Hex Hall (16 page)

By the time we got back to Chaston, she'd been puled out of the tub and wrapped in a towel. Bandages covered the holes on her neck, and were wrapped tightly over both wrists. But she stil looked realy pale, and her eyes were closed.

Elodie and Anna were huddled against the sink in their pajamas, clutching each other and sniffling. Mrs. Casnoff was kneeling by Chaston's head, murmuring something. Whether it was comfort or magic, I didn't know.

She looked up when Cal came in, and her face seemed to sag in relief, making her look more like someone's concerned grandmother than a formidable headmistress. "Thanks be," she said softly. As she stood, I saw that her heavy silk robe was soaked at the knees and probably ruined. She didn't seem to notice.

"My office," she said to Cal as he knelt and scooped Chaston into his arms.

Mrs. Casnoff moved out into the hal, spreading her arms to part the crowd of students gathered outside the bathroom. "Back up, children, give us some room. I assure you, Miss Burnett wil be fine.

Just a smal accident."

Everybody retreated, and the groundskeeper emerged, with Chaston in his arms. Her cheek rested against his chest, and I saw that her lips were purplish.

As the three disappeared down the stairs, I heard someone behind me sigh,"Wow." I turned and noticed Siobhan lounging against the bathroom doorframe.

"What?" she said. "Don't tel me you wouldn't give up a little blood to get carried around by
that
."

Siobhan started when Elodie and Anna walked out of the bathroom looking shaky and pale. Then Elodie's eyes fixed on something behind me and narrowed. "It was
you
," she spat. I turned and saw Jenna standing outside our bedroom door.

"You did this," Elodie continued, slowly advancing on Jenna, who, proving herself either brave or completely insane, held her ground and continued to stare at Elodie.

The whole mood in the halway changed. I think despite being worried about Chaston, we were al sort of anticipating an Elodie/Jenna smackdown, maybe to get our minds off the blood stil pooled on the bathroom floor, maybe because teenage girls are horrible creatures who like to watch other girls fight. Who knows?

Jenna's cool faltered for just a second, and she glanced down at her feet. When she lifted her head, however, that same bored, languid look was in her eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Liar!" Elodie cried, and tears spiled down her cheeks.

"You're kilers, al of you vamps. You don't belong here."

"She's right," someone piped up, and I saw Nausicaa push her way through the crowd. Her wings were flapping angrily, stirring the air around her. Taylor was standing just behind her, dark eyes wide.

Jenna laughed, but it sounded forced. I looked around and realized the crowd had thinned around her, making her look very smal and alone.

"And what?" she asked, her voice shaking a little. "None of your kind has ever kiled? None of you witches or shapeshifters or fae? Vampires are the only ones who've ever taken a life?"

Al eyes were on Elodie, and I think we expected her to lunge for Jenna's throat or something.

But she had the power and she knew it. Her green eyes were positively glittering as she sneered, "What do you know about anything? You're not even a real Prodigium."

The breath that everyone had been holding seemed to rush out al at once. She'd said it. The one thing they al thought but never acknowledged out loud.

"Our families' powers are ancient," Elodie continued, her face pale, except for two red spots on her cheeks. "We are the descendents of angels. And what are you? A pathetic little human who was fed on by a parasite; a monster."

Jenna was shaking now. "So I'm the monster? What about you, Elodie? Holy told me what you and your little friends were trying to do."

I waited for Elodie to fire back with something, but instead she turned very pale. Anna had stopped crying and was clutching Elodie's shoulder. "Let's go," she implored in a high voice.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Elodie said, but she looked scared.

"The hel you don't. Your little coven was trying to raise a demon."

You'd think the crowd would have gasped. I think I gasped.

But the rest of the hal was quiet.

Elodie just stared at Jenna, but I thought I heard Anna whimper.

In the face of that stare, Jenna started to babble. "She said you wanted more power, and that you wanted to do a summoning ritual, and you needed a sacrifice to do that. Y-you have to let the demon feed . . . feed on someone, so . . ."

Elodie had regained her composure. "A demon? You think we could raise a demon here and not have Mrs. Casnoff and the Vandy and the Council jump al over us? Please."

Someone in the crowd snickered, and the tension broke.

One person laughing gives everyone permission to laugh, so that's what they did.

Jenna stood there listening to that mocking laughter a lot longer than I could have. Then she pushed past me and went down the hal and into our room. She slammed the door behind her.

Once she was gone, the murmuring began.

Nausicaa was talking to Siobhan. "Which one of us is next?"

Siobhan's blue wings shuddered as she replied, "Al I did was fly to catch the bus! I don't deserve to be locked up here with kilers."

"Jenna isn't a kiler," I said, but I realized I didn't know that for sure. She was a vampire. Vampires feed off humans.

And maybe witches.

No. I shoved that thought away even as I remembered Jenna trying so hard not to look at my blood that first day.

To my surprise, it was Taylor who piped up next, saying,

"Sophie's right. There's no proof Jenna kiled anybody."

I have no idea if she said it because she actualy believed it, or if she just wanted to irritate Nausicaa, but I was grateful anyway.

"Thanks," I said, but Beth stepped in between me and Taylor.

"I wouldn't listen to anything Sophie Mercer has to say, Taylor."

I stared at Beth. What happened to our whole hairsniffing moment of bonding?

"I was talking to one of the other weres, and she said Sophie's dad is the head of the Council."

I heard a few murmurs at that, and some of the older girls glared at me. The younger ones just looked confused.

Crap.

"Her dad is the one who let vampires into Hex," Beth said.

She looked back at me, and I saw the gleam of her fangs as they slid out of her gums. "Of course she's gonna say Jenna's innocent.

