Afterlife

Chapter Sixteen

“MRS. BETHANY IS YOUR WIFE,” I REPEATED. Although I’d guessed it myself, I couldn’t fully wrap my mind around the information. The leader of the wraiths, married to one of the most powerful, ruthless vampires in existence? “Then why does she hate the wraiths so much?” Surely if she was married to a wraith, she’d have to like them a little. But maybe not. Maybe they’d broken up or something. A divorce would probably be extra — nasty after two hundred years of marriage.

But Christopher shook his head. “I have not spoken to her since my death.”

“Why not? Is it because she became a vampire? Did she — was she the one who killed you?” I corrected myself. “No, of course not. You said she was the only person loyal to you.”

“This is my history, mine alone,” Christopher said, and his voice held a sharpness I hadn’t heard since his first frightening manifestations at Evernight. Sensing my tension, though, he visibly calmed himself. “And yet, it concerns you now, and those close to you. It is not wrong for you to ask.”

Maxie gaped at him, her earlier outrage at my special treatment forgotten. “Are you going to tell us where you come from?” I got the impression this was a closely guarded secret.

Christopher glared at her. “I shall tell Bianca, as it relates to her existence,” he said. “It does not relate to yours.”

With a huff, Maxie stomped away, her shiny heels loud on the pavement. She disappeared into a crowd of people who seemed mostly to be dressed in feathers and paint. I turned back to Christopher. “If you don’t want to talk about it.” I said, “honestly, that’s okay. It’s your business.” I wanted answers, but that Wasn’t the same as wanting to pry.

“You will soon see how our paths intersected. These events are becoming part of your history as well.”

He swept his hand across the sky, turning it instantly black — as though, instead of being outside, we stood in a kind of planetarium. Instead of the flowing, chaotic land of lost things around us, we were entirely alone, in a sort of void. I understood, without being told, that this was beyond most wraiths’ power, including my own; this uncanny ability was something Christopher had forged from his long centuries trapped between 163 worlds.

“Wow,” I said. “What is this?”

“We are traveling to see the past.”

“We’re going back in time?” After everything else that had happened, it was weird that this had the power to surprise me. Like something out of a science — fiction movie; Vic would think this was extremely cool.

But Christopher shook his head. “Traveling to see,” he said. “The past is unreachable by any power, mortal or immortal.”

I Wasn’t sure what the difference was, but there was no time to ask. Taking shape around us was a forest, through which wound a narrow dirt road, striped with tracks from wheels and horses. A carriage came toward us, pulled by two pale gray horses and lit by actual lanterns on each side. It seemed romantic to me, something out of a novel by one of the Brontes.

At least, it seemed that way until figures jumped out of the dark — out of nowhere, it seemed — and sprang upon the carriage. The horses whinnied and snorted as one of the figures grabbed their harness, bringing everything to a halt.

I gasped, but nobody seemed able to hear me — the difference. maybe, between seeing the past and being there. Christopher stood quiet beside me as we saw the highway bandits or whatever they were pull open the doors of the carriage. In the lantern light, I could see their faces, their wicked grins, and their fangs: vampires on the attack. “Well, well. What have we here?” one of them snarled. “Guests for dinner?”

“I shall tell you what you have.” Mrs. Bethany — in Regency costume, her hair piled high upon her head — leaned out of the door, completely unfazed by the attack. Was this the moment she was changed?

Then she hoisted a crossbow. “You have to run,” she said.

The vampires scattered, but not fast enough. Mrs. Bethany shot one straight through, the wooden shaft staking it in the heart. In a flash, the carriage driver and liverymen leaped into action, each of them armed, each of them sure and detem1ined as they ran into the forest after the vampires.

“Quickly!” Mrs. Bethany cried, jumping from tl1e carriage so that her skirts fluttered. Already she had reloaded the crossbow, and despite the darkness, she took aim and brought another vampire down in a single stroke. Her smile was brilliant in the night.;;We have them now!”

She laughed out loud as she pulled a broadsword from within her cloak. As she lifted it high, I turned away: I’d seen one vampire being beheaded, and that was enough for a lifetime. As I heard the sick wet thud,l winced — and then my eyes opened wide.

“The way they’re fighting.. the way she throws herself into it…” I’d seen this before.

