Afterlife (7 page)

For a few seconds, we just stared at each other. The only
thing I could think of to say was, “Now we know why vampires don’t drink
wraiths’ blood.”

“Yeah.” Lucas winced wlhen he spoke, and his voice was
hoarse. I realized that his lips, tongue, and throat remained scorched. As a
vampire, he’d heal quickly, but not instantly. Every place we touched was just
a source of pain for him now.

Maybe he saw the pity in my eyes, because he turned his
head. “We should sleep.” He yanked back the covers on the other hotel bed.
“Lucas — it doesn
‘ t
always have to involve blood
drinking. You remember that.”

“I know.” He lay down in the other bed, heavily, as though
he could no longer support his body. “We’ll — we’ll figure it out.”

Though I wanted to argue, I knew this Wasn’t the time.I
simply shut off the light again and slid back beneath the covers, cold and
lonely in the big bed. After a couple of seconds, it felt pointless to remain
solid, so I took off my bracelet and dissolved into the blue, misty void by
myself.

So much for thinking death couldn’t take anything from us.

“Last chance to change your mind,” I said a few days later,
as Lucas bundled up his few possessions early on the morning of the first day
of school. For a moment I regretted the joke; it would be disastrous if Lucas
did change his mind, because we didn’t have a Plan B.

But Lucas attempted to roll with it. “Always meant to get a
diploma someday. I guess after death counts as someday, huh?” He tried to smile
for me, but it didn’t go far. “Does it feel weird? Not going?”

That was the first time I realized I’d died as an eleventh —
grade dropout. “Yeah, kinda.”

These days hadn’t been easy for us. We had to keep
overfeeding Lucas blood, and he mostly refused to leave the room. I’d memorized
the hotel maids’ schedule, so we could make sure Lucas avoided them. Lucas
still thought Evernight was too much of a risk for me, and I wasn’t sure I
disagreed. But what other options did we have?

The dawn light brightened the edges of the hotel window
shade as Lucas shrugged on the uniform sweater — Balthazar had ordered supplies
for them both online. He’d gotten a little taller and a lot more muscular since
he’d been an Evernight student, so the sweater was a bit tight, but in a good
way. “You look great,”I said. “Reminds me of when we met.”

“When I tried to save you from the vampires.” Lucas paused,
then stepped closer to me and put his hand on my cheek. “You know the only
reason I’m doing this is so I can come back to you. Be decent enough for you,
know how to act. You get that, right?”

“I do.”

“And You’re going to be careful.
right
?
You won’t take any chances at Evernight?”

Til be very careful.” I took his hand in mine and kissed his
palm. Then I removed my coral and silver bracelet, going half — transparent as
it dropped into Lucas’s fingers. “Take this with you. I’ll get it there.”

“You don’t want it with you? just in case
?
You can’t afford to lose this thing, and your brooch is already in my bag.”

“It’s not like I can take it myself, “I pointed out. “When I
go incorporeal to travel, nothing physical can travel with me. Besides, it
couldn’t be anywhere safer than with you.” I folded his hand around the
bracelet.

He leaned forward, as though to kiss me. Now that I was incorporeal
— a soft shadow of blue mist in the vague shape of my body — our lips couldn’t touch.
But a little of Lucas passed through me, a faint cool tickle that made me
shiver, just where our kiss would have been.
just
as I
began to smile, though, there was a rap on the door: Balthazar. Time to go.

 * * * After they’ d begun the long drive from
Philadelphia, I prepared for my own journey. Maxie had told me that wraiths
remained bonded to certain places and things that had been meaningful to us
during our lifetimes. We could always travel to them, no matter how far away we
might be. I wasn’t sure what every single one of those places was yet, though I
had ideas: the old maple tree in Arrowwood where I’d liked to play as a child,
the theater where Lucas and I had gone on our first date, and perhaps the wine
cellar where we’d lived our final weeks. Those were just theories, though.

The only place I knew I could travel was the first place I’d
gone, by accident: Evernight Academy, specifically the gargoyle that had
perched outside my bedroom.

