Page 31 of Slayer

Died. Yikes, I had no idea.

We chatted more while I ate and Harper finished getting ready, and then Celia came in with the paperwork. She urged me to always read every word of anything I was putting my name on, which I’d never done in my life but I did now to make her happy. It was a pretty straightforward document stating I was appealing to have my suspected grandfather’s body exhumed to run a DNA test and prove heredity urgently.

I signed it and she left, wishing us a good night.

Now I was going to a newbie vampire hunter party while my possible mom’s old best friend dug up my grandfather’s body.

Just another day in my new life.

Cool. Cool.

CHAPTER

SIX

The welcome party was basically a freshman mixer for incoming students, put on at the school in a small hall. The place was decorated nicely from what I could tell on the outside with flickering lanterns and flowers carving out a path to the entrance. Every wall on the outside of the stone building held a glowing blue rune.

“What’s that one?” I pointed to the rune facing us.

“Aegis Bastion, shield rune,” Harper said.

Whoa. “Cool name. Shield from what? The vamps?”

She nodded, tossing her glossy black hair over one shoulder. “They are constantly trying to snuff out our dimension. All the runes do things like dampen our smell, which is like coffee to them. They love it. There are confusion runes too, so if a vampire does find themselves in this dimension, they’ll forget what they are doing and leave.”

“That’s incredible!” I grinned. “So they can portal too?”

She nodded, eyes a little wide. “But they don’t need designated locations like we do. They portal instantly on shadows. It’s what makes them so terrifying.”

That made so much sense! How they just appeared at the club and in the park with Asher and me. “But you’re pretty safe here?” I asked.

She nodded as we moved up in line. “Haven’t had a vampire attack on campus in my entire lifetime.”

Wow. Eighteen years. That was a nice streak.

“Where do the runes come from?” I glanced farther down the line as a man began checking names on a list as the students entered.

“Short answer? Runes were created by a first generation of hunters, called the legacies.”

Interesting. The same legacy that Molly’s family was?

“And the long answer?” I asked.

A girl in front of us peeked over her shoulder to look at me and then quickly looked back.

Harper leaned to my ear. “The long answer would overwhelm you right now, but I’ll totally tell you later if you want.”

I nodded. Message received. Dipping my toes into the history of vampires and their hunters instead of a full submersion sounded good to me.

When we got to the front of the line, a tall man with broad shoulders, short hair, and smooth white skin grinned at Harper. He had a salt-and-pepper beard and wore thick black-rimmed glasses that were stylish and made him look cool. Definitely looked the part of a professor.

“Hello, Professor Walters,” Harper said formally.

He frowned. “No more Dad?”

My heart melted, and I couldn’t help but smile.

“Not at school! I don’t want anyone thinking I get special treatment,” Harper whined.