“Trained well, don’t you think?” Christopher never looked away from Mrs. Bethany.

“If she was hunting vampires, and if she knew just what to do, then she was — she had to be — Mrs. Bethany was in Black Cross?”

I had to look at her again now. The fight was over, the vampires dust at her feet. In the moonlight, her smile softened and became warm as she rushed forward toward one of the liverymen — who, I now realized, was a slightly younger Christopher. They embraced each other, her arms tight around his neck, and kissed so passionately that I felt my cheeks flush.

“We were both raised among Black Cross hunters,” Christopher said as he watched his long — ago happiness with his wife. “When I emigrated to America in the first years of its independence, I connected with the first Boston cell. There we met. Few women hunted in those days, but nobody questioned her. She was the best fighter among us. And the vampires — they always underestimated her l!lntil it was too late. There sprang up a legend amorng them of a huntress both beautiful and deadly, which they disbelieved at their peril. Sometimes it was the last thing they said, even as the stake sank into them. ‘It is her.’” The forest had darkened into indistinct gloom, but now shapes began to form anew. I saw a small house, simple, with one large room that seemed to be both kitchen and parlor. The fireplace was enormous, deep enough to walk into, tall as a person and as long as the house itself. A teakettle hung near the flames as Mrs. Bethany busied herself cutting cake; at the table, Christopher sat with a few men dressed as he was, with long coats and white kerchiefs tied at their throats. They had large metal cups filled with something that looked like beer, and they were laughing loudly.

Was it tbe clarity of this place that showed me the others weren’t as happy as they pretended to be? That their eyes watched Christopher cagily tss as he took another drink?

“Business associates.” Christopher’s face was illuminated by the long — ago fire. We seemed to be standing at the very edge of the room, in deep shadow. “Friends, or so I thought. We joined in a shipping venture. Trade between Europe and America, in fine goods — a growing industry in that time, and therefore a likely bet to increase my family’s wealth. But I was accustomed only to the company of Black Cross hunters; say what you will of Black Cross, but they do not engage in such gross trickery. I had been brought up to think that all evil was embodied by vampires. I did not look for it in men who called themselves my friends.”

“What did they do?” 1 whispered, though I knew by now the figures before us couldn’t hear.

“They did not want to establish a shipping business. They only wanted to steal the family money I gave them as investment.” He still sounded slightly bewildered — like after a couple hundred years, Christopher hadn’t yet wrapped his mind around the fact of his betrayal. “After some months, I began to press them for returns. Profits. To examine the books. They had countless excuses and nothing to show me. One night I swore I would take them to court. As I walked home that night, they attacked me. I was unarmed, and recovering from a winter illness. My Black Cross training was to no avail. They left me dying in a ditch. The last sound I heard was their laughter as they walked away.”

“I’m sorry.” Before us remained the happy scene with everyone being friendly. Maybe he preferred this to remembering his death; I wouldn ‘ t blame him. I didn’t like remembering my death either, and at least I’d been in my bed, with Lucas by my side. “That’s awful.”

Christopher stared hard at his killers, who were at that moment laughing at one of his jokes. Mrs. Bethany set the slices of cake in front of them; she didn’t seem to be in as good spirits as the others. In fact, her expression was wary. She’d picked up on trouble even if her husband hadn’t.

Then the room shifted again, with Mrs. Bethany remaining motionless at the center of it, her dress flowing from one color to another and her expression changing from unease to rage. “What do you mean, you cannot act?”

The scene in front of us was now some kind of meetinghouse or storeroom. Black Cross, I realized, seeing the weaponry mounted on the walls. 166 A man with his hair tied in a tail sat on a slightly raised platform, obviously in charge. He shook his head.. “Mrs. Bethany, as lamentable as your husband’s death is, it was not the work of any supernatural agency. Therefore it does not concern Black Cross.”

“The magistrate will not listen,” Mrs. Bethany said. “He believes it was the work of bandits and says lam a foolish woman, doubting two such ‘fine gentlemen.’ “She spat those two words, as if she thought they could poison her. “I could kill them myself, but they are gone to the Caribbean. His family’s money is lost, because of their deceit. At least give me the funds to travel there, to see justice done.”

