Lovely man, that Henry.
Deciding anywhere was better than here, I climbed out of the vehicle and stepped onto the sizzling sidewalk. All around me, teenagers unloaded from cars. I didn’t look back as Henry’s wheels squealed out of the parking lot.
As I headed up the front steps, I pressed my hand over my heart but couldn’t relieve the tension that had been amassing in my chest for a week.
Justin’s words played through my mind as I squeezed between happy families.
I love you, January. You probably won’t hear that very much from me, but you can just know that it’s true, and it’s going to continue to be true.
That was one of the last things Justin said to me before he went radio silent. Maybe he was trying to tell me he was going to drop me like I was hot … scratch that, drop me like I was lava. I hadn’t seen or heard from Justin in days. Henry assured me that Justin was fine, just busy. My nana said she saw him around the mansion, and I wasn’t about to show up at the big house uninvited with Justin’s mother up there.
Taking a steadying breath, I threw myself into the crowd. All around me, friends excitedly embraced, exclaiming how they missed each other over the summer. Parents lectured their kids on shaping up their grades, and maids pushed carts with name brand luggage sets. Many of the girls wore heels and designer dresses. Groups of students gathered on the grass to the side of the hall, throwing footballs and tossing frisbees. A line of about six junior or senior girls sunbathed on the lawn in bikinis.
When I rounded the corner, a giant banner came into view. “Welcome New Students!” Another banner read, “Go Falcons!” A third, even bigger banner read, “Senior Hunt Nominations This Friday.”
From what I could see, all of the students headed in through the wide doors of the hall with their parents, but I headed with an older crowd toward a second sign that read, “New Students, Register Here.”
“January!” a familiar voice yelled from somewhere in the quad. I cupped my hand over my eyes, looking past the glare to see Susie and Mia making their way through the crowd over to me.
I had only known the girls for a short time, but I was already falling head over heels in friend-love with them. Like most of the students at Blackburn, the pair were very athletic with well-defined muscles. Mia was almost six feet and built like an Olympic swimmer with lean muscles, perfect posture, and wide, muscular shoulders. In stark contrast, Susie was short, like me. But, unlike my soft, curvy body, Susie was built compact like a gymnast. Both girls had black hair. Mia’s fell down her back in waves, and Susie’s ringed her face in dark curls. They both had huge smiles on their beautiful faces as they rushed over to me and wrapped me in hugs.
Seeing their wonderful faces in this sea of unknown people felt like sunshine to my soul.
Susie threw up her hands. “You’re here. Yay!”
“Yay!” I tried my best to match Susie’s sweet enthusiasm. “Thanks to you two, the Baldwin brothers, and Richard.”
“Bitch, take credit for your own accomplishments,” Mia said with a smile as she pointed into my face.
I cussed a lot. Like, a lot. But I was still getting used to Mia’s dirty mouth. Mia was the only member of the Bad Boys Club who wasn’t on a scholarship, but, in her own words, she just hated assholes.
“I didn’t think so many of the students would be living on campus,” I said as I gestured out to the full quad. Allegedly, there were only three hundred students across four grade levels, and I could swear there were five hundred out here.
Susie’s eyes widened. “Yeah. Ninety-five percent of students live on campus. Half of the first floor is for students with special accommodations, and then it goes by wealth factor. So, your room will probably either be on the first or second floor, which are all two to a room.”
“Where are your rooms?”
“Second floor,” Susie chimed with a beaming smile. “Along with Michael, Patrick, Charlie, and Braiden. We have a communal kitchen along with bathrooms and showers. Mia is on fourth technically, but when’s the last time you went up there?”
“It’s the room I sneak into a minute before curfew and sneak out of before sunrise. Thankfully, I’m not on the fifth floor.”
Susie’s eyes widened, and she shook her head.
“Fifth floor has its own private entrance and elevator.” Mia chuckled. “So, the Elites can pretend we don’t exist and vice-fucking-versa.”
