“You know a lot for someone who wasn’t in it.”
“My dad was. He never talks much about it—hence the secret part—but I picked up things, and then I heard about it while I was at school.”
I leaned against the wall. The clock across the hall told me classes were almost over. “Did you hear anything about them beating up people? There are at least four Moroi I know of who were attacked. And they won’t talk about it.”
“Who? Like non-royals?”
“No. Other royals.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. The whole point of it is for elite royals to band together to protect themselves from change. Unless, perhaps, they’re going after royals who refuse or are supporting non-royals.”
“Maybe. But one of them was Jesse’s brother, and Jesse seems to be a founding member. Seems like he’d have to make the cut.
And
they didn’t do anything when Christian refused.”
Adrian spread his hands wide. “Even I don’t know everything, and like I said, this one’s probably got its own little agenda they’re keeping hidden.” I sighed in frustration, and he gave me a curious look. “Why do you care so much?”
“Because it isn’t right. The people I saw were in bad shape. If some group’s going around and ganging up on victims, they need to be stopped.”
Adrian laughed and played with a strand of my hair. “You can’t save everyone, though God knows you try.”
“I just want to do what’s right.” I remembered Dimitri’s comments about Westerns and couldn’t help a small smile. “I need to bring justice where it’s needed.”
“The crazy thing, little dhampir, is that you mean that. I can tell by your aura.”
“What, are you saying it’s not black anymore?”
“No . . . still dark, definitely. But it’s got a little light in it, streaks of gold. Like sunlight.”
“Maybe your theory about me catching it from Lissa is wrong then.” I’d been trying very hard not to think about last night, when I’d learned about Anna. Mentioning it now stirred up all those fears all over again. Insanity. Suicide.
“Depends,” he said. “When was the last time you saw her?”
I gave him a light punch. “You have no clue, do you? You’re making this up as you go along.”
He caught my wrist and pulled me closer. “Isn’t that the way you normally operate?”
I grinned in spite of myself. This close to him I could appreciate just how lovely the green of his eyes was. In fact, despite continually making fun of him, I couldn’t deny that the rest of him was pretty good-looking too. His fingers were warm on my wrist, and there was something kind of sexy about the way he held it. Thinking back to Deirdre’s words, I tried to assess how it all made me feel. The queen’s warnings aside, Adrian was a guy who was technically available. Was I attracted to him? Did I get a thrill out of this?
The answer: no. Not in the same way I did with Dimitri. Adrian was sexy in his way, but he didn’t drive me wild the way Dimitri did. Was it because Adrian was so readily available? Was Deirdre right about me purposely wanting relationships that were impossible?
“You know,” he said, interrupting my thoughts, “under any other circumstances, this would be hot. Instead, you’re looking at me like I’m some kind of science fair project.”
That was exactly how I was treating this, actually. “Why don’t you ever use compulsion on me?” I asked. “And I don’t mean just to stop me from getting in fights.”
“Because half the fun of you is that you’re so difficult.”
A new idea occurred to me. “Do it.”
“Do what?”
“Use compulsion on me.”
“What?” It was another of those rare shocked Adrian moments.
“Use compulsion to make me want to kiss you—except you have to promise not to actually kiss me.”
“That’s pretty weird—and when
I
say something’s weird, you know it’s serious.”
“Please.”
He sighed and then focused his eyes right on me. It was like drowning, drowning in seas of green. There was nothing in the world except for those eyes.
“I want to kiss you, Rose,” he said softly. “And I want you to want me too.”
Every aspect of his body—his lips, his hands, his scent— suddenly overpowered me. I felt warm all over. I wanted him to kiss me with every ounce of my being. There was nothing in life I wanted more than that kiss. I tilted my face up toward his, and he leaned down. I could practically taste his lips.
“Do you want to?” he asked, voice still like velvet. “Do you want to kiss me?”
Did I ever. Everything around me had blurred. Only his lips were in focus.
“Yes,” I said. His face moved closer, his mouth only a breath away from mine. We were so, so close, and then—
He stopped. “We’re done,” he said, stepping back.
