I was glad that I remembered the way to Mill’s condo. It was about twenty minutes from my school, but I knew that I had to get there as soon as I could; the sun had been up for a few hours, and Mill was surely going to be heading to bed soon.

  I jumped out of the car, handing the keys to the valet at the door, and ran to the elevator. I arrived at his door, banged on it. Mill opened it maybe ten seconds later.

  The inside was dark, all the drapes pulled shut, veiling the apartment from sunlight. It was the sort of place a rich, insomniac hermit gamer might live, cocooned in darkness and glued to a television screen.

  “Cassie, what are you doing here?” he asked, his thick eyebrows knitting together and his forehead wrinkling with concern.

  “I need to talk to you. Now.”

  I pushed past him into his condo, looking around. It looked different in the day. I still thought it captured his personality so well. Simple, clean, nothing too fancy. Everything was sleek, masculine, well taken care of.

  I glanced over my shoulder at him. He followed me slowly into the living room, watching me cautiously.

  I realized with a flash of embarrassment that this was the first time we had ever really been alone together.

  “So, is your girlfriend here?” I asked, looking around, shoving my hands into the pockets of my jeans.

  “No,” Mill said. “She’s visiting some friends in Tallahassee.”

  “Ah,” I said. My stomach tightened uncomfortably.

  “Is this about our conversation from last night?” he asked.

  I looked up into his face and nodded. “I’m going to New York.” I didn’t expect a particularly positive reaction—and my expectations were met.

  “You can’t be serious,” Mill said.

  “Mill, they attacked my uncle—my family.”

  His jaw fell. “What happened?”

  I repeated to him what my mom had talked about with my aunt, and about everything she had told me that morning before she had left for work.

  “She was really shaken up, my aunt—Mom and Uncle Mike’s sister,” I said.

  “That’s understandable,” Mill replied slowly. “But that doesn’t mean that you need to race up there.”

  “Mill, all of this is my fault,” I said. “Draven’s after me. That makes me responsible for the deaths of those people.”

  My bottom lip was starting to tremble, but I pressed on.

  “Do you have any idea how that makes me feel? Knowing that their blood is on my hands? Real people, who had futures that were ripped away from them because some teenage girl pissed off a vampire Lord in Florida. And now my uncle …” I furiously wiped the tear that had leaked from the corner of my eye. “He’s lucky he isn’t dead, you know? I don’t know what I would have done if I was going to have to fly north for a funeral that was entirely my fault.”

  Mill’s face hadn’t changed as I freaked out. He just listened patiently, watching me.

  “This is a terrible idea,” he said when I had nothing left to say. “It’s obviously a trap.”

  “I know,” I said, letting my hands fall to my sides.

  “I’m not going to change your mind, though,” Mill said. Not a question. He sighed heavily. “I understand. It’s your family. You don’t want it to get any worse.”

  “Right.”

  He glanced around. “All right,” he said. “I am saying it now. This is a bad idea. So …” He looked at me with a narrowed, surprisingly piercing gaze. “I’ll make the arrangements. We leave tonight.”

  “Wait … what?” I asked.

  “What, you thought I was going to let you go alone?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. “Yeah. Right. Which airport is closest to your hometown?”

  “Syracuse,” I said, my throat tight and dry. “Syracuse is the closest.”

  “All right,” Mill replied.

  I only half-listened as Mill made the necessary calls. My mind was whirling, a fog of chaotic thoughts and fears. Now it had become even more concrete, and I had no choice but to wait for Mill to be able to act with me.

  I couldn’t believe I was doing this—or that Mill was, once again, willingly throwing himself into Lord Draven’s firing line for me. I owed so much to him already, and the list was lengthening by the day.

  I almost wanted to tell him to stay home, not to come; he’d done enough already.

  But I was too cowardly for that. I’d had too many lucky kills and escapes. Mill, meanwhile, knew what he was doing.