Everyone had horrible things to say about the Elite students of Blackburn Academy. According to more than one source, they had some unspecified supernatural talents and wealth that made them untouchable at Blackburn.
“So, who doesn’t live in the dorms?” I asked. Because I previously had the feeling that it was a good portion of the student body, not fifteen people.
Susie rolled her eyes. “The Baldwin brothers don’t because they’re locals, and the people who gave them scholarships saw the chance to save a few dollars.”
“Shocker,” I deadpanned. Lucas Baldwin had his scholarship from the Roberts family. When I first met my grandmother’s employers, they’d acted like the most lavish and generous people in the world. It hadn’t taken long for me to realize that they were the exact opposite.
A tap came on my shoulder, and when I spun around, an elderly man in a suit stood there. When I turned, he nodded to the line and said, “It’s your turn, honey.”
The line had moved on without me, and the woman at the counter was staring at me with a barely tolerant smile. Two fans pointed at the woman, and her white-blond hair undulated on her head like an underwater creature.
“Next,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. As I approached the counter, the fifty-something looking woman in a Blackburn Academy Parent Volunteer emblazoned purple collared shirt glanced at my t-shirt and cut off shorts. Her nostrils flared as she smiled mechanically.
“January Moore,” I said as I forced a smile onto my lips.
“All right,” she whispered. I had to strain to hear her breathy voice over the buzz of the fan and the chatter of the students all around. She moved her finger across the screen of her tablet, scrolling down a long list of names before she found mine. When her head lifted, a much warmer smile sat on her face. “Miss Moore. I have your room here. Room ...” she continued to talk, but her words were drowned out by the buzz of the fan.
Both Susie and Mia must have heard the woman though because they sucked in a simultaneous breath.
“We have to have heard you wrong,” Mia said as she leaned in toward the woman. “Did you say a two-hundreds room?”
“No …” and then the woman muttered something unintelligible.
Mia adjusted her gold nose ring and shot a look at me that clearly asked if I understood what the woman was whispering. When I shook my head, Mia leaned in. “Sorry. It’s so … freaking loud here, and we just can’t hear you.”
“Room five-hundred-seven,” the woman yelled the words.
Mia’s gaze snapped to mine. “Damn. I guess we did hear you, but it doesn’t make sense. January, that’s fifth floor — the Elites Only floor.”
“Um. There’s been a mistake,” I said, leaning in. “I’m here on a scholarship — wouldn’t that put me on the first or second floor?”
“No mistake,” the registrar whispered as she attempted to hook her blond hair behind her ears, but it immediately sprung free in the wind while the woman concentrated back on her tablet. She thumbed through a bin of small plastic folders, pulled a key from one, and set it on top of a stack of papers. She held up the pile, but when I didn’t take it, her smile faded.
“Can I be reassigned to a different room?” I asked.
“No …” she continued, but all I caught were the words: orientation, rules, elevator, and map. Her smile was just a gritting of teeth now, which combined with her undulating hair, made her look a little like a menacing mermaid.
I took the papers. Heading away from the table, Susie and Mia flanked me on my left and right. They were both looking at me lik
e I was just handed down a prison sentence.
“How bad is this?” I asked them as we walked along the path toward the back of the hall.
Susie bit her lip and focused just a little way above my eyes. She bunched up her shoulders. “It’ll be fine, January. I’m sure they’ll let you transfer to a less expensive room if you request it.”
“As in to say that this is really fucking bad,” Mia said as she leaned in and fixed me with her deep brown eyes. “Really fucking bad. You are going to be ground zero at sociopathic, narcissist central.”
“Can you go back and stay with your nana until tomorrow?” Susie suggested before biting her lip.
The answer to that was a big fat no. Mr. Roberts had told me that now that Gregory Hall was open, I needed to be gone. It was too much of a risk to the Roberts family and the Roberts Mansion staff to keep me on the estate. He emphasized the threat I posed to the staff more than once, going so far as to say that if I insisted on staying the night with my nana, they were going to have to let her go as a housekeeper.
