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So why hadn’t he come when I needed him? I’d gotten used to my vampire coming when he sensed me upset, and when your supposedly good friend tries to kill you, it definitely falls under the Upset column. Surely Carden had felt my alarm. My anguish.
Maybe since Kenzie had come to my aid so quickly, he’d felt he hadn’t been needed. Maybe Carden even purposely stayed away to avoid discovery of our bond. Both were good excuses, but neither completely erased the pang of hurt.
I was telling myself to grow up when I heard Alcántara pause and clear his throat
. Crap. I looked up, and those fathomless eyes were waiting for me.
A smile curved the corner of his mouth. An I’m-watching-you smile.
Pay. Attention.
It was no secret that Alcántara was one of the main baddies in this place, but how could I get more insight than that? I pretended to take notes, writing down random phrases from his lecture—secrecy…motives…Shakespeare’s Macbeth?—embellishing the words with squiggles and curlicues, considering Alcántara’s secrecy. Alcántara’s motives.
Lissa asked a question, and as I turned to look at her, only then it struck me. There were empty seats—like, a bunch of empty seats. The realization shot me back into the present. If Emma were alive, she’d want me focusing on guarding my own hide and less on what’d happened to hers.
I wish I’d done a head count that first day. Just how many girls were missing from class? Did those empty seats represent girls who’d tried—and failed—to execute Alcántara’s assignment? (Pun intended. )
Rather than listen to Lissa’s question, I was mesmerized by the look of her. She was pale and drawn. I realized her pert-nosed friend was conspicuously absent. When Alcántara had given our assignment, he’d told us the cost of failure would be our life. So I guess Lissa’s friend was a fail.
My roommate, Frost, rose from her seat.
What the—?
My attention snapped completely back into class. Frost was about to report on her project.
Already. She’d already killed her assigned Trainee.
Jeez…these people. I was still trying to wrap my mind around what this whole business entailed, and yet there was my roomie, going to the front of the class so calmly you’d have thought she was about to give an oral report on Jane Eyre instead of detailing for us the finer points of her first successful assassination.
Bloodthirsty much?
“Acari Frost. ” Alcántara purred the name—and how annoying was it that even the vampires no longer called her Audra? “Tell us, did you successfully complete your assignment?”
“Yes, I did,” she said proudly.
“Well?” Alcántara looked like his patience was wearing thin already. Apparently, Frost wasn’t every teacher’s pet. My feelings for the Spanish vampire aside, I found his distaste to be just the slightest bit gratifying. “Why don’t you begin by outlining the details of your personal assignment? For example, do you know why you were assigned the target you were?”
So there was a method to Al’s madness. What did it mean that my assigned victim was Trainee Farm Boy? He’d asked that our assassinations have some sort of poetic twist. Horrific. Alcántara wanted a story, and I was suddenly curious to hear Frost’s.
“Yes,” Frost said. “Trainee Marlin Grosse was my assignment. ”
I searched my memory banks…Marlin Grosse. I’d never met him—I mostly knew the Trainees in Yasuo’s circle—but I pictured a tall, gangly guy with a blond buzz cut. Grosse—I’d assumed it was German, but it could’ve easily been Norse. Had he been in one of Frost’s advanced Norse classes? She was obsessed with it—if he’d been competition for Dagursson’s attentions, I’ll bet she hadn’t liked that one bit.
“Due to our mutual interest in Old Norse literature and mythology, we’ve had several classes together,” she said, confirming my suspicions. “I believe he was my assigned Trainee because…”
She faltered, and I shot up in my seat. Was I about to glimpse into the truth of Frost’s tiny heart?
She cleared her throat. “Marlin has troubled me in the past. I believe this is the reason he was my target. To force me to face my…problems. ”
She’d been about to say face my fears—I’d have put money on it.
Alcántara steepled his fingers, cocked his head, and furrowed his brow. “What is the nature of the trouble he’s given you?” His fake sympathy made me sick.
“He tried things,” she said simply. From the steel in her expression, I could guess what those things were. Some of the guys on this island were real scumbags. Rob had tried things with me. I got where she was coming from.
“This made my strategy easy. ” The way her eyes pinched at the corners told me not all of it had been that easy. “I got him alone. I told him…I’d changed my mind. About him, I mean. ”
She slowly began to unfold a square of linen, and everyone—even Alcántara—leaned forward to see. “The next question was, which weapon to use?” She revealed the long, thin knife that’d been tucked inside.