The Black Cross leader looked at Mrs. Bethany pityingly — the same look, I realized, that Kate had worn when she refused to give back Lucas’s coffee can full of cash. “Our funds are used for our struggle, and every penny is needed. You know this as well as I. Your grief has brought you to the point of hysteria.”

Mrs. Bethany’s proud face never changed, but I saw something I’d never expected to see: her eyes filling with tears. Yet she spoke steadily. “After everything I have done, everything I have given, this is your answer.”

“What other answer could there be?”

She stepped back slightly, cocking her head in that familiar gesture of contemplation and contempt. Li.ke she’s seeing him for the first time, I thought.

Christopher said, “In that instant, her dedication to Black Cross turned to hate. We can always hate that which we loved, and with a fire as great as our love once was.”

The room vanished, replaced by the same forest pathway we had seen first. But the scene had changed to winter; the naked tree branches glittered with ice, and the ground was thick with snow. Mrs. Bethany rode alone on horseback, sidesaddle, with a heavy cape of dark furs around her. Her eyes searched her surroundings despite the deepening shadows — it was dusk, the sky a piercing cobalt blue. Then she sat up a little straighter; she’d spotted something.

A vampire stepped from behind one of the larger trees, obviously uneasy. “Whatever trap you set, huntress, it’s a dangerous one for you. Your 167 help is too far away.”

“I set no trap,” Mrs. Bethany said. She dismounted from her horse and walked slowly toward him in the snow. “I bear no weapons.”

“Then I suppose you have come to die, huntress.”

It was a taunt, but Mrs. Bethany lifted her head. “Yes.”

The vampire appeared as shocked as I was. He didn’t say anything at first, didn’t rush at her or run away.

She held up her hands, gloved in dark green, to show that she had no weapons. A gust of wind ruffled her hair and sent down a shower of snow from the branches above, scattering white on her dark hair and cape. “I was bitten once. Did you know? Do they tell the story?”

“Many claim it,” the vampire said. “Many lie.”

“One tells the truth,” she said. A quick tug at the neck of her cape revealed an old scar upon her throat. “I was rescued, then. But I have always known that I am prepared. If a vampire were to bite me, and kill me, I would rise again, undead.”

The vampire took a step closer, disbelieving. “This is a trick.”

“No trick.”

“You hate our kind. Why would you become one of us?”

“I need to be free of human ties, human cares.” Mrs. Bethany’s expression faltered, but only for a moment. “I–I need to travel beyond the reach of my mortal means.”

That won her a burst of laughter from the vampire. “Mad. You’ve gone mad.” She said, “Change me and see.”

The vampire sprang at her, taking both of them down to the ground in one pounce. Mrs. Bethany didn’t resist and didn’t scream, not even when her blood spurted onto the white snow, steaming.

“Revenge,” Christopher said, “is a powerful motivator.”

The next place he showed me was obviously someplace a lot warmer. A palm frond brushed against the window and tropical flowers were piled high in vases. We seemed to be in an island villa, one that might have been very nice before it had been trashed. Furniture was upended, mirrors broken. Two dead bodies lay on the floor, and Mrs. Bethany stood in one corner, taking in the scene with some satisfaction. She wiped blood from her mouth with the back of her hand.

“She got them back,” I said. Despite the horror of the murder scene before us, I couldn’t help feeling like those guys had it coming.

Christopher nodded. “But at what cost? Her life. Perhaps more important, her mission. Her soul.”

“Where were you during all this?” I said. “Why didn’t you appear to her? If she’d known you were a ghost, that she could maybe talk to you — ”

“I could not yet appear to her.” The Caribbean scene with Mrs. Bethany faded, and we were once again in the land of lost things. Were we in the same location? Our surroundings had changed; instead of the city, we stood out in the open, in a desert too stark to be beautiful. Sunlight beat down hotly, and I noticed a scorpion scuttling across the ground. Christopher sat on a low, flat rock; his handsome profile was outlined against the dark stone, and for the ftrst time, I recognized him as the silhouette on Mrs. Bethany’s desk. “As you know, learning to use wraith powers takes some time — and far more time for most than it did for you. By the point when I could have appeared to my wife, she had learned to hate the wraiths as the natural enemy of the vampire. She had shown me, through her actions, that her hate was stronger than her love.”

