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  I knew they might be lying just to scare me. But…what if they weren’t? Shit. They were getting in my head. I needed to fight them off but I was afraid that if I did try and summon fire, and I really hurt them, the council would do something bad to me.

  Suddenly I heard a familiar voice murmuring in Latin behind me. Royce and Ronan both lifted their hands as if compelled and backed away from me. They started holding their hands like they were marionettes and doing a stupid little dance.

  Harris walked up to me, laughing with satisfaction. Once he stopped chanting, the spell on them broke and they stumbled on their own feet.

  “You can’t use compel,” Ronan growled. “That’s dark magic.”

  “It’s not dark if I’m defending a lady,” Harris said. “You two gorilla turds should listen in class more often. Or—let me guess—your inferior high school didn’t teach you compel to begin with.”

  I felt absurdly relieved. A warm, melty feeling settled in my stomach as I remembered Harris putting a protective arm around me when the demon came at me.

  But I came to my senses very quickly, as Harris said, “You’re right about one thing. Charlotte doesn’t belong here. However, I made a bet with her, and we’re seeing it through. Until then, she’s under my protection…such as it is.” He shot me a sideways look with a grin that was only slightly better than the look the snake gave me.

  “Stuff it. I don’t need your protection,” I said. “I was two seconds away from setting their hair on fire.”

  “Ha ha ha…sure. I would save face too, if I were you.” (He really laughed in ‘ha’ sounds.)

  The Locke brothers shuffled off, cursing under their breath and muttering stuff like, “You can have her.”

  And Firian suddenly appeared, looking like he’d been in a bar fight, with his hair and clothes apparently tugged every which way, dirt on his face, and a fresh bruise on his other eye. When he saw Harris, his eyes glowed with rage. “What are you doing here?”

  “Your job, I guess,” Harris said. “Are you a fox or a faithful dog?” He turned away. “I think you owe me one,” he said. “You should make me some pastry.”

  “If you like pastry with my spit in it, sure!”

  He strolled off.

  Jerk, I thought. Long-legged, strolling, over-confident jerk.

  Firian spun me around so I couldn’t look at him anymore. “Let’s head home.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Montague

  Harris shoved open the door of our room. “Hey,” he said, in a distracted tone. He moved some books on his desk and threw one open, sitting down, yanking the cap off a fountain pen like he was going to write that paper for magical history class. But then he turned around.

  “You know what the Lockes had the gall to do, Monty?”

  I lowered my own book. “What is that?”

  “They went after my quarry.”

  “Your ‘quarry’?”

  “I made a bet with Charlotte about summoning a demon, remember?”

  “Charlotte,” I said. “The girl you told me to forget about.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. The last girl I would ever be interested in is some commoner human who doesn’t know shit. But—I did make a bet with her, and the Lockes are trying to run her out of the school. Besides that, they’re doing it in the most hamhanded way you can think of. Anyway—I showed ‘em.”

  “How?”

  “Just a touch of compel magic.”

  “You’re not supposed to use that.”

  “I can use it for purposes of chivalry.”

  “You can use it because you’re you,” I retorted.

  “Well, I’d better work on this paper.”

  “Me too.”

  I put my book back in front of my face, but I was feeling extremely pissed that Harris was acting like Charlotte belonged to him, even in a rival sense. Harris looked at his book for a second, but I could practically feel his restless energy. He glanced up at the photographs on his wall of his three prospective fiancees.

  None of them looked very Harris-y, I thought privately. There was Camille, who looked very snobby, as New Orleans witches usually were, as the first great witch to come to America happened to be French (which was why the French language had clung to magic practice in the States); she had some of the most famous voodoo practitioners in her line as well. Daisy was a party girl with a huge grin on her face in every picture. And Ekaterina looked like she would eat Harris for dinner and then go clubbing, which was how most Russian witches looked these days.

  “Did I tell you Daisy is coming to the ball this year?” Harris said in a very neutral tone.