I had suspected that the Roberts would threaten my grandmother’s job to keep me in line. I hadn’t suspected that I would agree with them. There was only one place Nana would be safe, and that was away from me. Vampires had come for me twice now, and they would keep coming.
CHAPTER TWO
The security guard of the private entrance to the fifth floor’s gaze passed over me, and his mouth puckered like he was tasting something bad.
Clearly, he disapproved of what he saw. I had to admit that this wasn’t my best outfit, not that I had much better, but what I was wearing was particularly ratty. When I’d planned for Blackburn Academy’s Move-in Day, I’d expected to be getting dirty loading boxes and came prepared in an oversized t-shirt and scraggly cut-off shorts.
“Fifth-floor residents only,” the man said, his voice clipped. He looked like he would fit in on the set for a military movie, with buzzed short blond hair, sharp blue eyes, and a rigid battle-ready posture.
I raised my packet of colorful papers. “The registrar sent me here. My name is January Moore.”
For some reason, I said it as a question, like I was asking him if January Moore was my name. In the hopes of turning this awkward first meeting around, I held my hand across the desk. “Nice to meet you. What’s your name?”
“Back behind the desk, please. You can call me the fifth-floor guard.”
“I can’t call you Bernard?” I asked as I noticed that the guy had a plaque with his name on it that he’d turned on his desk to face the wrong direction.
“No.” Bernard tapped a finger on his glass desk. “You would be the winner of the Hawthorn Group scholarship.”
“That’s me.”
“I see. This is a secure entrance, Miss Moore. Only the fifth-floor residents are permitted upstairs. So, you two can’t go beyond the desk,” he pointed at Mia and Susie who had accompanied me with looks of concern on their face. The expressions had only deepened as they watched my interaction with the guard.
“You two will have to move along. It’s policy.” The guy’s voice was noticeably softer with Mia and Susie than it was with me. “January Moore,” he said, his tone brisk again, “if you plan to go any further, I’m going to need several forms of identification, more than five would be preferred.”
To my left, Mia cupped her hands around her lips and mouthed the word, “Dickhead.”
Bobbing my eyebrows at her in agreement, I laid out everything in my wallet. The guard clenched his jaw, and he studied each one like maybe I handed him a fake library card.
The man slid my cards back across the desk and glowered up. “There is a panic button in every room of your quarters. It locks down the fifth floor in case of a violent invasion. Do not press that button unless there is an attack. You will be immediately expelled if you utilize it as a joke and waste my time. Got it?” He glowered at me as if I’d already pranked him for my frivolous enjoyment. “Verbally respond.”
“Got it.”
I had to agree with Mia on this one. Henceforth, Bernard the fifth-floor guard would be known as Dickhead in my mind.
Dickhead nodded and settled back in his seat. “You may enter. You two nonresidents, please exit out the front.”
“You could just come and stay in Susie’s room until curfew,” Mia offered. “That’s what I do.”
I forced a shrug. “I should probably check it out. Can I drop by your rooms later?”
Susie rushed up and hugged me, telling me that I could stay with her at any time and to never hesitate. And … all of it just made me feel like she thought I was about to die.
The elevator looked like a buffed-out metal box. There was really nothing sinister about it, but my heart was still racing. When the doors opened out to a long hallway, it just seemed plain and utilitarian. There was hardwood flooring, a coat of fresh blue paint on the walls, and wide wood doors. A window lit the space from the end of the hall, and rays of sunlight shone through several skylights from above. Overall, it had a nice, old-fashioned feel.
Slipping off my paint-stained tennis shoes, I tiptoed down the hall as silently as I could. My heart jumped as I passed each doorway. The only magical ability I knew of was clairvoyance, but Justin hinted that the Elites had different kinds of powers. The last thing I wanted to do was discover what their powers were the hard way.
When I reached room five-hundred-seven, I held my breath as I pushed my key into its lock. When I had my door halfway open, a voice called out from behind me.
