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Brilliant, aquamarine light flooded the room as ice began to coat the windows, the walls, and the ceiling. In the center of the light, Bianca took shape, spinning from something not unlike a wavering candle flame to herself, red hair streaming around her.
As Redgrave lifted his head to see her, Balthazar could tell the ancient fear still held sway over him—that he, and all of his tribe, were still violently repelled by one of the only things that vampires dreaded as much as fire.
One of the vampires behind Redgrave whispered, “Wraith.”
Bianca swept forward, sliding horizontal, somehow turning herself into a blade that slashed through Redgrave, the wall, the door, all the vampires. Balthazar knew from having seen her in battle that this wouldn’t kill any of them, but it apparently hurt like hell. Half doubled over, Redgrave hissed something in his old language, the one Balthazar had always refused to learn, and the entire tribe fled.
The only sound for a moment was the thumping of the back door as they went out the way they’d come.
Then Bianca laughed. “Wow, some vampires scare easy.”
“You’re telling me vampires are so terrified of wraiths that they’ll steer clear of this house just because they saw Bianca?” Skye, who had already scooped out most of the ice from her room, shouted over the whirr of the hair dryer she was currently using on her bed quilt.
“It’s an old superstition that goes deep for us.” Balthazar himself didn’t care for being around wraiths who weren’t named Bianca, and even that had taken some getting used to. “Deeper for Redgrave than for most—he always had a particular horror of the wraiths. I’d seen him panic at the sight of one before. Trust me, he won’t come back to confront Bianca again. From now on, at least, you can spend time here and sleep without worrying about being attacked every single second.”
Bianca reappeared in the room; Skye jumped only a little bit. She was making progress. “I’ve searched everywhere,” Bianca said. “Where’s your ghost?”
Skye blinked at her. “How did you know I used to have one?”
“That’s the only way humans got admitted to Evernight Academy,” Balthazar explained. “A connection to the wraiths. Ghosts. Haunted houses, that kind of thing.”
“Like Clementine’s haunted car,” Skye said thoughtfully. “The house I grew up in, in the center of town, that one was haunted. It was a little girl who sat by the fire with me sometimes. She never said anything; she just seemed to want somebody to sit with. I liked her. Thought of her as, like, an imaginary playmate who wasn’t imaginary.” Her expression was fond, even warm; Skye’s ability to deal with the supernatural continued to surprise Balthazar. “But we moved here two years ago. New construction. No haunting here that I know of.”
Bianca frowned. “That’s not good. I’d hoped I’d be able to talk to your ghost and make sure you were protected all the time. I can’t stay here permanently.”
“We should be all right,” Balthazar said. “Relatively few vampires know the ways to trap or repel ghosts. He won’t try this house again. It’s the rest of town we’ve got to worry about.”
“You really know how to cheer a girl up,” Skye said, and he smiled at her apologetically.
Bianca, who now had a very odd smile on her face, said, “You know how to call us if you need us. Skye, thanks again for everything. You’re in good hands. Balthazar—it’s nice seeing you like this.”
Like what? Balthazar wondered, but it was enough to bask in her approval. Though his old love for Bianca had finally shifted into something simpler and less romantic, he thought he’d always have a weak spot for her smile. He lifted one hand in farewell as Bianca faded slowly from sight—returning to Lucas yet again.
Skye tucked a lock of her thick brown hair behind one ear as she said, “I’d forgotten you two used to go out.”
“That was never—Bianca was always with Lucas, really. Our relationship was more about hiding their romance.” And if he’d been fool enough to forget that for a while, he thought, he had no one but himself to blame.
“But you liked her, didn’t you?” This girl had seen right through him. “Do you still?”
“No. I mean—of course I care about Bianca. I always will. But she never wanted what I wanted. It took me a while to accept that, but I have.”
Why did it feel so strange, talking about that with Skye? It felt like … like talking about one girlfriend to another. Bad form. Though of course Bianca had never really been his girlfriend, and Skye—that couldn’t happen, for her sake.
They’d cleared the last remnants of ice from her bedroom, and he’d double-checked the entire first floor and fixed the locks—though Redgrave’s phobia of wraiths meant that the doors probably could be left wide open from now on without the tribe returning. Tonight’s crisis was taken care of: time to look toward the future.
“You’re going to take the bus to school in the morning, right?”
Skye gave him a look across her darkened bedroom. “Of course. I’m not going to walk along the road again by myself. But what do we do after that? If they came after me on one of the main streets in town, they’d come after me in school.”
“I’m working on that,” Balthazar said. He didn’t want to make any promises before he knew for sure. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Wait—you’re leaving?” She looked stricken.
“I promise you, they aren’t coming back tonight.”
“But you could still stay here. My parents wouldn’t see you.”
“There are a few things I need to take care of. If I did that here, I’d keep you up.”