I wanted to argue with him, but I remembered how hard it had been for me to appear to my parents. That fear of rejection was powerful. And as Lucas’s situation showed, not every person was strong enough to love despite the change.

Lucas, I thought. Of course Mrs. Bethany had been sympathetic to Lucas. Of course she reached out to him and understood him. She had been exacdywhere he was. But that didn’t make her generous and good. It just made her somebody who hated Black Cross a lot. He needed to realize that. and the sooner the better.

“I have to go,” I said. “I’ll come back, okay?”

I’d expected Christopher to protest, or throw some ice — storm tantrum to keep me here, but instead he kept gazing at the scorpion as it skittered upon the sand. “Go,” he said. “I am weary.”

Watching Mrs. Bethany’s death — even as a long — distant memory — had been as hard for him as it had been for me to see Lucas die. I put one hand on his shoulder. “Thank you for showing me.”

“Go,” he said, more quietly, and placed his face in his hands.

I concentrated on a place, on the records room, and traveled through the blue until it materialized around me. Patrice was up there alone, studying her German; she started when I appeared, but only for a second. “Hey, there you are. Lucas was getting worried.”

“I’m going to him right away,” I promised, going to the loose brick in the wall and retrieving my bracelet from behind it. When I’d put it around my wrist, I took completely solid form and felt an enormous wave of relief. “I just need a second to be … less ghostly. If that makes sense.”

“Whatever works,” Patrice said, not unkindly. “But he’s got a test this afternoon, remember? He’ll do better if he knows you’re around and okay.”

“I know it.” Though I hated to give up the bracelet so soon, I decided I’d better. “Okay, fine. Come with me?”

“Sure. I have to head down to class anyway.”

I trailed behind her as vapor the whole way down the stairs. “Could you keep out of my hair, please?” she muttered. “You’re awfully damp sometimes. I’ll frizz.”

“This isn’t easy. you know.”

“Neither is fixing my hair.”

I wanted to laugh, but just then — as we were reentering the classroom area — we heard the commotion. People shouting, shoes squeaking against the floor, the thud of a body against the waH — “A fight,” Patrice said.

“Lucas.” I knew it without having to be told.

Patrice ran, me above her, until we reached the fracas. Sure enough, Lucas and Samuel were on the floor, grappling with each other, their noses bloody.

“I said,” Lucas rasped, “leave her alone.”

“You want her for yourself, huh? Is that what you want?” Samuel’s sick grin made it clear that he Wasn’t talking about flirtation. Whatever human Samuel had been picking on — and Lucas had been defending — was a!J too appetizing as an evening snack. I realized who it must have been when Skye, amid the crowd, threw one of her books at Samuel, but he dodged it easily. “Hit me a little harder, and she’s yours, man. Take what you want.”

Lucas head — butted the guy, so hard that Samuel flopped back, stunned. Groggily, a hand to his forehead, Lucas said, “Mostly I just want you to shut up.”

The laughing crowd around us went very quiet, parting to allow Mrs. Bethany to sweep into the middle of this. She looked so different to me now that I had seen her younger, human, in love, alive. And yet she was still Mrs. Bethany, made of starched lace and long skirts and chilly authority. The fight scene got no more reaction from her than a raised eyebrow. “Mr. Ross. Mr. Younger. I take it You’ve settled this matter between yourselves?”

“Yeah, it’s settled.” Lucas got to his feet, somewhat unsteadily, and dabbed at his nose with his sleeve. Samuel continued to glare up at him, like he might tackle him anew whether the headmistress was watching or not.

“Mr. Younger?” Mrs. Bethany repeated. “I hope I won’t have to undertake any.. disciplinary action. I suspect you wouldn’t care for my methods.”

“Yeah,” Samuel said, which wasn’t exactly an answer, but he rose and slouched off without another word.

As everyone else went about their business, scattering from Mrs. Bethany like leaves in a strong gale, I wanted to talk to Lucas — but Skye was a little faster, reaching him before I had a chance to say a word. “Thanks for standing up for me.”

“No prob.”

She had a crooked sort of smile that somehow made her beauty more approachable. How come my funny smile only made me look silly? “You’re kind of like a one — man SWAT team, you know. Who would ‘ve thought anybody would need so much rescuing in high school?”

