Balthazar

by Claudia Gray

  “Not sure there’s much point. Driving alone isn’t that much safer for you than walking. But we’ll think of something. Maybe you can work out a way to get a ride from Madison or some other friend.”

  Skye’s phone chimed; she was so on edge that even that familiar sound made her jump. She lifted it to see a message from Clem: Plz tell me ur quiet b/c ur making out with Balty.

  Hastily she sent back: Will you SHUT IT b/c he’s RIGHT HERE and he can read?! Skye glanced over at Balthazar, who was paying no attention to her texts. Instead, he stared out the window into the darkness. She would’ve thought he was keeping watch if not for the deep sadness in his eyes.

  Clem texted back: Sorry!

  It’s OK. Listen, lots of stuff is going on here. Crazy stuff. Will email 2nite or 2morrow and catch you up. Already Skye knew she needed a friend who could really talk to her about all of this; Madison might be fun to hang out with, but she didn’t understand anything about vampires or ghosts, this entire vast supernatural world that hid within the cracks of everything else they’d ever known. Clementine, on the other hand, not only went to Evernight Academy but also grew up with a haunted car. She’d get it.

  As she slid her phone back into her pack, she stole another glance at Balthazar. If anything, he was even more absorbed in thought than before. The motion of the bus rocked them back and forth in one rhythm. She said, “Are you okay?”

  “I should really be asking you that question.”

  Her throat still hurt, but it was a dull ache now, like the sensation of trying not to cry. “I’m scared. That’s all.”

  “That’s enough.”

  “Definitely. But—something else is going on with you.” It was prying, and she knew it, but Balthazar obviously wasn’t the type to talk easily about his feelings. If she wanted to know more, prying was clearly in order.

  Balthazar didn’t seem to mind, but he thought his answer over for a long time. “Those memories—of being alive—they’re the best memories I have. And the worst memories I have. Living through that again brings a lot back.”

  “What did you remember?”

  A small smile crossed his face. “My first kiss.”

  “Really?” That didn’t sound so sad, Skye thought, until she realized how long ago it might’ve been. “When was that?”

  “1640.”

  Skye tried very hard not to let her shock show; she’d guessed he was old, but somehow hearing him say it jolted her regardless. She said only, “Where?”

  “Massachusetts Bay Colony. Just outside Boston.”

  It was such a simple answer, and yet she knew from the way he said it that Balthazar told very few people about his past. She wanted to hear more, but didn’t want to push—to abuse the trust he was showing her. So she said only, “What happened?”

  Balthazar shook his head. “One thing you can always be sure of—any vampire’s life story has an unhappy ending.”

  Instinctively, Skye leaned her head against his shoulder—offering comfort and seeking it, all at once. Even as she did so, she thought, This is too much. I shouldn’t hang on him. Probably he isn’t feeling what I’m feeling right now.

  But before she could pull away, Balthazar’s arm tightened around her, and his head rested against hers. Skye closed her eyes. She didn’t know why she felt less lost now that she knew he was lost, too. Yet she did.

  Balthazar walked her inside, all the way to her bedroom. As she wearily set down her pack, he went to the window and stared out into the darkness. “I don’t think they’re around tonight. Bianca’s wraith show did the trick.”

  “That’s something, anyway.” She walked toward him, rubbing her sore neck. “Maybe I’ll actually get some sleep tonight. But I doubt it.”

  “I could stay, if you wanted.” Balthazar looked back at her, his fighter’s frame outlined by the darkness.

  “Stay tonight? In my room?”

  “Yeah—oh. Or downstairs. Around. So you’d feel safer.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Skye wanted him to stay as badly as she’d ever wanted anything. But right now it felt like she might do reckless things, without thinking, only to escape the fear beating within her like a second pulse.

  “Are you okay?” Balthazar said. Only then did she realize she’d begun trembling again. She didn’t know if that was from fright, tension, exhaustion, desire—all of them together—just that there was only so much she could take in a couple of days, and she’d taken it.

