The thought of a vampire taking them hostage didn’t occur to me until this moment. “Oh my God,” I say. “We need to find them.”
“Let’s go,” says Trevor, and hopefully Minaro will just think we’re conferring for our next presentation.
“We should split up—”
“What part ofthis flamethrower is our only chance at survivingdid you not understand?” Trevor asks Salma. I can tell by the path he’s leading us down that we’re going to the newsroom first. But when we swing open the door, the place is empty.
“Where else?” I ask. “The library?”
We rush there next, but it’s equally empty. Along the way, we check every classroom—all empty, too.
“One of our rooms?” asks Salma, but our roommates aren’t there, either.
“What about the LUB?” I ask.
“It’s inaccessible,” says Trevor.
“But they could be in the room with the wardrobe,” I point out, and the three of us race toward the roped-off passage.
Even before we’ve reached the dusty room with the un-tarped furniture, we can hear their voices. They must have carried lanterns into the space because there’s more light than usual.
“—the entrance was once through this very wreckage—”
Tiffany stops speaking as soon as we spill into the room. Zach turns away from his camera to look at us.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Being responsible journalists,” she answers. “Just like Trevor said. Show them,” she tells Zach.
He raises his camera so we can all see the display screen, and he scrolls back to an earlier take of Tiffany standing in her black frock in front of the rocky rubble.
“Tiffany Carter, reporting from the newly opened Huntington Academy in New Hampshire. I’m one of the seniors in the school’s inaugural class, and I’mstanding in a secret room that the staff doesn’t want students knowing about. Why? This wall behind me was once the entrance to a hidden tunnel that led to an otherworldly basement.
“The basement was filled with shelves stocked with blank books, but the real centerpiece was an ancient coffin where a vampire lay dormant for nearly three centuries. Until our first night here, when Lorena Navarro, daughter of fallen mommy influencer Viviana Navarro, woke him—”
“Are you serious?” I round on Tiffany, and Zach pauses the video. “You’re going to punish me by fucking with my mom?” I look at Salma. “Yeah, that’s a ton of integrity right there.” Turning back to Tiffany, I snap, “There are more important things right now than your issues with me!”
“Oh, I know,” she says, nodding at Zach to press play. “Keep watching.”
“This reporter realizes how hard it is to believe, but trust me when I say that this is by design. There are, at present, about fifty vampires in the world, but their numbers aren’t growing because they don’t have the power to turn others. They survive thanks to our ignorance and arrogance. We humans think we know everything about our world, but we have so much to learn. Our history has been rewritten, expunging vampires from our records.Thisis a real timeline of events.”
The Tiffany on video freezes. “That’s where Zach is going to cut to a visual of what was written on the ceiling. We already typed it up again. You didn’t get rid of our notes.”
“Why would anyone believe this any more than your newsletter?” I ask.
“Show them the next part,” she tells Zach, and he clicks ahead to another recording of Tiffany.
“This is William Stoker, who also goes by the alias William Pride. In secret, Lorena let him feed off her for months, making him stronger, until he finally made contact with the rest of his kind. He’s a special vampire because as a Stoker, he has the power to turn humans.”
Tiffany holds up her phone, and I see William on the screen. It’s an odd angle, as if she was propping up her phone on her lap during one of our meals. “We could use some better B-roll—”
“What are you planning to do with all this?” I ask, my pulse pounding.
“I’m posting it onTiff Investigatestomorrow, as soon as I have reception.”
“Tiffany, he’s literally just gone to face off with his own kind because he wants to protect us!” I shout at her.
“And that’s why I’m giving youone chance.” She puts her phone back in her pocket. “If you agree to give an interview and hand over any possibleevidence you might have, I won’t mention how you helped him, and you can spare your mom further humiliation.”