Skye was only making a joke, but it obviously struck a chord for Lucas. He took her arm by the elbow and said, “We’ ve gotta talk.”

“Our test is starting in five minutes — and don’t you need to clean up after the fight?”

“Forget cleaning up. Forget the test. This is important.”

I followed them back into the stairwell; Patrice cast a worried glance after us but didn’t try to join them. Good thing, too, because she probably would’ve freaked out. Knowing Lucas as I did, I knew what he was about to say — and I thought it was a good idea.

It was time to tell Skye the truth.

“What’s up?” Skye’s expression clouded as they stood together in the stairwell, light from the narrow arched window illuminating her dark hair. “Are you finally going to talk about what’s wrong with you?”

Lucas grew wary. “What do you mean?”

“You’re just so … angry,” she whispered, her voice gentle. “So angry about everything, all the time. I’m not saying you’re wrong to be angry, but Lucas — it’s burning you up inside. What is it? Can you tell me?”

If she’d tried to hint or trick it out of him, Lucas would never have spoken. But simple honesty always broke down his barriers. “My girlfriend, 171 Bianca. . she died last summer. I still love her. I always will.”

The truth, if not the whole truth, and it had the power to warm and thrill me all over again. What surprised me was the power that it had over Skye; her pale blue eyes instantly welled with tears. “I lost somebody this summer, too. My older brother.”

“Oh, jesus.” Lucas was clearly caught off guard. “Skye, I’m sorry.”

She squeezed his hand. “Believe me, I get it. I might hide the anger better than you do, but sometimes I just want to. .” Skye breathed out in frustration but managed to smile for him as she wiped away one tear. “Was Bianca just — amazing? I bet she was amazing.”

Lucas’s expression faltered. Talking about me in the past tense reminded him of my death and brought the pain back. “You have no idea.”

“If it helps any, I believe — no, I know — the dead aren’t truly gone.” She spoke with the deep assurance that could only have come from growing up in a haunted house. Skye knew about the undead, at least on that level. “They watch us. They’re close by. And I think they realize how much we love them, maybe more than they did when they were alive.”

As Skye finished saying this, I took the risk of brushing, gently, against Lucas’s hand. I saw him straighten, reassured of my presence and safety, and yet more emotional than before. “I believe that, too.”

“She’d want you to be happy,” Skye said. “Not angry all the time.”

Tm trying.” I knew Lucas was speaking to me as much as to Skye.

They just watched each other for a second, struggling for composure. After swallowing hard, Skye managed to say, “So, what did you want to tell me?”

“This school is dangerous, Skye. Everywhere around here is dangerous. You have to watch yourself.”

“Yeah, I kinda got that after the time those weird old gang members fired an arrow at me. What kind of gang uses crossbows?”

Lucas took a step closer and looked her straight in the eyes. Through the one crescent — shaped window, afternoon sunlight flooded in, turning his hair pure gold. “No, I mean it. Some of the students here — they’re not just students.”

She folded her arms. “You mean, they’re also enormous dickweeds?”

“I mean. they’re vampires.”

Skye stared at Lucas. Lucas stared right back at her. I wondered if she would scream, or ask questions, or just run like hell out of the school. Instead she burst into laughter.

As Lucas pulled back, startled, she gasped, “You almost had me!”

“Skye — ”

“It’s okay, I get it.” Her giggles almost masked her words. “We were getting way too heavy for people who need to think about calculus. Thanks for making me laugh. I needed it.”

Lucas struggled for words, then surrendered. “Anytime.”

“Come on, let’s get to class.” Skye headed for the door. Lucas glanced back, and I shimmered slightly in the light, so he’d know I was near. His bashful smile was the best welcome — home I could have had.

Of course I wanted to tell Lucas about Mrs. Bethany, but it could wait. Lucas’s dedication to his studies this semester might be mostly a way of distracting himself from pain, but that was a good reason to respect it. I supposed it wouldn’ t hurt to wait forty — five minutes.

Not everybody could be as disciplined about waiting for the right time to speak, though. As I settled back into the records room upstairs, alone and ready to spend a little more quality time wearing my bracelet, someone else decided to pay me a visit.