I drifted into foggy darkness, and at frrst the sensation
was deliciously like sleep, so tempting. But my mind remained focused on the
gargoyle.

I’d spent so much time looking at his gap — fanged grin that
I could picture him perfectly: stony claws, hunched back, pointy wings. Briefly
I imagined the way the stone had felt beneath my hands, cold and hard — Then I
could feel it.

The world clarified around me. I perched atop the gargoyle,
which would ‘ve been massively uncomfortable if I’d been alive but was fine now
that I could float when I wanted. Curlicues of frost streaked across the
windows, heralding the presence of a wraith.

Would my parents see it? They had the first time I’d
accidentally come here. Instead of realizing it was me, though, they’d freaked
out, believing the frost came from yet another of the ghosts that had invaded
Evernight.

Not invaded, I reminded myself. Drawn here, because of the
students. Brought here specifically by Mrs. Bethany. I had to remain on my
guard.

I heard nothing from the apartment. Probably my parents were
downstairs, helping Mrs. Bethany welcome the students. Looking downward, I
could see that the first few people had already begun to arrive. Mostly humans
at this point, too noisy and too happy — but every once in a while silent, dark
— clad figures would sweep thro111gh the crowd as though they belonged here
more than anyone else. They did belong here more; they were the vampires.

Quickly I shimmered along the side of the building, invisible
except for the trails of frost I left behind. At first I just wanted to get a
better view, but then I realized: Something felt odd about the school.

Well, big surprise. Evernight Academy was pretty much made
of odd. This was different, though, something I had never sensed before — as
if, in places, the school was pushing back at me, trying to keep me out.
Probably it was something only the wraiths could feel. In those places, I felt
as though I was being watched right through the walls. Curious, I whisked along
the side of the building, leaving trails of frost on the windows in my wake.
Although there were places I could get into the school, there were places that
I couldn ‘t. And one place — the area at the very top of the south tower, right
above my parents’ apartment — felt shut off to me completely, in a way that
gave me cold shivers.

So don’t go there, I told myself. It’s not like you’ve ever
had a single reason to go up there before. As long as you can get in anywhere
in the building, you can get to Lucas. Nothing else matters.

However, the knowledge of that strange forbidding energy
made me uneasy. I darted downward again, the better to get away from it, and to
watch the arrivals, which was what I needed to be paying attention to anyway.

As I focused again on the group, I saw my first familiar
face and felt a warm glow of happiness that could ‘ve been a smile. Patrice!

Patrice Deveraux, my roommate during my first year at
Evernight, stepped out of a lean gray Lexus. Her tailored version of the school
uniform made her look sophisticated and trim, even in a kilt and sweater, and
her hair now bounced with its natural curl, a thick dark halo that suited her.
She’d skipped last year to have fun in Scandinavia with her new guy, but one or
the other of them must have broken it off — probably Patrice, who seemed to
think of men primarily as fashion accessories.

Despite her obsessions with appearances and luxury, Patrice
had a fundamental grit that made me like her. Sort of to my surprise, she’d
tried to reach out to me during the summer after I’d run away, proving that she
wasn’t as thoughtless as she could sometimes seem. It made me happy to remember
that not every vampire at Evernight Academy was sinister and forbidding.
Besides, this was the first time I’d seen her since I’d died. I wished I could
have said hello, but of course that was impossible.

just
before Patrice stepped inside,
she paused at the door and looked! upward, directly at where I was hovering.
Could she see me
?
I realized quickly that she couldn’t,
but the coincidence was striking. Patrice hesitated a second longer before
readjusting her sunglasses and going inside.

A few more familiar faces began to appear, both vampire and
human, mostly people I hadn’t known too well but had shared classes with and
spoken to from time to time. A couple of teachers, too — both Mr. Yee and
Professor Iwerebon mingled among the newcomers, saying hello to 52 parents. I
looked for my mother and father, half in dread, half in hope, but they didn’t
make an appearance. Among the human students, I didn’t see any old friends but
recognized a few faces — like Clementine Nichols, whose ticket to Evernight had
been her family’s haunted car, and Skye Tierney, Raquel’s sophomore — year lab
partner. Raquel had said Skye was “good people, basically.” Coming from Raquel,
who hated most people on principle until they gave her a reason to feel
otherwise, that was high praise.