  I needed him if I was going to have any hope of stopping Lord Draven’s minions.

  I set my jaw.

  I was going to stop it, come hell or high water.

  Draven would not frighten me away.

  Chapter 8

  “You better get on back to school,” Mill said, pulling his phone from his pocket. “I’ll call Lockwood to take you.”

  “I drove here,” I said.

  Mill arched an eyebrow. “You have your license?”

  “I’m not a kid, Mill.” My cheeks burned. Never mind I’d just gotten the Florida one.

  “I never said you were,” he said. “It’s just something I didn’t know about you.” He considered something for a minute. “I’d feel better if you let Lockwood take you. He can keep an eye on you for the rest of the day.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “Who said anything about a babysitter?” Mill asked. “You’re capable of dealing with more now than you could before. But why do you think I’m not letting you go to New York alone?”

  “Fine,” I said, more harshly than I should have. “I’ll let Lockwood take me. Here.” I tossed my keys onto the long table against the wall. They landed right beside the keys to Mill’s Mustang.

  “Is something wrong?” Mill asked, peering around to try and look me in the eye.

  I turned away toward the door. “I’m fine.”

  Mill hesitated, but eventually lifted his phone to his ear. “Lockwood? Could you take Cassie to school?”

  I stared around Mill’s apartment, shame preventing me from looking up at him.

  So, that was what he really thought about me? That I was just some kid? That I needed to be babysat?

  I chewed on the inside of my lip, breathing heavily through my nose.

  “He’ll be downstairs waiting for you,” Mill said, laying his phone down beside my keys. “He’s coming down the street now. I'll get your car home for you. And if I can find a flight, Lockwood will be ready to bring you here, or the airport, immediately.”

  I deflated a little. He hadn’t even reacted when I’d thrown my keys … like a child.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Hey,” Mill said, grabbing my shoulder before I started toward the door.

  I felt a rush of heat in my face as his cool fingers touched my shoulder, but I reluctantly met his gaze.

  His eyes, a deep, dark blue with flecks of grey, were looking intently at me—only at me—like I was the only thing in the world.

  “We’re going to fix this. And we’re going to protect your family. All right?”

  I swallowed nervously. “Yeah …”

  Mill clapped me on the shoulder and then gestured to the door. “Better get back to class before anyone misses you.”

  My heart clenched, but I forced a smile. It sucked to be simultaneously in his debt while realizing he thought of me as just a kid. Damn. I forced a smile that was faker than a starlet’s chest. “See you later. Keep me updated.”

  The door behind me closed with a click, and I exhaled slowly. That probably could have gone worse, but maybe not by much.

  How had he dissipated my anger so easily? No one disarmed me like that. And yet Mill …

  I stepped into the elevator, glad that it was empty, and sagged against the back wall when the doors slid closed.

  Whoever had been in here before me had been wearing too much cologne, which sort of brought me to my senses. I had never really had a real boyfriend before, and it was obvious that I had literally no idea about anything in the romantic department.

  I shook my head. Romance? Mill? No.

  Besides, he had a girlfriend. My nose wrinkled and my chest tightened. He was nice to me, but it didn’t really mean anything.

  And it wasn’t like I wanted it to, anyway.

  School. Right. I should probably get there.

  Lockwood was waiting for me just outside the condo’s front doors, leaning against the limo. I had ridden in it so often by this point that I felt more comfortable in it than my own car. Mom and Dad’s car smelled like the scented plug-ins Mom bought to cover the odor of stale take-out. Lockwood’s limo smelled like immaculately kept leather and cedarwood … what Mill’s shirt had smelled like that time he had let me borrow one.

  “Good morning, Lady Cassandra,” Lockwood said, his bright green eyes twinkling.

  I smiled. Lockwood had knack for making me feel better, even when I didn’t really want to. “Lady again, huh?” I asked.

  He bowed, grinning. “Off to school?”

  “Yes.”