“Well, if it isn ‘t the prom queen of the dead,” Maxie said. I sat up, startled; she’d materialized across the room, and I’d been so deep in thought I hadn’t noticed. She was back in her flowing nightdress, like I was back in my usual pajamas. “Tell me, what’s it like to be so special that the rules don’t apply to youT’ “Awful,” I said. “It means even people you thought were your friends don’t like you.”

Maxie hesitated. She ducked her head, so that her cropped hair fell into her eyes, slightly blocking our view. “I like you,” she said in a small voice.

“Sometimes you don’t act like it.”

“We have to make choices,” she said. For the first time since I’d known her, she sounded more like an adult than a petulant child. “We have to recognize that we’re dead.”

“I get that. Trust me.”

“Vampires are our enemies.”

“Maybe that’s true most of the time,” I admitted, thinking of Mrs. Bethany, “but it’s not true for Lucas. Or for Baltl1azar, or Patrice, or Ranulf.

Why do you keep trying to create these black — and — white categories? Why are you looking at what everyone is, instead of who they are?”

“It helps,” she whispered. “When you’re not alive but not totally dead — it can feel like everything is gray. You want black. You want white.”

“I know.” And I did.

At that moment, the door opened, and Vic and Ranulf walked in. They had lunch period now. “Wait, wait,” Vic was saying. “You got Cristina Del Valle to go to the Autumn Ball with you? How did you work that? She’s the hottest girl in school.”

“I am wise in the ways of comely maidens,” Ranulf said. Then they both stopped as they saw me — and, I realized, Maxie, who hadn’t made herself invisible in time and now seemed to be too startled to do so, or anything else but gape at them.

Quickly, I said, “Maxie, obviously you already know Vic, but have you met Ranulf?”

“Still more wraiths,” Ranulf said. He’d been uneasy about socializing with me at first, after my deatl1, but it only took him a second to get past it now. “Welcome. Will you be here often? If so, please do not frost too many of the seating places. Bianca often leaves them too cold to be of use to others.”

“Hey!” I protested, but Ranulf suddenly seemed very interested in the Elvis posters.

Vic just kept staring at Maxie. She’d interacted with him throughout his life, but always invisibly; this had to be the first time he’d ever actually seen her. “Wow,” he said. “Uh, wow. Hey there.”

“Hello,” Maxie whispered. I knew that was the first word she’d ever spoken to him. She’d crossed the line — the one she didn’t want me to cross, and I liked it. Was she starting to think for herself? To understand that the lines between vampire, wraith, and human were as blurry as the ones bet\veen life and death?

“Do you want to.. hang out for a while?” Vic looked around the room wildly, obviously trying to figure out what might entertain her. “We could just talk or.. I’ve got some music — ”

“I should go,” Maxie said. But before I could be disappointed, she added, more quietly, ““ll come back sometime.” Vic grinned. “Great. I mean, that’s — That would be great.”

Maxie vanished, but I could sense her. She was. drifting out of the room very slowly, as if more reluctant to leave than she’d let on. As she finally 174 rose through the roof, Vic turned to me and said, “That was unbelievable!”

“Was it great? Finally meeting her?” I grinned up at him. His mouth was parnvay open, half smile and half amazement. “I guess.. I never realized. . I mean, I knew she was a she and all that, but I never realized my ghost was a girl.” Ranulf said, “Vic has not yet learned the arts of interaction with females.”

“You gonna teach me your tricks, buddy?” Vic said.

“It is only a small matter of observation over several centuries.”

“Great.” Vic sighed, throwing down his backpack.

Til be right back, okay?” I slipped off my bracelet and dematerialized, drifting up through the roof. As I’d suspected, I found Maxie high in the sky. We could see each other, mostly — misty outlines of ourselves that would be invisible from the ground.

“I talked to Vic!” she said. Her smile was part of the afternoon sunlight. “I talked to him, and he talked back!”

“See how much fun it is, crossing the lines?”

“It’s not wrong to move on,” she said, more firmly. “You know how much better it is there than here. But — as long as we are partly here — ”

“I think our afterlives have to be about the people we love.” I started drifting higher, mostly out of curiosity to see how high we could go. “Nothing else makes any sense.”

“But I didn’t know Vic before. Not when I was alive,” Maxie protested.

“If you ask me, it doesn’t make any difference when you start to love somebody. just that you love them.”