I snapped out of it instantly. The dreamy haze was gone, as was the yearning in my body. But I’d discovered something. Under compulsion, I had definitely wanted him to kiss me. Yet even under compulsion, it hadn’t been the electric, all-encompassing feeling I had when I was with Dimitri, that feeling that we were practically the same person and were bound by forces bigger than both of us. With Adrian, it had simply been mechanical.
Deirdre had been wrong. If my attraction to Dimitri was just some subconscious reaction, then it should have been as superficial as that forced attraction to Adrian. Yet they were completely different. With Dimitri, it was love—not just some trick my mind was playing on me.
“Hmm,” I said.
“Hmm?” asked Adrian, eyeing me with amusement.
“Hmm.”
The third “hmm” hadn’t come from either of us. I looked across the hall and saw Christian watching us. I separated from Adrian, just as the bell rang. The sounds of students pouring out of classrooms rumbled through the hallway.
“Now I can see Lissa,” said Adrian happily.
“Rose, will you come with me to the feeders?” asked Christian. He spoke in a flat tone, and his expression was unreadable.
“I’m not guarding you today.”
“Yeah, well, I miss your charming company.”
I told Adrian goodbye and cut through the cafeteria with Christian. “What’s up?” I asked.
“You tell me,” he said. “You were the one about ready to start making out with Adrian.”
“It was an experiment,” I said. “It was part of my therapy.”
“What the hell kind of therapy are you in?”
We reached the feeders’ room. Somehow, despite him getting out of class early, there were still a few people ahead of us in line.
“Why do you care?” I asked him. “You should be happy. It means he isn’t moving in on Lissa.”
“He could be moving in on both of you.”
“What are you, my big brother now?”
“Annoyed,” he said. “That’s what I am.”
I looked beyond him and saw Jesse and Ralf enter. “Well, keep it to yourself, or our good friends will overhear.”
Jesse, however, was too busy to hear, because he was arguing with the feeding coordinator. “I don’t have time to wait,” he told her. “I’ve got to be somewhere.”
She pointed to us and the others in line. “These people are ahead of you.”
Jesse met her eyes and smiled. “You can make an exception this time.”
“Yeah, he’s in a hurry,” added Ralf in a voice I’d never heard him use before. It was smooth and less grating than usual. “Just write his name down at the top of the list.”
The coordinator looked like she was going to tell them off, but then a funny, distracted look came over her face. She glanced at her clipboard and wrote something. A few seconds after she looked away, her head jerked up again, eyes sharp once more. She frowned.
“What was I doing?”
“You were signing me up,” said Jesse. He pointed at the board. “See?”
She looked down, startled. “Why is your name first? Didn’t you just get here?”
“We were here earlier and checked in. You told us it was okay.”
She looked down again, clearly puzzled. She didn’t remember them coming earlier—because they hadn’t—but she apparently couldn’t figure out why Jesse’s name was at the top now. A moment later, she shrugged and must have decided it wasn’t worth overthinking. “Stand with the others, and I’ll call you next.”
As soon as Jesse and Ralf came near us, I turned on them. “You just used compulsion on her,” I hissed.
Jesse looked panicked for a fraction of a second; then his normal swagger took over. “Whatever. I just convinced her, that’s all. What, are you going to try to tell on me or something?”
“Nothing to tell,” scoffed Christian. “That was the worst compulsion I’ve ever seen.”
“Like you’ve seen compulsion,” said Ralf.
“Plenty,” said Christian. “From people prettier than you. Of course, maybe that’s part of why yours isn’t as good.”
Ralf seemed highly offended at not being considered pretty, but Jesse just nudged him and started to turn away. “Forget him. He had his chance.”
“His chance at—” I remembered how Brandon had attempted weak compulsion when trying to convince me his bruises were nothing. Jill had said that Brett Ozera actually
had
convinced a teacher that his were nothing. The teacher had dropped the matter, much to Jill’s surprise. Brett must have used compulsion. Lightbulbs went off in different parts of my brain. The connections were all around me. The problem was, I couldn’t untangle the wires quite yet. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Your stupid Mână and its need to beat up on people. It’s got something to do with compulsion. . . .”
