Bloodlines b-1

by Richelle Mead

“No one forced her to do it,” I said. “Least of all Adrian. The fact that she coaxed Lee and didn’t tell us shows that she knew it was wrong. That’s free will. And Adrian has no such excuses.”

  “Yeah . . . but he’s Adrian,” said Eddie lamely. “Sometimes I don’t know how much of what he does is him and how much is spirit.”

  “Spirit users can take antidepressants, can’t they? If he’s worried about it becoming a problem, then he needs to step up and take charge. He has a choice. He’s not helpless. There are no victims here.”

  Eddie studied me for several seconds. “And I thought I had a harsh view on life.”

  “You have a harsh life,” I corrected. “But yours is built around the idea that you always have to take care of other people. I was raised to believe that’s necessary sometimes but that everyone still needs to try to take care of themselves.”

  “And yet here you are.”

  “Tell me about it. You want to come talk to Lee with me?”

  All apology vanished from Eddie’s face. “Yes,” he said fiercely.

  We found Lee sitting on a bench outside, looking miserable. He jumped up when we approached. “You guys, I’m so sorry! I shouldn’t have done it. She just sounded so sad and so lost that I wanted to—”

  “You know how protective we are of her,” I said. “How could you have not thought that this would worry us?”

  “And she’s a minor,” said Eddie. “You can’t just take her away and do whatever you want with her!”

  I admit, I was a little surprised that the threat to Jill’s virtue was what he chose to bring up. Don’t get me wrong—I was also conscious of her age. But after he saw her literally die, it seemed like Eddie would be worried about more than making out.

  Lee’s gray eyes went wide. “Nothing happened! I would never do anything like that to her. I promise! I’d never take advantage of someone so trusting. I can’t ruin this. She means more to me than any other girl I’ve dated. I want us to be together forever.”

  I thought being “together forever” was extreme at their ages, but there was a sincerity in his eyes that was touching. It still didn’t excuse what he’d done. He took our lecturing seriously and promised there would never be a repeat.

  “But please . . . can I still see her when you’re around? Can we still do group things?”

  Eddie and I exchanged glances. “If she’s even allowed to leave campus after this,” I said. “I really don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  Lee left after a few more apologies, and Eddie also returned to his dorm. I was walking upstairs when my phone rang. Glancing down, I was startled to see my parents’ number in Salt Lake City on the caller ID.

  “Hello?” I asked. For a frantic moment, I hoped it was Zoe.

  “Sydney.”

  My father. My stomach filled with dread.

  “We need to talk about what’s happened.”

  Panic shot through me. How had he found out about Jill’s disappearance already? Keith jumped out as the obvious culprit. But how had Keith found out? Had he been at Clarence’s when Eddie called Adrian? Despite his flaws, I couldn’t imagine Adrian telling Keith what had happened.

  “Talk about what?” I asked, playing for time.

  “Your behavior. Keith called me last night, and I must say, I’m very disappointed.”

  “Last night?” This wasn’t about Jill’s disappearance. So what was it about?

  “You’re supposed to be coordinating efforts for that Moroi girl to blend in. You aren’t supposed to be out socializing with them and having a good time! I could hardly believe it when Keith said you took them out bowling.”

  “It was mini-golf, and Keith okayed it! I asked him first.”

  “And then I hear you’re helping all these other vampires run errands and whatnot. Your duty is only to the girl, and that is to do only what’s necessary for her survival—which I also hear you aren’t doing. Keith tells me there was an incident where you didn’t properly handle her difficulties in the sun?”

  “I reported that immediately!” I cried. I’d known Keith was planning to use that against me. “Keith—” I paused, thinking about the best way to handle this. “Misunderstood my initial report.” Keith had blown off my initial report, but telling my father his protégé had lied would just put my father’s defenses up. He wouldn’t believe me. “And Keith’s one to talk! He’s always hanging out with Clarence and won’t say why.”

  “Probably to make sure he remains stable. I understand the old man isn’t all there.”

