We didn't make another trip up to the room at the top of the north tower. Although I wanted to be with Lucas as badly as ever, and I knew he felt the same way, we were both cautious. We had enough trouble controlling my hunger for blood as it was; if something had changed deep within Lucas, there might be other dangers if we started kissing and got too carried away. So you can guess how much I wanted to finally get some answers.
One evening, I decided we ought to try the ultimate test.
I met Lucas at the gazebo with a thermos in my hands. "What's that?" he asked, obviously unsuspecting.
"Blood."
"Oh." His expression was strange. "If you're hungry, just—you know, don't mind me." As he shifted from foot to foot, Lucas avoided meeting my eyes. Apparently Lucas still wasn't comfortable with the idea that I drank blood, which didn't bode well for the experiment I was about to try.
"It's not for me," I began. "It's for you."
Appalled, he retorted, "No way."
"Lucas, let's face it. When I bit you the second time, something changed, down deep, maybe forever. If I've made you part vampire, or a vampire-to-be like me, then we have to know."
He looked pale and drew his long coat more snugly about him. "You really think that's what happened? Because—Bianca, I can't face turning into a vampire. Not ever."
His blunt rejection of the idea hurt; I'd already begun to dream about us going through the centuries together, vampires forever young and beautiful and head over heels for each other, just like my mother and father. Lucas obviously hadn't gotten that far yet. It was disappointing, but I remained focused on the test. I wore fingerless gray gloves, so I was able to unscrew the lid on the thermos easily. "We have to find out how you react to blood. You know it's true. Just take a drink and get it over with."
"This isn't, like, from a person, right?"
"No! It's cow blood. Superfresh."
Lucas looked like he would rather have stripped naked in the freezing night air. But he took a deep breath, accepted the cup, and managed not to make too much of a face as I poured a rivulet of blood. I only gave him a sip; that would be enough to tell. With a grimace, Lucas lifted the cup to his mouth, slowly tilted it back, and drank—
—and then spat blood all over the ground. "Ugh! Jesus Christ, that's disgusting!"
"That answers that." Grimly I screwed the thermos cap back on. I'd heated the blood and sampled it myself, so I knew it was delicious. If Lucas didn't like that, then he still had no appetite for blood at all. "You're not what I am. You're something else."
"How are we supposed to figure that out?" Lucas was busily wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, trying to remove every last trace of the blood. "We don't have reference works; and it's not something either of us has ever run into before. And before you ask, no, they don't have anything on this on Wikipedia. I got so desperate, I checked. Nothing. There's just…nothing."
I wished Lucas would stop talking like he knew something about vampires; it was sort of annoying. Still, he'd just tasted something really gross, so I figured I'd let him off this time. "I have a suggestion. You won't like it, but I think that if you consider it, you'll realize it's the best thing to do."
"Okay, tell me this suggestion I won't like."
"Let's ask my parents."
"You were right about my not liking it." Lucas ran his hands through his hair, like he wanted to rip it from its roots in frustration. "Just…tell them? Tell the vampires what's wrong with me?"
"Stop thinking of them as 'vampires' and think of them as my parents." I knew it would take Lucas a while to make this transition, but that didn't mean I wasn't going to push. He'd learned to see me for myself, given time. Eventually he could do the same for Mom and Dad. "They'll hear you out, and if they can help, they will." Lucas shook his head. "If they're going to be mad at someone, that's going to be me. I'm the one who bit you again and started all this."
"Then we shouldn't get you into trouble."
"If you need help, then that's what's important. Nothing else." I faced him squarely. "Think about it, Lucas. Once they know, we can talk openly. Get answers to all your questions and mine, too. If you're destined to be a vampire—"
He shuddered. "We don't know that."
"If, I said. You need to know all about us, don't you? Even the history and powers that I don't know about yet. We could learn all about it together." And perhaps Lucas would like what he heard and decide to join me as a vampire forever. I could hope, couldn't I? "Once you're one of us—in whatever way—then they can talk to you openly. You can ask whatever you want. And maybe this will make my parents realize that I'm old enough to hear the whole truth now. We won't be confused or lost anymore. We'll learn what we need to learn; we'll learn everything. Don't you see?"
Lucas froze. For the first time, he seemed to understand what I'd been saying—that whatever had happened to him would, in some way, let him become a part of Evernight. Despite his dislike of the school, I sensed that he wanted to know more about it, so much so that it surprised us both. Maybe Lucas needed to belong to something after all.
Or maybe he was starting to think about becoming a vampire and staying with me forever.
"Don't ask me to do this," Lucas said quietly. "Don't give me that chance."
"Are you afraid you'll like what you hear?" I challenged him.
Lucas didn't answer. Finally, slowly, he nodded. "Let's talk to them now."
* * *
I'd predicted that Mom and Dad would be upset with me, but I hadn't guessed the half of it. First Mom read me the riot act about ignoring all their warnings. Then Dad wanted to know just what Lucas was thinking taking a young girl to the top of the north tower alone.
