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“I hoped maybe it was you who died. ”
I looked at Emma. “Don’t the Initiates have their own dorm to go to?”
Maybe it was a dumb thing to say, but I was getting more and more fearless with girls like her. Stupid, maybe, but a big part of me thought maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t. This island had a lot of posturing, and I’d come to the conclusion it was a good idea to set yourself up as someone to be reckoned with.
Emma wasn’t dumb, though, and she gave me a warning look.
“I take any excuse to keep my eye on you,” Masha told me in her Russian-accented snarl. “One day very soon you will go down. It would be a shame to miss it. ”
I gave her a grim smile. “I’m not out of the game yet. ”
She took her whip from its little holster and began to slide it through her hands over and over. She peered around us to look at Mei-Ling. “Acari Mei,” she said slowly. “How do you like your new friend?”
“I just arrived. I have no friends. ”
A naive person might think Mei-Ling was selling me out. I was not a naive person. That was the smartest thing my roomie could’ve said.
Masha gave her a sly smile. “Pretty answer, Acari. But you will need someone to watch your back if you are to live through the month. ”
I pressed my thigh against my roommate’s in a silent show of solidarity, and though Mei didn’t so much as shrug, she nudged her leg firmly against mine.
In that moment, I decided my roommate’s stoicism was the awesomest thing in the world. Her face was utterly emotionless, and the nonresponse was aggravating Masha. The Guidon loved nothing more than terrifying her peers—what would she do if she were no longer scary?
Masha cut her eyes at me, then back to Mei. “Who is your combat instructor now that Angel was killed?” She was digging for something, I was sure of it. She thought I had something to do with the murders.
“Watcher Clara,” Mei said evenly.
Masha snorted a laugh. “Good luck to you. Clara trained Trinity, and she’s eager to see her killer found. She will be very interested to hear that you spend so much time with this. ” She stabbed a thumb my way.
“Watcher Clara’s trained a lot of girls,” Emma pointed out.
“I’ve heard much about my roommate’s feats,” Mei said. “Are you suggesting she’s under suspicion for this as well?”
Masha gave a little shrug, a little innocent tilt to her head. “She had the motive and maybe the friend to help her. ”
Was she implying Carden? Did she suspect something was going on between me and the Scottish vampire? Either way, it sounded to me like Master Alcántara’s words coming out of her mouth.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Dangerous words, Guidon Masha. ”
Emma bristled, and her arms flexed, practically vibrating with tension beside me. “Are you saying Drew had something to do with the murders? You’re nuts. It’s impossible. ”
“I thought Guidons were stronger than the younger girls,” Mei-Ling said, her tone innocent and matter-of-fact. “Are they so easy to overpower after all?”
Masha’s face hardened. Even with Emma sitting between us, I could feel waves of anger wafting off her.
“Quiet,” Kenzie said, and her timing was impeccable. I suspected I was one comment away from a thrashing.
“This isn’t over,” Masha growled under her breath.
“So you’ve said. ”
Kenzie banged on the window. “I said, listen up. I’ll make this brief. Another body was found. A human. He was drained. ”
The room exploded with questions. This was huge. There was a small human community on the island, and though they sometimes worked for the vampires, driving cars, operating boats, or farming I don’t know how many bushels of those godforsaken turnips the vamps were always feeding us, there was an unspoken pact. They didn’t bug us and we didn’t bug them.
We certainly didn’t exsanguinate them.
She raised a hand to silence us. “The Directorate is investigating. They are actively searching for the killer. The punishment will be death. ”