  “Oh really?”

  “Yes.” He reached over, took down the photo of Ekaterina, and tossed it in the trash. “I think my mother has decided against that one.”

  I lifted up my book again. “Sounds like you have some issues to work out.”

  “No, I don’t. Daisy’s the hottest.”

  “True. Very well. Congratulations.”

  “It’s hardly a done deal.”

  “Mrs. Daisy Nicolescu…”

  “Quit it, Monty.” He threw down his pen and gave me a furious glare.

  I think in that moment I knew that he really liked Charlotte, and he knew that I knew. The temperature in the room seemed to drop to about thirty degrees.

  “You don’t have the slightest idea about what you’re going to do with your life,” I said.

  “Well, at least I haven’t destroyed mine yet.”

  “You were always a bit of an ass, Harris, but you used to be a good friend. Ever since this happened to me—and I’m not sure you have ever appreciated that it was a traumatizing experience for me—”

  “You used to be the guy who pulled me away from all this!” Harris interrupted. “You sold your car. We used to go out, talk to other girls…escape into another world for a night. Now—there’s nothing—but this.”

  I couldn’t stand it anymore. “I didn’t sell it! They took it from me.”

  “They took…your car?” Harris snapped out of his own head. “What did they do with it?”

  “They just took it! I don’t know! They said I couldn’t leave the Haven unless I left the car. The whole thing was basically a big brainwashing camp. They said I never should have been driving around, I never should have been hanging out with human girls, never should have gone to Cancun. Now I’m a vampire and it’s permanent and I have to take all these spells just to stave off the inevitable and it’s my fault. That’s what my summer was all about.”

  “Oh.” Harris frowned. “I mean, I suppose I could buy you another one on the sly. How expensive could a twenty year old car be?”

  “You can’t just buy me out of this problem,” I said. “And I don’t want another car. I spent the past three years scrounging every penny to make that one what it was.”

  “So now none of us get to go anywhere on the weekends.”

  “So that’s why you like Charlotte. She’s an escape in her own way.”

  “I don’t like Charlotte. I just don’t want anyone else to like her. There’s a big difference.”

  “All right. I get it. You aren’t concerned about me being a vampire and Charlotte’s safety or happiness.” I stood and grabbed my jacket off the bed post.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Asking her if she wants to get dinner.”

  As I stepped into the hallway, my mind started to wander to the way Charlotte’s uniform hugged her curves, and how nice it would be to see her big green eyes and sexy full lips across the dinner table, but instead…

  My brain crowded with memories of other girls. Girls across the centuries, the women my sire had wooed, only to see them die or be killed. Memories flashed across my mind of a girl slipping away from a vampire bite…mauled by some unknown creature…and an old woman crossing paths on the street and halting in shock before giving him a sad smile of realization. “It’s you, Rayner… At last…,” she whispered, and I actually kno
cked my head into the wall to get rid of the memory.

  If anything else, I needed to see her just to root me in my own life.

  I knocked on Charlotte’s door. Alec answered. “Hey.”

  “Hey…I just wanted to see if Charlotte wanted company for dinner. Because I’ve decided I don’t particularly care what Harris thinks.”

  She peered out behind him.

  “Just as friends?” she asked.

  “As you wish,” I said.

  “Uh…okay. I do need dinner.” She grabbed a coat. “Firian—it’s okay. Maybe it’s better if everyone sees me without you once in a while.”

  Firian and Alec both looked wary and a little annoyed.

  Are we really all interested in the same girl?

  Even the fox?

  Even Harris?

  But then, it didn’t seem that strange. I had met so many witch girls, and Charlotte was a breath of fresh air. She wasn’t caught up in all of that stuff. She seemed like a perfect balance of all the things I would want a girl to be. Cute and down to earth, sweet but willing to stand up for herself. I wondered if that was why Rayner wanted to take Lisbeth with him to London, even after he became a vampire and their worlds were far apart.