"I'm almost seventeen!" I shouted at one point. "You keep telling me to make mature decisions, and when I make one, you yell at me!"
"Mature decisions!" My father was so outraged that I half expected him to grow fangs any second. "You reveal all our secrets because you like a boy and you want to talk about mature decisions? You are on thin ice, young lady."
"Adrian, calm down." Mom put both her hands on his shoulders. I thought she was sticking up for me until she added, "If Bianca wants to spend the next thousand years looking too young to get a job or rent a car or do any of the basic things that make life manageable, then we can't really stop her."
"That's not what I want!" I couldn't even imagine getting carded for all eternity. "I didn't kill him. I didn't change. Okay?"
Dad retorted, "You came damn close to it, and you know it."
"I don't know that at all! You never explained to me what would happen if I bit a human and didn't kill him! You never explained to me what humans would or wouldn't know the next day! There's a whole lot you never explained to me, and now I finally realize how stupid you've kept me all these years!"
"Excuse us for not knowing exactly how to handle this! There's only a handful of vampire babies born a century. It's not like we had anybody to turn to for advice, you know." Mom looked mad enough to pull her hair out. "But, yeah, Bianca, at this point, I agree with you. Clearly, somewhere, we screwed up. If we hadn't, you'd be behaving sensibly now instead of carrying on like this!"
From his place on my parents' couch, where he had been forcefully told to remain, Lucas attempted to defend me. "This is mostly my fault—"
"You keep quiet." Dad's glare could have melted metal. "I intend to have a long talk with you later."
Just when I thought it couldn't get worse, Mom said, "We'll have to tell Mrs. Bethany."
"What?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Lucas's eyes opened wide. "Mom, no!"
"Your mother is right." Dad stalked toward the doorway. "You've told a human the secret of Evernight. We have to explain that to Mrs. Bethany, which you should have realized from the start."
As the door slammed shut behind him, Mom added, more quietly, "Our secrets protect us, Bianca. Someday you'll understand that."
It felt like I would never understand any
of this. I sank down beside Lucas on the sofa, so that at least we'd be together when the boom fell. All three of us sat in sullen silence for several minutes, until footsteps began to echo on the stone staircase outside. The sound made me shiver. Mrs. Bethany was near.
She swept in as if she owned the place and the rest of us were merely intruders. My father, behind her, might as well have been her shadow. Lavender fragrance followed her, changing the space subtly from ours to hers. Her dark eyes focused instantly on Lucas, who faced her steadily but said nothing.
"So much for your promised self-control, Miss Olivier." Her long skirts brushed along the floor as she stepped closer. Tonight she wore a silver bar pin at the collar of her blouse, so bright that the light glinted off it. Her long fingernails were painted the darkest imaginable purple, but it didn't hide the deep grooves in each nail. "I suspected it would come to this sooner or later. Sooner it is."
"This isn't Bianca's fault," Lucas said. "It's mine."
"How very gallant of you, Mr. Ross. But I think it's rather obvious who was the active party here." She tugged his collar open, a weirdly intimate gesture from a teacher toward a student. Lucas tensed, and I thought that if she actually put her hand on his neck, he might snap. His temper had frayed from less. Instead, she merely glanced at the pink scars left after two weeks. "You've been bitten twice by a vampire. Do you know what that means?"
"How could he?" I asked. "He didn't even know vampires were real until a couple of months ago."
Mrs. Bethany sighed. "Remind me to go over the concept of the 'rhetorical question' in class. As I was saying, Mr. Ross, you are now marked as one of our own."
"Marked," Lucas repeated. "You mean, as Bianca's?"
"The change is subtle at first." She paced slowly around Lucas, studying him from head to toe. "I sense it now, but only because you called my attention to it. As time goes on, however, the change will become more pronounced. The other vampires around you will notice. Eventually they will be unable to ignore it. You have surrendered to a vampire, and more than once. That has brought you to the very brink of being changed into one of us."
Lucas interjected, "Does that mean I have to become a vampire no matter what?" I fidgeted, unable to wholly conceal my hope. My mother shot me a look that made me go still.
Mrs. Bethany shook her head. "Not necessarily. You might yet live a long life and die of other causes, if that's the sort of thing you consider cause for celebration. However, soon you'll find yourself more and more drawn to Miss Olivier, whose lack of discipline has already been made very clear." Dad took a step forward, like he was going to defend me, but Mom put one hand on his shoulder to keep him back. "Other vampires will find you equally appealing, although the taboo against hunting another vampire's chosen prey should protect you—for a time. Eventually, Mr. Ross, you'll find the prospect entices you as much as it does her. You will desire it more powerfully than you can possibly guess. It is a craving no pure human can ever understand. When that time comes, you will probably choose to join us."
If Lucas was going to lose it, I thought this would be the moment. But he remained calm. "Does that mean I'm sort of…in between? Like Bianca?"
"Not exactly like her, but close enough." Mrs. Bethany's prim mouth relaxed slightly, and I realized that she was almost smiling. "You are a quick study, Mr. Ross."
