used to look—sweet, pretty stories that held no danger or change, only beauty. They talked for a long time before exhaustion won out over misery and I finally, finally fell asleep.
That night I dreamed once more of the storm, the creeping hedge that grew up like a wildfire of brambles around Evernight, and the mysterious flowers that bloomed black beneath my hands. Even in my dream, I knew I’d seen it all before. I had been warned even before I met Lucas that the flowers weren’t for me, but I reached for them anyway, despite the thorns and the storm.
“You’re daydreaming again.”
Raquel’s words brought me back to reality. We were out in the fringe of woods closest to the grounds, beneath new, pale-green leaves so soft they curled at t
he edges. I’d been standing still, my hand on one branch for no telling how many minutes. She was a good enough friend to allow me space when I needed it and smart enough to know when it was time to bring me down to earth once more.
“Sorry.” We started walking again, lazy steps that didn’t really take us in any particular direction. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“You were thinking about Lucas.” Obviously Raquel wasn’t easily fooled. “It’s been almost six weeks, Bianca. You have to forget him. You know that.”
Raquel knew only what the other students like her knew: that Lucas had broken a slew of rules and run away, assaulting my father on his way out. That probably fit perfectly into her sad view of the world, in which every secret was only a cloak for violence. She’d warned me about Lucas a dozen times. Why shouldn’t she believe he’d snapped? Never did she say anything remotely resembling “I told you so”—Raquel was too good for that.
Vic took it hard. Lucas had really been his best friend at Evernight, and there was a gap in Vic’s life now that was beyond my power to fill. I’d assured him, as best I could without revealing secrets that would only endanger him, that Lucas was a good guy and that he’d had his reasons for running. I thought Vic believed me, but he didn’t smile as often anymore. I could’ve used some of his smiles.
The other vampires, both students and teachers, knew more of the truth. They knew that Lucas was a member of Black Cross—one who now had some of the strength and power of a vampire, thanks to me. Before, Courtney and her friends had merely held me in contempt; now they hated me, pure and simple.
To my surprise, however, Courtney’s group was in the minority. My parents forgave me, of course, and Balthazar blamed Lucas for everything, treating me more gently to make up for Lucas’s supposed cruelty. But comfort and support came from others, as well—Professor Iwerebon, who had offered several off-topic lectures about the treachery of Black Cross while gesturing with bandaged hands, or Patrice, who insisted that no girl could be held responsible for her first love. For them, I suspected, a battle with Black Cross meant that I was more surely on their side. More purely a vampire than I had been before.
I was the only one who knew the whole truth about Lucas—who he really was, and what we felt for each other. That truth was all I had left of him, and I would have to carry it alone.
“We should go inside.” Raquel nudged me with her elbow, which was as close as she ever came to showing affection. The tawny leather bracelet dangled upon her wrist once more; I’d told her it turned up in the lost and found. “Mail call soon.”
“Expecting a care package?” Raquel’s parents had let her down a lot, but at least they knew how to bake. “If there are going to be more oatmeal cookies—”
Raquel shrugged. “Gotta be there when I open the box, or else I’ll end up inhaling them all before you know it.”
“Exercise some self-control, would you?” I felt a rare smile creep across my face as we started back across the grounds. For the first time, I was able to walk past the gazebo without hoping that I’d see Lucas there waiting for me.
“Self-knowledge is better than self-control any day,” Raquel said firmly. “And I know myself well enough to know how I act around cookies.”
We got back to the great hall just as the first brown-wrapped packages and FedEx envelopes began making their way among the crowd. As she’d hinted, Raquel got a big box, and the two of us started up the stairs to her room to wolf the cookies down. But just as my foot hit the first step, a hand tugged at my elbow.
“Bianca?” Vic brushed his sandy bangs back from his face and smiled uncertainly. “Hey, can we talk for a sec?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
He shifted from foot to foot. “Um, like, alone?”
I hoped Vic wasn’t about to ask me out in some cracked attempt to get me on the rebound. “Well, okay.” With a shrug, I turned back to Raquel and said, “There had better be cookies left when I get there.”
“I’m not making any promises.” She jogged up the stairs without me, and I resolved to make this quick.
Vic guided me to the far end of the great hall, near the one window that wasn’t stained glass—the one broken by Lucas and also, so long ago, by a member of Black Cross. Instead of his ordinary casual slouch, Vic was tense and a little bit strange. I mean, stranger than usual. I asked him, “Hey, are you all right?”
“Me, I’m fine.” He looked around, decided we were definitely alone, and then grinned. “And you’re about to be a whole lot better, thanks to something I found in my care package.”
“What do you mean by…” My voice trailed off as Vic slipped something into the pocket of my blazer.
