Students also had to learn the rules that surrounded magic, rules that had been in place for centuries and were strictly enforced.

All Moroi had a small ability in each element. When they got to be around our age, students «specialized» when one element grew stronger than the others: earth, water, fire, or air. Not specializing was like not going through puberty.

And Lisa…well, Lisa hadn't specialized yet.

"Is Ms. Carmack still teaching that? What she'd say?"

"She says she's not worried. She thinks it'll come."

"Did you-did you tell her about-"

Lisa shook her head. "No.Of course not."

We let the subject drop. It was one we thought about a lot but rarely spoke of.

We started moving again, scanning the tables as we decided where to sit. A few pairs of eyes looked up at us with blatant curiosity.

"Lisa! "came a nearby voice. Glancing over, we saw Natalie waving at us. Lisa and I exchanged looks. Natalie was sort of Lisa's cousin in the way Victor was sort of her uncle, but we'd never hung out with her all that much.

Lisa shrugged and headed in that direction. "Why not?"

I followed reluctantly. Natalie was nice but also one of the most uninteresting people I knew. Most royals at the school enjoyed a kind of celebrity status, but Natalie had never fit in with that crowd. She was too plain, too uninterested in the politics of the Academy, and too clueless to really navigate them anyway.

Natalie's friends eyed us with a quiet curiosity, but she didn't hold back. She threw her arms around us. Like Lisa, she had jade-green eyes, but her hair was jet black, like Victor's had been before his disease grayed it.

"You're back! I knew you would be! Everyone said you were gone forever, but I never believed that. I knew you couldn't stay away. Why'd you go? There are so many stories about why you left! " Lisa and I exchanged glances as Natalie prattled on. "Camille said one of you got pregnant and went off to have an abortion, but I knew that couldn't be true. Someone else said you went off to hang out with Rose's mom, but I figured Ms. Kirova and Daddy wouldn't have been so upset if you'd turned up there. Did you know we might get to be roommates? I was talking to…"

On and on she chatted, flashing her fangs as she spoke. I smiled politely, letting Lisa deal with the onslaught until Natalie asked a dangerous question.

"What'd you do for blood, Lisa?"

The table regarded us questioningly Lisa froze, but I immediately jumped in, the lie coming effortlessly to my lips.

"Oh, it's easy. There are a lot of humans who want to do it."

«Really?» asked one of Natalie's friends, wide-eyed.

"Yup.You find 'em at parties and stuff. They're all looking for a fix from something, and they don't really get that a vampire's doing it: most are already so wasted they don't remember anyway. " My already vague details dried up, so I simply shrugged in as cool and confident a way as I could manage. It wasn't like any of them knew any better. "Like I said, it's easy.Almost easier than with our own feeders."

Natalie accepted this and than launched into some other topic. Lisa shot me a grateful look.

Ignoring the conversation again, I took in the old faces, trying to figure out who was hanging out with whom and how power had shifted within the school. Mason, sitting with a group of novices, caught my eye, and I smiled. Near him, a group of Moroi royals sat, laughing over something. Aaron and the blond girl sat there too.

"Hey, Natalie, " I said, turning around and cutting her off. She didn't seem to notice or mind. "Who's Aaron's new girlfriend?"

"Huh? Oh. Mia Rinaldi. " Seeing my blank look, she asked, "Don't you remember her?"

"Should I? Was she here when we left?"

"She's always been here, " said Natalie. "She's only a year younger than us."

I shot a questioning look at Lisa, who only shrugged.

"Why is she so pissed off at us? " I asked. "Neither of usknow her."

"I don't know, " answered Natalie. "Maybe she's jealous about Aaron. She wasn't much of anybody when you guys left. She gotreally popularreally fast. She isn't royal or anything, but once she started dating Aaron, she-"

"Okay, thanks, " I interrupted. "It doesn't really-"

My eyes lifted up from Natalie's face to Jesse Zeklos's, just as he passed by our table. Ah, Jesse. I'd forgotten about him. I liked flirting with Mason and some of the other novices, but Jesse was in an entirely different category. You flirted with the other guys simply for the sake of flirting. You flirted with Jesse in the hopes of getting semi-naked with him. He was a royal Moroi, and he was so hot, he should have worn awarning: flammable sign. He met my eyes and grinned.

"Hey Rose, welcome back.You still breaking hearts?"

"Are you volunteering?"

His grin widened. "Let's hang out sometime and find out.If you ever get parole."

He kept walking, and I watched him admiringly. Natalie and her friends stared at me in awe. I might not be a god in the Dimitri sense, but with this group, Lisa and Iwere gods- or at least former gods-of another nature.

"Oh my gawd, " exclaimed one girl. I didn't remember her name. "That wasJesse."

«Yes,» I said, smiling. "It certainly was."

"I wish I looked like you, " she added with a sigh.

Their eyes fell on me. Technically, I was half-Moroi, but my looks were human. I'd blended in well with humans during our time away, so much so that I'd barely thought about my appearance at all. Here, among the slim and small-chested Moroi girls, certain features-meaning my larger breasts and more defined hips-stood out. I knew I was pretty, but to Moroi boys, my body was more than just pretty: it was sexy in a risque way. Dhampirs were an exotic conquest, a novelty all Moroi guys wanted to "try."

It was ironic that dhampirs had such an allure here, because slender Moroi girls looked very much like the super-skinny runway models so popular in the human world. Most humans could never reach that «ideal» skinniness, just as Moroi girls could never look like me. Everyone wanted what she couldn't have.

Lisa and I got to sit together in our shared afternoon classes but didn't do much talking. The stares she'd mentioned certainly did follow us, but I found that the more I talked to people, the more they warmed up. Slowly, gradually, they seemed to remember who we were, and the novelty-though not the intrigue-of our crazy stunt wore off.

Or maybe I should say, they remembered whoI was.Because I was the only one talking. Lisa stared straight ahead, listening but neither acknowledging nor participating in my attempts at conversation. I could feel anxiety and sadness pouring out of her.

"All right, " I told her when classes finally ended. We stood outside the school, and I was fully aware that in doing so, I was already breaking the terms of my agreement with Kirova. "We're not staying here, " I told her, looking around the campus uneasily. I'm going to find a way to get us out."

"You think we could really do it a second time? " Lisa asked quietly.

"Absolutely. "I spoke with certainty, again relieved she couldn't read my feelings. Escaping the first time had been tricky enough. Doing it again would be a real bitch, not that I couldn't still find a way.

"You really would, wouldn't you? " She smiled, more to herself than to me, like she'd thought of something funny. "Of course you would. It's just, well. . " She sighed. "I don't know if we should go.

Maybe-maybe we should stay."

I blinked in astonishment. «What?» Not one of my more eloquent answers, but the best I could manage.

I'd never expected this from her.

"I saw you, Rose. I saw you talking to the other novices during class, talking about practice. You miss that."

"It's not worth it, " I argued. "Not if…not ifyou… " I couldn't finish, but she was right. She'd read me. I had missed the other novices.Even some of the Moroi. But there was more to it than just that. The weight of my inexperience, how much I'd fallen behind, had been growing all day.