He studied my cheekbone intently. When he spoke, his voice came out in a strange whisper. “What has come to pass?”

“Stick training.” I eased away from him, self-conscious and a little embarrassed, too. “Tracer Otto faked left but went right.”

He closed the distance I’d put between us. He lifted his hand, then gently traced a finger along the line of the bruise. “All that blood, just beneath the surface.”

Of course. Of course he didn’t go for sexy smiles or flowing hair. It was the blood that floated his boat.

“It’s not a big deal,” I demurred, making my voice steadier than I felt, when really all I wanted to do was flee. I’d taken his mind from Josh, that was for sure.

He inhaled deeply. “Black, blue, green, purple, yellow…every color but red. And yet just below the surface, all those burst vessels, pooled a rich crimson.”

I wriggled deeper into my seat, totally creeped out. “Happens all the time.”

“So brave you are. Did you know they once treated bruises with leeches? The leech would suck, ingesting the excess blood.” His eyes grazed from my cheekbone to my mouth. “We have other ways now.”

Alarm bells shrilled in my head. Run run run. But I couldn’t. It wasn’t just because of Josh, or me, or any of that other stuff. The specter of Masha kept me glued to my seat. I needed Alcántara on my side if I wanted to stop Masha from coming and slaughtering me in my sleep.

He dragged his fingertip down the side of my face, to the tip of my chin. He pinched it, then tilted my face to look at him eye to eye. “Mi Acarita, I wonder if you’d be brave about all things.”

I knew he meant kisses. Would I be brave about kisses? I’d thought I might. But I realized now, the answer was a resounding no. Not about kisses from him, at least.

This was my own fault. I’d been a kid with a box of matches; I’d played with fire; I’d tempted fate—all the clichés in the book.

How quickly this had gone from blood to kisses. Inside, I recoiled. But I kept my face a placid mask on the outside. I stayed still, my gaze locked with his.

Something happened—a shift in the world around me, and my skin grew cold. The air whooshed from my ears and the room grew dim—as though I might faint. And then I fell into his eyes. They were black, and deep, and bottomless, like gleaming shards of obsidian.

I trembled, fighting the sensation. I didn’t want to kiss him. So why was I leaning closer?

I was wrong to have been this bold. This wasn’t what I wanted. I blinked hard, fisting the heat back into my hands. I curled my toes in my boots till my feet cramped.

The world snapped back into clarity, and I sucked in a great breath.

Alcántara’s low laugh came to me as though from a great distance. “Touché. For now, querida.”

A vampire wouldn’t be my first kiss. Yet.

I’d won the battle. But I still worried how I might fare in the war.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Finally.” A cramp seized me, and I shook out my calf as I hobbled to keep up with Emma. My bruises were almost healed, but I still stiffened up at odd moments. One more drink of the blood should get me back to full strength.

“Finally what?” Emma stopped and, noticing my limp, let me catch up.

“Finally we get a moment together. You and Yas have been attached at the hip.” I rubbed my lower back as we walked.

“Are you okay?”

“My ass hurts,” I grumbled. “Tracer Otto kicked it for me.”

She held the dorm door open and slowed her pace for me. She studied me as we made our way up the stairs to our rooms on the second floor. Pulling the hair from my face, she said, “That’s some bruise.”

I flinched away. “Unfortunately, you’re not the first to notice.”

She shot me a questioning look as she came to a stop in front of her bedroom door, rifling in her bag for her key.

I leaned against the wall with a sigh. “Alcántara. Apparently all that blood under the skin is tantalizing.”

“Ugh.” She grimaced. “Did not. Need. To know.” She pushed open her door, assuming I’d follow.

I didn’t. The Initiates hadn’t yet targeted her for a special hazing treat, and it’d been on my mind since my whole Saran Wrap ordeal.

“Get in here,” she said, her get sounding more like git, “before anyone sees us.”

“Actually”—I snagged her arm, pulling her back out and down the hallway—“come on. Let’s hang in the common area instead.”

She hesitated. “But…”

“But the Guidons? We can’t hide, Em. You can’t hide. Your turn is coming. This situation is going to come to a head, and the sooner we face it, the better.” I plopped onto one of the couches, a cozy beast of a thing upholstered in dark red wide-wale corduroy. “We need to show them we’re not afraid.”