  He pulled the door to the back seat open for me.

  “I can open the door myself, you know,” I told him, not unkindly.

  “You are a very capable lady indeed,” he said, but didn’t let go of the door. He stood there patiently, waiting for me to slide inside.

  I sighed but got in.

  He closed the door behind me and returned to the front of the car.

  As he moved the car away from the curb, my phone sang in my pocket.

  It was Iona.

  How are you doing today?

  Figuring the conversation would be too difficult via text, I called her.

  She answered after one ring. “Hello?”

  “This would be easier to just tell you,” I began, and launched into the plan that Mill and I had concocted.

  There was a great sigh on the other end of the line—a very typical Iona reaction, bringing me to two for two in the expectations/reality game this morning.

  “I’m not surprised,” she said. “I assumed that you’d do something like this.”

  “Am I getting to be that predictable?”

  “You were always that predictable.”

  Irritation flared again at that. But I tamped it down—having two fights before ten a.m. didn’t bode well.

  “So what’s the plan?” Iona asked. “You’re going to go to New York and … what? Place you neck in front of a vampire’s teeth?”

  I hesitated.

  “You really don’t have anything in mind other than ‘show up, find vampires,’ do you?” She sighed again. “You actually have to do something once you run across them, you know. They’re not just going to see you and run.”

  “Give me a break,” I said. “I just decided even to go this morning.”

  I could just see her rolling her eyes.

  “Teenagers. Always so impulsive.”

  “Why is everyone having a go at my age today?” I asked.

  “Because we’re old, and you’re doing something crazy,” Iona said, and let that hang for a moment. “So, New York. I suppose you’re taking that Cro-Magnon idiot with you, since you can’t drive all the way there or afford a plane ticket?”

  Everyone was just determined to piss me off today, it seemed. “Yes, Mill is coming,” I said.

  “At least he isn’t as dumb as he looks,” she said. I frowned, more annoyed by that than I had any right to be.

  “All right,” Iona said. “You convinced me. I’m going with you.”

  “What?” I asked. Obviously I hadn’t heard her right. “Convinced you how?” I hadn’t made any argument for her coming that I remembered. Not even a, “Hey, Iona, whatcha doing tonight? And for the next several days? Want to visit scenic upstate New York, famed for its farms and now its vampires?”

  “I’m coming along,” she said. “I can’t trust that goon as far as I can throw him. Mark my words: you need competent help.”

  I wanted to argue, I really did—but Iona was right, just like Mill, and I knew it. I had been bailed out by both of them during my long night with Roxy and her cohorts. So I just pursed my lips and stayed silent, torn between regretting telling either of them when I should’ve just gone, and aware that putting my neck on the line, quite literally, to prove a point was grade-A stupid.

  “Let him know that he has to buy another ticket,” Iona went on.

  Um. “I’m not sure he’s going to be all that crazy about you coming with us …”

  “To hell with what Forehead wants.” Her voice got harder. “Do you want me to come?”

  My palms grew sweaty. I wiped my free hand on my jeans. “You guys were weird around each other the other night. The idea of us all going on a little trip together doesn’t exactly sound … stress-free.”

  “Do you want to be comfortable, or do you want to be safe?” Iona asked.

  “That’s not much of a question.”

  “Great, then let him know.”

  We were just pulling into the parking lot now. Entirely deserted, because it was the middle of third period.

  “Okay. I gotta go,” I said. “School.”

  “This would be so much easier if you were older,” Iona said.

  “See you later,” I said before hanging up.

  “Do try and avoid throwing your neck in front of any vampire teeth today, will you?” Iona said as I started to push the END CALL button. “It’d be shame to deprive those New York vampires of their long-awaited meal—”

  I ground my teeth as the call clicked off.

  She was right, of course, at least about one thing.

  This would be so much easier if I were an adult.

