Chapter 5
I don’t understand why she threw me under the bus this time.” I dump my single bag on the sterile claw-foot couch in the middle of our new dorm suite.
Cara and Alice are snickering as they check out the rooms, which look tiny and austere, perhaps because of all the dark wood flooring and creepy, gothic wainscoting along the entirety of the fourteen-foot ceilings.
Alice leans in her doorway, her long legs looking even longer in her skinny jeans. A big jeweled belt rests cockeyed on her model-narrow waist. “I, for one, am glad I won’t be playing the role of super tramp this assignment.”
I gape, about to say something snarky about how Alice couldn’t look less like a tramp at the moment, but think better of it.
“Oh, give her time,” Cara says to me from her own doorway. “Besides, Dr. Haskins did you a favor.”
“A favor? By setting me up as a tramp? How so?”
“Think of it, girl. Now the Vamplayer will come looking for you, not the other way around.”
I picture the tall boy in the alcove, his hand brushing away the redhead’s curls, his confident stance, his cool eyes peering up at me as if he knew I’d been watching him all along. I shrug, unconvinced. “You know that’s not how it usually works.”
“Not usually,” says Alice, “but at least she tried.”
I sigh and retreat to my room to freshen up for dinner.
Mine is small but bright. Afternoon light filters through three gabled windows dominating most of each wall. A steel-framed bed is under the middle one, two bare wooden nightstands on either side, a matching dresser across from the foot of the bed.
Under another window is a simple desk, a rickety wooden chair shoved in as far as it will go. On the desk my schedule is wedged under the brass stand of an ancient lamp. I ignore it for now and look behind me to see if the other girls are watching.
The coast is clear.
As I do the first day of every assignment, I take my one-use, one-number pager and hide it beneath my nightstand. Crumpling up a clean sock and using it for cover, I shove both way in the back, where they’re not readily visible from the front door or anywhere in the room but directly in front of it and then only while you’re lying flat on the floor.
Next I change into simple black jeans and a gauzy black blouse over a silver tank top. I slip into charcoal shoes with enough heel to get me an inch higher but comfortable enough to walk the entire grounds of Nightshade before dinner if necessary.
When it’s my turn in the communal bathroom, I freshen up with some lip gloss and a touch of Cara’s perfume while my Sisters wait impatiently at the front door.
“So?” Alice says like a kid waiting to open presents Christmas morning. “Same drill as always? We’ll split up and make the rounds, sit together at dinner, and see where we fit.”
Cara and I look at each other. “I know where you’ll fit best,” she says to Alice as we walk out the door and into the hallway. “Right in some jock’s arms.”
“Or two,” I say, “if he has a friend.”
Chapter 6
I know I’m supposed to be doing recon right now and scouting the school for potential Vamplayers, but I skip the quad and the lawn and the gym and the track field, where kids normally congregate, and make a beeline for the cafeteria instead.
I know we still have a couple hours until dinner, but I’m a little famished from the long trip out— and not just for the red stuff.
It’s a little known fact that most vampires are absolute sugar fiends. Like, crack addict-style sugar fiends. Some of us down sodas by the six-pack. Others literally rip open three or four sugar packets in a fast-food restaurant and glide into a blissful sugar coma as the granules dissolve on our greedy tongues.
They say this one girl at the Academy—I forget her name—went two full weeks, a record, without ingesting a single drop of blood by streamlining a case of Pixy Stix she’d ordered online.
My weakness, now and always, is candy. Chocolate preferably, bars of chocolate specifically, chocolate kisses in a pinch, chocolate squares if I’m desperate. But really, anything with straight-up sugar will do.
Yes, I know, we don’t really digest our food so much as absorb it. And there’s the rub: between feedings of blood consommé and braised blood clots and the occasional live vein during the holidays, there’s nothing like a quick sugar high to rehydrate your cells and keep you humming along in Vamplayer-detecting mode.
This is what I hate about academies and conservatories and prep schools and the like: assigned meal times.