“We?” She gave me a tremulous smile.

“Naturally, we.” I chose to ignore my instincts and all Alcántara had warned about friends—these tentative relationships had come to mean too much. “We’re in it together, right?”

“Right,” she agreed, and I had to give her credit, because, though her expression was uncertain, her voice was her usual solid, calm, farm girl self. She settled next to me on the couch. “So…Alcántara?”

“Yeah. He’s got a thing for bruises.”

Even though we were alone, she looked around. Seeing the coast was clear, she hissed, “That’s disgusting.”

“Tell me about it.” I leaned in. “It gets weirder.”

She gave me a flat look. “Of course it does.” After a pause, she prompted, “Well?”

I hedged, uncomfortable with how I’d handled it. “I was scared he was going to be angry about Josh and the hazing thing. So I tried to change the subject. In a dramatic way.”

Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Dramatic, how?”

“Okay, okay. I panicked,” I said, on the defensive already. “Dramatic, as in I—I think I was flirting with him.”

“You think?”

I flopped back, idly picking at the plush corduroy. Her stoic farm girl expressions really could feel accusatory sometimes. “Well, I don’t exactly have loads of practice.”

“Did he flirt back?”

“Yeah.” I gave a rueful laugh. “I was in over my head in, like, three seconds.” I glanced away, weighing my words, then confessed, “I think he was going to kiss me.”

That woke her up. Her face came alive. “Did you want him to kiss you?”

“No way. At least…I don’t think so.” I waffled, not really sure how I felt about any of it. For the first time in my life, a guy wanted me—my luck it was a dead one. “I don’t want a vampire to be my first kiss.”

She marveled at the concept. “I wonder if it’d be cold.”

“Gross. You mean, like his tongue, too?” We both shuddered. “I guess it might be.”

She nodded gravely. “They are dead, aren’t they?”

“Technically speaking.”

That silenced us for a moment, until Emma quivered, stifling an unexpected giggle.

I stared at her, amazed. “What?”

“There’s always the dance,” she said, with an uncharacteristic smirk. “Maybe he’ll ask you to be his date.”

I glared. “The dance. Don’t remind me. I wonder if they’ll issue uniform prom dresses.”

“Black, floor-length.”

“Yeah, like Morticia.” I joined her giggling. “And black capes with super-high, velvety collars. We can hobble around like the brides of Frankenstein.”

“I hear you even learned some smooth moves for the dance floor.”

“You sound like—” I froze, gaping, then elbowed her. “Yasuo told you that.” I scrunched lower into my seat, frowning. “I can’t believe he told you about dance class. I’m sure he’s out there right now trying to devise ways to blackmail me.”

A bunch of Initiates came into the lounge, buzzing with conversation and bursting our bubble. Emma darted a nervous glance my way.

I sat up and put a steadying hand on her arm, whispering, “Not afraid, remember? We’re just hanging out. We have as much right to be here as they do.”

They were across the room, studiously ignoring us and draping their taut, catsuited bodies across couches, over armrests, on the edges of coffee tables. Their yammering drowned out our voices.

Emma’s face turned pleading. “Can’t we just go to your room to hang out? What if Masha comes?”

“I’ll face Masha any day of the week.” I sounded braver than I felt, but I knew I spoke the truth. “Listen, Em. We can’t act scared. These girls can smell fear. We go into hiding, and I swear it’ll trip some sort of animal-instinct urge to hunt or something.”

I felt someone staring; I turned. Trinity loomed at the end of the hall, arms crossed over her chest and her gaze zeroed in on us. She curled her lip in disgust before joining her friends.

Her eyes didn’t leave us, though. She sat on an armchair, staring, legs crossed severely and hands clawed on the armrests. Slowly, she pulled a weapon from her boot. It was a long, thin, steel thing, like a cross between a file and a dagger. With a pretty tilt to her head, she began to stab robotically at the arm of the chair, over and over. She made it look like an idle gesture, but we knew better.

I felt Emma freaking, and I tried to ease the tension, murmuring from the corner of my mouth, “Guess she doesn’t like the furniture.”

She began to gather her stuff. “Seriously. Let’s just go.”

I squeezed my hand where I’d rested it on her arm, then gave her an encouraging look. “If we leave now, we’ll just look weak. We need to stay. Now, take out your knife.”

“My what?”