  She reached out blindly with one hand, and Balthazar’s arms went around her, enveloping her in his embrace. Skye didn’t cry, didn’t speak. Instead she gripped the lapels of his coat as she buried her face in the curve of his neck. He held her tightly as she breathed in and out, steady and slow, calming herself.

  “We’re going to get through this.” He spoke as if they were truly in it together, as if she weren’t the hunted and he the protector. “I’m not going to let them hurt you. Not ever.”

  Skye couldn’t say anything. She pulled back to look at Balthazar, at the strong lines of his face so close to hers. The moonlight off the snow had painted him silver. Without hesitating, without thinking, she tilted her face up and kissed him.

  It was the softest touch, only for an instant. Balthazar didn’t move. The reality of what she’d done rushed over Skye, and she might have stepped away or even apologized—if Balthazar hadn’t kissed her back.

  This time she wound her arms around his neck, closed her eyes, and let the world fall away. His mouth was hard against hers, the kiss fierce enough to electrify. It was only a few seconds, but it felt like she’d escaped all the danger and fear forever.

  When they broke apart, though, Balthazar took her arms from around his neck, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”

  “Why not?” Skye gave him a look. “Because you don’t like me that way?”

  “What? No. That isn’t—no.” One of his hands stroked through her hair, a brief, simple caress. “It’s just… I made a rule centuries ago, Skye. No getting involved with humans. It’s dangerous for them, more than you can possibly realize.”

  “I’m already in danger,” she pointed out, but she stepped away from him anyway. Although logically she thought she ought to have felt rejected, she didn’t. Balthazar’s eyes never left her face; his body remained taut from the tension of their brief kiss. And that kiss—

  No, he wasn’t rejecting her. He wanted her. He just wouldn’t let himself have her.

  Skye said, “You should go, I think.”

  “Yeah.” Balthazar had obviously been expecting her to ask him to stay, or to try to kiss him again. Had he been hoping for that? Hoping she’d give him an excuse to give in? “I’ll keep watch outside for a while, though. Make sure you’re safe. So you can sleep.”

  She smiled at him crookedly. “Thanks.”

  Balthazar hesitated, clearly wanting to say something else. For a long moment they stared into each other’s eyes, yearning to keep the connection. Then he was gone—not like a normal person, but vampire fast, as if he had flickered into shadow instead of walking out. She gasped, both from shock and from the pain of that sudden parting.

  Every limb heavy with exhaustion, her brain fuzzy with sudden desire, Skye dressed for bed. Just before she put out the last light, though, she stood at the window for a moment, knowing the illumination from her lamp would outline her to anybody watching from below.

  Tonight she knew Redgrave wasn’t watching. Balthazar was.

  “Good night,” she whispered, before turning out the light.

  Chapter Thirteen

  BALTHAZAR PACED THE LENGTH OF HIS BARE carriage house; the sheets were rumpled from his brief, futile attempt to get some sleep. The early morning sunlight filtering through the curtains seemed to fall on his mistakes, making them clearer, and therefore worse.

  No humans. It’s a simple rule. How could you forget it?

  His mind’s reply didn’t take the form of words; instead,
he remembered Skye’s face last night—drawn and pale, and yet trying so hard to be brave that his defenses had crumbled. The way she’d leaned against him on the bus, glowing with warmth like the last ember of a fire. The feel of her mouth against his.

  Frustrated, Balthazar tried to push the memories away. Skye was a beautiful girl. He enjoyed spending time with her. He knew he was already committed to keeping her safe from Redgrave and his tribe. That was all there could ever be to it, though. Going any further than one impulsive, mistaken kiss would be unfair to her in the end.

  But it had been so long since anyone good and decent had wanted him that way—and her silhouette against the window last night, looking for him in the darkness—

  No humans.

