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“Drained and then just left there. ” Emma shuddered.
Her words were a revelation. The fact that the bodies were left behind was in some ways the most shocking thing of all. “This breaks every rule they’ve got,” I said, feeling good to be engaged in something other than my own problems. “Any normal vampire would make the dead body disappear. For the killer to leave the bodies in the open to rot…it’s like he’s bragging. ”
“Or she’s,” Mei amended.
“It’s gotta be a guy. ” I ticked the reasons off on my fingers. “A vampire did this. Vampires are guys. Ergo the killer is a guy. ”
“The vampire could’ve had help from a woman,” Mei said, defending her point.
“True enough. ” I thought of Masha and her preoccupation with Alcántara. It wasn’t hard to imagine her or many of the other girls doing anything to earn vampire brownie points. But did she want vampire attention badly enough that she’d help kill her friend to get it?
Emma shrugged. “It could be a Draug. ” She knew Draugs as well as I did, having fought one with me.
“We can’t rule it out,” I said, though I had a hard time believing it was anything but a thinking, scheming vampire.
“From what you learned on your mission,” Emma began carefully, “it seems like…” She looked from me to Mei and back again. “There might be other stuff, on other islands, that we still don’t understand. ” She gave me a pointed do-you-understand-my-hint look.
She was hedging around one of my least favorite topics: Lilac. Subtle, Em.
Mei shifted to the edge of her seat. “Would you like me to leave?”
“No,” Emma and I said at the same time.
“No,” I repeated, rubbing my temples. Thoughts of Lilac did nothing to help my killer headache. “You can hear this. ” I needed to trust my new roommate. What would my life be if I never trusted anyone ever again? Besides, I had a good feeling about Mei-Ling, and one of us had to take the leap. Who knew? Maybe if I confided in her, she’d open up a little more to me. “Look, this isn’t for public consumption, but…”
I proceeded to give her the full download. Lilac, the crazy pyromaniac roommate. How I’d supposedly killed her in the Directorate Challenge. The weird tension between me and Alcántara on our mission together. The mysterious sighting of someone who looked exactly like her.
“Wait. ” Mei stopped me, confused. And of course she was—I was confused, and this was my story. “Didn’t you see Lilac’s body? How could she be alive?”
I remembered back to that day. By the time our fight was over, I was covered in bruises, slashes, and third-degree burns. Not a lot else registered. “I thought she was dead. ”
Emma spoke for me. “They took away the injured girls. They always do. We don’t know what happens to them. ”
“Maybe it wasn’t her you saw,” Mei said.
“I thought I was hallucinating, but then I mentioned it to Alcántara and he wigged out. ”
She looked alarmed. “Wigged how?”
“Nothing crazy. You know, he got all…focused. Distant. ”
“Strange,” she said, frowning.
All I could do was nod at that, the understatement of the year. How or why Lilac could be alive and living with a bunch of crazy Germanic vampire monks was a mystery. And rather than put it behind me, it loomed out there like something that might come and bite me in the butt while I slept.
We were all quiet then, considering what it could mean, when Kenzie startled us out of it. She was walking down the hall, banging on doors as she went. “Lights out. ”
Mei-Ling glared at the door. “She’s like the warden in a prison movie. ”
I felt Emma’s hand on my shoulder. She whispered, “You going to be okay?”
I considered her question. I had a new roommate, and not only was she not a psycho, she might end up being a friend. I gave Emma a true smile. “Yeah, I think I just might. ”
After Emma left, Mei flicked off the lights as I got into bed. I chuckled in the darkness. “Talk about overwhelming you with information on your first week, huh?”
But her response was somber. “We could investigate. ”
I edged up onto my elbows. “My thought exactly. ” I weighed my words. How much could I trust her? I decided it was all or nothing. “I’ve already tried a little. Investigating, I mean. ”
