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She shook her head. “No, Balthazar. You don’t.”
“At least promise me you’ll leave the tribe.” His voice broke with the strain of surrender, and my heart ached for him. “As long as you’re hanging around with them, you’re not safe from Black Cross.” Charity glared at Lucas. “While you’re hanging around with Black Cross, you’re not safe from my tribe. So try taking some advice before you give it, Balthazar. And get out of here now.”
“Charity, we can’t leave it like this.”
Fear hit me so hard I nearly reeled. “She said now.” Both of them glanced back at me. Lucas said, “What?” I knew before I knew, sensed it as deeply as I’d sensed anything.
“They’re here. Watching us. I think we’d better go.” Charity smiled at me. “You’re much too smart to be hanging around with a vampire hunter. You’ll probably get out alive.” Lucas turned toward the small grove of trees a couple hundred yards away, and his eyes narrowed. “Get to the truck.”
“Not yet.” Balthazar’s eyes widened in dismay as Charity began walking off in the direction of the grove. “Give me one more chance to get through to her.”
“Truck,” Lucas repeated. I could see how badly he wanted to fight, but he remained focused on protecting me. “Now.” Instinct told me to run. But other instincts—my vampire instincts—
told me that running prey was somehow more inviting. I forced myself to walk slowly toward the truck, and I grabbed Balthazar’s arm so that I could pull him along. Lucas kept his stake at the ready as he edged toward the driver’s side door.
My belly sank as I glimpsed, behind Charity, the footprints of at least half a dozen people. I knew that somewhere nearby they were watching us. I imagined that I could feel their eyes upon me, and, as the wind rus-tled through the ice-stiff trees, I thought I could hear faraway laughter.
Balthazar started walking faster. “We’ll be all right,” he said.
“I’m not so sure,” I said, but then we were in the truck. The two doors slammed shut on either side of me, and Balthazar and Lucas shoved down the locks at the same moment. “Let’s hurry, okay?” Lucas turned the key and spun us out of there. As we turned, the headlights washed over Charity, who stood in the field, watching us go.
The lights caught her eyes so that they reflected, just like a cat’s.
“She thinks I’ve turned against her.” Balthazar’s big hands were braced against the truck’s dashboard.
“You’ll get to talk to Charity again,” I said. “You know you will.
Once you do, she’ll understand.”
“Charity will understand why I’m hanging out with a hunter from Black Cross? Then she understands more than I do.”
“It’s going to be okay,” I promised him again. Lucas glanced sideways at us, then stared resolutely at the road.
The snow now was falling faster and thicker. By the time we had reached the center of Albion, drifts had begun to form around the tires of parked cars. “Maybe you guys shouldn’t drive back tonight,” Lucas said.
“Call the ’rents. Tell them you can’t travel on the roads like this.”
“We’ve got another hour or so at this rate. That’s enough time for us to get back.” Balthazar turned up the collar of his coat as if he could already feel the chill.
I knew that if I asked Balthazar to remain, he would, and I wanted to stay longer so that Lucas and I could have a few minutes alone together.
If we managed to convince my parents that we shouldn’t drive until the roads were cleared in the morning, then we’d have hours and hours—
while poor Balthazar waited nearby. That would be awkward for me and worse for Balthazar, who looked miserable enough already. He needed to go back to Evernight Academy soon.
“We’ll go now,” I said to Lucas. “It’s better this way.” Lucas stared at me, his expression shifting from disappointment into something harder to read. “Maybe it is.”
Neither of us knew quite what to say after that.
Balthazar, apparently too dazed to notice the tension between me and Lucas, opened the truck door. A gale of frigid air whipped into the cabin, blowing my hair in my eyes. Lucas already had turned his attention back to the road like a man plotting a getaway. When Balthazar held his hand out to steady me in the snow, I took it. “Good-bye, Lucas,” I said in a small voice.
Lucas leaned over to shut the truck door behind me. “See you one month from tonight. Amherst. Town square. Usual time. Okay?” Then he sighed once and gave me an uneven smile. “Love you.”
“I love you, too.” But for once, those words didn’t make everything okay.
Balthazar and I were both in such a terrible mood in the following days that I suggested we pretend that we were having an argument.
Walking around together pretending to be a happy couple—neither of us could do it. But after a week, we could pull ourselves together, pretend to make up.