  Chapter 9

  After bidding Lockwood goodbye, I ducked back inside the school building and down the hall toward my locker without getting spotted by a teacher. Sneakiness wasn’t quite the same as lying, but I was good at both by this point. After the visit to Mill’s apartment, and the ride in Lockwood’s town car, walking into school was even less appealing than usual. The over-sanitized smell of it was a distant cry from Mill’s addictive leather and bergamot scent, and the air, having leaked in from outside, was sticky and humid.

  Yay for Florida …

  Part of me was thrilled at the prospect of going back north. I’d have the chance to see the town I had grown up in, the place that I still thought of as home. I missed the trees, the mountains, the winding rivers, the clear lakes. I missed the cool evenings, the fireflies, the smell of the pine trees and freshly tilled dirt from nearby farms.

  It was just a shame I was going home under these circumstances.

  I grabbed my chemistry book from my locker and walked through the halls and up the stairs. Twenty minutes of class to go—too long to dawdle in the halls, unfortunately.

  Mrs. Tozer was writing frantically on the board when I stepped inside the classroom, and I wished I could disappear into the wall as every eye in the room turned to me.

  Xandra’s gaze was particularly intense. I could see a million questions on her face.

  “Miss Howell,” said Mrs. Tozer in her nasal voice. “Nice of you to join us.”

  I flashed a smile at her. “Sorry. My stomach was really upset all morning. I’ve been in the bathroom since first period.”

  Xandra rolled her eyes. Lame lie—and damned embarrassing, come to think of it.

  Mrs. Tozer didn’t seem pleased either. “Really? Why didn’t you to go the nurse?”

  Oh, damn it. The initial lie was bad enough. But to double down on it …?

  Her gaze was unrelenting though, so after a long, painful pause, I finally said, “Well, it was … you know …” The class stared. Titters and chortles broke the quiet.

  My cheeks burned bright pink. Mrs. Tozer pursed her lips. “Stay home next time, if you feel that sick.” And she turned back to the board and went on as if I hadn’t interrupted.

  I slid into the seat and took a steadying breath.

  A few other students glanced over their shoulders at me before returning to their notes. Xandra stared at me, eyes practically popping out of her head. She wanted answers.

  This was not the time or place. But I was a student, and I knew how to game it. Pointedly avoiding her gaze, I flipped open my textbook and notebook—then used them to block Mrs. Tozer’s view as I unlocked my phone in my lap.

  Xandra beat me to the punch.

  What the heck? she sent me.

  I had to go see Mill, I replied.

  Why couldn’t it wait until later?

  Because I have to go back to New York.

  What? Why?

  I looked across the room at her. She stared at me in confusion, her eyebrows knitted together in one tight line.

  Vampires in hometown, I answered, shorthanding furiously but trying to make my text understandable. Draven sent minions. Figured out where I was from. My uncle was attacked last night. Going up to sort things out.

  I pretended to listen for a few minutes as Mrs. Tozer discussed phosphates … then, the moment her back was turned, I looked down to—four brand new texts from Xandra, all waiting accusingly.

  Wait, what?

  U going alone?

  What r u going to do when u get there?

  What if Draven finds you?

  The last was the one I focused in on most. Because I had thought about it, at least in the moments of downtime when I couldn’t shy away from it. I didn’t have an answer though … so all I could do was turn toward Xandra and lift my shoulders in a small shrug.

  Her face softened a little, but she looked more determined than not. She went back to her phone.

  This is insane.

  I paused, chewing on the inside of my lip. She was right, of course. I knew it. But I needed to do this, no matter how crazy or dangerous it might be. People were in danger because of me. I had to stop anyone else from being hurt.

  My phone lit up again. I’m worried for u. What if Draven’s vampires are like ultra assassins?

  What if something happens? To you?

  Oh, thank goodness. She hadn’t gone with “2 u.” I wasn’t a huge fan of English class, and I could handle some of the abbreviated text shorthand, but too much and I started to gag.

 

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