Merely saying the word Jove reminded me of Lucas and the news I wanted to share with him so badly that it burned inside me. But I had half an hour to kHI. So I pushed myself higher; Maxie followed.

“How high up can we go?” I asked.

“Oh, crazy high. Above the troposphere. You can see the stars during the day, if you want.”

“Really?” I could go stargazing right now — anytime, in fact. I wouldn’t have a telescope, of course, but nevertheless, that view would be something to see, like a picture from the Hubble. “Let’s go, okay?”

Maxie started to laugh, and I knew that this was what she’d wanted all along. Not for me to choose sides — just for her to have a companion in her in — between world. “Okay, sure.”

We rose up, farther and farther, until Evernight Academy was only a speck on the ground, then obscured by clouds. The sunlight above was brighter than bright. Blinding.

Then this enormous silver shape appeared in the distance, coming closer, faster than I could imagine. “What in the world is that?”

“Hang on!” Maxie yelled.

Is that — is it an airplane?

A commercial jetliner zoomed straight toward us, until I could see the outline of it — the front windows — the pilots inside — and then, wham, Maxie and I slamming directly through the center of the plane, front cabin, the long aisle, dozens of passengers, the little drink cart, the tail — and it was gone. We’d gone straight through.

Maxie and I drifted there, dazed, for a long second. She finally said, “Do you think anybody on the plane saw us? “We were going too fast,” I said. “But maybe they hit some turbulence.”

She started to laugh, and I did, too.

Although Maxie wanted to keep creating “air pockets” for plane traffic out of Boston, I parted from her when I sensed that Lucas’s class was probably over. We promised to go stargazing soon, and while that prospect delighted me, the closer I got to earth, the more pressing my real concerns seemed.

I found Lucas out at the gazebo, waiting for me as usual. His backpack had been tossed on the floor, and he was resting his forearms on his knees, his head drooping. “You look tired,” I whispered, becoming a soft mist near him.

“I am tired.”

“Up late worrying about me?”

“Up late worrying,” he confirmed. “But I know you can take care of yourself, so I also stayed up studying. And listening to music. And surfmg the Internet. And doing whatever else I could think of to avoid going to sleep.”

I didn’t have to ask why. “Charity.” Lucas didn’t reply, but he swallowed hard, making his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. I brushed gently against his cheek, hoping he could feel the cool touch. “Is she getting worse?”

“Worse? No. She started off making my dreams as bad as they could be, and since then — well, you have to give her this, she’s consistent. It’s horrible every night. Every single night.” Lucas stood abruptly. He braced his hands against the cast iron of the gazebo, every muscle in his back so tense I could make them out through his uniform sweater. “Sometimes it’s Erich again, threatening to torture you with stakes soaked in holy water. 176 Sometimes other vampires drink your blood, and for some reason it kills you instead of turning you into one of them. Sometimes my mom cuts off your head. Or those drunk guys — remember, our first date? In my dreams, they’re not trying to take care of you. They’re trying to burn you. All the dreams are about losing you, over and over again.”

The ragged pain in his voice made me wish I could risk becoming corporeal. so I could put my arms around him. “Charity only turned you to take you away from me,” I said. “It’s my fault.”

“It’s not your fault,” Lucas said. I wished I could be as sure as he sounded. “But yeah, Charity likes the idea of me losing you forever. Enough to have it on infinite replay in my head.”

“Please, let me come back. If I were in your dreams, I know I could get through to you.”

Lucas shook his head. “Absolutely not. Anything she did to you in there could really hurt you. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take.” Even if the only alternative was his enduring pain? I hated this, but for now, we had no better choice.

He said, “Bianca, I’ve been meaning to ask you about this for a while now. What happens after Evernight?”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t stay at this school forever, “Lucas said. “I mean, I guess technically I could, but I don’t really see me repeating English Lit every other semester for the next several centuries. And you can’t want to spend the rest of eternity hiding in corners. Waiting on me.”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead — hadn’t let myself. Now that I understood my own powers, the many places I could go and things I could do, I no longer feared the eternity that lay before me. But it was different for Lucas.

I said, “Vampires usually start out … wandering, I guess. Taking advantage of their immortality to explore the world. Once you get a few decades of experience, apparently it’s not so hard to start making money. And after you get rich, well, you can pretty much do what you want.”

