It’s nothing major you can point at, like a word written on her forehead or a brand on her wrist or a tattoo on her ankle, but gradually, she just generally . . . morphs . . . into something other than Bianca.
It’s kind of like watching an ice sculpture melt.
If you sit there and watch minute by minute, you can barely notice the difference, but if you look away and then look back after an hour or two, what was once a lovely, long-necked swan is now kind of just a shapeless hunk of ice sitting in a bowl of water.
She’s still Bianca; don’t get me wrong. Same witchy ways, same sharp tongue, same radiant beauty, same kicking clothes. She just turns cold and hard and inhuman by degrees as the day unfolds.
In AP English, she digs her nails into the desk all through class. While we’re all struggling through the first chapter of Crime and Punishment, her book lies there unopened, and she’s scritching-scratching at the top of her desk like a starving artist in her studio. She doesn’t look up, doesn’t wonder if anybody’s watching, doesn’t fear the teacher catching her, doesn’t seem to care who sees her. It’s like she’s in her own little world and finishing whatever she’s started on her desk is the most important thing on the planet.
After class she stands quickly, blows splinters off her palms, and breezes out of class, one knee-high stocking firm just beneath her shapely knee, the other pooled like an old lady’s second skin above her fashionably clunky heels.
Bianca is not herself. I mean, this witch freaks and sends one of her minions to the drugstore across the street for replacements if she gets a run in her stocking, let alone if one of her stockings runs down her leg like elephant skin.
But I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she’s not feeling so well and just doesn’t notice—not likely for an evil superpower like Bianca, but possible.
I make sure she’s gone, swing by her desk, and read these words scratched precisely into the surface:
The night approaches; I can’t wait.
OK, well, a few things.
First, approaches?
That’s, like, poetry for a girl like Bianca.
Next, I can’t wait?
For what?
Another nonstop night of carnal relations with Reece?
But the worst is that the message is carved deep, practically right through the top of the desk.
It looks like the work of a knife, a really sharp one, only she didn’t have a knife or a nail file or even a pen. She just had her fingernails.
I step away from the desk and follow Bianca’s crooked skirt and droopy stockings to food and culture class, where she spends the entire period collecting the little white Styrofoam trays from everybody else’s pound of ground round, and when she thinks nobody’s looking, tipping them up by one corner so that the blood left behind runs straight into her mouth.
Then she licks her lips, almost seductively, to catch every spare drop—of warm hamburger blood, mind you—she might have missed.
Then, instead of cooking her meatloaf like the rest of us, she slides it into the oven, which she never turned on, which I know because I watched. Then she waits until the other students are busy taking theirs out, hot and fresh, and dumps the pan upside down on a plate and eats it all. Raw. Straight from the pan. With her fingers.
I point it out to Abby, who turns just in time to see Bianca set the empty—and cold!—meatloaf tray down and once again lick every ounce of raw meat off those plump lips.
Abby shivers with disgust, but has long since given up being surprised over Bianca’s theatrics. “Probably some new all-protein, raw-food diet.”
“Abby, not that I’m any expert—we both know that—but aren’t raw foods supposed to be like broccoli and carrots and almonds and figs and stuff? I’m pretty sure all those raw-food health nuts are major vegans, right?”
“So maybe she’s cramping major and needs some iron. What do I know? Don’t be a stalker, OK? You did this with the snowboarder, remember? You drove me all the way to Burbank just so we could see if he was dating someone else, when all along he was just shopping for new snow boots. It wasn’t pretty then; it’s no prettier now. Remember what I said about living in your head, writer girl? Now’s the time to get out—get out while you can!”
And with that she cuts our meat-free-loaf into eighteen perfect little slices, one for each student in the room—except for Bianca, of course.
With an attitude like that, I figure it’s best not to tell Abby about the scratched-in sentence from AP English or what I see later in my last class with Bianca: gym. It’s nothing that happens in class, so much as what happens after, in the locker room, no less.