  “He’s obsessed with vampire hunters,” I explained. “He thinks there are humans out there that killed his niece.”

  “Well,” said my father, “there are some humans out there who catch on to the vampire world, those whom we can’t dissuade. Hardly hunters. Keith’s doing his duty by enlightening Clarence. You, however, are misguided.”

  “That’s not a fair comparison!”

  “Honestly, I blame myself,” he said. Somehow I doubted that. “I shouldn’t have let you go. You weren’t ready—not after what you went through. Being with these vampires is confusing you. That’s why I’m recalling you.”

  “What?”

  “If I had my way, it’d be right now. Unfortunately, Zoe won’t be ready for another two weeks. The Alchemists want her to undergo some testing before she gets her tattoo. Once she does, we’ll send her in your place and get you . . . some help.”

  “Dad! This is crazy. I’m doing fine here. Please, don’t send Zoe—”

  “I’m sorry, Sydney,” he said. “You’ve left me no choice. Please don’t get into trouble in your remaining time.”

  He disconnected, and I stood in the hall, my heart sinking. Two weeks! Two weeks and they were sending Zoe. And me . . . where were they sending me? I didn’t want to think about it, but I knew. I needed to stop this from happening. Wheels were already in motion. The tattoos, I suddenly thought. If I could finish my tests on the stolen substances and find out info about the blood supplier, I would earn the Alchemists’ regard—hopefully enough to take away the taint that Keith had put on me.

  And why had he done it? Why now? I knew he’d never wanted me along. Maybe he had just been biding his time, building up evidence against me until he could get me ousted in one fell swoop. I wouldn’t let him, though. I’d bust open this tattoo case and prove who the stellar Alchemist was. I had enough evidence now to get their attention and would simply turn in what I had if nothing new came to light within a week.

  The decision filled me with resolve, but I still had trouble sleeping when I went to bed later. My father’s threat hung over me, as did my fear of the re-education centers.

  After about an hour of tossing and turning I finally dozed off. But even that was fitful and troubled. I woke up after only a few hours and then had to fall asleep all over again.

  This time, I dreamed.

  In the dream, I stood in Clarence’s living room. Everything was neat and in place, the dark wood and antique furniture giving the space its usual ominous feel. The details were surprisingly vivid, and it was like I could even smell the dusty books and leather on the furniture.

  “Huh. It worked. Wasn’t sure if it would with a human.”

  I spun around and found Adrian leaning against the wall. He hadn’t been there a moment ago, and I had a flash of that childhood fear of vampires appearing out of nowhere. Then I remembered this was a dream, and these kinds of things happened.

  “What weren’t you sure about?” I asked.

  He gestured around him. “If I could reach you. Bring you here into this dream.” I didn’t quite follow what he meant and said nothing. He arched an eyebrow. “You don’t know, do you? Where you are?”

  “At Clarence’s,” I said reasonably. “Well, in reality I’m asleep in my bed. This is just a dream.”

  “You’re half right,” he said. “This is a spirit dream. This is real.”

  I frowned. A spirit dream. Since most of our information about spir
it was sketchy, we had hardly anything on spirit dreams. I’d learned most of what I knew about them from Rose, who had been frequently visited by Adrian in them. According to her, the dreamer and the spirit user were actually together, in a meeting of the minds, communicating across long distances. It was hard for me to fully grasp that, but I’d seen Rose wake up with information she wouldn’t have otherwise had. Still, I had no evidence to suggest I was really in a spirit dream now.

  “This is just a regular dream,” I countered.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “Look around. Concentrate. Doesn’t it feel different? Like a dream . . . but not like a dream. Not quite like real life either. Call it what you want, but the next time we see each other in the waking world, I’ll be able to tell you exactly what happened here.”

  I looked around the room, studying it as he’d suggested. Again, I was struck by the vividness of even the smallest details. It certainly felt real, but dreams often did . . . right? You usually never knew you were dreaming until you woke up. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to still my mind. And like that, I felt it. I understood what he meant. Not quite like a dream. Not quite like real life. My eyes flew open.