  As he got ready for the day, slicking back his hair and dressing as tweedy-preppy-conservative as he could manage with his wardrobe, Balthazar thought again of how fragile Skye had been the night before. Being pushed away after a kiss like that: That couldn’t have helped her state of mind. How could he have gotten so carried away, been so selfish, as to pile one more thing onto the burdens she already had to bear?

  He shrugged on his blazer and looked at himself in the mirror; his reflection was crisp and bright, no doubt thanks to the sip of Skye’s blood he’d drunk the night before. Even in small doses, living human blood gave vampires a kind of vitality nothing else could. Not that he deserved it.

  “You bastard,” he said to the man in the mirror.

  A knock on the door startled him. His first thought was Skye, but he hadn’t told her exactly where he was staying yet. To find him here, somebody would have had to be following him.

  Balthazar tensed. He walked to his small kitchen and looked in the knife drawer; nothing in there was larger than a ten-inch carving knife, but the blade seemed sturdy. It would do. Palming the handle so that the knife lay flat against one arm, he put one hand on the doorknob, took a deep breath, and opened it—

  —to see Madison Findley on his doorstop, a coffeemaker in her hands.

  “Madison!” He put his hands behind his back, the better to conceal the knife. “Good morning.”

  “Sorry to intrude, Mr. More.” Madison didn’t look sorry; her eyes darted around the bit of his carriage house she could see, the gesture of the perpetually nosy. “My dad remembered last night that the coffeepot in here broke and we hadn’t gotten around to putting in the replacement.” She hoisted the coffee maker a little higher in her arms. “Meet the replacement.”

  “Oh, thanks. Some caffeine would be good around now.” Balthazar didn’t respond much to caffeine; he just needed something to joke about, so he could laugh to cover the sound of his sliding the knife onto his table.

  “They said you took Skye home last night. Is she okay?”

  “Fine, I think. It can get hot in the gym, and just after you come in from the cold—you know.” Which made no sense, but hopefully Madison would skip over it. “Just dropped her off at the house. She should be in class this morning.”

  “That’s good. Hey, want me to set this up for you?”

  She’d taken one step inside before Balthazar’s hands were free to collect the coffeemaker from her. “That’s okay, Madison. I’ve got it. But seriously, thanks for bringing it by.”

  “Well, okay.” Madison hesitated a moment before stepping back out again. “See you in class!”

  “Don’t be late!” he called cheerfully as he shut the door. That was a teacherish sort of thing to say, right? At that moment he was too relieved to worry about it much.

  It never occurred to him to wonder whether Redgrave and the others would really have knocked on the door if they’d come intending to do violence.

  He suspected they wouldn’t knock on his door the night they came to kill him.

  Balthazar walked into his first class just before the bell, so all the students were in their seats. Though he gave the room a glance he hoped was professional, his eyes searched for Skye first of all—

  —and found her. Instead of looking crushed by last night’s events, as he’d feared she would, she gazed back at him evenly. Serene, almost. As if she didn’t have a care in the world. And she’d dressed accordingly.

  That skirt … that cannot possibly pass the dress code.

  Skye’s outfit wasn’t outrageous; her sweater was slightly oversized, even, and the colors were all blacks and dark grays and plum-colored tights. But he could see a whole lot of the tights, almost all the way up her thighs, because that skirt…

  Drooling over one of the students in front of the rest of the class is definitely not professional, he told himself, pulling it together as best he could. “Good morning, everybody. We’ll be diving into chapter one today—though I haven’t had much time to review, I’m afraid. Had to catch the game last night.”

  “Where the Weatherman kicked their butts!” somebody said, and most everyone started cheering and clapping. A few people patted the shoulders of a tall, handsome kid in the front row, who hung his head in not entirely false modesty. Balthazar glanced at the seating chart to see that this was WEATHERS, CRAIG… Skye’s ex, he realized. Not that he should care one way or the other.

  “Okay, everyone, settle down.” That was definitely a teacherish thing to say. “Basketball is over, and Colonial History Honors Seminar has begun. Let’s see, what do we have here, chapter one is … freedom of religion?”