"I'd like to know more," he said, seizing upon her approval. "I want to understand these…senses. Abilities. Powers."
"And limitations, too. Those take root in humans more slowly than our powers, but they will arrive. You cannot afford to forget that." Mrs. Bethany considered it for a few more seconds, then nodded. "This was not what I intended when I opened the school to human students, but I ought to have anticipated it. I'll send over some papers that might help you. Old letters, studies, things like that regarding those who have been in your situation and who have chosen to follow our path. Just remember this, Mr. Ross: Our secret is now your secret. The more you learn, the more you belong to us. You can no longer betray the truth about Evernight without also betraying yourself. I will be watching you very closely from now on."
"I believe you. I'm not going to say a word about vampires to anybody." He gave me a sidelong glance. "Well, at least not to anybody who doesn't already know."
I squeezed his hand, happy and relieved. It didn't matter what my parents said to us now or how long I was going to be grounded. All that mattered was that the truth was out at last, and Lucas would be okay. And he might—just maybe—be mine forever.
Not until much later that night did I realize that Mrs. Bethany had never told Lucas what would happen if he didn't choose to become a vampire. She didn't offer it as an option. I wondered if that was because it was impossible for him to choose anything else—or because he wouldn't be allowed to choose.
Chapter Fifteen
With march came rain, torrents of it, blurring the windowpanes and turning the earth to mud. For the first time, the grounds weren't available to us as an escape. But for the first time, we didn't need it. Lucas and I were learning about Evernight now. We were becoming a part of it.
"Look at this." Lucas pushed one of Mrs. Bethany's heavy, black, leather-bound books toward me as we sat together in a private corner of the library. The only other sound was raindrops pattering against the window. The book's pages were brownish with age and the ink had faded, so I had to squint to make out the words. I read as Lucas explained, "They keep talking about 'the Tribe.' Some older group of vampires. Is anybody here from this Tribe?"
"I never heard of the Tribe before." I'd never imagined how complicated vampire lore was; my parents had never hinted at any of this. "But what do they mean by older? My dad is nearly a thousand years old. Surely that's about as old as it gets."
"Not if everyone is immortal. There ought to be vampires two, three, ten times older than him. Ancient Romans. Ancient Egyptians. Whoever came before those guys. Where are they? Not here, I don't think."
He was right. The oldest vampire at Evernight was probably Ranulf, who had died in the seventh century. Of course, some vampires did die, like, finally die; if you didn't get any blood for months and months, or even if you didn't drink blood for a shorter time and then were exposed to the sun—that could get you. My parents had made that clear when I was a little kid who didn't want to finish her glass of goat's blood. Everyone's worst nightmare was fire, which killed vampires even more quickly than it did humans. Despite all those dangers, a lot of vampires should have survived even longer than Ranulf.
"Mom and Dad say some people get lost," I murmured. "That they lose track of time and humanity altogether. Evernight Academy was built so that vampires wouldn't fall into that trap. Do you suppose that's what my parents meant? Maybe the Tribe is all the vampires who get lost. They're hermits and recluses, with no connection to humanity." The thought made me shiver.
"Is this creeping you out?"
"Yeah, a little."
Lucas brushed his thumb across my cheek. "You want us to take a break?"
I realized that I did, kind of. "I ought to study history. It's hard enough to get As when you're being graded on a curve alongside people who actually witnessed about half the events in the book. Now Mom's being tougher on me than ever."
"Go ahead." Already he had turned his attention back to the book of vampire lore. "I'll be right here." Lucas didn't lift his head from the book for the next hour, and when I bundled up my things to go downstairs, he let me leave without him so that he could keep working until the moment the library closed. (There was no taking the book back to his room; we agreed that Vic might be oblivious, but he wasn't stupid, and leaving the real vampire information out where Vic could see it would be crazy.)
Every once in a while I asked myself if Lucas could have any other reason for immersing himself in Mrs. Bethany's books. But I always pushed the thought away almost instantly. Mostly I encouraged him, thinking that he was getting closer to becoming a vampire—and staying with me—forever.
<
br /> Not that everybody liked that idea, of course. Courtney had kind of chilled out after I bit Lucas for the first time, apparently figuring that I was now "in the club." However, she didn't want Lucas in the club with us, which meant that after news of the second bite spread around the school, she was in high bitch mode.
"Can you imagine hanging around with that guy for a hundred years?" she complained loudly to Genevieve in Modern Technology one day, while Mr. Yee was in the corner patiently explaining something to the perpetually bewildered Ranulf. "I mean, eww. One school year of Lucas Ross's attitude is too much. If he thinks I'm going to acknowledge his sorry existence in a couple of decades, when he's trying to suck up to all the people he put down here, he can think again."
Balthazar, who had been attempting to program the microwave that provided the lesson for the day, casually called, "Hey, Courtney, refresh my memory. The other day, I was thinking that I'd seen you in French Indochina, but then I realized that wasn't quite right. You were changed—what—fifty years ago?"