“I didn’t mean to. I just got on a roll with the security codes. Well, I thought I was on a roll, anyway. I’m so handing this in as my independent study.” She rubbed her red-rimmed eyes. “I feel like shit.”

“They have this new cure for that,” I said drily. “It’s called sleep.”

“Ha-ha.”

“Are you gonna crash now or what?” I insisted. I could pull the plug on her computer but she’d probably scratch my eyes out. And it was too early for a catfight. She yawned and crawled into her bed. She was asleep before she’d even answered me.

I decided to take advantage of the early hour and the still dormitory. It was so rarely quiet and today was Saturday. All the students who weren’t already here would start arriving after breakfast. Courtney would almost certainly pawn off some of her less glamorous duties on me, and then tonight we were going into town for vampire bait night.

So if I was going to follow through on the possibly illegal idea I’d had last night before falling asleep, now was my best chance.

I grabbed my knapsack and stuffed it with supplies as Chloe began to snore. I didn’t bother changing out of my pajamas since I planned to go right back to sleep as soon as humanly possible, but I did stop by the bathroom. There was just enough light from the windows to make the hall gray instead of black. I stayed on the edge of the staircase so it wouldn’t creak, skipping the third and eleventh steps altogether.

As much as my grandfather was strict and full of hunter pride, he’d given me awesome toys over the years—mostly old weapons, crossbows, and surveillance equipment.

It was the latter I was planning to put to good use.

I didn’t have Chloe’s knack, and I could hardly ask for her help. After that Hel-Blar woman died and Will mentioned vitamins, I knew something was up—I just had no idea what. We needed more information on this so-called vitamin, but I didn’t know anyone in the science department I trusted enough to test the pills I’d pocketed. Chloe’s mom helped devise Hypnos, and apparently she had a hand in the vitamins too, but that kind of chemistry or biology or whatever was way beyond my scope.

But I did know someone who might able to help me.

Quinn.

If Kieran trusted him, surely that meant I could too.

Even if he was a vampire.

And I was a hunter.

When had life become so freaking complicated?

For the part of this mess where I was essentially accusing higher-ups in the league and my friend’s mother besides, I was on my own. I wouldn’t even tell Kieran about that right now. He was already walking a thin line by dating Solange and allying himself with the Drakes. Not only would they have him under some kind of surveillance, but he didn’t need extra flack for my unproven theories.

And anyway, it was far more likely that if the vitamin was making Chloe act weird, it was because she was taking it too often. Maybe she was even allergic to it.

There were too many questions that didn’t make sense and not nearly enough answers.

So I was bugging the eleventh-grade common room.

Also, I was going to have to steal a sample of Will’s blood from the infirmary.

I had no idea if this sort of thing could get me expelled or if I could plead extra credit. I hoped I never had to find out. It was worth the risk, though. This is where Will would hang out when they finally released him from the infirmary.

I only had three reliable microphones and just one of them had a motion sensor. I hid one under the couch, tucked behind the ugly brown fringe and a gross lump of gum no one was likely to want to breach. Another one I slid inside the removable drawer handle on the bottom left of the dresser under the bulletin board. I figured those would be the two most likely places students would gather to talk. There was no point in tapping the communal phone; they only used it to call home when they were out of minutes on their cell phones.

I could hear the faint sounds of someone padding down the hall toward the bathrooms. I had just enough time to duck behind the coat tree, still thick with discarded and lost clothes from last year. The student ambled past, scratching parts of his anatomy I didn’t need to know about.

I unscrewed the knob on the top of the coat rack and dropped my last microphone into the pole. Luckily the microphone was an old-fashioned one from WWII and fit into a ballpoint pen–like casing. Unluckily, it dropped straight to the bottom, where I might never get to fish it out again. I couldn’t risk trying to shake it loose now either. Cursing, I ran all the way back to my room.

I slipped under the sheets, the muggy August morning already too humid for blankets. Chloe was still snoring. I rubbed the coronation medallion I wore around my neck and hoped I knew what the hell I was doing.

This had every indication of going horribly wrong.

Into the breach, then.

I lay there, staring at the ceiling, and wondered what exactly I was going to say to Quinn.

“You’re late,” Courtney snapped at me later that morning.

“I’m not late because I didn’t have an appointment,” I replied. And I was late because I’d been at the infirmary, stealing a test tube of blood. Theo wouldn’t let me in to visit Will, but he left me alone in the waiting room after wheeling the cart of blood samples into one of the examination rooms to await pick-up. All I’d had to do was reach around the curtain. The only difficult part was making sure I had the right sample. Apparently there were a lot of students with the weird flu that was going around because there were a lot of tubes in the tray. The thought of that many needles had me cringing.