I didn’t understand how it all fit together, but the surprised look on Jesse’s face told me I was on to something, even though he said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I pushed forward, hoping some blind hits would make him mad and say something he wasn’t supposed to. “What’s the point? Does it give you guys some kind of power trip to do these little tricks? That’s all they are, you know. You seriously don’t know the first thing about compulsion. I’ve seen compulsion that would make you do handstands and throw yourself out a window.”
“We’re learning more than you can even imagine,” said Jesse. “And when I find out who told—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish his threat because he was called over to the feeder just then. He and Ralf stalked away, and Christian immediately turned to me.
“What’s going on? What’s a Mână?”
I gave him a hasty recap of Adrian’s explanation. “That’s what they wanted you to join. They must secretly be practicing compulsion. Adrian said these groups are always royals who have some plan to change and control things in dangerous times. They must think compulsion is the answer—it’s what they meant when they told you they had ways to help you get what you wanted. If they knew how crappy your compulsion was, they probably wouldn’t have asked.”
He scowled, not liking me reminding him of the one time he’d attempted—and failed—to compel someone at the ski lodge. “So where’s the beating-people-up part come in?”
“That’s the mystery,” I said. Christian was summoned over to feed just then, and I put my theories on hold until I could get more info and take action. I noticed which feeder we were being led to. “Is that Alice
again
? How do you always get her? Do you request her?”
“No, but I think some people specifically un-request her.”
Alice was happy to see us, as always. “Rose. Are you still keeping us safe?”
“I will if they’ll let me,” I told her.
“Don’t be too hasty,” she warned. “Conserve your strength. If you’re too eager to fight the undead, you may find yourselves joining them. Then you’d never see us again, and we’d be very sad.”
“Yes,” said Christian. “I’d cry into my pillow every night.”
I resisted the urge to kick him. “Well, I couldn’t visit if I was Strigoi, yeah, but hopefully I’d just die a normal death. Then I could come see you as a ghost.”
How sad, I thought, that I was now making jokes about the very thing that was freaking me out lately. Alice found no amusement in it whatsoever. She shook her head.
“No, you wouldn’t. The wards would keep you out.”
“The wards only keep Strigoi out,” I reminded her gently.
A defiant look replaced her scattered one. “The wards keep anything that isn’t alive out. Dead or undead.”
“Now you’ve done it,” said Christian.
“The wards don’t keep ghosts out,” I said. “I’ve seen them.”
Considering Alice’s own instability, I didn’t mind discussing mine with her. In fact, it was kind of refreshing to talk about this stuff with someone who wouldn’t judge me. Indeed, she treated this as a perfectly normal conversation.
“If you’ve seen ghosts, then we’re not safe anymore.”
“I told you last time, the security’s too good.”
“Maybe someone made a mistake,” she argued, sounding remarkably coherent. “Maybe someone missed something. Wards are made of magic. Magic is alive. Ghosts can’t cross them for the same reason as Strigoi. They aren’t alive. If you saw a ghost, the wards have failed.” She paused. “Or you’re crazy.”
Christian laughed out loud. “There you go, Rose. Straight from the source.” I shot him a glare. He smiled at Alice. “In Rose’s defense, though, I think she’s right about the wards. The school checks them all the time. The only place guarded better than here is the Royal Court, and both places are overflowing with guardians. Stop being so paranoid.”
He fed, and I glanced away. I should have known better than to listen to Alice. She was hardly a reputable source of information, even if she’d been around for a while. And yet . . . her weird logic did make sense. If wards kept Strigoi out, why not ghosts? True, Strigoi were the dead who had come back to walk the earth, but her point was sound:
All
of them were dead. But Christian and I were right too: The wards around the school were solid. It took a lot of power to lay wards. Not every Moroi home could have them, but places like schools and the Royal Court had theirs maintained diligently.