  “Stop it,” I cried, backing away from him. “Make it end. Get me out of here.”

  Because in accepting that this really was a spirit dream, I’d had to acknowledge something else: I was surrounded in vampire magic. My mind was ensnared in it. I felt claustrophobic. The magic was pressing on me, crushing the air.

  “Please.” My voice grew more and more frantic. “Please let me go.”

  Adrian straightened up, looking surprised. “Whoa, Sage. Calm down. You’re okay.”

  “No. I’m not. I don’t want this. I don’t want the magic touching me.”

  “It won’t hurt you,” he said. “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s wrong,” I whispered. “Adrian, stop it.”

  He reached out a hand, like he might try to comfort me, and then thought better of it. “It won’t hurt you,” he repeated. “Just hear me out, and then I’ll dissolve it. I promise.”

  Even in the dream, my pulse was racing. I wrapped my arms around myself and backed up against the wall, trying to make myself small. “Okay,” I whispered. “Hurry.”

  “I just wanted to say . . .” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and glanced away uncomfortably before looking at me again. Were his eyes greener here than in real life? Or was it just my imagination? “I wanted to . . . I wanted to apologize.”

  “For what?” I asked. I couldn’t process anything beyond my own terror.

  “For what I did. You were right. I wasted your time and your work today.”

  I forced my mind to dredge up memories from this afternoon. “Thank you,” I said simply.

  “I don’t know why I do these things,” he added. “I just can’t help it.”

  I was still terrified, still suffocating in the magic surrounding me. Somehow, I managed to echo my earlier conversation with Eddie.

  “You can take control of yourself,” I said. “You aren’t a victim.”

  Adrian had been gazing off, troubled by his thoughts. He suddenly jerked his gaze back to me. “Just like Rose.”

  “What?”

  Adrian held out his hand, and a thorny red rose suddenly materialized there. I gasped and tried to back up farther. He twirled the stem around, careful not to prick his fingers.

  “She said that. That I was playing the victim. Am I really that pathetic?”

  The rose wilted and crumpled before my eyes, turning to dust and then vanishing altogether. I made the sign against evil on my shoulder and tried to remember what we were talking about.

  “Pathetic’s not the word I’d use,” I said.

  “What word would you use?”

  My mind was blanking. “I don’t know. Confused?”

  He smiled. “That’s an understatement.”

  “I’ll check a dictionary when I wake up and get back to you. Can you please end this?”

  The smile faded to an expression of amazement. “You really are that scared, aren’t you?” I let my silence answer for me. “Okay, one more thing, then. I thought of another way I can get out of Clarence’s and get some money. I was reading about college and financial aid. If I took classes somewhere, do you think I could get enough to live on?”

  This was a concrete question I could deal with. “It’s possible. But I think it’s too late. Classes have started everywhere.”

  “I found a place on the internet. Carlton. A college on the other side of town that hasn’t started yet. But I’d still have to act fast, and . . . that’s what I don’t know how to do. The paperwork. The procedures. But that’s your specialty, right?”

  “Sad but true,” I said. Some part of me thought Carlton sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  He took a deep breath. “Will you help me? I know it’s making you babysit again, but I don’t know where to start. I promise I’ll meet you halfway, though. Tell me what I need to do, and I will.”

  Babysit. He’d been talking to Jill or Eddie or both. That was reasonable, though. He’d want to know that she was okay. I could only imagine how my tirade had been paraphrased.

  “You were in college before,” I said, recalling his record. I’d scoured it when putting together the ill-fated resume. “You dropped out.”

  Adrian nodded. “I did.”

  “How do I know you won’t this time? How do I know you aren’t just wasting my time again?”

  “You don’t know, Sage,” he admitted. “And I don’t blame you. All I can ask is that you give me another chance. That you try to believe me when I say I’ll follow through. That you believe I’m serious. That you trust me.”