After changing clothes, I linger near my locker, which just happens to be three doors down from Bianca’s. I take my time, watching as Bianca talks to her minions, regaling them with Reece’s French-kissing prowess at the top of her lungs—all for my benefit, I’m sure—when the moment I’ve been waiting for finally arrives: the patented Bianca Ridley hair toss.
Now, all girls toss their hair; this we know.
It’s as natural to us as stopping to ask for directions, taking the croutons off our salads, or stopping dead in our tracks when we see the word Clearance! on a big red sign in a store window.
But not a single girl on this planet, and I’m talking a town full of models, starlets, legends, hookers, and divas, tosses her hair like the one and only Bianca Ridley. This hair toss starts from the arches of her perfectly shaped, size eight-and-a-half feet, ripples through her shapely calves, up her slender thighs, through her size zero waist, up her graceful spine and swan neck, and out through her delicate hands, which flip the hair up and out in such a way that there is literally hang time—like Michael Jordan on the way to the basket in some vintage highlight reel Wyatt made me watch on YouTube once. Her lustrous blonde hair magically hovers in the air until everyone in the room has seen how long and healthy it is, and then and only then does it drift back to her shoulders like it’s being gradually released by a flock of cherubs hovering gently around her ears.
And it’s in that hang time, those precious 34.2 seconds (or so it seems), that I see what I’ve been looking for all day, what I’ve been suspecting since I saw her drain her eighth Styrofoam tray full of blood in food and culture class: two tiny bruises evenly spaced at the nape of her neck, just in the back, which her lustrous hair would normally cover.
Bianca didn’t just come back from a mental-health day.
She came back from the dead.
Chapter 9
I want Abby to be there when I test my theory, but she has an early call on the set of Zombie Diaries 4 and can’t hang after school.
I text Wyatt, asking him to meet me by my locker after the final bell, but he’s got a callback for a photo shoot for some Swiss watch line that he says would be “great for his portfolio” (whatever that is) and can’t make it either. (Hmm, maybe if I want more attention, I should seek less-famous friends.)
That’s OK. It’s a simple test, really, and I can do it from afar, so there’s no way I should be in any danger.
Right?
To make sure I’m set up early, I get a pass for the last ten minutes of class from Mr. Simmons, my seventh-period physics teacher, and set up at my locker.
All I have to do is open the door. Everything I need to prove Bianca Ridley is a vampire (I can’t believe I’m writing that) is right inside my locker.
The irony of what I’m about to do strikes me as I’m waiting for the final bell of the day to ring. How many times have I written this scene in a Better off Bled book? How many times has Scarlet Stain had to prove someone is a living vampire before shoving a stake in his heart or loosing a town full of torch-and-pitchfork-bearing peasants on him?
And here I am, standing in the most posh prep school anywhere, in the middle of the day, getting ready to do the very same thing.
The final bell of the day rings loud and clear, the commons area floods with kids—big kids, little kids, rich kids,
richer kids, pretty kids, prettier kids . . . and no Bianca.
Now, this girl is always first to her locker after school lets out, hands down.
It’s like a contest with her or something.
Last year my seventh-period class was literally right around the corner from my locker—I’m talking six short steps, I counted them one day—and she still managed to beat me every single time.
I don’t know if she just gets out of her chair and leaves her last class a few minutes early without telling anyone (not that I’d put it past her) or if she’s a speed walker or has supersonic shoes or has mastered time travel, but no one gets to her locker faster than Bianca Ridley.
Until this very day.
The one day I’m counting on her to get to her locker faster.
Her locker is only six down from mine, facing my still-open locker door, and she never misses an opportunity to freshen her lip gloss, apply some fresh mascara, or study her face . . . until today?
Has she pulled another disappearing act?
Is she seducing Reece in the supply closet as we speak?
Is this some master plot to humiliate me in front of the whole school?
