Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side (2 page)

I started to turn to my left, thinking maybe Jake could loan me one of his pens. Before I could ask him, though, I felt a tap on my right shoulder.
Not now . . . Not now
... I considered ignoring it, but the tapper struck me lightly again.

"Excuse me, but are you in need of a writing instrument?"

The deep voice with the unusual Euro accent came from close behind me. I had no choice but to turn around.

No.

It was him. The guy from the bus stop. I would have recognized the strange outfit—the long coat, the boots—not to mention his imposing
height
anywhere. Only this time, he was just a few feet away. Close enough for me to see his eyes. They were so dark as to appear black and were boring into me with a cool, somehow unnerving, intelligence. I swallowed thickly, frozen in my seat.

Had he been in class all along? And if so, how could I have failed to notice him?

Maybe because he was sitting sort of apart from the rest of us. Or maybe it was because the very air in his particular corner seemed murky, the fluorescent light directly above his desk snuffed out. But it was more than that. It was almost like he
created
the
darkness.
That's ridiculous, Jess. . . . He's a person, not a black hole. . . .

"You require a writing instrument, yes?" he repeated, stretching his arm up the aisle—a long, muscular arm—to offer me a shiny gold pen. Not the plastic Bics that most people used. A real gold pen. You could tell just by the way it glittered that it was expensive. When I hesitated, a look of annoyance crossed his aristocratic face, and he shook the pen at me. "You do recognize a pen, right? This
is
a familiar tool, yes?"

I didn't appreciate the sarcasm, or the way he'd crept up on me twice in one day, and I kept staring, stupidly, until Faith Crosse reached forward and pinched my arm. Hard. "Just sign the chart,
Jenn,
all right?"

"Hey!" I rubbed what would be a bruise, wishing I had the nerve to tell Faith off, both for pinching me and calling me by the wrong name. But the last person who'd tangled with Faith Crosse had ended up transferring to Saint Monica's, the local Catholic school. Faith had made her life at Woodrow Wilson that miserable.

"Hurry it up,
Jenn,"
Faith snapped again.

"Okay, okay." Reluctantly reaching out to the stranger, I accepted the heavy pen from his hand, and as our fingers touched, I felt the most bizarre sensation ever. Like déjà vu crashing into a premonition. The past colliding with the future.

He smiled then, revealing the most perfect set of even, white teeth I'd ever seen. They actually gleamed, like well-tended weaponry. Above him, the fluorescent light sizzled to life for a second, flickering like lightning.

Okay, that was weird.

I slid back around, and my hand shook a little as I wrote my name on the seating chart. It was stupid to be freaked out. He was just another student. Obviously a new guy. Maybe he lived somewhere near our farm. He'd probably been waiting for the bus, just like me, and missed getting on somehow. His somewhat mysterious appearance in English class—a few feet from me—probably wasn't cause for alarm, either.

I looked to Mindy for her opinion. She'd obviously been waiting to make contact. Eyes wide, she jabbed her thumb in the guy's direction, mouthing a very exaggerated,
"He's so hot!"

Hot?
"You're crazy," I whispered. Yes, the guy was technically good-looking. But he was also totally terrifying with his cloak and boots and ability to materialize near me seemingly out of nowhere.

"The chart already," Faith growled behind me.

"Here." I passed the seating chart over my shoulder, getting a deep, razor-thin cut as impatient Faith snatched the paper from my hand. "Ouch!"

I shook the stinging, bleeding finger, then jabbed it into my mouth, tasting salt on my tongue, before I twisted back around to return the pen.
The fasten the better..
. "Here. Thanks."

The guy who generated his own gloom stared at my fingers, and I realized that I was dripping blood on his expensive pen. "Um, sorry," I said, wiping the pen on my leg, for lack of a tissue.
Ugh. And will that stain come out of my jeans?

His gaze followed my fingers, and I thought maybe he was revolted by the fact that I was bleeding. Yet I swore I saw something quite different than disgust in those black eyes. . . . And then he ran his tongue slowly across his lower lip.

What the hell was
that?

Tossing the pen at him, I spun around in my seat.
I could change schools, like that girl who messed with Faith. Go to Saint Monica's. That's the answer. It's not too late. . . .

The seating chart made its way back to Mrs. Wilhelm, and she read through the names, then glanced up with a smile that was directed just past my desk. "Let's take a moment to welcome our new foreign exchange student, Lucius . . ." Frowning, she referred back to her chart. "Vlades . . . cooo. Did I say that correctly?"

Most students would have just muttered, "Yeah, whatever." I mean, who really cared about a name?

My early-morning stalker, that's who.

"No," he intoned. "No, that is not correct."

Behind me, I heard the scrape of a chair against linoleum, and then a shadow loomed over my shoulder. My neck prickled again.

