Eric jumped slightly, then turned around.
Blaise just stood there.
It was all she needed to do. Blaise reeled guys in just by being. It was the glorious dark hair, the smoldering gray eyes . . . plus a figure that could s top traffic on the freeway. Curves galore, and clothes that emphasized every one. On another girl it might have been too much, but on Blaise it was just b reathtaking. Guys who thought they liked the waif look dropped everything to follow her just as fast as guys who thought they liked blonds.
Eric blinked at her, looking hazy already. He didn"t seem to know what to sa y.
That wasn"t unusual. Guys always got tongue-tied around Blaise.
"I"m Blaise Harman." The voice was low and liquid. "And you"re . . . Eric?"
Eric nodded, still blinking.
Yes, he"s dazed all right, Thea thought. The jerk. She was surprised at her own vehemence.
"Good, because I wouldn"t want to give this to the wrong person." Blaise p roduced the notebook from behind her back like a magician.
"Oh-where"d you get that?" Eric looked relieved and grateful. "I"ve been lo oking everywhere."
"My cousin gave it to me," Blaise said carelessly. She held onto the noteboo k as he tried to take it, and their fingers touched. "Wait. You owe me somet hing for bringing it back, don"t you?"
Her voice was a purr. And now Thea knew, without a doubt, what was going to happen.
Eric was doomed.
CHAPTER.
^one for, lost, a goner. Blaise had chosen him, and it was only a matter of how she was going to play him.
A parade of names marched through Thea"s mind. Randy Marik. Jake Batista. Kristoffer Milton. Troy Sullivan. Daniel Xiong.
And now: Brie Ross.
But Eric was talking, sounding animated. "Your cousin? Is she that other ne w girl? Thea?"
"Yes. Now-"
"Look, do you know where she is? I really want to talk to her." The hazy look descended again, and Eric stared into the distance. "She"s just . . . I"ve nev er met anybody like her. . . ."
Blaise let go of the notebook and stared.
From her hiding place, Thea stared, too.
It had never happened before. This guy didn"t even seem to see Blaise.
That was strange enough. But by the Blue Monkey-headed G.o.ddess of Inquisi tiveness, what Thea really wanted to know was why she herself felt so rel ieved by it.
A bell rang. Blaise was still standing there flabbergasted. Eric stuffed the n otebook in his backpack.
"Could you just let her know I asked about her?"
"She doesn"t care if you asked about her!" Blaise snapped, voice no longer h oneyed. "She said very explicitly that she never wanted to see you again. An d I"d watch out if I were you. Because she has a temper." The last word was uttered in rising tones.
Eric looked slightly alarmed-and crestfallen. Thea saw his throat move as h e swallowed. Then, without saying good-bye to Blaise, he turned and walked out the far side of the corridor.
Well by the Red Crow-headed Thunderbolt G.o.ddess.
Blaise turned around and stalked up the corridor in Thea"s direction. Thea did n"t even try to hide.
"So you saw all that. Well I hope you"re happy," Blaise said waspishly.
Thea wasn"t. She was confused. Strangely agitated-and scared, because the C up of Death was still floating before her eyes.
"I guess we should both just leave him alone/" she said.
"Are you kidding? I"m going to have him," Blaise said. "He"s mine. Unless,"
she added, eyes glittering, "you"ve already staked a claim."
Thea floundered, shocked. "I ... well no . . ."
"Then he"s mine. I like a challenge." Blaise ran a hand through her hair, di sordering the black waves. "Isn"t it nice that Gran has so many love charms in the shop," she mused.
"Blaise . . ." Thea had a hard time collecting her thoughts. "Don"t you remem ber what Gran said? If there"s any more trouble . . ."
"There isn"t going to be any trouble for us," Blaise said, her voice flat and p ositive. "Only for him."Thea walked to her next cla.s.s feeling oddly empty.
Ignore it, she thought. There"s nothing you can do.
She didn"t see many Night People along the way to cla.s.s. A young kid, prob ably a freshman, who looked like a shapeshifter; a teacher who had the hun ting light of the lamia-the born vampires-in his eyes. No made vampires, n o werewolves. No other witches.
Of course, she couldn"t be certain. All the people of the Night World were masters of secrecy, of blending in, of pa.s.sing unseen. They had to be. It w as what allowed them to survive in a world where there were so many more hu mans . . . and where humans loved to kill anything different.
But when she was sitting in the world literature cla.s.sroom, Thea noticed a gi rl in the next row.
The girl was small-boned and pretty, with thick eyelashes and hair as black and soft as soot. She had a heart-shaped face-and dimples. But what caught T hea"s eye was the girl"s hand, which was playing with a pin on the girl"s bl ue-and-white-striped vest. A pin in the shape of a black flower.
A dahlia.
Thea immediately turned to a blank page in her notebook. While the teacher r ead a pa.s.sage from the story Rash.o.m.on, Thea began drawing a black dahlia, tr acing it over and over until it was large enough for the girl to see distinc tly. When she raised her head, she saw the girl was looking at her.
The girl"s lashes swept down as she looked at the drawing, then up again. S he smiled at Thea and nodded slightly.
Thea smiled and nodded back.
After cla.s.s, without any need to discuss it, Thea followed the girl to the fr ont of the school. The girl looked around to make sure no one was in earshot, then turned to Thea with something like resigned wistfulness.
"Circle Midnight?" she said.
Thea shook her head. "Circle Twilight. Aren"t you?"
The girl"s face lit up with shy delight. Her eyes were dark and velvety. "Ye s!" she said and rushed on, "But there are only two more of us-two seniors, I mean-and they"re both Circle Midnight, and I was afraid to hope!" She thru st out her hand, dimpling. "I"m Dani Abforth."
