I’m going to wait until my roommates fall asleep, then I’ll find Minaro’s office and slip her an anonymous note about the room with the coffin. If I mention what I think is inside, she’ll just assume it’s a prank—but I also don’t want her showing up unprepared. So I settle on writing thatsomeone violentis sleeping down there. That way she’ll know to involve law enforcement.
Though I’m not sure how much experience the cops have with mind-controlling bloodsuckers.
I’ve just finished writing the letter when the door opens. I fold the page inside my copy ofJane Eyre,then I get ready for bed with Salma and Tiffany.
“How about a movie?” asks Sal, and the three of us meet on Tiffany’s bed, gathering around Salma’s laptop to review her digital library.
We can only watch the titles that have been downloaded to her computer, which are about a dozen. We settle on an old film calledThe Craftabout four teen girls in the nineties who practice witchcraft. It became Salma’s whole personality when we watched it four years ago, so as soon as Tiffany said she’d never seen it, the matter was settled.
One hour and forty minutes later, we crawl into bed with our copies ofJane Eyre.
“What a bitch,” says Tiffany after ten minutes of silent reading.
“Fuck Mrs. Reed,” says Salma, and I grin.
She won’t be with her for much longer,I say only in my mind, since I don’t want to spoil the fact that Jane’s about to go away for school. I’ve always been a faster reader than my classmates, and I’m on chapter five when Tiffany turns off her reading light. Salma’s has been off for ten minutes.
I turn mine off, too, and I decide to wait another half hour to make sure they’re really asleep before sneaking out.
I know Salma will be furious with me for betraying them, but I have to do something.
I won’t let that monster hurt anyone else—especially her.
CHAPTER 6william
William did not anticipate the effect drinking blood would have on him after such a prolonged death-sleep.
At first, the substance seemed to be replenishing him, fortifying his body and sharpening his thoughts—then it turned on him, like poison, collapsing his strength.
He should have savored the girl’s taste, let his body acclimate. But he got greedy.
His punishment was spending all night on the stone floor, his bones rigid and mind reeling. Lying there, awaiting his fate, he tried to summon his last memories.
He had been in the Old World, traveling among a network of immortals. They were teaching him how to shed his human ways and navigate his new life as a vampire.
His last concrete recollection was of February 13, 1769. He was in London, and if he had still been a man, he would have been celebrating his twentieth birthday.
Except six months earlier, he became nineteen forever.
THE GIRL’Sblood is slow to travel through him, but eventually enough of his strength returns that he is able to leave the basement.
It is daytime, and as he slinks through the halls of the manor, the scent of blood grows so overwhelming that he has to shut off his sense of smell.
Breathing is a leftover impulse from being human, and it is the last thing a vampire gives up. It can take years to break the habit.
Yet without inhaling, he cannot locateher.
When he finally finds the girl, she is in a room with nine others her age, listening to a woman speak. Gazing through the narrow window in the door, he observes the strange garments she and the others wear. Yet what is most striking to him is that she does not appear altered by last night’s encounter.
There are bags under her eyes, and she stares at the wall instead of taking notes like her peers, yet she does not look ill or traumatized. Clearly, she felt well enough to come to this lecture.
Her neighbor nudges her arm, and the girl jumps a little, as if the touch startles her. “Lore, you okay?”
The girl—Lore—nods and redirects her gaze to the instructor.
“The Revolutionary War gave way to the birth of this nation. Who can tell me what year it started? Bonus points if you can also tell me why.”
“1775,” says the girl’s friend, the only one dressed in all-black. “Britain overstepped. They were too controlling with the colonists and wanted to tax them without representation in parliament.”
