I thought I heard it: a strange crackling sound, like breaking ice. The crackling came closer, as though it were traveling up the stairs. Hurriedly I screwed the lid back on my thermos, so that no human student would see me drinking blood. I ducked into the hallway and tried to figure out what could be causing that sound.
Had a girl sneaked out of the dorms for a snack, just like I had? The sound was a little like the popping noise ice cubes made after they were dropped into water. Then I stifled a giggle when I wondered if it was a guy instead, sneaking up here to visit the girl he liked. Maybe it wasn’t even a person. It could just be an old building reacting to the deepening autumn cold.
The crackling came closer. The air around me instantly went colder, as if I’d just opened a freezer door. My hair stood on end, and goose bumps appeared on my arms. My breath looked foggy, and once again I sensed that somebody was watching me.
Farther down the stairwell, I saw a wavering light. It flickered like a candle, but the light was a brilliant blue green, the color of a swimming pool. Ribbons of illumination rippled across the stones. It looked eerily like Evernight was under water.
By now I was shaking from cold, and I lost my grip on the thermos. The moment it clattered to the floor, the lights vanished. The air around me warmed again instantly.
That was not a reflection, I thought. That was not my imagination.
So what the hell was it?
The door nearest the stairwell swung open. Courtney stood there in a hot-pink nightshirt, her blond hair messy around her face. “What is your damage?”
“Sorry,” I mumbled as I ducked down to grab my thermos. “I had to sneak out to eat. I—I guess I lost my grip.”
Eventually I would have to tell somebody what I’d just seen, but Courtney was the last person I would take into my confidence. Even admitting that I’d done something as simple as dropping a thermos made her roll her eyes.
“God, just catch mice like a normal person, okay?” But instead of slamming her door, she shifted from foot to foot, then said, “I guess that does suck.”
“—dropping my thermos?”
Courtney scowled. “Sneaking out to eat. You drew the short straw when it came to roommates.”
“Raquel is not the short straw!”
“Be that way.” Then she slammed her door.
Wait, did Courtney just try to sympathize with me?
I shook my head. The idea of Courtney trying to be sort of friendly was almost weird enough to make me forget what I’d seen in the stairwell. But not quite.
When I told my parents I would be camping out that Friday night for the meteor shower, they didn’t bother worrying about me out in the woods; the school grounds were extremely safe, at least if you were a vampire. I knew they wouldn’t double-check whether there really was any meteor shower—a good thing, because there wasn’t. But they asked a whole lot of other questions, and in my paranoia, I wondered why.
“It seems like you could get some friends together to go with you,” Mom said as we sat down to Sunday dinner: lasagna for me, big glasses of blood for us all. Billie Holiday sang from the stereo, warning about a lover she had believed in once upon a time. “Maybe Archana. She seems like a nice girl.”
“Uh, yeah, I guess.” Archana was an Indian vampire, about six centuries old; I’d met her in history class last year, but we had hardly said ten words to each other. “I don’t know her that well, though. If I were going to ask anybody, I’d ask Raquel, but she couldn’t care less about astronomy.”
“You’re spending a lot of time with Raquel.” Dad took a deep swallow of his glass of blood. “Wouldn’t it be good to have other friends, too?”
“Vampire friends, you mean. You always told me not to be a snob, that we’re more like humans than most vampires claim. What happened to that?”
“I meant every word of it. But that’s not what I’m talking about,” Dad said gently. “The fact remains that you’re going to be a vampire. In a hundred years, Raquel will be dead, and your life will only have just begun. Who’s going to be with you then? We brought you here to make friends you can keep, Bianca.”
Mom gently laid one hand on my forearm. “We’ll always be here for you, sweetheart. But you don’t want to hang out with your parents forever, right?”
“That wouldn’t be so bad.” I meant it—but not the same way I would have once. Last year, I had wanted nothing except to hide out from the world forever in our cozy home, only the three of us; now I wanted so much more.
Balthazar stepped to the edge of the fencing area, his mask still tucked under one arm. He looked incredibly dashing in his white fencer’s garb, which outlined his powerful body like he was roughly carved of marble.
Me? I glanced in the mirror along one side of the room and sighed. Dashing was not the word for me. I looked like the lost white Teletubby Pasty. Also, I had no idea how to handle a sword. But there was no way I could claim I needed a second year of Modern Technology class, and fencing was the only other elective that fit my schedule.
“You look terrified,” Balthazar said. “You won’t actually be dueling for your life in here, you know.”
“I get that, but still—sword fighting. I don’t know.”
“First of all, the actual fighting won’t come for a really long time. Neither will the actual swords. Not until you know how to move. Second, I’ll fix it so we’re partners, at least at first. That way I can make sure you’re comfortable.”
“You mean, you’d rather fence with somebody you can beat.”
“Maybe.” He grinned, then tugged the mask down over his face. “Ready?”
“Give me a second.” I busied myself with the mask, which to my surprise I could see out of perfectly well.
Sure enough, we didn’t start fighting right away. In fact, most of the first day was spent learning how to stand. Sound easy? It’s not. We had to hold our legs just so, tensing this muscle but not that one, and position our arms in this incredibly formal, stylized way. I hadn’t realized it was possible to exhaust every single muscle in my body just by trying to stand still, but before the hour was up, I was trembling all over and sore from my shoulders to my calves.
“You’ll be all right,” Balthazar said encouragingly as he adjusted one of my elbows. Our teacher, Professor Carlyle, had already designated him as one of her assistants for the course. “You have good balance, and that’s the main thing.”
“I would think the main thing would be not getting hit with a sword.”
“Trust me. Balance. That’s what it all comes down to.”
The bell rang. Sighing with relief, I stumbled to the nearest wall and sagged against it. I pulled off the fencing mask so that I could breathe more deeply. My cheeks felt hot, and my hair was damp with sweat. “At least I’ll lose weight this year.”
“You don’t need to lose weight.” Balthazar hesitated as he tucked his