  Long moments stretched out between us. I’d relaxed slightly, without even realizing it, though I remained up against the wall. I studied him, wishing I was better at reading people. His eyes were that green in real life, I decided. I just usually didn’t look at them so closely.

  “Okay,” I said. “I trust you.”

  Total shock filled his features. “You do?”

  I was no better at reading people than I had been ten seconds ago, but in that moment, I suddenly gained a flash of understanding into the mystery that was Adrian Ivashkov. People didn’t believe in him very often. They had low expectations of him, so he did as well. Even Eddie had sort of written him off: He’s Adrian. As though there was nothing to be done for it.

  I also suddenly realized that, as unlikely as it seemed, Adrian and I had a lot in common. Both of us were constantly boxed in by others’ expectations. It didn’t matter that people expected everything of me and nothing of him. We were still the same, both of us constantly trying to break out of the lines that others had defined for us and be our own person. Adrian Ivashkov—flippant, vampire party boy—was more like me than anyone else I knew. The thought was so startling that I couldn’t even answer him right away.

  “I do,” I said at last. “I’ll help you.” I shivered. The fear of the dream returned, and I just wanted this to be over. I would’ve agreed to anything to be back in my non-magical bed. “But not here. Please—will you send me back? Or end this? Or whatever it is?”

  He nodded slowly, still looking stunned. The room began to fade, its colors and lines melting like a painting left in the rain. Soon, all dimmed to black, and I found myself waking up in my dorm room bed. As I did, I just barely caught the sound of his voice in my mind:

  Thank you, Sage.

  CHAPTER 19

  IF I’D HAD TROUBLE SLEEPING BEFORE, Adrian’s dream only made things worse. Even though I was safely back in my own bed, I couldn’t shake the feeling of violation. I imagined that my skin was crawling with the taint of magic. I’d been so anxious to get out of the dream that I’d only half-realized what I’d been agreeing to. I respected Adrian’s desire to go to college but now wondered if I should really be helping with that after my father’s chastisement about “getting friendly” with vampires.
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  I wasn’t in the greatest of moods when I finally got up a few hours later. The tension in our room was thick as Jill and I prepared for school. Jill’s defiance from yesterday was gone, and she kept watching me nervously when she thought I didn’t notice. At first, I figured my outburst from last night had made her uneasy. But as we walked out of the room for breakfast, I knew there was more to it.

  “What?” I asked bluntly, breaking the silence at last. “What do you want to ask me?”

  Jill gave me another wary glance as we joined the rush of other girls heading downstairs. “Um, something happened yesterday.”

  A lot of things happened yesterday, I thought. That was my overtired, bitter self talking, and I knew that wasn’t what she was leading up to.

  “Such as?” I asked.

  “Well . . . I was starting to tell you about how Lee took me to that store. That clothing boutique where he knew the owner? Her name’s Lia DiStefano. We talked, and she, uh, offered me a job. Kind of.”

  “The modeling job?” We reached the cafeteria’s food line, though I had little appetite. I selected a yogurt, which looked sad and lonely in the middle of my otherwise empty tray. “We talked about that. It’s not safe.”

  Still, it was ironic that a random visit could land Jill a job when three formal interviews had failed for Adrian.

  “This isn’t for posed pictures that would be in a magazine or anything, though. It’s a runway show of local designers. We told her this story that we’re part of a religion that has rules about photos and identity. Lia said she’d actually been thinking of having her models wear half masks. Like the kind you wear at a masquerade? Between that and the lighting and the movement . . . well, it’d be hard to identify me if any candid shots got out. It’s just a onetime event, but I’d have to see her beforehand for fittings . . . and to practice. She’d pay me too, but I’d need rides to get there and parental permission.”

  We sat down, and I spent an unnecessary amount of time stirring my yogurt as I mulled over her words. I could feel her gaze on me as I thought.

  “It’s kind of silly, I guess,” she continued when I didn’t answer. “I mean, I don’t have any experience. And I don’t even know why she’d want me. Maybe it’s some gimmick she’s going for. Weird models or something.”