The air outside smelled like freedom. The dorms smelled like burning dust from the ancient heating system. It made my nose and lungs tickle and gave me bad dreams. Anything that smelled like smoke did. Next to the dorms was the building where the Council members were housed. It had been converted from a cathedral, and it was beautiful—the spires pointing to the sky like a warning to creatures of the night.
The other benefit of its conversion was that it was positively unwelcoming to vampires. Unlike the dark, wild grounds we slinked across to get to the nearest street.
None of us should have been surprised when a vampire stepped out from behind a tree. Of course there was a vampire. Of course it had been watching the Watchers’ compound, waiting for someone to be alone or vulnerable. We weren’t alone, but we were definitely vulnerable.
Or I was, at least.
“Down!” Artemis shoved me to the ground as the vampire lunged. She twirled to the side, drawing it away. I knew I should run for help, but I couldn’t move. Fear and panic paralyzed me. A vampire had killed my father. One had attacked us after we buried him. Had we survived just to be killed by one today?
“Jade!” Rhys shouted. I heard the sound of a fist connecting with flesh, and then somebody landed heavily next to me. Rhys. He was unconscious.
“No!” Artemis jumped on the vampire’s back. He spun in circles, trying to get her off.
And he was laughing. He was having fun.
After making sure Rhys was still breathing, I reached into the interior pocket of my jacket. My trembling fingers almost dropped the vial of holy water, but I managed to uncap it.
The vampire got ahold of Artemis and tore her off his back. “You wanted to protect her?” He dragged her toward me with his hand around her neck. “The weak one? She would have slowed me down. You could have saved yourself. Now you’ll have to watch her die, and then die yourself.”
Artemis answered, but her tortured voice addressed me—not the vampire. “I’ll never leave you behind again.”
The vampire loomed. Artemis’s eyes were filled with tears, and fear. But they were not a mirror to mine. Because they also contained a fury more frightening to me than the monster that held her. The vampire smiled. He held Artemis over me, so close I could hear every strained breath.
I threw the holy water. The vampire barely flinched. “I want you to be close enough to hear the life leaving her body,” he said to Artemis. She closed her eyes. She refused to watch me die. I didn’t want her to, but I felt so much more alone, not having her to witness it.
The briefest flash of surprise crossed the vampire’s face, and then he disappeared in a shower of dust. I lay on the ground, coughing and gagging on his remains. Artemis crawled to my side, but I could only see our savior.
He was older than us but still young. A teenager. He had dark hair that curled almost to his shoulders, dark eyebrows, full lips. He was beautiful. And he had saved me. He reached for my hand, his long fingers soft and cool against my own. We weren’t going to die. And it was all because of this boy.
“I’m Leo Silvera,” he said, like we were meeting in the cafeteria. “I’m going to help train Rhys.”
“I’m Athena,” I gasped, my asthma mildly triggered. I didn’t know why I introduced myself that way. No one here used my real name. But I wanted to sound older, more confident than I felt. Which was difficult, since I was struggling for air.
“Everyone calls her Nina,” Artemis said from where she was checking Rhys’s head. I should have done that, but I was too focused on my own breathing. Jade ran up. She had come back either too late or just in time.
Leo ignored Artemis, focusing only on me. “Just breathe. In and out, in and out. You’re going to be okay.”
“Promise?” I whispered.
“I promise, Athena.” His smile was softer and darker than the night around us. It was a smile I wanted to curl into; I wanted to live forever in the way it made me feel. “Now, where were we going?”
“For ice cream.”
“Fantastic. I love ice cream.” With Leo leading us, the night held no terror. He bought me a double scoop of mint chocolate chip, and by the end of the hour, he had us all laughing about an encounter with a chaos demon who had taken over a dry cleaner’s just to try and keep its clothes clean from its own secretions. We had forgotten how close we had all come to dying.
When my mom found out, I was grounded and restricted to the dorms for the next six months, but I didn’t mind. Any time a vampire reared up in my nightmares, Leo appeared behind it to save me.
With a start like that, was it any wonder that I developed an agonizing crush on him?
And was it any wonder that it ended in disaster?
5
“OF COURSE WE LOOKED FOR you,” Eve Silvera is saying. “But the castle was missing from where it had stood for centuries. We assumed it had been destroyed along with everything else. Imagine our shock when Helen found us in Costa Rica! We thought we were the only ones left.”
It feels weird to hear my mom casually called Helen. Like she’s a real person.
I had forgotten what Eve Silvera looked like. We didn’t interact much. I only took notice of her because she was the mother of my crush. She’s tall, and there’s something powerful in the way she holds herself. Her body offers no apologies for its presence in the world. She wears a red blazer over crisp black pants, and her heels manage to be elegantly aggressive. Combined with her red lips and her black hair, she is everything I aspire to be (and probably never will). Her voice has a quality that makes it sound as though she might break into laughter at any moment. It softens her, makes her human.