I dug for my book, but the roaring in my ears drowned out most of what he said next. The marks on my wrist had mostly healed by now. They were just two innocent little bruised-looking divots, right where the radial pulse beat. Marks from Christophe’s teeth.

I didn’t take. I only borrowed. Remember that.

He could have killed me. I remembered the ripping, tearing, awful sensation as something more than blood was pulled out of me. And that was only three long, hellish gulps. And after that he’d called up fog to shield us and hunted the vampires chasing us and—

“Milady?” Beauforte’s voice. “Be so kind as to read us the first passage on page 285.”

“Yeah.” I flipped two more pages. “Sure. All right. Two eighty-five.”

My eyes wandered and I had something caught in my throat. But I got through three paragraphs on something about the patterns of vampire migration during the Peloponnesian War and wasn’t called on for the rest of the class. I made it through by just putting my head down and staring at the pages, my eyes blurring. I’d catch hell for it on quizzes next week, but Jesus. Remembering someone sucking your blood—and soul—out of you isn’t comfortable.

What would it be like to have that happen until you died?

I shifted uncomfortably every time I thought about it, and by the time class was over I was so ready to get the hell out of there. So it came as a complete surprise when the silk-button-down boy in front of me turned around and leaned over the back of his couch. “Hey.”

The book went jammed back into my bag. I grabbed my hoodie, shrugged into it. “Yeah?”

So I didn’t sound very welcoming. So what?

“You, um, wanna have some coffee? Sometime?”

What? I stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language, and the shuffling noise in the room as everyone got ready to go crested. Then I realized what he was asking me, for whatever reason.

Words finally occurred to me. “I guess so.”

Now why did you say that, Dru? Like you’ve got time for a coffee klatch. But hell, it was the first time someone had said anything to me that they didn’t absolutely have to. And yeah, I was the new girl. Always be cautious of the first guy who talks to you—that’s the rule for new girls. I could have recited it in my sleep.

But it had worked out fine last time, with Graves. Or not so fine, considering he’d kissed me once and decided he didn’t want to go further. And this guy looked so hopeful, and his blue eyes were warm and shy.

“I mean, sure,” my mouth replied independently of my brain. “Like when?”

He looked surprised but covered it well. “Um. Huh. Well, when are you free?”

Leon made a stifled noise behind me. I ignored him. “Weekends, mostly. Except this Saturday, I’m, uh, busy. So, um, Sunday? Like around one or so? We can meet in the caf.”

Way to play hard to get, Dru.

He looked like I’d just given him Christmas. “Yeah.” He stuck his hand over the back of the couch. “I’m Zeke.”

I barely pressed his warm fingers. Some guys go for the squeeze to prove they’re manly, but he wasn’t one. The touch didn’t leap to show me anything about him, either. “Dru.”

“I know.” He gave me a grin, dropped my hand, grabbed his books, and beat it out the door. I would have been insulted, but the way he was blushing was kind of cute.

“The ice,” Leon said to thin air over my head, “has now officially broken.”

I rolled my eyes, hauled myself to my feet. Said nothing. Sometimes, if you just ignore him when he gets all sarcastic, he shuts up.

Today was not one of those times.

“I suppose you wouldn’t care to come out to coffee with any of us.” He was still talking to the air above my head, his arms folded.

Oh, Jesus. I kept my hand down with an effort. I was playing with Mom’s locket more and more often now. “Nobody ever asks me. I spend every day with you guys. What the hell?”

A single shrug, and he turned on his heel. “You’re going to be late. And you should be ready for that sort of reaction, Milady.”

“Why? What’s so wrong with a cup of coffee? Nobody else bothers to talk to me.”

“I really do believe you are a babe in the woods sometimes.” He took two gliding strides, cocked his head like he expected me to follow. “You’re svetocha, Milady. One girl, out of a total of two, in a school full of restless, hungry boys raised and schooled to be Kouroi. And . . .” A quick look around, his fine hair ruffling. The room had emptied. “Wherever you cast your glances, there will be trouble. Some have used that type of trouble to further their own ends.”

Did he mean that I’d already made trouble, or something else? Guess which one my money was laid on.

“You mean Anna,” I said flatly.

He gave me one of those Significant Glances a guy gives when he thinks you’re dumb but you’ve hit on something anyway. “I mean that your time is more precious than you know. Especially if they hold Trials.”

Trials. I’d finally found out what that meant, even though Benjamin didn’t want to talk about it. Where they slug it out over who gets to be in a particular group—in this case, one of my bodyguards. I didn’t like the notion. I mean, I can see the benefit of someone who will successfully beat the shit out of someone else as a bodyguard, but . . . it just didn’t seem right.

Besides, someone had tried to kill me in a Schola before. Several times. What’s to say that whoever won the Trials wouldn’t be someone who would try to put me in front of the suckers again? Or even . . .

Once I started going down that mental road, I started wondering about Benjamin and his entire crew. What if one of them had a reason to hate me? I saw them every day. Their rooms were right next to mine.

I ate lunch with them, for Christ’s sake.

“I’m not looking to hold Trials.” I hitched my bag up on my shoulder and headed for the door, my empty latte cup crumpling in one fist.

He got there first, swept the heavy door open, and glanced out into the hall. “Very wise of you. Or not.”

“My thoughts exactly.” I pushed past him, out into the hall, and stamped away.

It was going to be one of those days.

Of all my classes, Basic Firearm Safety was probably my favorite. Maybe because the first time I’d shown up, the lean dark unsmiling instructor—Babbage—had asked me what I knew about guns. I played a little dumb, asked him what he meant, and he smirked and showed me a table with a range of handguns, four different rifles, an AK-47, and a crossbow. There was ammo set off to the side, and he asked me if I had any idea what to do with any of it.

In front of the class, I checked, loaded, and laid each handgun; clipped the magazine into the AK-47; and was loading the rifles when the teacher coughed and said, “Well, I guess we know who my assistant this semester will be.”

Everyone had laughed, and I’d finished loading the rifles too. There was no reason to stop, and it felt good to have my hands performing movements they knew by heart.

I didn’t touch the crossbow, though. It looked like a polycarbon recurve, not a compound. The arrows were weird, with a head I’d never seen before. Even the gang down in Carmel who went out to clean sucker holes—the only time I ever heard of humans taking on suckers and winning—used guns, more guns, and flamethrowers. Nothing even close to a crossbow, for Christ’s sake.

I couldn’t wait for vampire anatomy to be covered in the Paranormal Biology class. Right now we were on basic wulfen anatomy because it was closest to humans. But finding out how to use a crossbow on a sucker—wow. I mean, you never want to be face-to-face with a sucker. But still . . . a crossbow.

It really says something about you when that’s your idea of fun. Just what it says kind of isn’t nice, though.