Public schools are much better when it comes to enabling sugar addicts to get their fix. I mean, between the vending machines, candy bar fund-raisers, the parking lots smack-dab in the middle of two convenience stores and three gas stations, a Sister never wants for sugar when she’s assigned to a public school.
But academies, especially conservatories, are so rigid. No quick sugar fixes unless you cozy up to the kitchen staff and persuade them to break you off a nibble of baking chocolate or, if necessary, a marsh-mallow or a macaroon.
I hear clanging dishes down a distant hall and know I’m finally heading in the right direction. Bring the map next time, Lily!
I peel off toward the sound, walking what feel like miles and miles of empty, twenty-foot-high hallways lined on one side with vast stained glass windows and on the other with stone.
I pass a few kids, mostly girls with long thin legs and swinging short skirts. I give them a casual nod, get none in return, and fantasize about sinking my fangs into their stupid chichi throats to teach them a lesson about common civility. Down, girl, down.
The clinking grows louder and louder, and I enter through two giant doors that lead to a sprawling, if empty, cafeteria.
It seems to stretch, like the rest of the school, for miles. It’s as if the Jolly Green Giant designed it for himself but had to sell it at a loss during the recession.
I count at least three dozen tables with at least a dozen chairs at each. They are clean and smell of bleach, and some still even look damp.
My flats are soft and silent on the tiled cafeteria floor as I pass through the sea of empty tables and shoved-in chairs.
I hear hissing steam, laughter, clinking plates, and rattling silverware and know I’m in the right place. I can almost taste the bittersweet chocolate or maybe even a squirt of chocolate syrup or perhaps just the last of the maraschino cherry juice at the bottom of a jar.
I’m so eager my fangs quiver, and I nearly barge straight into the kitchen proper.
Then I hear this and pause: “There’s no way Luke Skywalker could beat Captain Kirk in a fair fight.”
Oh boy, this ought to be good.
I stand just outside the red swinging double doors, complete with grimy portholes at the top center like you see on cruise ships, and listen in.
A hearty baritone voice says, “Define fair fight, Zander.”
“What always constitutes a fair fight, Grover?” the other asks, his voice clipped and masculine, less melodic. “Identical weapons, identical uniforms.”
Water hisses out of what sounds like a nozzle gun.
I try to put faces with sounds, but the voices seem so close to the doors that I can’t risk looking through the windows.
“You’re telling me a standard Starship Enterprise uniform is going to give Kirk some untold advantage over a Jedi Knight?”
“Grover, have you ever actually examined a Jedi Knight’s uniform up close and personal?”
“As personal as you can get at a Mega-Con light-saber signing, my dear boy.”
“Then you know it’s much baggier, much fruitier than Kirk’s uniform, which is much more streamlined and—”
“Define fruitier.”
I can’t stand it anymore. I shove through the doors like an outlaw in some old western and stand, hands on my hips. “Yeah, define—”
But I never get to finish my sentence. A stream of hot water splashes my face.
And my hair.
My neck.
My shoulders.
And my midsection.
“Oh. My. God.” I hear the Grover person (I think) screaming. “Zander, put it down. Put the hose down!”
Zander (I think) gasps, and the dishwashing spray gun he’s been holding hits the floor, squirming like a snake that’s just been grabbed by the tail and saturating us with fine, hot jets of water.
Suddenly chocolate (baking, syrup, or otherwise) is the last thing on my mind.
Chapter 7
You see, miss, uh, I mean, ma’am, it’s just that, well, we’re not used to actual women being in the cafeteria,” the one who shall be known as Grover stammers as he hands me yet another thin white cotton towel from the wrought iron bar on his dorm suite bathroom wall.
“What?” I keep drying my hair. “You’re telling me it’s an all-male kitchen staff.”
They bite their lips, snickering in the doorway.
“What my roommate means, miss,” says the one who shall be known as Zander, “is that we’re not used to having girls in the kitchen. Like, you know, actual student girls.”
”Like actual hot student girls.”
