AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Adrian, leave her alone.” Mom handed me a glass before she headed back toward the kitchen, where I could hear something sizzling in a frying pan. “Besides, if we don’t hurry, we’re going to be late for the preorientation faculty meeting.”
He looked at the clock and groaned. “Why do they schedule these things so early? It’s not as if anyone could want to be down there at this hour.”
“I know,” she muttered. To them, anytime before noon was too early. Yet they’d worked as schoolteachers my whole life, continuing their long feud with eight A.M.
While I ate breakfast, they got ready, made little jokes that were supposed to cheer me up, and left me alone at the table. That was fine by me. Long after they’d gone downstairs, and the hands of the clock crept closer to orientation time, I remained in my chair. I think I was pretending that, as long as breakfast wasn’t over, there was no way I’d have to go meet all those new people.
The fact that Lucas would be down there—a friendly face, a protector—well, it helped a little. But not much.
Finally, when I couldn’t put it off any longer, I went into my room and changed into the Evernight uniform. I hated the uniform—I’d never had to wear one before—but the worst part was that returning to my bedroom reminded me once again of the strange nightmare I’d had the night before.
Starched white shirt.
Thorns scratching at my skin, lashing me, telling me to turn back.
Red plaid kilt.
Petals curling up and turning black as though they were burning in the heart of a fire.
Gray sweater with the Evernight crest.
Okay, a good time to stop being hopelessly morbid? Right around now.
Determined to act like a normal teenager for at least the first day of the school year, I stared at my reflection in the mirror. The uniform didn’t look terrible on me, but it didn’t look great, either. I tugged my hair into a ponytail, picked out a tiny twig I’d missed before, and decided my appearance would have to do.
o;Of course. There’s one that’s just clear glass, and I never understood why.”
“Now you do. Evernight’s been closed to my family ever since.”
“Until now.”
“Until now,” he agreed. “And I don’t mind. I think I can learn a lot here. Doesn’t mean I have to like everything about it.”
“I’m not sure I like anything about it,” I confessed. Except you, added the voice in my head, which had turned awfully bold all of a sudden.
Lucas seemed to be able to hear that voice. There was something knowing in the way he gazed back at me. With his chiseled features and school uniform, he should’ve looked like the all-American boy, but he didn’t. During the chase, and in the moments afterward when he’d thought we’d be fighting for our lives, I’d glimpsed something a little wild lurking just beneath the surface. He said, “I like the gargoyles, the mountains, and the fresh air. That’s it so far.”
“You like the gargoyles?”
“I like it when the monsters are smaller than me.”
“Never thought of it that way.” We had reached the edge of the grounds. The sunlight was bright now, and I sensed that the school was waking up, preparing to receive its students, to swallow them through that arched stone doorway. “I’m dreading this.”
“Not too late to run, Bianca,” he said lightly.
“I don’t want to run. I just don’t want to be surrounded by all these strangers. Around people I don’t know, I can never talk or act normal or be myself at all—why are you smiling?”
“Seems like you know how to talk to me.”
I blinked, astonished at myself. Lucas was right. How was that even possible? I stammered, “With you—I guess—I think you scared me so badly that I got all the fear over with right away.”
“Hey, if it works—”
“Yeah.” Already I sensed that there was more to it than that. Strangers still terrified me, but he wasn’t a stranger. He hadn’t been since the first moment I realized that he’d been trying to save my life. I felt as though I’d always known Lucas, as if somehow I’d been waiting years for him to arrive. “I should go back before my parents realize I’m gone.”
“Don’t let them hassle you.”
“They won’t.”
