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“Wait. What do you mean? Do you know what happened?” Yasuo lived inside the castle. He was privy to many of its secrets. He got to peek behind that thick granite curtain every day. “What do you mean gone? Do you know what they—”
“I just know, all right?” He speared his fingers through his hair in what looked like a gesture of desperation, and I saw how his hands trembled.
“But how do you know?”
“I know,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Did you actually see her?”
“Let it go. ”
He stormed away, and I followed at his heels. Until I knew exactly what’d happened, until I saw it with my own eyes or talked to someone who had, I wouldn’t believe it.
“I just need to understand. Did you see her…after?” I shuddered. It was unthinkable.
“Leave it. ”
His long legs were striding down the path again, and I had to do a skip-hop to catch up. “What if I can’t leave it? She might’ve been your girlfriend, but she was my best friend. And that’s something. ”
It’d once been everything.
He stopped and met my gaze full-on, throwing me in the path of hundreds of tiny razor blades. He peeled his lips back, revealing shimmering fangs. They were longer than I’d realized.
“When’d your fangs grow?” I wished he’d look away again. A nervous laugh fizzed out of me. “The better to bite me with, right?”
“Listen…to…me,” he said, enunciating slowly and with ice-cold fury. “She’s gone. Forever. Gone. ”
“No,” I whispered in a voice like a child’s. His words finally registered. I saw the truth in his expression. It’d cracked—he’d cracked. I clutched my head in my hands, experiencing her death all over again. Grief embraced me—so familiar, it felt like my natural state. It would never go away. I’d carry it forever. “No. No, no. ”
“Yes, Drew. She was ripped up the fucking middle, and it was your fault. ” He looked manic, anguish flowing from him like a torrent of acid. “She loved you,” he said, his words like a slap. “Emma loved, but it always was all about you. ” He stepped forward, stabbing a finger in my chest. “You, you, you. And Em was too good—she was too goddamned nice—to do anything but humor you. And you turned around and let her…let that happen to her. ”
“Not a minute passes where I don’t wish that’d been me. ” It took
everything I had not to take a step back. I would not be afraid of Yasuo—he was once my close friend. He’d be my friend again. I refused to accept that he was done with me forever. “If I could’ve traded places with her, I would have. We need to stick together now, more than ever. Emma would want us to be there for each other. There’s no reason we need to be grieving alone through this. ”
He gaped at me, aghast. “If you think you can show up here and say some shit and be all nice and I’m-so-sad and that it’ll make it all better, think again, D. You just want yourself to feel better. This is you making it about you, all over again, as always. ”
“You’re not the only one who gets to be sad,” I snapped. I was the one who was angry now. “Don’t think for one second that there’s anything pretend about how totally and completely heartbroken I am. You’re not the only one who gets to grieve. You’re pissed, sure, but guess what? I’m pissed, too. I should’ve been the one Al sliced up the middle—I get that. But I wasn’t, okay? And now we have a chance for revenge. Don’t you want to know what happened to her?” It was knowledge that’d surely torment me for the rest of my life, but I had to know her exact fate. Had Alcántara tortured her? What happened to all those girls? “We can take them down, Yas. We can fight them together. Get our revenge. ”
“None of your stupid little games or plans is going to bring Emma back. I wish you were dead instead. ”
“Fine. Maybe you should just kill me right now. How about that?” I took a turn stabbing my finger into his chest. “You can have your revenge on me, and we can all slaughter one another until there’s nobody left on this stupid island. ”
I let the dramatic pronouncement hang, then continued more calmly. “Or we can team up, Yas. We can be allies. We can fight this system. Approach it logically, systematically. We take our time, and we can have payback. For Emma. You’re on the inside. Maybe we can’t save her, but maybe we can save the next girl. She’d have wanted that. We could do it for her. ”
He stared at me for a moment, silently processing. His features softened, and hope filled my chest like a balloon.
But then he said, “You’re right. I should just kill you now. ”
CHAPTER THREE
I couldn’t bear to see if Yasuo would be true to his word. A tide of students appeared, and I turned from him and merged with the others heading to the dining hall. When I got there, I didn’t wait to sit down. I just grabbed my drink and pounded it, standing right there at the fridge, black lunch tray dangling empty in my hand.
I swallowed, and a pleasant shiver rolled up my body. It sounded disgusting, consuming the blood of another, but how quickly we got used to it. Who could resist the rush of courage and power that came from consuming the lifeblood of a vampire? It was cumulative, too—the more we drank, the stronger we grew.
I peered into the glass-fronted refrigerator. Vampire blood glimmered in preposterously formal, cut-crystal tumblers, all lined up in neat rows. For one crazy moment, I contemplated stealing an extra.
I shook off the feeling. As with all good things, just enough was just right. But too much? Too much could make a girl powerful beyond imagining…or it might just make her nuts. Too much of a good thing could drive a weak mind mad.