Lucas’s face looked pained at the words a few decades. He said, “I don’t need to get rich. I don’t need to do what I want. Because right now, I’m not sure I’d use that power well.”

“You have to stop being frightened of yourself. Of what you’ve become.”

“I know what I’ve become,” he said. “That’s why I know I need to be afraid.”

Fear gripped me as I realized that the next thing he was going to say was something along the lines of “You should be free.” He still thought he wa:; a uun.leulu me, w!teu!te wa:; auylltiug uut. “Wital yuu’ve uecume i:; my aucltur,” I:;aid. “Tite per:;uu w!tu cuuuecl:; me lu lith wurld.”

He couldn’t fully believe me. “Really?”

“Always.”

Lucas breathed out heavily. “I only wish I could believe I could give you something worth having.”

“You do every day. Every second. Never doubt that.”

“Okay,” he said, but I knew he Wasn’t completely convinced.

Time to focus his attention on our real problems. “Listen,” I said. “I want to talk to you about Mrs. Bethany.” He half turned, so I could see his face. “Do we have to go over this again?”

“This is new.”

As quickly as I could, I told him who Christopher was, and what he had revealed to me about her past. When I said that she’d been Black Cross, Lucas’s eyes went wide, but he said nothing. Once I’d finished, I said, “She’s not being sympathetic because she suddenly turned nice. She just hates Black Cross as much as you do.”

“Why do those have to be two separate things?”

I stared at Lucas, stung. He seemed more frustrated than before.

“Bianca, does being mad at Black Cross mean you lose the power to think rationally forever? Or to care about other people? If so, I’m screwed.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Isn’t it?” Lucas kicked at the iron scrollwork nearest his feet, making the ivy rustle. “Why do you hate her so much?”

“She’s a killer.” I hadn’t realized I could speak so loudly, or so sharply, while hardly more than a vapor. “She murdered Eduardo, remember? And how many other members of your cell?”

“The Black Cross cell that invaded this place to try and kill her? And Eduardo — ” His hands gripped so tightly around the gazebo railing that I would’ve thought it would hurt. Lucas hadn’t been very fond of his stepfather, but he worried about his mother being left alone, even now. “That happened when she came to the New York cell to try and rescue you. Or have you forgotten?”

“She wanted revenge for the attack on the school! That’s what it was, revenge! And have you forgotten the traps she’s laid for the wraiths?”

“You wanted to trap them yourself before you turned into one!” Lucas realized we were starting to shout and took a deep breath, calming himself. I couldn’t exactly breathe in this state, but I tried to be more still. The few fights Lucas and I had had were always bruising, and besides, we didn’t want anybody to start staring at us. More quietly, he said, “People can do things for more than one reason.”

“If it’s Mrs. Bethany, it’s not a good reason.”

“Why do you believe that? Seriously, Bianca, do you have a reason for distrusting her besides the fact that she’s a hardass in the classroom?” That caught me up short. “The people she’s killed — ”

“I’ve killed plenty of vampires,” Lucas said. “I see now that they were people, too. Do you trust me?”

“Of course. Always.” My mind raced. When had I begun to fear Mrs. Bethany? Was it nothing more than a juvenile dislike of a strict teacher? I couldn’t believe that, but I couldn’t give any better reason than this: “Call it instinct, Lucas. I don’t trust her.”

“We can’t write her off on instinct alone. Not when she’s offering me — ”

“What is she offering you? Besides vague promises?”

“A place to live,” he said. “The right to figure things out. And maybe an end to this hunger.”

Lucas looked across the grounds, where a group of students were lounging. Humans. I could tell. Even now, while we were in the heart of a passionate discussion, he could smell their blood and long for his first kill.

“Oh, Lucas.” I dared to add a bit more substance to myself. enough to touch his hand. He closed his eyes tightly as I did. “Do you think that could be real?”

He stepped back from the railing, newly energized. His jaw was set as he looked at me — knowing, somehow, as he always did, how to look into my gaze. “I’m about to find out.”

“Lucas, wait!” But I was too late. He jogged from the gazebo, two steps at a time, heading straight for the carriage house.

Lucas was walking right into Mrs. Bethany’s lair — and I knew at that moment, if she made him the right promise, I could be in danger of losing him forever.