Thea felt her heart lighten. The girl"s laughter was infectious. "Thea Harman . Unity." It was the age-old greeting of the witches, the symbol of their har mony, their oneness.
"Unity," Dani murmured. Then her eyes widened. "Harman? You"re a Hear th-Woman? A daughter of h.e.l.lewise? Really?"
Thea laughed. "We"re all daughters of h.e.l.lewise."
"Yes, but-you know what I mean. You"re a direct descendent. I"m honored."
"Well, I"m honored, too. Abforth is "All-bringing-forth," isn"t it? That"s a pretty impressive line itself." Dani was still looking awed, so Thea said quickly, "My cousin"s here, too-Blaise Harman. We"re both new-but you must be , too. I"ve never seen you around Vegas before."
"We moved in last month, just in time to start school," Dani said. Her bro w puckered. "But it you"re new, what do you mean you haven"t seen me aroun d?"
Thea sighed. "Well, it"s kind of complicated. . . ."
A bell rang. Both she and Dani looked at the school building in frustration, t hen at each other.
"Meet me here at lunch?" Dani asked.
Thea nodded, asked which way her French cla.s.s was, and then flew off toward the other side of the building.
She sat through her next two cla.s.ses trying to actually listen to the teacher s. She didn"t know what else to do. She had to concentrate to keep the image of gray-flecked green eyes out of her mind.
At lunch, she found Dani sitting on the steps out front. Thea settled beside her and opened a bottle of Evian water and a chocolate yogurt she"d bought at the snack bar.
"You were going to explain how you know Vegas," Dani said. She spoke soft ly because there were kids everywhere in the front courtyard, sprawled in the sun with paper bags.
Thea eyed a row of sago palms and felt herself sighing again. "Blaise and I-our mothers died when we were born. They were twin sisters. And then both our dads died. So we grew up sort of moving a round from relative to relative. We usually spend the summers with Grandma Harman, and we live with somebody else during the school year. But these last couple of years . . . well, we"ve been in five high schools since we were soph.o.m.ores."
"Five?"
"Five. I think five. Isis knows, it could be six."
"But why?"
"We keep getting expelled," Thea said succinctly.
"But-"
"It"s Blaise"s fault," Thea said. She was mad at Blaise. "She does-things-t o boys. Human boys. And somehow it always ends up getting us kicked out of school. Both of us, because I"m always too stupid to tell them she"s the on e responsible."
"Not stupid, I bet. Loyal," Dani said warmly, and put her hand on Thea"s. T hea squeezed it, taking some comfort in the sympathy.
"Anyway, this year we were in New Hampshire living with our Uncle Galen-an d Blaise did it again. To the captain of the football team. His name was R andy Marik. . . ."
When Thea stopped, Dani said, "What happened to him?""He burned the school down for her."
Dani made a sound halfway between a snort and a giggle. Then she straighte ned out her face quickly. "Sorry, not funny. For her?"
Thea leaned against the wrought-iron stair railing.
"That"s what Blaise likes," she said bleakly. "Having power over guys, messi ng with their minds. Getting them to do things they would never ordinarily d o. To prove their love, you know. But the thing is, she"s never satisfied un til they"re completely destroyed. ..." She shook her head. "You should have seen Randy at the end. He"d lost his mind. I don"t think he"ll ever get it b ack."
Dani wasn"t smiling anymore. "Power like that... she sounds like Aphrodite,"
she said softly.
And that"s right, Thea thought. Aphrodite, the Greek G.o.ddess of love who co uld turn pa.s.sion into a weapon that brought the whole world to its knees.
"Remind me sometime to tell you what she"s done to the other guys she"s pla yed. In a way. Randy was lucky. . . ."
Thea took a breath. "So, anyway, we got shipped back here to Grandma Harma n because there weren"t any other relatives willing to take us. They figur ed if Gran couldn"t straighten us up, n.o.body could."
"But that must be wonderful," Dani said. "I mean, living with the Crone.
Part of the reason my mom moved us here was that she wanted to study with your grandmother."
Thea nodded. "Yeah, people come from all over to take her cla.s.ses, or to bu y her amulets and things. She"s not always easy to live with, though," Thea added wryly. "She goes through a couple of apprentices a year."
"So is she going to straighten Blaise up?"
"I don"t think anybody can. What Blaise does-it"s just her nature, the way it"s a cat"s nature to play with mice. And if we get in trouble again, Gran says she"s going to send us to our aunt Ursula at the Connecticut enclave."
"The Convent?"
"Yeah."
"Then you"d better stay out of trouble."
"I know. Dani, what"s this school like? I mean, is it the kind of place where Blaise can keep out of trouble?"
"Well . . ." Dani looked dismayed. "Well-I told you before, there"s only t wo other witches in our cla.s.s, and they"re both Circle Midnight. Maybe you know them . . . Vivienne Morrigan and Selene Lucna?"
Thea"s heart sank. Vivienne and Selene-she"d seen them going to summer Circ les, wearing the darkest robes of any of the Circle Midnight girls. The two of them plus Blaise would make . . . well, a lethal combination.
"Maybe if you explain to them how important it is, they might help you keep Blaise under control," Dani said. "You want to go talk to them now? They"l l be on the patio by the cafeteria-I usually eat with them there."
"Um ..." Thea hesitated. Talking to those two- well, she doubted it would he lp. But on the other hand, she didn"t have a better idea. "Why not?"
On the way to the cafeteria, she saw something that made her stop dead. Tap ed to the stucco wall was a giant piece of butcher paper, painted orange an d black at the margins. In the center was a grotesque figure: an old woman with a black dress, disheveled white hair, and a wart-covered, haglike face . She was straddling a broom and wearing a pointy hat. Lettering under the picture said coming OCTOBER 31 ... THE ULTIMATE HALLOWEEN PARTY.