"You were in my head again?" she exclaimed. "For that long?"
"I didn"t do it on purpose," I argued. "It just happened. And that"s not the point. How long did you hang out with him afterward?"
"Not that long. It was kind of...fun."
"Well, you can"t do it again. If people find out you"re hanging out with him, they"ll crucify you."
I eyed her warily. "You aren"t, like, into him, are you?"
She scoffed. "No. Of course not.
"Good. Because if you"re going to go after a guy, steal Aaron back." He was boring, yes, but safe. Just like Natalie. How come all the harmless people were so lame? Maybe that was the definition of safe. She laughed. "Mia would claw my eyes out."
"We can take her. Besides, he deserves someone who doesn"t shop at Gap Kids."
"Rose, you"ve got to stop saying things like that."
"I"m just saying what you won"t."
"She"s only a year younger," said Lissa. She laughed. "I can"t believe you think I"m the one who"s going to get us in trouble."
Smiling as we strolled toward cla.s.s, I gave her a sidelong glance. "Aaron does look pretty good though, huh?"
She smiled back and avoided my eyes. "Yeah. Pretty good."
"Ooh. You see? You should go after him."
"Whatever. I"m fine being friends now."
"Friends who used to stick their tongues down each other"s throats."
She rolled her eyes.
"Fine." I let my teasing go. "Let Aaron stay in the nursery school. Just so long as you stay away from Christian. He"s dangerous."
"You"re overreacting. He"s not going Strigoi."
"He"s a bad influence."
She laughed. "You think I"m in danger of going Strigoi?"
She didn"t wait for my answer, instead pushing ahead to open the door to our science cla.s.s.
Standing there, I uneasily replayed her words and then followed a moment later. When I did, I got to see royal power in action. A few guys-with giggling, watching girls-were messing with a gangly-looking Moroi. I didn"t know him very well, but I knew he was poor and certainly not royal. A couple of his tormentors were air-magic users, and they"d blown the papers off his desk and were pushing them around the room on currents of air while the guy tried to catch them.
My instincts urged me to do something, maybe go smack one of the air users. But I couldn"t pick a fight with everyone who annoyed me, and certainly not a group of royals-especially when Lissa needed to stay off their radar. So I could only give them a look of disgust as I walked to my desk. As I did, a hand caught my arm. Jesse.
"Hey," I said jokingly. Fortunately, he didn"t appear to be partic.i.p.ating in the torture session.
"Hands off the merchandise."
He flashed me a smile but kept his hand on me. "Rose, tell Paul about the time you started the fight in Ms. Karp"s cla.s.s."
I c.o.c.ked my head toward him, giving him a playful smile. "I started a lot of fights in her cla.s.s."
"The one with the hermit crab. And the gerbil."
I laughed, recalling it. "Oh yeah. It was a hamster, I think. I just dropped it into the crab"s tank, and they were both worked up from being so close to me, so they went at it."
Paul, a guy sitting nearby whom I didn"t really know, chuckled too. He"d transferred last year, apparently, and hadn"t heard of this. "Who won?"
I looked at Jesse quizzically. "I don"t remember. Do you?"
"No. I just remember Karp freaking out." He turned toward Paul. "Man, you should have seen this messed-up teacher we used to have. Used to think people were after her and would go off on stuff that didn"t make any sense. She was nuts. Used to wander campus while everyone was asleep."
I smiled tightly, like I thought it was funny. Instead, I thought back to Ms. Karp again, surprised to be thinking about her for the second time in two days. Jesse was right-she had wandered campus a lot when she still worked here. It was pretty creepy. I"d run into her once- unexpectedly. I"d been climbing out of my dorm window to go hang out with some people. It was after hours, and we were all supposed to be in our rooms, fast asleep. Such escape tactics were a regular practice for me. I was good at them.
But I fell that time. I had a second-floor room, and I lost my grip about halfway down. Sensing the ground rush up toward me, I tried desperately to grab hold of something and slow my fall.
The building"s rough stone tore into my skin, causing cuts I was too preoccupied to feel. I slammed into the gra.s.sy earth, back first, getting the wind knocked out of me.
"Bad form, Rosemarie. You should be more careful. Your instructors would be disappointed."
Peering through the tangle of my hair, I saw Ms. Karp looking down at me, a bemused look on her face. Pain, in the meantime, shot through every part of my body.