As quickly as the commons area fills with noisy, spoiled, well-dressed brats, it bleeds itself dry, kids running, shouting, skipping toward the bike racks, the bus loop, or the student parking lot as fast as their designer shoes will carry them.
They leave only balled-up wads of paper, empty soda cans, a stray #2 pencil, and dead, dusty silence.
Soon I’m standing there, all alone, my locker still open, my gaze darting left and right, when suddenly I hear their footsteps behind me. One after the other, squeaky shoes on an empty floor. Fast at first, coming faster, then slowing a few yards behind me.
I can’t turn too soon or I’ll spook her, and she’ll wonder why I’m standing there, all alone, my locker open, long after everyone’s gone.
But I have to look back in case—well, in case she’s turned into some kind of bat or winged monster, fangs drooling mere inches from my neck.
I whip around, just as a hand touches my shoulder—
“Wyatt!” I shout, my heart literally leaping into my throat.
“Yeah, jeez, who’d you expect?”
“Oh my God.” I gasp, clinging to his chest as if it’s a life raft and I’m leaping off the Titanic. “I can’t believe it’s really you. I thought . . . I thought . . . What are you doing here? I thought you had a photo shoot and were too busy to meet me.”
He shrugs. “They canceled on me before I could even turn the key in the ignition,” he says, sporting a new tracksuit—this one all black. “I remembered your text and figured I’d still find you hanging out by your locker. What gives?”
Just then I hear footsteps: different footsteps.
Not squeaking but clacking.
Purposeful.
I’d know that witchy walk anywhere. Finally, Bianca is on her way.
I panic. There’s no reason for me to be here, alone, after school.
But I’m not alone; Wyatt’s here.
Still, there’s no reason for me to be here, alone with Wyatt, this long after the final bell unless . . . unless . . .
“Do you trust me?” I ask in a whisper, heart still pounding. I peer up into his deep-blue eyes, already imagining.
He smiles in reply. “What do you think, Nora?”
I cut a glance at Bianca, and she is bearing down on us, just rolling out of D-wing and on her way to her locker, her head down, smiling as she writes some wickedly sexy text (probably) to Reece (most likely).
Before she can look up and spot us, I lean in on my tippy toes, grab Wyatt’s neck, and pull his warm lips to mine—
Now I know why they say it’s like fireworks, this whole kissing thing.
But no, that’s not entirely true; kissing Wyatt for the first time is like biting into a firecracker and holding on even though you know it’s going to explode and quite possibly rip your whole world open.
It’s instant sensory overload, my heart and mind short-circuiting as a jolt of pure desire connects with parts unknown.
Stay focused, Nora, I think desperately, even as my fingers probe the back of his head to feel the stubble that was once his dark, flowing locks.
Somehow, I do. Stay focused, that is.
Even above the blood pumping through my ears, I can hear Bianca’s heels clattering on the marble floor of the commons area.
Amid the swirl of passion that floods from my toes to my thighs to my heart to my throat, I can sense the vampire’s presence, lurking just in the distance.
And then, sweet bliss; Wyatt’s lips are soft and gentle. Just like I’ve imagined every night since I’ve met him. They are moist too and taste vaguely of some kind of coconut lip balm. (Coconut, really? Could he be wearing it for me? Did he put it on in the car when he read my text?)
I can feel a little resistance, at first, as he gasps, quite sincerely, “Nora,” his voice hoarse and gentle. I hold him close, press against him, press hard, and the resistance crumbles like a tissue in a hurricane. We meld together. Even as tall and tough as he is, our bodies gently merge until we share the same tiny space in front of my locker.
His large, warm hands wrap expertly around the small of my back, as if he’s touched it a thousand times before, pulling me up and closer to him with ease.
Meanwhile a deep, contented sigh escapes his lips, and just as I’m threatening to go over the cliff, give in to the passion and the heat pounding from his body, my eyes flicker open, I pivot just so, and see Bianca rolling her eyes at us as she quickly dials in the combination to her locker and opens it.
