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““d planned to travel that weekend,” Patrice said, “but I suppose if I stayed, I could wear my new Chane!. What do you say, Balthazar? Let’s be partners in crime.”
Balthazar sighed. “Sure. But one of these years, I hope to go to this party with somebody who actually wants to date me.”
“So that just leaves Lucas,” Vic said. Then his face fell. “And that gets kinda awkward.”
Lucas shrugged. ‘Til be the guy who doesn’t go. I can just dig around up in the dorms.”
“No,” I said. Although I hated this, I knew it was true: “The people who go to the party are the ones who have the most freedom that night. Otherwise, the teachers will think that if You’re not in your dorm, you’ve got to be up to something.”
“You want me to ask some other girl out on a date?” His disbelief would’ve been funny, if it weren’t such serious business.
“Uh, no. But is there someone you could maybe go with just as a friend?” I hesitated, realizing that Lucas only had one other friend at school — but maybe she would do. “Like Skye?”
“Would she understand it’s not a date?” Patrice said.
“Sure,” I said. “She’d only be looking for a friend to go with, because she’s got a boyfriend back home.”
“Actually, not so much, “Lucas said. “I heard her telling Clementine earlier today — apparently her boyfriend just dumped her hard. But she said she’d date a guy again ‘about six months after hell freezes over,’ so I’m guessing she’d only want a friend right now. That’s not the real problem, though.”
“You Wouldn’t attack her,” I said, trying to be soothing. “You’re getting stronger. Besides, you’ll meet her downstairs and be in the center of a crowd the whole time. If you did snap, which you won’t, somebody would be there to stop you.”
Lucas shook his head. “Too risky. Let me go witl1 Patrice, and Balthazar, maybe you could ask Skye.”
“I’ve never so much as spoken to her,” Balthazar said. “She probably doesn’t know who I am.”
Patrice and I shared a look. Balthazar could be obtuse about his own good looks. Maybe he and Skye had never spoken, but there was no way any straight girl or g*y guy at Evernight Academy didn’t know exactly who he was.
“So ask somebody else,” Lucas said.
More firmly, Balthazar said, “I think spending some time with a human would be a good idea for you.” He glanced at Vic. “An .. . undaubed human. You can’t stay at Evernight much longer, now that things are getting weird with Mrs. Bethany. Eventually you’ve got to test yourself. Try to strengthen your self — control. And like Bianca said, this is as good an opportunity as any.”
“I guess.” Lucas gave me an uneasy look. “Bianca, are you sure about this?”
Honestly, I felt a little jealous. Not of anything happening between Lucas and Skye — I had total faith in him. But Skye would get to dress up, go to the ball, and dance with Lucas the whole night long, while I was stuck watching from the ceiling in the spectral version of the pajamas I’d died in. That was a pretty stupid reason to fret, though. “As long as she gets the whole friends thing, yeah. It’s fme.”
From his place in the beanbag chair, Vic hung his head backward and grinned at Lucas. “Okay, it’s slightly losery to have your best friend find you a date,” he admitted. “But way less losery than having your girlfriend find you one.”
Lucas scowled at him, though I could tell, despite his bleak mood, he thought it was funny. “Shut it.”
The preparations for the dance took a fair bit of time; since I wouldn’ t be able to take part in the search, I did what I could on the prep work. We mapped out the different areas of the school and decided who would slip out to which area, and when.
Lucas seemed possessed by a wild, desperate energy. He strategized more than any of the rest of us, studied longer than before, and made Balthazar practice fencing with him for hours. I thought that he was trying to keep himself in a perpetual state of exhaustion — so that he would be too tired to fully contemplate the fact that there was a way for him to live again, but it was one he could never take advantage of. Even the dancing lessons he took from Patrice were intense and joyless, with Lucas memorizing the steps as though they were Black Cross battle moves.
As important as our plans were, though, I couldn’t spend all my time preparing for the Autumn Ball search. At moments, I had trouble so much as 191 thinking about it. Something else, just as important, was on my mind. Finally, Wednesday night, the time came.
I waited in the forest grove with my coral bracelet nearby, eager and yet nervous, until I saw my father coming toward me. Quickly I slipped on my bracelet and ran forward for a hug. He gathered me into his arms, so strong and warm that for a second it was as if I were a little girl again, scared of thunderstorms and trusting my daddy to protect me from the lightning.
“Is she here?” I whispered.
“She’s coming.” Dad squeezed my hands. “I broke it to her a couple hours ago.”
“Is she okay?” Despite my father’s reassurance, I couldn’t stop worrying that my mother Wouldn’t be able to accept me as a wraith.
“Yes.” There was a strange note in his voice. Uncertainty. Fear pierced me; Dad must have seen it, because he quickly shook his head. “Your mother loves you. She just . . . she can’t accept that something so terrible has happened to you. That’s what upsets her. But it means the world to her to be able to be with you again.”
Something so terrible.Those words resonated with me, not in a good way. I wanted to turn them over in my mind and discover why, but there was no time — I could hear my mother’s footsteps on the thick carpet of pine needles upon the ground.
I peeifed past my father, searching for her. As a wraith, my night vision was no longer as sharp as it had been during my vampire life. So I heard my mother gasp first.