And yet I never tried to have a real conversation with her,
or with a lot of these people. How could I never ask Clementine what it was
like to have a haunted car
?I
should’ve reached out to
people more often. I’d never been incredibly outgoing, but death made me feel
lonelier, somehow.

The Woodsons’ car finally showed up, and Vic and Ranulf both
emerged. Each of them wore the regulation uniform, but Vic had on a Phillies
cap, as usual — and to my delight, Ranulf wore one as well.

“How very striking.” Mrs. Bethany swept out of the school,
as if she could sense deviations from protocol at a distance. “Mr. Woodson,
your sartorial influence on Mr. White is both profound and unfortunate.”

“We’ll take them off before class,” Vic promised, edging
around her. “Absolutely.”

“See that you do.”

Mrs. Bethany watched them go, her sharp eyes following them
like a hawk follows prey. She looked darkly beautiful with her thick hair piled
atop her head and her long fingernails painted crimson. But the only thing I
could think about was the last time I’d seen her — during the raid she’d led on
Black Cross’s New York headquarters. She’d killed Lucas’s stepfather in front
of my eyes without hesitating. The headmistress of Evernight enforced her idea
of the law, absolutely, whether seeking revenge for a Black Cross attack or
regulating the school dress code. I wondered if tl10se things were any
different for her, or whether it was all just a matter of rules.

That was what Balthazar seemed to think. I wasn’t sure,
though. Lucas and I had met because, two years before, Mrs. Bethany had
suddenly changed the rules of Evernight Academy in order to allow human
students to enroll — without informing those humans that they would be
surrounded by vampires, of course. Each of those many human students had
connections, one way or another, to ghosts. She’d been hunting the wraiths — creatures
like me — for reasons we had yet to learn. Mrs. Bethany was complicated in ways
I couldn’t pretend to fathom.

But I had to hope she would play by the rules today, at
least, because I recognized the car that Balthazar had rented coming up the
long gravel drive.

When Balthazar stepped out, several of the students — vampire
and human — smiled at him; he’d always been effortlessly popular, trusted by
everyone. But when Lucas got out of the passenger seat, the vampires’ smiles
vanished, replaced by expressions of pure loathing.

The ones who had been here t\vo years ago knew that Lucas
had been Black Cross — that he had first come to Evernight to spy on them, and
that he had been raised to kill vampires on sight. All of them would have heard
how narrowly he had escaped Mrs. Bethany when he’d been discovered. The fact
that Lucas had been changed into a vampire, something they had to sense
instantly, didn’t diminish their hatred in the slightest.

The only vampire who didn’t gape in shock and fury was Mrs.
Bethany. She stepped forward smoothly, her long black skirt swirling around
her, to face Lucas. Her expression was unreadable as she stared him in the
eyes.

Could he bring himself to do it? His face betrayed his
confusion and doubt, and who could blame him? To ask for the vampires’
protection — to declare himself one of them at last — was a kind of second
death for him. The death of who he had been, his whole life.

But he didn’t have much other choice.

Lucas took a deep breath. “I call upon the sanctuary of
Evernight.”

 Chaos followed. Several of the vampire students tried
to protest, either to Balthazar, who refused to be baited, or Mrs. Bethany, who
ignored them as she stood entirely still amid the din. The human students, of
course, had no idea what was going on or why this new guy was so despised by a
lot of the student body; understandably, they were suspicious of him already.

Lucas stood his ground, though I could see how he longed to
lash back, and how his dark green eyes sometimes followed one of the human
students a little too long. Mrs. Bethany studied him, her eyes searching, until
she gestured for him to follow her and walked toward the edge of the campus — toward
the carriage house where she lived.

As Balthazar watched them go, a space widening around him as
he was shunned by the other vampire students, I willed myself to his side and
whispered, “How do you think she’s taking it?”

He jumped, then hissed, “You scared me.”