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“No, we got kidnapped by the tribe about a week before Bianca—about a week ago.” Lucas swallowed hard, then kept going. “Charity was hot to turn Bianca into a vampire. She had some stupid idea that it would make you and her and Bianca one big happy undead family.”
“She was going to kill Bianca?” Balthazar looked so wounded, so disappointed in her. Despite the ample evidence that Charity was a psychopath, he still believed in his sister and loved her as much as ever. His faith would have been touching, I decided, if it hadn’t been so willfully blind. “You rescued her, though.”
Lucas shook his head. “The ghosts did that.”
“The wraiths saved you?”
“That’s what it seemed like at the time.” Lucas’s gaze became more distant. “Now I see it, though. What they were really doing was making sure Bianca would die when they wanted, the way they wanted. So they’d get their prize. If Charity had done it, she’d have been doing us a big favor.”
“I told you before, being a vampire isn’t the same as being alive.”
“It beats being a ghost, though, doesn’t it?” Lucas pushed back from the table, too angry with himself to sit still. “If Bianca were a vampire, she’d still be here. She’d have her friends back, and she could go see her parents, and—nothing would have changed.”
Balthazar’s expression darkened, nearly to anger. “Everything would have changed for her. And you know that.”
“I could touch her,” Lucas whispered. “She would be here. I’m never going to touch Bianca again.”
Never? Really never? The sorrow of it overwhelmed me. Then the kitchen suddenly looked very misty, became very far away. No, not again!
The blue foggy nothingness swallowed me once more. I struggled against it, but I had no fists to fight with, no feet to plant firmly upon the ground. All my will seemed to count for nothing. In my misery and desperation, I felt as frightened and bewildered as a lost child crying for her parents.
And then I wasn’t in the mist any longer.
Instead, I had appeared at Evernight.
I glanced around, trying to understand what this could be. I knew it wasn’t a memory because I was sitting on top of the gargoyle outside my bedroom window—not something I’d ever done before. It didn’t feel like a dream, either, though I couldn’t guess what wraiths’ dreams felt like, if they even had them.
No, weird though it was, the most logical guess was that I’d somehow just transported myself back to Evernight Academy. Maybe my afterlife assignment was to haunt Mrs. Bethany or something.
Peering downward, I saw the gargoyle’s scowl. Had I bruised his dignity by perching on top of his head?
For the first time since Vic’s attic, I had a definite sense of physical form. I could even see my feet dangling past the gargoyle’s claws. So I pressed my hands against the window glass, mostly just to do something with my hands, but also in hopes of peering inside.
When my fingertips touched the glass, frost flickered across the surface. I watched the tendrils spread in featherlike patterns, completely covering the pane. So much for snooping about what was going on in my old bedroom, but the effect was kind of cool.
Noise from the ground below made me look down. To my surprise, several trucks were parked on the driveway, and at least a dozen people seemed to be milling around. The other summers I’d spent at Evernight Academy had been almost unbearably quiet. Nobody came to visit, save a few deliveries and the laundry service. So who were these people?
I realized the truth as soon as I recognized that they were all wearing coveralls. These were the workmen rebuilding Evernight.
Before that moment, I hadn’t heard much of anything—mostly, I thought, because I hadn’t been listening. How weird, to have to choose to hear. Now I could make out the growling of buzz saws and the thumping of hammers. Most of that seemed to be coming from the roof, but probably people were hard at work on the inside, too. Despite the fact that I loathed Evernight Academy, I hated Black Cross even more, so it gave me grim satisfaction to think that the damage done by Black Cross’s fire was being undone. Mrs. Bethany wouldn’t stand for anything else.
Then I heard a voice from inside my bedroom. “Adrian?”
That was Mom, calling my father.
I turned back to the window, eager to catch a glimpse of her, but frost still covered the pane of glass. That had to be what Mom was looking at. Rub the glass! I thought. If you clear the glass, you can see me!
Footsteps echoed inside the apartment, coming closer. Then I heard Dad say, “Oh, my God.”
I pressed my hands against the glass eagerly. Too eagerly—the frost thickened, Now it would be even harder for them to see me. But they would, wouldn’t they?
“We knew the wraith would return.” Dad’s words were hard, even cold. “Mrs. Bethany warned us.”
“But here—in Bianca’s room—” Mom sounded like she was crying.
“I know,” Dad said quietly. “They’re still looking for her. At least we know they haven’t found her yet—that she’s still alive.”
Oh, Dad. I covered my mouth with my hand, as though I could still cry and had to hold back the tears.
