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Confronting Emma about her crush on Yasuo had taken a tremendous weight off my shoulders. It felt good to talk about things instead of being on the outside looking in. I’d find Ronan and Amanda and talk to them, too. They’d know that I knew about them, and maybe this tension would ease a little.
I trailed them as best I could, which was pretty well, if I said so myself. All that intense training was good for something—I was a regular James Bond.
But then something unexpected happened. I hid behind a hedge along the path, watching as they reached the Acari dorm. And then, without even a hug between them, they said good-bye, and Amanda went inside.
Had they fought? Were they just being discreet? They weren’t acting as I imagined lovers normally acted.
I jogged to catch up to Ronan as he picked up the trail to the coast. But why there? He didn’t have his surfboard or his wet suit, so he wasn’t going for a swim.
And why didn’t he just drive? He was one of the few people who had the use of the campus SUVs. Did it mean he went somewhere he didn’t want people to know about?
He walked, and I followed, and just as I was beginning to think it a fool’s errand—my luck he’d turn on me, shout, Gotcha, and make me do water drills—he walked right by the beach, taking a tiny path I’d never seen before.
And then he headed inland, toward the other side of the island.
I didn’t think twice. I followed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
And then he left the trail, and I did think twice.
Don’t stray from the path—it was one of the mainstays of the vampire rule book. Nerves tensed my muscles, tightening my stride. I’d become hardwired to follow the rules, because with them came survival.
Ronan had also warned me to stay away from the far side of the island. Could that be where he was headed? Was he going to see his family?
Maybe I was just desperately curious for a glimpse of the real Ronan. And maybe, somewhere in the back of my mind, I considered myself safe from trouble—that if it came down to it, I’d be protected by Alcántara. Whatever the reason, though it was stupid and reckless, I followed.
The farther inland we went, the trickier it got. I was able to see him from quite a distance—it was crazy, but this whole episode made me realize just how much my vision had improved since drinking the blood. Even so, there were few trees and fewer rocks, and I was intermittently forced to let Ronan slip out of sight lest he spot me.
Finally, I had to put more distance between us. The landscape had become too barren, all gravel and flat plateaus as opposed to the crags and cliffs of the shoreline.
But Tracer Judge had covered rudimentary fieldcraft in last term’s phenomena class. I knew how to track, and how to avoid being tracked myself. Following Ronan thus far, I’d relied on some basic techniques. It was time to see just how much I’d learned.
I scanned the dirt for what Judge called a track trap—an area in the terrain that lent itself to marks. Marshy ground, mud—anything that held a footprint. In my case, it was gravel.
And there I saw it, up ahead, a particularly gritty spot. Ronan’s footprints were easy to detect. There were faint depressions in the terrain with hints of damp—dark streaks among light gray—representing bits of gravel recently displaced.
I squatted to study the prints. The wind was up, and these tracks would fade by the end of the day. If it’d been sunny, the telltale dark patches wouldn’t have lasted more than a couple hours.
I followed due northwest. Every once in a while I lost his trail but always managed to pick it up again. And then something changed. I squatted again, studying.
There was a new pattern, visible only in the deeper patches of grit. His toes were digging more sharply into the terrain, with halos of gravel exploding from the heel. Ronan had begun to jog.
I began to jog, too, tamping down a spurt of nerves. Why had he upped his pace? Did he sense someone was following him? Did he know it was me?
Or maybe he was just eager. He’d given Amanda a key. Maybe he was running to her, to their secret rendezvous.
The footprints changed again, deeper, cutting hard to the right. He’d changed direction, due northeast. Back to the water.
I dug my thumb in the soil to check the depth and dampness, to see if it was telling a true story. Because the tracks told me he was running now.
I ran eastward following him, and the landscape got hilly again, bringing more boulders and crags with it. Cold prickled the back of my neck. A sensation nagged me—I felt watched.
My imagination, I told myself. Refusing to bow to nerves, I looked around. Sure enough, I was alone. I felt silly that I’d even let my head go there.
And then I cursed myself. I’d lost his trail. I knew better than to let emotion or imagination overwhelm me. It’d been lesson number one: Don’t lose control.
Had I lost Ronan for good? Suddenly, I felt so alone, and with the solitude came a burst of irrational panic. There were aspects to tracking I hadn’t mastered, such as determining the age of a print. Maybe I’d been following a trail that was laid weeks ago. Maybe I’d never been following him in the first place.