  Somehow I knew it was. Five hundred years might pass by, but love was the same.

  Charlotte stepped out into the brisk autumn evening with me, shivering a little, breathing into her cupped hands. “Princess Bride?” she said.

  “What?”

  “You said ‘as you wish’. I thought it was a Princess Bride reference.”

  “That’s the movie with…Andre the Giant?”

  “Well…yeah. That too, I guess. Like, ‘My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.’” She waved an imaginary sword around. I didn’t really know what she was talking about, but I approved in a general sense.

  “I’ve never seen it,” I said. “But maybe I should. Inigo Montoya sounds like my people.”

  “Do you ever watch movies at home? I think it was on Netflix. But maybe not. It was a few years ago that I watched it.”

  “We didn’t keep a television in the home,” I said. “Most magical families don’t. But I used to go to a friends house. Every magical kid has that one normal friend who hooks them up with the good stuff like a drug dealer. Mostly we just watched wrestling, though.”

  “It’s no wonder no one knows what I’m talking about half the time.”

  “I used to take the guys to the Regal in town. And when I was a kid, my parents took me to the movies for a special treat. That was exciting. You can imagine, when you don’t own a television at all…”

  “I’ll bet! What’s the first movie you saw?”

  “It was the great cinematic masterpiece, the Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause.”

  “It could be worse…”

  “My mother had to take me out of the theater because I was afraid of Martin Short and crying.”

  She started laughing hard enough that I knew she was enjoying herself. “Oh, to be young again, when your greatest fear was a comedic actor.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  She looked at me with concern in her beautiful green eyes. Her face was like an open book, no deception, no pretense. And her skin smelled…quite delicious. “Is…any of what Alec said true? Do you have the memories of other vampires?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Is that strange? It seems like it would be…”

  I felt like she deserved an honest answer. Was I ready to give one? Man, I don’t know…

  “To be honest…the worst part isn’t the memories. It’s that when I was turned, I had to go to this…therapy to learn how to keep functioning as a human. So I can go out in the sun and stuff. They gave me some helpful spells, but I had to be there for eight weeks, and most of it was just getting berated by old warlocks.”

  “Sounds like my life here,” she said.

  “A lot of vampires end up being forced to stay there forever,” I said. “In order to be allowed to leave, I had to give up my car. I never thought about all these rules too much before that. Like the story about the St. Augustine witch and her familiar. I was always told that like it was a horror story, but I wonder if the witches who broke the rules were the smart ones. Then again, magic is pretty dangerous. I could hurt someone. So could Alec. Because of…Sinistrals. Corrupting us and our families.” I shrugged. “I didn’t mean to say so much. It’s a lovely night. The moon is full. I said I’d take you to dinner and we just walked past the dining hall…”

  She smiled. “Actually, it helps a lot to hear that. Sometimes I feel like I’m just…confused, and I don’t fit in. Maybe there’s a reason for it all. Or maybe not, and I need to just not care. I’m sorry about your car.”

  “Me too. It was a pretty sweet ride. I would drive us all to Asheville or Knoxville for the weekend.”

  Her mouth opened. “Really? Can you do that? I feel like we’re in another world.”

  Suddenly we heard screams. A moment later, I caught this scent on the mountain breeze.

  Blood.

  Fresh…

  My teeth immediately turned to fangs. I staggered, trying to resist the urge to bolt toward it.

  “Montague? What’s happening?”

  “It’s so…strong… Blood…” My vampire senses wanted the blood. My human brain knew I had to keep control. Something terrible was happening.

  Charlotte started running toward the screams.

  “Wait—let me go first,” I said.

  “Why, to be chivalrous or something? No one has to go first. Let’s both go!”

  Chivalrous? More like, to keep her from seeing me hurt someone with my blood lust. But my resistance failed me. I went running toward the scent. It was coming from behind the conservatory, in a lonely and unlit part of campus. The screams were getting louder.

