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Please. I need you.
—Yas
I stared. His words chilled me to my bones.
I might not live until morning.
What did that mean? Was he dying? Was he going to be in a fight? Had there already been one? I had no idea what the situation could possibly be. The Trainees kept their business pretty top secret. We girls had no clue what happened behind their locked gates.
Yasuo needed me. But tonight? After curfew? All the way across campus, past those creepier-than-creepy standing stones, all the way to the gates of the boys’ dorm? I dared not think how many rules that little scenario broke.
I glanced at the note, and four words popped out at me: Please. I need you.
Ultimately, that was what convinced me. I had a friend and he needed me. Me. Nobody had ever needed me before.
Come midnight, I was going to break pretty much every rule available to me. I was venturing to the forbidden heart of Vampire central.
To the standing stones and the castle on the hill.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I lay in bed, waiting for time to pass. Apparently, this was to go down in the Drew Annals as the longest night ever.
I didn’t know what was going on. Yasuo basically said they might not let him live. But they who? Vampires? Trainees? I didn’t know what good I could do—I just knew he’d asked for my help, and I needed to be there for him.
I’d only been to the stones once, but Emma and I had seen the castle in the distance on the night o
f our epic walk. I thought I could retrace our steps. I considered getting her, or at least telling her where I was going, then immediately thought better of it. Yasuo was already in trouble, and if I got caught, I would be, too. Best to keep Emma way out of it.
And what if I got caught? Before, it’d just been an iPod and a photograph, and look at what’d happened. Then there was Mimi—all she’d done was talk back to a vampire, and Headmaster Fournier had turned her into a puddle of carnage. And now I was considering breaking pretty much every rule in the book.
They wouldn’t look kindly on it. Leaving after curfew? Straying from the path, going near the boys’ dorm, to the standing stones? I was toast if anyone caught me.
I was toast if Lilac caught me.
Her breathing was steady and deep, but was she really asleep? If I went, I’d be giving her the perfect opportunity to get rid of me once and for all.
But Yas needed me. Tonight. There’d been no doubt in his message.
I slid on my boots. The weather had gotten warmer, so I pulled on my lightweight fleece jacket instead of my parka. I needed to be able to fight or to run, if necessary.
The last thing I did was grab my shuriken, wadding up the whole bundle and shoving it into my jacket pocket. I really needed to figure out a better way to carry them, like a ninja-star holster or something.
The lights were out across campus, but the moon was bright and a great shaft of white light shot across the quad. It was empty, desolate. I wondered what monsters might be lying in wait.
What was I doing? What happened to Acari who broke the rules so flagrantly? I was certain they must suffer a fate worse than death.
But Yasuo was in trouble. He wanted my help. Out of all the people he could’ve asked, he’d chosen me. Shivering, I zipped my jacket to my throat and snuck from the dorm.
I stayed on the path all the way across the quad till I reached the science building. It was empty, and its blackened windows reminded me of the Draug’s dark eye sockets. I had the eerie feeling the building watched me, that those windows might’ve blinked to life at any moment, glowing red, to witness my fall from grace.
This was it. The end of the road. My heartbeat thundered in my ears. I was entering the unknown, the forbidden.
But I thought of Yas. His life depended on this.
I stepped from the path. The first transgression in a night sure to be full of them.
Fear drove my feet forward, eating up the uneven terrain. I didn’t slow my pace—if I was going to be mauled, I might as well present a moving target. Occasionally I spun, jogging backward to judge my direction in relation to the North Star. Emma had taught me well—I was on track, heading what I estimated to be due southwest.