Mail call. Lucas would’ve known that they’d double-check any letters for me, but not letters to Vic. If Lucas wanted to reach me, this is how he’d do it.
I put one hand over that pocket, which now bulged with a thick, padded envelope. Vic nodded quickly. “So, right, that’s good, then. Glad we got that settled. See ya!”
As he loped away, I took a deep breath. My heart pounded inside my chest, but I walked calmly up the stairs until I reached my parents’ apartment. They weren’t home—probably Mom and Dad were downstairs grading papers and getting ready for finals. I went into my bedroom, shut the door, and, after a moment’s hesitation, pulled the shade down so that even the gargoyle wasn’t looking inside. Then, with trembling fingers, I unsealed the envelope.
Inside was a small white box. When I opened that, a cool dark shape tumbled into my waiting palm—my brooch. The black flowers gleamed in my hand again, as perfect and as beautiful as they had ever been.
He promised. Lucas promised he would get it back for me, and he did. He kept his word.
For a moment I couldn’t think about anything but the brooch. I wanted to pin it to my shirt that second, just where I’d always worn it before, but I couldn’t do that any longer. Too many people knew that I’d worn it as a gift from him, and if anybody realized that Lucas and I were still in contact, Mrs. Bethany and those loyal to her would use that to go after him. No, for Lucas’s own good, I had to hide it, keep it safe.
Maybe I would never have anything else of his, but I had this to remind me of the truth nobody else would ever understand. Lucas and I truly loved each other, and we always would.
Carefully I folded one of my winter scarves around the brooch and nestled it in the back of a dresser drawer. Then I very nearly tossed the envelope away to hide the evidence, but I realized that there was something else inside—a card. One of the expensive kinds that they sell in museums, on thick, shining white paper, with a work of art emblazoned on the front: Klimt’s Kiss. I glanced up to see the identical print hanging beside my bed—the same print he’d seen when we were in here, laughing and talking and making out, during those few brief months we had together.
Reverently I opened the card and read what was written.
Bianca, this has to be short. You need to destroy this card as soon as you’re done reading, because it would be dangerous for you if Mrs. Bethany discovered it. And I know you—if I write too much, you’ll hang on to this forever, no matter how dangerous it would be.
I had to smile. Lucas really did understand me.
I’m okay, and so are my mom and my friends, thanks to you. You were stronger than I could have been that day. I wouldn’t have had the courage to tell you good-bye.
And I’m not telling you good-bye now.
We’ll be together again, Bianca. I don’t know where or when or how, but I know it beyond any doubt. It couldn’t happen any other way.
I need you to believe that. Because I believe in you.
“I believe it, Lucas,” I whispered. We’d find each other once more, and all I had to do was endure until that day came. Someday Lucas and I would find a way to be together again.
I folded the card against my chest. I’d burn it in a few minutes—but not yet, not just yet.
Acknowledgments
THANKS ARE FIRST D
UE TO MY EDITOR, Clare Hutton, who took a big chance on a new author, which this new author truly appreciates. I also want to acknowledge the wise advice offered by those who read the manuscript first, including Calista Brill, Michele De France, and Naomi Novik. Edy Moulton and Ruth Hanna not only participated in those early reads but also have tirelessly worked with me on my writing for a long time now, cultivating my better instincts as an author while ruthlessly pointing out the worst. The cultivation was helpful, the ruthlessness invaluable. Other friends such as Lara Bradley, Mandy Collums, Francesca Coppa, Rodney Crouther, Amy Fritsch, Jen Heddle, Jesse Holland, Eli Nelson, Stephanie Nelson, Tara O’Shea, Jessica Ross, Whitney Raju, and Michele Tepper have provided unfailing encouragement. Ashelee Gahagan traveled to Massachusetts with me for research and tried to view the countryside through a vampire’s eyes—no mean feat. Robin Rue has proved to be a generous guide to the world of publishing, and I’ve benefited greatly from her insight. I also have been lucky enough to receive incredible support from my family: Mom, Dad, Matthew, Melissa, and Elijah. Above all, I want to thank my agent, Diana Fox, who first suggested that I might think about writing something with vampires. She believed in my writing before I did, and for that I will be forever grateful.
Finally, I’ve had the good fortune to be read, critiqued, questioned, and debated by many smart and opinionated readers over the years, a learning experience that has helped me immensely. So to anyone who’s ever taken the time to comment upon something I’ve written, I offer my heartfelt thanks.
Excerpt from STARGAZER
Chapter One
AT MIDNIGHT, THE STORM ARRIVED.
Dark clouds scudded across the sky, blotting out the stars. The quickening wind chilled me as strands of my red hair blew across my forehead and cheeks. I pulled up the hood of my black raincoat and tucked my messenger bag beneath it.