Isle of Night (19 page)

Do whatever it takes.
That was the lesson here. Not everyone was perfect, but with luck and smarts, one could find a way.

I held myself there, letting a little bark of triumph escape me.

“She did it,” someone called.

Once I was in position, I was able to hold myself there for a moment. Long enough for the crowd to turn and see me.

Long enough for me to steal a glance down.

But I didn't need to look to guess whom I'd find staring up at me.

CHAPTER TWENTY

M
y hands slid from the bar, and I dropped to the mat.

“Why?”

Heart Face shrugged, and then turned and walked toward the locker room.

I wiped my hands on my shorts. If I wasn't mistaken, I had a red splotch on my ass, roughly the size of
her
hand. All these weeks and she hadn't said a word to me. Why this? Why now? What was her deal?

“It's not over, Charity.” Lilac's gaze strafed from me to Heart Face and back again, looking suspicious. She began to walk away. Slowly, she turned her head, watching me from the corner of her eye. It reminded me of a bird of prey. “You're going down.”

I had to believe clever trumped hot. That smart and determined would triumph over cruel and petty any day of the week. “Then I'll take you with me,” I said, and this time I felt the words resonate to my soul.

It wasn't until after class that I finally got a chance to catch up with my mysterious helper. “Wait,” I called, running to catch Heart Face.

“Thanks,” I said, catching my breath. She only looked at me, so silent and strange. “You know, for earlier.”

She gave me a half smile and shrugged.

Was she capable of carrying on a conversation? There was only one way to find out. “I'm Annelise Drew, but people call me Drew.” Well,
most
people. “What's your name?”

“Emma Sargent,” she said, quiet as a mouse.

“Oh.” I blanked, unsure what to say next. Sparkling chatter wasn't exactly my forte.

She began to walk again, and I jogged a couple of steps to catch up and asked the next logical question. “Where are you from?”

“North Dakota” was all she said.

Okayyy.
She wasn't going to make this easy for me. She was quite possibly the one person on this island who was lamer than me. I liked that. “How'd you end up here, Emma from North Dakota?”

She gave another shrug. “Long story.”

So she wasn't big on talking. I could hang with that. She'd helped me with my pull-up—at the moment, I wouldn't care if she requested we hold every conversation in pig Latin.

We were almost to the dorm when I mustered another question for her. “What class do you have before this one?” She wasn't in phenomena with me.

“Decorum.”

“Oh, I have that one, too. I
hate
decorum.” It didn't offer anything nearly as cool as lock picking. Plus, the teacher freaked me out. “Master Dagursson is supercreepy.”

“We had to dance with him this morning.”

I shuddered. “You're kidding. I thought we had a few weeks till the unit on
dancing
.”

We reached the dorm and walked up to the second floor, but Emma stopped halfway down the hall. She gave me another of those stoic nods and disappeared into her room.

“Okay, then,” I said to the closed door. “See ya.”

Who was her roommate, and why couldn't I have been placed with
her
instead of Lilac? I sighed, knowing I was about to face that very demon.

I returned to my room and nearly gagged. It smelled like a lit match. Or, rather, a hundred lit matches. I looked around, expecting to find my bed smoldering or my toiletries melted and clothes singed. But there was just Lilac, guiltily sliding something into her bottom drawer.

What little gift had the vampires given her? If I'd received throwing stars, she'd gotten what—a box of matches? Candles? Incense?
Explosives?
I dared not consider the possibilities.

“It smells like sulfur.” I eyed her critically. “Did you get a little visit from your pal Satan?”

“Anything to mask
your
stench, dweeb.”

I needed to find out what was in her bottom drawer. I was certain she'd already rifled through mine. I hoped she hadn't discovered my iPod, though I imagined I'd have heard by now if she had.

I peeled off my coat and hung it up. Sliding the closet door shut, I spied a bit of charred paper in the trash can.

Was our Lilac a juvenile arsonist? Pyromaniac, perhaps? I only hoped she was well acquainted with the concept of impulse control.

As terrifying as the thought was, unless she'd managed to smuggle in a lighter, her gift from the vampires must involve some sort of incendiary device. I vowed to find out the first chance I got.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

T
he next several weeks passed quickly. Our training intensified as the effects of the blood began to take hold.

The drink heightened everything. My enhanced sense of smell especially freaked me out. It was as if I could smell the origins of things and not just the things themselves—like the scent of leather brought me back to the cow itself, to the grass it fed on, the field where it grazed.

My sense of myself in the world also became more acute. I was hyperaware of my feet connecting to the ground, mindful of the people around me, where they stood, and how far away.

Most startling of all was the power. We were all growing stronger, and our instructors thrashed those new muscles at every opportunity.

I'd never been so sore in all my life. But, oddly, sometimes the aches and pains were a plus. I loved plopping into bed, being so dead tired I fell asleep instantly.

Some nights the injuries were too bad to sleep. And God forbid the vamps let us have a bottle of Motrin. They claimed it messed too much with our blood. Instead, our instructors taught us stretches and acupressure points, and we were allowed to take all the ice we wanted from the freezer in the kitchenette. But bags of frozen peas only helped so much when your whole body rang with pain.