Ignoring it as best I could, I clambered to my feet. Being in cla.s.s with Crazy Karp while surrounded by other students was one thing. Standing outside alone with her was an entirely different matter. She always had an eerie, distracted gleam in her eye that made my skin break out in goose b.u.mps.
There was also now a high likelihood she"d drag me off to Kirova for a detention. Scarier still.
Instead, she just smiled and reached for my hands. I flinched but let her take them. She tsked when she saw the sc.r.a.pes. Tightening her grip on them, she frowned slightly. A tingle burned my skin, laced with a sort of pleasant buzz, and then the wounds closed up. I had a brief sense of dizziness. My temperature spiked. The blood disappeared, as did the pain in my hip and leg.
Gasping, I jerked my hands away. I"d seen a lot of Moroi magic, but never anything like that.
"What...what did you do?"
She gave me that weird smile again. "Go back to your dorm, Rose. There are bad things out here. You never know what"s following you."
I was still staring at my hands. "But..."
I looked back up at her and for the first time noticed scars on the sides of her forehead. Like nails had dug into them. She winked. "I won"t tell on you if you don"t tell on me." I jumped back to the present, unsettled by the memory of that bizarre night. Jesse, in the meantime, was telling me about a party.
"You"ve got to slip your leash tonight. We"re going up to that spot in the woods around eight thirty. Mark got some weed."
I sighed wistfully, regret replacing the chill I"d felt over the memory of Ms. Karp. "Can"t slip that leash. I"m with my Russian jailer."
He let go of my arm, looking disappointed, and ran a hand through his bronze-colored hair.
Yeah. Not being able to hang out with him was a d.a.m.ned shame. I really would have to fix that someday. "Can"t you ever get off for good behavior?" he joked.
I gave him what I hoped was a seductive smile as I found my seat. "Sure," I called over my shoulder. "If I was ever good."
Six
AS MUCH AS LISSA AND Christian"s meeting bothered me, it gave me an idea the next day.
"Hey, Kirova-er, Ms. Kirova." I stood in the doorway of her office, not having bothered to make an appointment. She raised her eyes from some paperwork, clearly annoyed to see me.
"Yes, Miss Hathaway?"
"Does my house arrest mean I can"t go to church?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"You said that whenever I"m not in cla.s.s or practice, I have to stay in the dorm. But what about church on Sundays? I don"t think it"s really fair to keep me away from my religious...um, needs." Or deprive me of another chance- no matter how short and boring-to hang out with Lissa.
She pushed her gla.s.ses up the bridge of her nose. "I wasn"t aware you had any religious needs."
"I found Jesus while I was gone."
"Isn"t your mother an atheist?" she asked skeptically.
"And my dad"s probably Muslim. But I"ve moved on to my own path. You shouldn"t keep me from it."
She made a noise that sort of sounded like a snicker. "No, Miss Hathaway, I should not. Very well. You may attend services on Sundays."
The victory was short-lived, however, because church was every bit as lame as I remembered when I attended a few days later. I did get to sit next to Lissa, though, which made me feel like I was getting away with something. Mostly I just people-watched. Church was optional for students, but with so many Eastern European families, a lot of students were Eastern Orthodox Christians and attended either because they believed or because their parents made them.
Christian sat on the opposite side of the aisle, pretending to be just as holy as he"d said. As much as I didn"t like him, his fake faith still made me smile. Dimitri sat in the back, face lined with shadows, and, like me, didn"t take communion. As thoughtful as he looked, I wondered if he even listened to the service. I tuned in and out.
"Following G.o.d"s path is never easy," the priest was saying. "Even St. Vladimir, this school"s own patron saint, had a difficult time. He was so filled with spirit that people often flocked around him, enthralled just to listen and be in his presence. So great was his spirit, the old texts say, that he could heal the sick. Yet despite these gifts, many did not respect him. They mocked him, claiming he was misguided and confused."
Which was a nice way of saying Vladimir was insane. Everyone knew it. He was one of a handful of Moroi saints, so the priest liked to talk about him a lot. I"d heard all about him, many times over, before we left. Great. It looked like I had an eternity of Sundays to hear his story over and over again.
"...and so it was with shadow-kissed Anna."
