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“Not at you. Never at you.” Balthazar took a deep breath. “You haven’t told anyone about Charity.”
“No. I promise I haven’t.”
“It wasn’t a question. If you’d told anyone, Mrs. Bethany would already have interrogated me about it.”
“Why? And what do you mean, interrogated?”
“Charity and Mrs. Bethany never got along.”
“So Charity said.” I cast him a curious glance. “If you and your sister are so tight, why did you fall out of touch?”
“We’ve lost track of each other before. It’s complicated.” He stopped walking. The raw pain in his face hurt to witness. Embarrassed, I dropped my gaze toward the ground. We stood on yellowing fall grass, his heavy-booted feet almost twice as large as mine in their muddy loafers. “She’s never forgiven me.”
“Forgiven you for what?”
He opened his mouth to answer, then apparently thought better of it. “That’s between us. All you have to know is that she needs me. That never changes; for vampires, nothing ever changes. It’s always like this—she slips away, and everything goes to hell, but then I find her again and we’re all right.”
I remembered her unwashed clothes and body, her transparent loneliness. Charity looked like somebody who needed looking after, badly. “How long has it been?”
“We haven’t seen each other in thirty-five years.” Thirty-five years, I thought, recalling a conversation we’d had almost a year ago, just before last Christmas, as we walked together through the snow. That’s when he last “lost touch” with humanity, I realized. Losing Charity is what made him give up. “But she always comes back to Massachusetts eventually. That’s where we grew up together; it’s home, Bianca. Our home. If she’s returned, that means she’s homesick. I can reach her now. But to reach her,” he continued, even more quietly than before, “I have to find her.”
Now I understood. “You want me to take you to her. You want me to use Black Cross to figure out where Charity is, so you can get to her first.”
“And for you to keep throwing Black Cross off her trail, if you can.” He squared his broad shoulders. The sun had begun to set, painting the sky orange behind him. “I know it’s a lot to ask. I’m prepared to offer a lot in return.”
“You mean, you won’t tell about me and Lucas.”
“Your secret is safe with me no matter what.” Balthazar meant it; when he spoke, it sounded like surrender. My relief turned to amazement as he continued, “If you’ll help me with this, I’ll help get you off campus so that you can be with Lucas.”
“You mean it? You really will?” My head whirled. “But how?”
“Easy.” His smile was strained. “We’ll tell one simple lie. We’ll say that we’re together.” Together? Oh. But I saw the sense of it, even before Balthazar explained the rest. “Older vampires can come and go from Evernight if they get permission, and Mrs. Bethany is pretty free with permissions for the vampires she trusts. She trusts me. Your parents haven’t made any secret of the fact that they’d like us to spend more time together. If you and I are supposedly a couple—”
He looked down at the ground, lips pressed together for a second. That supposedly had cost him.
“—then I can ask permission to take you off campus sometimes. If your parents okay it, Mrs. Bethany probably will, too. They’ll see it as you becoming closer to a ‘real vampire.’ They’ll encourage it. They’ll let us go.”
It was a good plan. Solid. “You’ve been thinking about this.”
“For a few days now. If you need time to consider, I understand.”
“I only have one question. Why do you have to keep Charity a secret? I mean, she went here all those years ago, so Mrs. Bethany knows all about her, right?”
“Like I said, they didn’t get along, and that’s an understatement. If I bring Charity here, Mrs. Bethany will give her sanctuary—she has to give sanctuary to any vampire who seeks it. That’s the most sacred rule here. But Mrs. Bethany would do anything she had to do in order to make sure that I couldn’t bring Charity here. She’d try to scare her off, maybe even drive another wedge between us. I can’t lose another thirty-five years.”
“I understand.” I would do what I could to spare Balthazar that pain. Besides—in return, he would make it possible for me to be with Lucas. There was almost nothing I wouldn’t have done for that.
“Do we have a deal?” he asked.
“Yeah. When do we begin?”
“Might as well start now.” Balthazar held out his hand.
I took it, and together we walked back toward the school. We remained hand in hand as we walked through the great hall, where a few students were milling around between classes. I could feel their glances on us, hungry and avid, as eager for new gossip as they were for blood. At the bottom of the staircase to the girls’ dorm, Balthazar bent and kissed my cheek. His lips were cool against my skin.
The entire way upstairs, I tried to think of how I would explain this to Lucas. I’m not dating Balthazar. I’m pretend dating him. Which involves some not pretend hand-holding. And maybe some not pretend kissing. But it’s all actually pretend, see?
I groaned. My explanations were making my head hurt already.