  I turned the corner, and that was when the alluring smell of fresh human blood hit me hard, but even then, the sight terrified me more.

  That demon beast was back, and it was ripping into Royce and Ronan Locke as they screamed and tried to cast some sort of defensive spells. It was hard to concentrate when a demon was trying its best to maul you to death. It was also hard to concentrate when you wanted to taste the tantalizing smell of fresh human blood that filled the air.

  They never let me have the good stuff…

  My mind went blank. All I could think about was the taste of blood. It was just being wasted spilling on the ground.

  Charlotte grabbed me. “What the fuck are you doing?” she snapped, and then she ran toward Royce and Ronan and did what she does.

  She spread her hands and set everyone on fire.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Charlotte

  The beast screamed at me and then it hissed, “They hurt you!”

  “Yeah—but—don’t kill them!” I said. Was this the same demon from the roller rink?

  Royce and Ronan were running around with their clothes on fire.

  “Stop, drop and roll, morons!” I screamed. “Please! I don’t want anyone dead!”

  “Hurt her again and I will finish the job!” the beast screeched, and then it vanished into a shadowy rift in the universe, leaving the smell of burnt fur behind.

  Montague had taken off his jacket and was beating the flames off Royce.

  “Get off me, vampire!” Royce shoved him. “I’m fine.”

  “Yeah, now you are.”

  Nothing kills a date or date-type moment like a good demon attack and saving the lives of some pissy bullies.

  Montague grabbed Royce with an iron grip. Royce looked awful. There was a huge scratch on his arm, and another on his face. His clothes were torn and charred. Blood was everywhere.

  “What the fuck was that?” Ronan shouted at me. “Is that demon working for you? And could you not burn us to death?”

  “I saved you from the demon! I’m not working with it! My magic isn’t perfect but you’re alive, aren’t you?”

  �
�Crazy bitch.”

  Montague bared his fangs and, I’m not kidding, he bit Royce’s arm and took a drink of his blood.

  “Stop!” I grabbed his hair and pulled him back.

  He gave Royce a shameless grin. “I’m not sorry.”

  “You’re both crazy,” Ronan said, while Royce was trying to staunch the bleeding with his shirt. They both started trying to escape the scene, and Montague, moving with unnatural speed and strength, grabbed them both by their bloody shirts.

  “The demon attack was random,” he said. “The demon didn’t say anything. I didn’t drink your blood. Charlotte saved your lives.”

  He let them go.

  “I hope that worked,” Montague said.

  Chaos broke loose from there. (I hesitated to say ‘all hell’ broke loose, because by now I felt like there was still a bottom we hadn’t reached.) As the Lockes fled to the professors, we went to Lancelot dorm to hide the blood on Montague’s clothes. Since he shared a room with Harris, there was no way to hide it from him.

  Harris grabbed me. “Don’t tell anyone the Lockes attacked you the other day.”

  “Why?”

  “Because—if they think that demon is attacking other students to protect you, you’re gone.”

  “Why would a demon protect me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I had to admit, the demon made it sound like it was protecting me from the Lockes. What if its appearance in the roller rink had been to protect me from Montague and Alec? I wondered if I should tell someone. The Lockes could have been killed.

  Before long, every student was being questioned. No one had seen anything. Of course, they knew I had already caused a lot of weird stuff to happen, and that I had a tendency to burn things. Master Blair wasn’t stupid. I expected him to challenge me about this incident, maybe even expel me just to end all this trouble. Instead, he said,

  “Charlotte. Don’t tell the council that the Locke brothers were hassling you.”

  “But what if that thing kills someone else?” I was shocked that he was trying to protect me, and it only reinforced my disconcerting sense that he was using me. “Something is really wrong. I mean, Samuel got me into this school with some…male impersonation of me, then he gets killed, now I keep getting attacked by a demon, and the Lockes almost died!”