"Oh." Mrs. Wilhelm looked slightly alarmed as a tall teenager in a black velvet coat advanced up the aisle toward her. She raised a cautionary finger, like she was about to tell him to sit down, but he strode right past her.

Grabbing up a marker from the tray beneath the whiteboard, he flipped off the cap with authority and scrawled the word
Vladescu
in a flowing script.

"My name is Lucius Vladescu," he announced, pointing to the word. "Vla-DES-cu. Emphasis on the middle syllable, please."

Locking his hands behind his back, he began pacing, as though he was the teacher. One by one, he made eye contact with each student in the room, obviously summing us up. I sensed from the look on his face that we were found wanting somehow.

"The Vladescu name is rather revered in Eastern Europe," he lectured. "A noble name." He paused in his pacing and locked onto
my eyes.
"A
royal
name."

I had no idea what he was talking about.

"Does it not 'ring a bell,' as you Americans say?" he asked the class in general. But he was still staring at me.

God, his eyes were black.

I flinched away, looking to Mindy, who was actually fanning herself, totally oblivious to me. It was like she was under a spell. Everyone was. No one was fidgeting, or whispering, or doodling.

Almost against my will, I returned my attention to the teenager who'd hijacked English lit. It really was almost impossible not to watch him. Lucius Vladescu's longish glossy black hair was out of place in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, but he would have fit right in with the European models in Mindy's
Cosmopolitan
magazines. He was muscular and lean like a model, too, with high cheekbones, a straight nose, and a strong jaw. And those eyes . . .

Why wouldn't he quit staring at me? "Would you care to tell us anything else about yourself?" Mrs. Wilhelm finally suggested.

Lucius Vladescu spun on his booted heel to face her and capped the pen with a firm snap. "Not particularly. No." The answer wasn't rude . .. but he didn't address Mrs. Wilhelm like a student, either.

More like an equal.

"I'm sure we'd love to hear more about your heritage," Mrs. Wilhelm prompted, admitting, "It
does
sound interesting."

But Lucius Vladescu had returned his attention me.

I slunk down in my seat.
Is everyone noticing this?

 
"You shall learn more about me in due time," Lucius said. There was a hint of frustration in his voice, and I had no idea why. But it scared me again. "That is a promise," he added, boring into my eyes. "A promise."

Yet it sounded more like a threat.

Chapter
4

"DID YOU SEE how the foreign guy was looking at you in English lit?" Mindy cried when we met up after school. "He's gorgeous, and he is so into you! And he's
royal."

I squeezed her wrist, trying to calm her down. "Min . . . before you buy a gift for our 'royal' wedding, I have to tell you something scary about the so-called gorgeous guy."

My friend crossed her arms, skeptical. I could tell that Mindy had already made up her mind about Lucius Vladescu, basing her opinion entirely on broad shoulders and a strong jaw. "What could you know about him that's scary? We just met him."

"Actually, I saw him earlier this morning," I said. "That guy—Lucius—was at the bus stop. Staring at me."

"That's
it?
"
Mindy rolled her eyes. "Maybe he takes the bus."

"He didn't get on."

"So he missed the bus." She shrugged. "That's stupid, but not scary."

Mindy wasn't getting it at all. "It's weirder than that," I insisted. "I ... I thought I heard him say my name. Just as the bus pulled up."

Mindy looked puzzled.

"My
old
name," I clarified.

My best friend sucked in her breath. "Okay. That could be a little weird."

"Nobody knows that name. Nobody."

In fact, I hadn't even shared much of my past with Mindy. The story of my adoption was my closely guarded secret. If it ever got out . . . people would think I'm a freak. I
felt
like a freak every time I thought about the story. My adoptive mother, a cultural anthropologist, had been studying an off-the-wall underground cult in central Romania. She'd been there with my dad to observe their rituals, in hopes of writing one of her groundbreaking insider journal articles about unique subcultures. However, things had gone wrong over in Eastern Europe. The cult had been a little
too
strange, a little too offbeat, and some Romanian villagers had banded together, intent on putting an end to the whole group. By force.

Just before the mob attacked, my birth parents had entrusted me, an infant, to the visiting American researchers, begging them to take me to the United States, where I would be safe.

I hated that story. Hated the fact that my birth parents had been ignorant, superstitious people duped into joining a cult. I didn't even want to know what the rituals were. I knew the kind of things my mom studied. Animal sacrifices, tree worship, virgins tossed into volcanoes . . . maybe my birth parents had been involved in some sort of deviant sexual stuff. Maybe that's why they had been murdered.

Who knew? Who
wanted to
know?

I didn't ask for details, and my adoptive parents never pressed the issue. I was just happy to be Jessica Packwood, American. Antanasia Dragomir didn't exist, as far as I was concerned.