Add to that the fact that Lilac said some pretty weird shit in her sleep. Hearing your roommate murmur things like
Burn, sunny, burn
—whatever
that
meant—wasn't exactly sleep inducing.

Those were the nights I snuck out my iPod. I'd wait for Lilac's psycho sleep chatter to begin, and I'd dig out my treasures, cradling them like they were my blankie. I'd listen to music, regular music—alternative, soundtracks, eighties hits, whatever—and just that little bit of normalcy did a ton to alleviate the aches, fears, and uncertainty of the whole messed-up scene.

My iPod also stored books—I kept dozens on the thing—and I was able to read and reread my favorites under the covers, pretending I was a regular girl in a regular dorm with a regular roommate.

I gradually got into a routine, and things started to feel fairly normal and uneventful. If
uneventful
meant finding a box of extralong matches, a gold Zippo, lighter fluid, and various other incendiaries in your roomie's drawers, and
normal
was a word you could ascribe to a vampire-ambassador training academy-cum–charm school.

I headed to phenomena class, thinking just how much I was beginning to doubt the
ambassador
part of that equation. With all the brutal gym classes, I sensed that a Watcher was less an attaché than an agent in the 007 sense of the word.

I cringed, spotting a clique rounding the corner on the path ahead. Apparently, my hatred was strong enough that just thinking about Lilac summoned her out of thin air. She and one of her high-class gal pals were headed straight for me.

But they were with
Josh
.

They were looking cozy, too, him with an arm around each girl. Was he just being friendly? Didn't he know they were evil incarnate? Who was flinging themselves at whom?

Rumor had it that he'd joked he'd eventually make his way through all the Acari. Yasuo couldn't confirm it, so I didn't give it much credit at the time, chalking it up to girls getting the hots for the cute Aussie.

But seeing him now, remembering how that naughty-boy leer had flickered in his eyes, I wouldn't put it past him. I'd thought he was, I dunno, interested in me. But apparently, Josh was interested in
everyone
.

Disappointed, pissed, flattered, relieved . . . I wasn't sure how I felt about it.

Lilac's laugh trilled across the quad. Either she was really amused by something he'd said, or she was just really working it. My money was on the latter.

Double-oh-seven indeed. Who better to be cast as Bond girls but Lilac and her sleek, slutty friends? Her crowd seemed especially interested in Josh, and I couldn't figure out why. He was supposed to be a Harvard guy. What would a bunch of dimbulb girls see in him? I mean, Josh was cute, but so was pretty much every other guy on campus.

They got closer, and instead of making room on the path, I stood my ground, striding toward them with my head held high. I would
not
step aside for Lilac.

She and her friend glowered, but Josh greeted me with his usual wide smile. The glint in his eyes made him look like he had a secret.

He pulled away from the girls, moving to the side to let me pass. “Looking lovely today, Drew.”

His voice was slow and intent, like there was some private subtext. And who knew? Maybe he was trying to communicate a message to me. Or maybe he was just flirting. Maybe this was how
all
guys acted.

Well, no, thank you.

I listened to Lilac's laugh and Josh's sexy Australian lilt fading in the distance. Theirs was effortless flirtation—something that was completely foreign to me.

I thought of decorum class, and how even that was difficult for me. Knowing when to smile coquettishly and when to avoid a man's eye. When it was proper to stray from formal titles, when to serve soup and with which spoon. Charm, poise, courtesy . . .

I gave a little shudder. If there was one thing to clear Lilac and Josh from my mind, it was thoughts of Alrik's decorum seminar. I'd hoped it'd teach me things like Martini Mixology or Baccarat 101, but I'd been sorely mistaken. Instead, we had to endure things like couples' ballroom dancing.
Ballroom
, for God's sake. I despised it, just as I'd known I would.

And the instructor, Master Alrik Dagursson?

Creepiest. Teacher. Ever.

He'd taught me three things thus far.

1. I hated couples dancing.

2. Some teachers were vampires.

3. Not all vampires were hot.

So much for the
Twilight
worldview.

I suspected that Alrik—or Master Dagursson, as we lowly Acari had to call him—was one of the old ones Ronan had mentioned. The name alone proclaimed him of Viking stock, though he'd lost the trace of any accent long ago. Instead he spoke with contrived, faux-classical inflections. Imagine Keanu Reeves delivering a speech while pretending to be a Knight of the Round Table, and you had the velvet sounds of Master Dagursson.

As for his looks? Maybe they only made cute vampires now, but this dude looked like he might've been an aging rocker before being frozen in time.

All in all, my vampire count was up to three. Headmaster Fournier. Master Dagursson. And the mysterious monster from the path.

I unzipped my parka and bounded up the stairs to the science building. I smiled. Thank God it was Tuesday. Tuesday meant Tracer Judge's phenomena class,
not
decorum.

I loved phenomena. And I adored the teacher, too. I'd come to realize that people like Tracer Judge were rarities on this isle. He was supersmart in an always learning, inquisitive sort of way. And though he was disciplined, he was thoughtful and forgiving, too. The good news was, he said if I stayed after class a couple of times a week, he'd teach me the basics of hacking Linux servers.