I jerked my head up. I had no idea what the priest was talking about now, because I hadn"t been listening for some time. But those words burned into me. Shadow-kissed. It had been a while since I heard them, but I"d never forgotten them. I waited, hoping he"d continue, but he"d already moved on to the next part of the service. The sermon was over.
Church concluded, and as Lissa turned to go, I shook my head at her. "Wait for me. I"ll be right there."
I pushed my way through the crowd, up to the front, where the priest was speaking with a few people. I waited impatiently while he finished. Natalie was there, asking him about volunteer work she could do. Ugh. When she finished, she left, greeting me as she pa.s.sed.
The priest raised his eyebrows when he saw me. "h.e.l.lo, Rose. It"s nice to see you again." "Yeah...you too," I said. "I heard you talking about Anna. About how she was "shadow-kissed."
What does that mean?"
He frowned. "I"m not entirely sure. She lived a very long time ago. It was often common to refer to people by t.i.tles that reflected some of their traits. It might have been given to make her sound fierce."
I tried to hide my disappointment. "Oh. So who was she?"
This time his frown was disapproving rather than thoughtful. "I mentioned it a number of times."
"Oh. I must have, um, missed that."
His disapproval grew, and he turned around. "Wait just a moment."
He disappeared through the door near the altar, the one Lissa had taken to the attic. I considered fleeing but thought G.o.d might strike me down for that. Less than a minute later, the priest returned with a book. He handed it to me. Moroi Saints.
"You can learn about her in here. The next time I see you, I"d like to hear what you"ve learned."
I scowled as I walked away. Great. Homework from the priest.
In the chapel"s entry way, I found Lissa talking to Aaron. She smiled as she spoke, and the feelings coming off her were happy, though certainly not infatuated.
"You"re kidding," she exclaimed.
He shook his head. "Nope."
Seeing me stroll over, she turned to me. "Rose, you"re never going to believe this. "You know Abby Badica? And Xander? Their guardian wants to resign. And marry another guardian."
Now this was exciting gossip. A scandal, actually. "Seriously? Are they, like, going to run off together?"
She nodded. "They"re getting a house. Going to get jobs with humans, I guess." I glanced at Aaron, who had suddenly turned shy with me there. "How are Abby and Xander dealing with that?"
"Okay. Embarra.s.sed. They think it"s stupid." Then he realized who he was speaking to. "Oh. I didn"t mean-"
"Whatever." I gave him a tight smile. "It is stupid."
Wow. I was stunned. The rebellious part me of loved any story where people "fought the system." Only, in this case, they were fighting my system, the one I"d been trained to believe in my entire life.
Dhampirs and Moroi had a strange arrangement. Dhampirs had originally been born from Moroi mixing with humans. Unfortunately, dhampirs couldn"t reproduce with each other-or with humans. It was a weird genetic thing. Mules were the same way, I"d been told, though that wasn"t a comparison I really liked hearing. Dhampirs and full Moroi could have children together, and, through another genetic oddity, their kids came out as standard dhampirs, with half human genes, half vampire genes.
With Moroi being the only ones with whom dhampirs could reproduce, we had to stay close to them and intermingle with them. Likewise, it became important to us that the Moroi simply survived. Without them, we were done. And with the way Strigoi loved picking off Moroi, their survival became a legitimate concern for us.
That was how the guardian system developed. Dhampirs couldn"t work magic, but we made great warriors. We"d inherited enhanced senses and reflexes from our vampire genes and better strength and endurance from our human genes. We also weren"t limited by a need for blood or trouble with sunlight. Sure, we weren"t as powerful as the Strigoi, but we trained hard, and guardians did a kick-a.s.s job at keeping Moroi safe. Most dhampirs felt it was worth risking their own lives to make sure our kind could still keep having children.
Since Moroi usually wanted to have and raise Moroi children, you didn"t find a lot of long-term Moroi-dhampir romances. You especially didn"t find a lot of Moroi women hooking up with dhampir guys. But plenty of young Moroi men liked fooling around with dhampir women, although those guys usually went on to marry Moroi women. That left a lot of single dhampir mothers, but we were tough and could handle it.
However, many dhampir mothers chose not to become guardians in order to raise their children.
These women sometimes worked "regular" jobs with Moroi or humans; some of them lived together in communities. These communities had a bad reputation. I don"t know how much of it was true, but rumors said Moroi men visited all the time for s.e.x. and that some dhampir women let them drink blood while doing it. Blood wh.o.r.es.