I glare, then look at my supposed-to-knock-’em-dead-on-the-first-night black blouse covering my sopping wet silver tank top and see pieces of white towel lint sticking all over it. “Well, what were you two doing in there anyway? Having a quick water fight before dinner?”
With my head out from under a towel for the first time since they dragged me from the cafeteria to their suite, I notice the boys’ soggy, dirty aprons.
“We work there,” Grover says proudly or maybe defensively; it’s hard to tell when your ears are full of water. “Nightshade gives us a third off our tuition every semester if we handle kitchen duty before and after classes. So, again, we’re really sorry.”
I instantly feel cruddy.
Like these poor guys don’t have it bad enough slaving away in the kitchen twice a day on top of regular school. And God knows how the Nightshade snobs must torture them over it.
I give up on drying myself, wrap the towel around my shoulders like some dazed prizefighter, and sit on the closed toilet lid. “No, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have barged in on you like that.”
Grover, big as a house, nudges Zander. “She does have a point, dude.”
Zander is nearly four inches taller than Grover and a third his weight. He’s not skinny, per se. He’s just lean, although his roguishly handsome face is just fleshy enough to dimple when he smiles, crookedly, which he does amazingly often.
“Yeah,” he says, leaning casually on the door-jamb. “What were you barging in for anyway?”
“Well”—I sigh dramatically—”I was just looking for a snack before dinner. You know, something sweet like a Laffy Taffy or Hershey’s Kiss, when I heard the most asinine argument ever and—”
“Oh, please, please, please tell me you didn’t hear that,” Zander squeaks, face growing three shades of red and two of purple. He puts his long fingers together in a supplicating gesture. “Please, oh please, say you didn’t hear us arguing about—”
“Skywalker versus Kirk,” I say gleefully. “Sure did. Every word of it. It was very … illuminating.”
Grover walks away, probably out of embarrassment, and disappears around the corner.
“I can’t wait to share your findings at the first possible opportunity over dinner tonight. Is there a microphone available in the cafeteria or perhaps a blow horn? A podium and slide-show screen? Because I really think everyone deserves to hear it verbatim. Hey, here’s an idea. Maybe you two can reenact it. Wouldn’t that be cool?”
Zander hangs his head. His dirty blond curls dangle near his bushy brunet eyebrows. In the irresistible department, it’s like peanut butter meeting chocolate—and not just ‘cause I’m starved for sugar. When he raises his head, I admire his hazel eyes, his adorable pug nose, and his smile.
He looks me in the eye and says, “Well, hold up. If that’s why you barged in, then whose side were you going to take? Obviously you came in loaded for bear, so fess up. Who would win that one?”
I snort. This one’s quick. “Kirk, of course. His uniform quails on Skywalker’s.”
“Thank you.” He moves in for a quick high five, which of course I deny.
He mumbles, “Oh right,” and leans against the wall.
When Grover returns, he has a handful of both Laffy Taffies and Hershey’s Kisses. I should probably be surprised he happens to have both of my favorite types of candy, but from the looks of him, this kid has every type of candy in his possession.
“For you, m’lady,” he says, handing them over with a mock Renaissance bow and a trilling motion of one massive, pink hand.
”You, good sir, are almost forgiven,” I say around a mouthful of divine melting chocolate, shoving the Laffy Taffies in my pocket for later. And, no, I won’t be sharing them with Alice or Cara. “I shouldn’t be taking candy from a stranger,” I say to Grover coyly, the instant sugar rush turning me vaguely coquettish, “so let’s introduce ourselves and then I won’t feel so guilty.”
“I’m Grover, and this beanpole here is Zander. And you are?”
“Lily. I’m—”
“New,” Zander finishes for me. “Yeah, we’d remember seeing someone like you around.”
I can’t tell if it’s a compliment or another jab, but at this point I’ll take what I can get.
Zander nudges Grover and shows him his watch. Both stand at attention.
“Something wrong?” I look down at my damp chest to make sure I’m not having some kind of wardrobe malfunction or something.