Otherwise her daddy's job would be on the line."

I did not have time for this. "I've never even met my dad, and I'm certainly not here to further his political agenda or anything. I broke the rules and got sentenced to Hex. Just like everyone else."

Taylor narrowed her eyes. "Your dad is head of the Council?"

Before I could answer, Mrs. Casnoff appeared at the top of the stairs. She was stil in her wet robe, and she looked majorly stressed, but she wasn't nearly as pale, so I took that as a good sign.

"Attention, ladies," she said in a voice that managed to be powerful without actualy yeling. "Thanks to Cal's efforts, Miss Burnett has regained consciousness and appears to be on the mend."

The colective sigh of relief and folowing murmurs covered my leaning against Anna and whispering, "What does she mean about this Cal guy?"

I'd expected a snotty response about how stupid I was, but Anna was apparently too relieved about Chaston to be bitchy. "He's a white warlock," she replied. "A super-powerful one. He can heal wounds other witches and warlocks can't."

"Why didn't he heal Holy, then?" I asked, and that got me a snotty look. Good to know Anna was back to normal. "Holy was already dead when they found her, thanks to your little
friend
. Cal can only heal the living; he can't raise the dead. No one can."

"Oh," I said lamely, but she was already talking to Elodie.

"Her parents wil come for her tomorrow," Mrs. Casnoff continued, "and I hope she wil be able to rejoin us after winter break."

"Has she said anything?" Elodie asked. "Did she say who did it?"

Mrs. Casnoff frowned slightly. "Not at this time. And I encourage al of you to use your best judgment before you go around spreading rumors about this incident. We're obviously taking this very seriously, and the last thing we need is panic."

Elodie opened her mouth, but a look from Mrs. Casnoff stopped whatever nasty thing she was about to say.

"Al right," Mrs. Casnoff said with a clap of her hands.

"Everyone off to bed now. We can discuss this further in the morning."

W
hen I returned to my room, Jenna was inside, sitting on the dresser next to the window. Her forehead was resting on her knees.

"Jenna?"

She didn't look at me. "It's happening again," she said in a thick voice. "Just like Holy."

She took a deep shuddery breath and said, "When I saw them carrying Chaston out . . . it was exactly the same. The holes in her neck, the slashes on her wrists. The only difference is that Chaston was white. Holy w-was nearly . . . nearly
gray
when they p-puled her out. . . ." Her voice broke.

I sat on my bed and laid a hand on her knee. "Hey," I said softly, "that wasn't your fault."

She looked up, her eyes red with anger. "Yeah, but that's not what everyone else thinks, is it? They al think I'm what, a

'bloodsucking freak'?"

She hopped off the dresser. "Like I asked for this," she muttered in a low voice, puling clothes out of her closet and tossing them on her bed. "Like I wanted to come to this damn school anyway."

"Jen," I started to say, but she whirled around on me.

"I
hate
it here!" she cried. "I . . . I hate taking stupidass classes like
A History of Nineteenth Century Witches
. God, I j-just wanna take algebra or something stupid like that. I wanna eat lunch--
real
lunch--in a cafeteria, and have an after-school job, and go to the prom."

With a sob, she sat down on her bed, like al the anger in her had evaporated. "I don't want to be a vampire," she whispered, and then she broke down crying, burying her face in the black Tshirt she was holding.

I looked around the room, and for the first time, al the pink didn't seem cheerful; it just seemed sad, like Jenna was trying to hold on to whatever life she'd had before. There are times when saying nothing is definitely the best course of action, and I felt like this was one of those times. So I just crossed the room and sat on her bed, stroking her hair like my mom did for me the night I'd found out I was going to Hecate.

And after a while, Jenna leaned back against her pilows and started talking.

"She was so nice to me," she said softly. "Amanda."

I didn't have to ask who Amanda was. I knew she was finaly teling me the story of how she'd come to be a vampire.

"That was the biggest part. Not that she was cute, or smart, or funny. She was those things too, but it was the nice that got me.

No one had ever paid so much attention to me before. When she told me what she was, that she wanted me to be with her forever, I didn't realy believe it. I didn't believe it until I felt her teeth in my neck."

She paused, and there was no sound in the room except the soft rustling of the breeze in the oaks outside.

"When the Change happened, it was . . . amazing. I felt stronger and just
better
, you know? Like the rest of my life had been a dream. Those first two nights with her were the best nights of my whole life. And then they kiled her."

"They?"

Her eyes met mine. My tiny reflection in her eyes looked very pale.

"The Eye," she replied, and an involuntary shiver ran through me.

"There were two of them. They broke into the motel where we were hiding, and they staked her while she was sleeping. But she woke up and she started . . . she started screaming, and it took both of them to hold her down. So I got up ran out the door and I just kept running. For three days I hid in somebody's garden shed. I only left there because I was starving. So I stole some food from a convenience store.

"As soon as I put the first Twinkie in my mouth, I felt like was I going to die. I chewed it maybe twice before I had to spit it out. The--" She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "The manager of the store came out and found me on my knees in the parking lot. He saw the wrapper and started yeling about caling the cops, and I--"

She broke off and wouldn't meet my eyes. I put my hand on her shoulder, trying to console her or let her know I didn't care that she'd drunk someone's blood, but I couldn't look at her face.

"After . . . after that, I felt better. I got a bus back into the city and found Amanda's parents. They were vamps too. Amanda's dad had been bitten years ago and had changed al of them. So they contacted the Council and I got sent here."

She looked at me again. "It wasn't supposed to be like this,"

she said plaintively. "I don't want to be like this without Amanda. I only wanted to be a vampire if we could be together forever. She
promised
." Tears were glistening in her eyes.