  “It’s, like, about the Pilgrims?” said a cute Asian girl seated directly beside Craig. “And how they came to America so they could create freedom of religion for everybody?”

  “Well, that’s not true,” Balthazar said. “Seriously, does it say that?”

  Everyone in the class seemed to be glancing around at one another—except Skye, who was now hiding a smile behind her hand. Madison Findley piped up: “Yeah, it does. I mean, that was the whole point, right?”

  “No. That was—as far from the whole point as it gets.” He started flipping through that first chapter, which had been written by someone with more patriotism than common sense. “This is wrong. And that’s not—Good God, it’s all wrong. Completely and totally wrong.”

  The Asian girl (whom the seating chart called FONG, BRITNEE) said, “Then why did they come?”

  “The reason the Godly—wait, let me back up. The Puritans didn’t call themselves Puritans; that was a nickname given to them by people who disliked them—in other words, everyone who wasn’t a Puritan.” Though he’d fallen into the trap of using it himself, in the centuries since: The present always exercised a kind of tyranny over the past, all-knowing, invariably right. “The reason nobody liked them was because they were convinced they knew the only true way to God, the only true way for people to live. They didn’t come to the New World to create freedom of religion; they came to create the kingdom of God on earth. They could worship as they chose, but anybody else who came to that territory—or, in the case of the Native Americans, anybody who lived there already—was going to have to worship in the same way. Even other Christians weren’t welcome. Roman Catholics in particular.”

  Some of the students had started to smile, but in a good way, as if they were actually sort of interested against their will. Balthazar decided to go with it. He shut the idiotic book and just went to the board. If the best way to handle this class was to talk about what he already knew, fine.

  “The Puritans called themselves the Godly,” he said, jotting it on the board. All around him, students started taking notes. Skye looked down last, though. Their eyes locked for an instant, long enough for Balthazar to realize how good it felt to know at least one person understood that he was telling his own truth.

  By the study hall at the end of the day, Balthazar was feeling pretty good about the whole teacher thing—at least until Skye walked into the library, and how could that skirt possibly have become shorter since homeroom? It had to have. There was no way she could’ve walked around like that for hours without being spoken to. Or possibly arrested.

  Balthazar realized th
at was partly the old-fashioned side of him talking—her skirt was short but not indecent. The obscenity of it wasn’t the length of the hemline; it was the thoughts that hemline inspired in him.

  Skye texted him first: I’m going straight home after school. Madison asked me over, but I told her I still feel weird. You didn’t tell me you were living over there!

  Haven’t had much chance. Listen, are you okay?

  Yeah. The vision in Ms. Loos’s class today was intense, but since I fainted yesterday at the game, she was actually nice about it for a change. I think everybody thinks I’m epileptic or something. I should be transferred out of there by the end of the week, though.

  Balthazar raised an eyebrow at the realization that Tonia had been giving Skye a difficult time, but that was hardly the most important subject for them to discuss. I just need to say—I’m sorry. About last night.

  For what?

  For going further than I should’ve gone.

  I was hoping you were going to say, for leaving too soon.

  The idea of lingering longer in Skye’s bedroom flickered in his mind, invitingly, but Balthazar pushed it away. I think you’re amazing. You know that. But I meant what I said. Getting involved with humans—it’s a line I don’t cross.

  There’s a first time for everything.

  He glanced up from his phone to look at her the precise moment she did the same. As their eyes met across the library, Skye recrossed her legs, giving him another glimpse of just how long and slim and toned they were.

  A bold move—but her eyes told the true story. There he could see her uncertainty, her vulnerability. Whatever it was, that mixture of flirtation and fragility struck deep within him.

  Balthazar’s response was as much a reminder to himself as to Skye: We can’t be anything more than friends.

  I hear you, Skye sent back, which seemed surprisingly reasonable—until the next line arrived. But nobody said I had to make it easy for you.