“Hey there, housekeeper’s daughter.”
I turned to find my least favorite person in all of Blackburn Academy. Unfortunately, Mitch Holter looked disconcertingly like his cousin Justin. They had the same short, dark hair, strong, chiseled features, square jaw, and cleft chin. They even had a similar muscular, quarterback build, but at the same time, they couldn’t be more different.
You know those horror movies where someone looks in the mirror and their reflection was an evil version of themselves, I was pretty sure that was Mitch to Justin. As I looked at him, heat simmered up in my chest, boiling away my earlier fear. There were a lot of things I’d wished I’d said when Mitch Roberts had threatened to literally kick my dog and me out of Justin’s party. It would be stupid to say them now, but I still wanted to.
“Looks like we’re next door neighbors,” he said as he leaned into his door frame. “I need to make something fucking clear to you here —”
“No thanks,” I said, not needing to hear whatever he was going to say. Knowing that it probably wasn’t the best call, I pushed open my door, flipped Mitch the bird, and headed into my apartment.
As my door slammed behind me, I heard Mitch growl, “Well, that’s fucking friendly.”
Why the hell did the guy live in the dormitory, anyway? Weren’t his parents local billionaires?
My heart sank as I leaned back against my door. As per the deal I made with the school, Bailey was going to live in my apartment with me tomorrow. But I didn’t want Bailey anywhere near Mitch after he said he’d literally kick her out of the party. I’d have to come out, ready to defend my dog every single time I took Bailey on a walk.
Sighing, I lifted my head and got my first look at my dorm room. I amended “room” to “apartment”. The space didn’t feel whatsoever foreboding, and that was one hell of a relief. I walked around, examining the high ceilings with inlaid tiles and ridges running its length. I ran my fingers over the inset columns on the walls and corners.
Two giant picture windows looked out over the school. Blackburn Academy looked like a three-story baroque castle with rounded towers. The structure had a haunted feeling, but not in a decrepit, enter-here-and-die type of way. It more felt sad and romantic, with draping ivy over brick walls, like a ghost might be watching out the windows, forever waiting for her lover to return. Large willows stretched their limbs across the grounds surrounding the school.
There was a tablet waiting for me on the counter that I
didn’t dare touch. I found another touchscreen embedded directly into the fridge that prompted me to make a grocery list. After I inputted the list, a message popped up that the food would be delivered in half an hour from the Blackburn Academy kitchens.
The apartment felt surreal like I was hanging out in someone else’s space, touching their stuff, and deluding myself that it was mine. When I wandered into my bedroom, I found a bouquet of red roses on the dresser. A note was tucked into the flowers.
My driver will arrive at six to pick you up. I will provide for all of your sustenance needs, and we will discuss the scholarship I am personally offering you then.
Sincerely,
Sebastian Holter
The image of Sebastian Holter’s cold features rose in my mind, and the little hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. It was a face I never wanted to see again. He had barged onto the stage after the entrance trials and granted me his own personal scholarship to Blackburn Academy as the owner of the Hawthorn Group. His icy blue eyes had held a glint that felt demonic at the time. My friends had nicknamed the guy Prime, as in, they thought Sebastian Holter was prime evil.
It wasn’t hard to guess which sustenance needs he was referring to in his note. I needed blood. It had been four days since Mr. Roberts gave me a blood bag to suck down in his office, and at least seven days without feeding, I started to hear people’s heartbeats.
Somehow, between pacing around my apartment and worrying about the fact that I had to meet my cruel benefactor, time drained away, and at ten until six, I found myself once again slipping out of my apartment and tiptoeing down the halls. A tall auburn-haired girl, made even taller with five-inch heels, passed me heading the opposite direction. She was leaner than most of the students I’d seen around campus, but her muscles were clearly defined on her arms and legs. She wore a flowy green dress that brought out her vivid green eyes.
Hunter Trials (The Vampire Legacy Book 2) Page 2