I have only seconds now, but I need to wait until she shuts her locker door to get the full effect.
I sigh, pushing slightly against Wyatt, but not too much.
He doesn’t sigh so much as grunt, an animal hunger filling him, filling me as I grunt back in reply.
How many times have I imagined kissing Wyatt this way? Always in fantasies deep inside my head: shoving him into some random locker, ravishing him in the waning afternoon light of another boring school day as dust bunnies from four hundred lockers swirl around us.
And here I am, using Wyatt to spy on Bianca, lying with my lips, telling the truth with my hips, and somewhere, far outside me, in the real world that still exists outside our own personal coconut-flavored heaven, I hear the slam of a locker and am jerked back to reality.
Seconds now, only seconds left. I roughly shove Wyatt away, whip open my locker, and stare straight at the eight-by-ten-inch mirror I have wedged in there.
Beyond Bianca’s locker I can see clearly to the double back doors, leading outside to the track and field. My line of vision is clear; there is nothing blocking it. Though there should be. Bianca should be blocking it, blocking everything. There is no Bianca.
I turn all the way around, just to make sure she’s still standing there. There she is, plain as day, right where she was, slowly picking lint off her busty sweater as she adjusts her purse strap before leaving.
“Nora, what the—?” Wyatt gasps.
Again I grab his neck, this time shoving his face toward the mirror. “Look, Wyatt. Look.”
He does, he sees, he looks behind him, eyes wide, looks back in the mirror at where Bianca should be and . . . nothing. Just an empty row of lockers backlit by the double doors to the track.
It’s like one of those illusions you see in magic shows, where the magician uses a special mirror to make his pretty assistant disappear.
Only, in our case, this isn’t magic. Or maybe it is.
Black magic.
“Oh my God.” He looks me deep in the eyes. “How did you know?”
I take one of my complimentary copies of Better off Bled #4 from the top shelf of my locker (I always like to keep a few handy, you know, for the freshmen), shove it into the middle of his chest, and snap, “Are you kidding me? This is what I do!”
By the time he’s grabbing my arm and
pulling me out to the student parking lot, Bianca is gone, but the commons aren’t entirely empty.
Standing in a corner, hidden from even Bianca herself, I see a very familiar shape. Looming, dark.
Just after Wyatt enters the hallway leading from the commons, and just before I follow him, the shape emerges from the shadows and smiles.
Reece is watching; Reece was watching.
And now he knows that we know.
I think he’s smiling, but I’m wrong. It’s just his fangs poking out from his upper jaw, puffing his lips out, curling them upward.
It only looks like a smile.
His dead, dark eyes say something completely different.
And it’s not good.
For either of us.
Chapter 10
“So tell me this,” Wyatt says after his fourth chocolate-covered biscotti at Hallowed Grounds an hour later. “Was there anything not manipulative about you kissing me just so Bianca wouldn’t suspect you were trying to catch her in the act of being a . . . a . . . whatever she is?” He leans in close so as not to be overheard, his eyes alive and bright, his throat still flush. Whether that’s from my kiss or Bianca’s vampire status remains to be seen.
“Yes, I mean, no, I mean . . . It’s complicated, Wyatt, OK?” I say, looking over his shoulder to the front door, half expecting Bianca and Reece to storm in—maybe even fly in—any minute.
“Do you have somewhere to go?” he says, reaching for his second hot chocolate. “I think, considering the fact you tricked me into meeting you after school today, lured me into a false kiss, and used me like a piece of meat, you at least owe me a thoughtful and careful explanation.”
I laugh for the first time since, well, since Bianca disappeared. No, no, earlier than that: since Reece appeared. “You’re right, of course. So let me be brutally honest here because this day is a game changer. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Game changer? It’s a life changer! An, an . . . afterlife changer.” His voice is low. The café is crowded this time of day, and even as insensitive a lout as he can be, Wyatt knows this is deadly serious business.
The Vampire Book of the Month Club Page 6