by Jayme Morse
I tilted and turned my body, gliding through one of the gaps in the metal cage.
Shifting back to my normal size was easy. All I had to do was picture myself the way that I always saw myself in a mirror.
When my butt connected with the passenger’s seat, Jordan fished my dress and undies through the cage. Everything except for my bra, anyway. The underwire didn’t fit through the hole.
As I put my clothes back on, Jordan asked, “Do you see the key to the cage anywhere up there?”
I checked the glove compartment, cup holders, and above the sun visors.
“No. They must have taken it with them,” I replied.
“Great. That’s great. What now?” she asked, her chocolate brown eyes had grown wide with worry. “You should go look for help.”
I shook my head. “That’s a bad idea. I’m not leaving you and Drew locked in a car. We’re staying together. We don’t even know where we are.”
Her eyes glanced around at the parking lot. “I have an idea of where we are.”
“Where?” I asked, my brows shooting up.
Apparently, I lived under a rock, if she recognized this place and I didn’t.
“We’ve definitely left the state,” she said with a nod.
“That’s what I figured,” I replied with a sigh. “Which state are we in?”
“That,” Jordan replied, “I do not know.”
“Some big help you are.”
I climbed over into the driver’s seat and sat there, staring at all of the buttons and shifter things.
“How do I make it go?” I asked.
“Riley!” Jordan squealed from the back of the car. “You don’t know how to drive!”
“Walk me through it,” I told her.
“Oh my god. We got through all of this and now we’re going to die. I just know it,” she said, her voice on edge.
I looked at her in the rearview mirror. “We can’t die. We’re vampires, remember?”
“Oh. True,” she realized. “But still. Even if we live, it wouldn’t be fun to get into a car accident.”
“Would you rather stay in the cage while I go look for help? The vampires might come back before I get back. Then who knows what will happen,” I said.
“Nope. Nope, I would rather not do that,” Jordan replied, nervous at the idea. “Ahh. I wish I was the faerie so that I could fly out and drive us. Okay, so here’s what you need to do…”
She walked me through starting the car and all of the other steps.
And even though I’d never driven before, I put my foot on the gas.
Chapter 9
Noah
We glanced around the hallways, making sure there was no one around to rat us out, before we stepped back into the Headmaster’s office.
Julius headed straight for Headmaster McCullough’s desk and sat behind the computer.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Julius,” Tristan said, sounding more nervous than ever.
“What am I looking for?” he asked.
Julius was a computer whiz. Genius was probably more like it. He could hack just about any computer. I didn’t understand even half the shit he did, but he knew what he was doing.
That was the only thing that made me not completely panic over this.
“Anything relating to student admissions, or student application forms. See if there’s a list of accepted students, and add Riley, Drew, Jordan, and Noah’s names to the list,” Slade instructed him. “After we do that, we’ll just have to compel Headmaster McCullough into believing that it was her decision to add the names to the list.”
“That sounds simple enough,” Tristan said, his voice thick with sarcasm.
He leaned back against the window and watched Julius get to work.
Slade snorted. “If all else fails, we’ll just compel Headmaster McCullough to do it herself. She’s easy to compel.”
“I found a list of current students and their schedules. Will that work?” Julius asked, peering up at him.
“That’s perfect,” Slade replied as he walked over to stand next to him. He placed his palm on the desk and leaned over, reading the computer screen. “That’s exactly what we need.”
“I need their full names,” Julius said as he began typing.
“Riley Emerson. Jordan Nash. Drew Peters. Noah Donovan,” Slade said slowly, pausing between each name so Julius had time to type it correctly.
“I know Noah’s last name,” Julius said with an eye roll.
“I’m just checking,” Slade replied with a shrug.
“How do you know all of their names already?” Tristan asked.
Slade only smirked. “I have my ways.”
I wasn’t sure why, but I was a little jealous that he knew more about them than I did. The only one that I really knew anything about was Riley, and that was only because I’d gotten into her thoughts.
Every once in a while, one of her thoughts came to me.
As strange as it was, I liked it. It was comforting to still be able to hear where her mind was at.
Even if she did think about how much she hated me sometimes.
“I hear her, too,” Tristan said quietly, his cloudy gray eyes meeting mine.
Fuck. I didn’t want him to be able to hear her. I wanted to be the only one who could. I’d met her first, after all. I was the one who had found her. Er… she was the one who had found me.
Slade looked up at us. “Hear who?”
“Riley,” we replied at the same time.
“Me, too,” Julius said quietly as he peered over the computer at us.
Slade’s face turned stony. “She’s in my head, too,” he admitted.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“Nothing good,” Slade replied coolly. “It’s going to mean a whole lot of drama for all of us.”
I waited for more of an explanation, but it never came.
He looked around at the rest of us. “I hope all of you are ready to have your hearts broken.”
I wasn’t sure why, but it felt like he was challenging us.
“We need to get this problem sorted out first, and then we’ll worry about the future,” Slade added.