“No,” Zander says, “it’s just, dinner is in an hour, and if we don’t finish cleaning first we’ll get docked and have to start even earlier tomorrow, so …”
I stand, the heavy toilet seat making clattering noises to further my already significant level of absolute embarrassment. “Go, go,” I say forcefully, shooing them like a mom sending her kids outside for some much needed exercise. “Far be it from me to get you in any more trouble.”
Zander smiles, heading for the door.
Grover says, “Can you show yourself out?”
“I’d love to. That will give me some time to lay some booby traps around here. I’m thinking water balloons above the doors, slime in your soda cans, and of course fake snakes in your peanut brittle jars. You know what they say about payback, right, boys?”
They grin and cut out of the room, talking, laughing, shambling all over each other on their way.
I stand and am not surprised when I notice the Boba Fett toilet seat I’ve been sitting on or the Wookie shower curtain or the matching Darth Vader electric toothbrushes. I’m not even shocked by the green Yoda throw pillows on both perfectly made beds.
“Well,” I mutter as I walk out of the suite, “you have to admire their consistency, if not their taste.”
Chapter 8
Speaking of taste,” a deep, rich voice says from the inky halls, “first impressions are so important, aren’t they, dear?”
“Indeed,” an equally rich, though decidedly feminine voice, says. “I guess it’s true what they say: the new girl is a tramp.”
I turn, gasping, ready to unload my considerable immortal fury on my fellow students. Instead I see the two shadowy figures I saw speaking outside Headmistress Holly’s window during our brief orientation earlier this afternoon.
“W-w-what did you just say?” I manage to stammer, though it’s hard when half your face is under a towel and what’s visible is covered in runny mascara and smudged lipstick.
“Nothing, dear.” The guy is taller in person, crisper, leaner, cuter—if that’s possible—than he looked from Headmistress Holly’s window. “Just that, well, you couldn’t wait until your second day to seduce a couple of work release geeks? From the cafeteria, no less?”
“Too right.” The stunning girl’s eyes are magnetically green and intoxicating. “At least pretend to
be hard to get for a day or two before giving the milk away for free. Any tramp worth her salt knows that much.”
Zander and Grover’s door is still open, though they are long gone, giving us a clear shot of their Star Wars poster-covered wall, to say nothing of their prolific action figure collection displayed on several perfectly straight shelves and, of course, the scale model spacecraft hanging on fishing wire from every available inch of ceiling space.
I stow the towel behind my back and ignore the wet tendrils still covering the other half of my face. “Whatever do you mean?”
“It’s all a matter of taste, Lily.” The redhead looks me up and down the way a garbage man sizes up a stained mattress in the gutter. “It’s one thing to be promiscuous.” She hangs on to the guy’s sleeve. “But at least try to be a little discriminating, huh?”
“What? When? How do you know my name?”
She sizes me up. “You’re at Nightshade, where everybody knows everybody else—and everything about everybody else. You’re Lily, the easy one. Then there’s Cara, I believe, the … multicultural one. I hear Alice is the smart one.”
I snort. The smart one? Obviously they don’t know everything here at Nightshade.
“Hmm.” I tousle my hair to try to at least look presentable. “Then I’m at a disadvantage because I have no idea who you two are.”
She takes it as it was intended: a massive slight. Her face is not quite as red as her flowing, gorgeous tresses but close enough to make me smile.
“Bianca Ridley. Of the Manhattan Ridleys.”
Yeah, like that means anything to a vampire who spends half her time shut away in an academy for the undead and the rest in boring high schools deep in the Midwest.
“Tristan.” The hunk, er, guy extends a long, pale hand. “Tristan Winters.”
I smirk. Hmm, a Vamplayer name if ever I’ve heard one. I take his hand, which is dry and papery, another sure sign.
His eyes are a deep brown, leaning toward the dark chocolate side. His long hair is thick and a deep shade of black: so black the shiny locks almost glisten in the soft light of the stone-walled halls.
Vamplayers Page 4