Julius cleared his throat. “I added new student profiles for each of them. Which classes should I place them in?”
“I want you to change our classes. I want you, me, and Tristan to all be in one of Riley’s classes. I want one of us to be with her at all times. It’s the only way we can be sure we’re looking after her.” Then he shot an uncomfortable look in my direction. “Everyone except for Noah.”
I put my hands up defensively. “Don’t keep me away from her. I promise I’ll do good. I’ll be on my best behavior.”
“It would make the scheduling easier on us. I’m only going to give Riley four classes. I don’t want her to be too overwhelmed with this big life change and all of that homework on top of it. And four classes would mean that each one of us would only have to be on guard duty for one class per day,” Julius said.
I wouldn’t have minded guarding my Beauty for more than an hour a day. I would have guarded her at all times, if it meant that it would keep her safe.
“Just give me a chance,” I insisted.
“Fine,” Slade relented, his lips in a tight line. “But you’ll keep your distance. You’re not going to talk to her. You’re not going to be friendly. You’re just going to be there in the background, watching.”
“That is a really good way to make her think that I’m a creep. She’ll only hate me even more than she already says she does. And what do you expect me to do if our professor has us work on a class project together? It’s not like I’ll be able to say no.”
Slade looked me straight in the eye and said, “I really don’t care if she thinks you’re a creep.”
I sat there stewing while they continued to talk.
Slade was really pissing me off.
And I knew him. I knew how he got when he was in love with someone. This was h
ow he acted… except, he had never been this extreme before. I had never witnessed him planning out a girl’s whole entire schedule at the Academy before. He’d never tried this hard to keep a girl safe. I didn’t know what about her made her so different from the others to him.
Either way, Riley was supposed to have been mine. I found her first. I wasn’t going to just let him have her. Not without a fight, anyway.
“I don’t want you to put her and her friends in the same classes. I want them to be separated,” I heard Slade say.
“Why?” I asked. “That just seems kind of cruel and unnecessary.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “How is it cruel?”
“Noah ripped her away from her entire life,” Tristan began.
“I did,” I admitted quietly. “And if we take her away from her friends on top of it, then she’ll just get depressed. She should at least be able to see her friends in her classes all day.”
Slade considered it.
“I want her to be isolated. I want her to feel like she can only come talk to us if she has a problem, or if she gets into trouble. If we keep the three of them together, they might start plotting against us. It’s not that I want them to be away from each other. I just think we’ll have our hands full if we keep them together,” he explained. “They’re not dumb. I bet they could come up with some really good schemes if you left them alone together long enough.”
I supposed he had a point.
“At least let them be roommates,” I insisted.
“That’s even worse than them being in classes together. They can talk more when they’re in their dorm room, and we won’t be able to overhear it,” Julius said.
“Okay. New idea. What if we plant a spy in their room?” I asked. “Then they can come to us if they catch wind that they’re escaping, or something.”
“But who?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure we can find someone. They don’t even have to know about it, or at least not the whole story,” I said.
“That seems like a lot of work,” Tristan said with a sigh.
“Do you guys want to hear what your new classes will be?” Julius asked, interrupting us.
“Go for it,” Tristan replied.
“Okay. So, I put her into Vampire Fitness with Noah. It’s mostly outside and we usually just run the whole class, so Riley can run away from him if she needs to,” Julius joked, though there was a slight serious tone to his voice.
I sighed and crossed my arms as I rolled my eyes at him.
The jokes were getting really annoying.
Slade chuckled. “Good idea. What’s mine?”
“I put her into Moon Magic and Myths with you,” Julius read the computer screen.
“With Professor Keaton?” Slade asked, his eyebrows knitting together.
“No. Professor Flores,” Julius replied.
“Good. Professor Keaton is a dick.”
“Tristan has Feedings and Turnings,” Julius continued.
Tristan clapped his hands together and thrust his fist towards the ceiling. “Yes! You gave me the easiest one.”
“That’s because I knew you’d be the biggest slacker. And I have The History of Vampires.”
“Did you put her friends into any classes yet?” Slade asked.
“Don’t bother putting Jordan into any classes,” Tristan said quietly.
“Why?” Julius asked.
“Only vampires can go to Nightshade Vampire Academy,” he replied.
Slade narrowed his eyes at him. “You turned her, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” he said with a nod. “But I’m not so sure that was a good thing, because I’m pretty sure I made a hybrid.”
“That’s why you’ve been so quiet over there,” Slade said as the realization set in. “How sure is pretty sure?”
“Well, I did make a hybrid. She’s not just a vampire. She’s something else, too,” Tristan said.
“What kind of hybrid?” I asked.
“The werewolf vampire kind.”
I shook my head. Riley, what were you doing hanging out with a werewolf? Werewolves think faeries are snacks.
Then again, so do vampires.
Slade shot a dagger-eyed glare at Tristan.
“Ugh. Great. This is just great. This is exactly what we need right now. Another problem we need to fix. We can’t let a werewolf run around on campus.”
Tristan smiled awkwardly. “Oops.”
Slade let out a deep breath. “We can’t allow Jordan to come onto campus. Not only is it a risk for the other students, but we would get in trouble if anyone found out we turned her. Or even if they thought we brought her here, it would be bad,” he said.
“She’s just going to have to find somewhere else to go,” Julius said.
“Well, that’s the thing… We can’t allow her to leave the school grounds either. That would start a war between the vampires and the wolves. They can’t find out about what you’ve done. Not yet anyway,” Slade said.
“Maybe Nightshade Vampire Penitentiary would be the best place for her. She’d be able to stay hidden,” Tristan suggested.
“It’s an idea,” Slade agreed with a nod. “What about Riley’s other friend, Julius? Is Drew a werewolf, too?”
Julius shook his head. “Nope. He was fully human before I turned him.”
Slade breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. So we only have to worry about Jordan.” He glanced around at all of us. “Honestly? I think that we’re going to have to go to the Nightshades for help.”
Great.
They were the last ones who I wanted to go to for help.
*
“Welcome back, brother,” Slade said as he pulled me in for a hug.
“What’s with your sudden change in mood? You went from screaming at me to annoyed with me to hugging me,” I said.
I figured that must have meant he was done being mad at me.
“Oh, no. I’m still mad. I’ll always be mad about this one. You really fucked up. But we’re family, and we haven’t seen you since we nailed your coffin lid shut,” Slade said with a shrug.
I shuddered at the mention of that coffin. I never wanted to go back into that thing ever again.
“You will. One day,” Tristan said with a look of sympathy on his face. “We all will. It’s just how it is. We all just have to take our turns dealing with it.”
I nodded, feeling kind of numb. I was getting lost in my thoughts, my memories, of that musty old coffin.
“Some of us handle it better than others,” Slade said jokingly with a shake of his head.
“Enough coffin talk. Let’s just enjoy the time we have together now,” Julius suggested. “We should throw a party to celebrate us all being back together again, huh?”
Slade considered it. “The last thing we need to do is draw more attention to ourselves. I feel like we may already be on some people’s radars. They’re going to wonder why you’ve been gone for a year, Noah.”
“No one’s said anything about us so far. At least nothing that I’ve caught wind of. What about you guys?” Julius asked, looking at Tristan and Slade.
They both shook their heads.
“I think we probably use just the right amount of compulsion to trick the other vampires into not caring about us whenever we need to convince someone,” Julius added.
“I think a party would help us blend in with the other vampires more, if you ask me. We’d be like normal vampire teenagers if we threw a party,” Tristan offered.
“That’s a thought,” Slade agreed as he nodded. “Maybe we can consider it. But it’s going to be hard to arrange. We’re going to be pretty busy the rest of the year. We have three new vampires we have to keep our eyes on.”
“They can come to the party, too,” I said.
Truthfully, I really wanted to see Riley again—sooner, rather than later. I didn’t want to have to wait until our classes started up.
I wasn’t sure what it was about her, but even before I drank f
rom her, I was drawn to her. To her voice, to her scent, to her very presence in that graveyard. For a year, it felt like there had been something missing. I’d had an empty hole inside of me, and the moment she’d stepped foot in that graveyard, I’d felt complete.
It could have been the fact that I hadn’t seen a girl in person in a year, but I didn’t think that was it. Even if I had been surrounded by girls, I would have chosen her.
I’d always choose her.
“You almost killed her,” Slade reminded me, a look of anger filling his bright blue eyes.
I’d already told him that it had been an accident. I wasn’t sure what more I could have said to get through to him, to make him understand.
Even though I’d left Riley for dead… even though I was the one who caused her to almost die… the thought that I was the one who had done it was eating at me. But I hadn’t been in my right mind when that happened.
I still wasn’t.
I wouldn’t be able to think straight until I stopped being so hungry.
But then after that… After that, I would go to her. I would apologize. I would make it right… somehow.
“You won’t do anything like that. You’re going to leave her the fuck alone,” Slade warned, his voice harsh and threatening. “You won’t go anywhere near her ever again. You’re going to keep your distance during your class together. Got it?”
He was my Alpha. I had no choice but to nod my agreement to his rule.
He seemed so overprotective of Riley. It seemed like he had already claimed her as his. Was that the real reason he wanted me to leave her alone?
Slade darted his eyes to the ground, avoiding my gaze.
I could have tried to leave her alone, but I knew it was going to be really hard to stick to that rule.
Her blood had been so… intoxicating.
“We’re going to have to get some more blood into you,” Slade said, ignoring my other thought.
“Why is Noah reacting so badly to his reawakening?” Tristan asked. “None of us were ever this hungry when we went through it.”
Slade shook his head slowly. “I don’t know, but I’m not going to trust him until he gets past this hunger phase.”
“We’re all going to have to keep an eye on him. We’ll take turns. Tristan can have first watch,” Julius suggested, clapping his hands together like a football coach.
