Stolen Nights Read online

  ‘Do I own anything that isn’t black?’ I asked the closet. Everyone already had reason to stare at me: I had left for six months at the end of last year; my best friend, Tony, had died; and I was now back at school with no explanation. What would Tracy and Claudia say? I wondered, holding a skirt in my hand. There were bound to be questions and talk about Kate, the third girl in the Three Piece, who was now dead. I pulled a black blouse and black jeans from the closet. My breath caught in my chest. Would Tracy and I be friends this year, without Tony around?

  I sighed and tried to shake away the dream from the night before. Odette’s reign if she achieved the ritual would turn Wickham into an abandoned hell. A hell without those I loved, without Justin or Rhode.

  Hello, I thought, holding the blouse to me. I am Lenah Beaudonte. I wear all black, all the time, and at one time was a harbinger of death.

  I sighed again and made myself a cup of coffee.

  When I stepped out on to the campus, I slid on a pair of sunglasses. For the briefest of moments I expected to see Tony waiting for me, as he had done so often the year before. I expected to see the gauge earrings in his ear, the charcoal on his fingertips and the backwards baseball hat. I could have seen my beautiful Japanese friend if I imagined hard enough.

  But he was dead.

  School, on the other hand, was lively despite the new security presence. The campus was vibrant with students from the upper schools scrambling from building to building. Some exited the union grasping mugs and cups, others held to-go boxes filled with a quick breakfast. I walked in the shade of the branches, though I no longer feared the sun. I looked down at my palms, at the lifelines I knew so well. I wondered briefly, though I knew it would never be answered, why sunlight once came out of my hands in my second life as a vampire. Who made those decisions in the world and why had that power been given to me?

  As I walked towards assembly, I knew that when I could wield sunlight I harboured an enormous amount of power. I gulped my coffee and stopped short, as a realization came to me. If I had remained a vampire, I would still be one of the most powerful vampires in the world. The desire for power, the high I once felt as a vampire, throbbed deeply within me for a moment, then ebbed away.

  I started walking again. Vicken stood up from a bench about ten paces down the pathway. Seeing him there, with a backpack slung over his shoulders, made me smile. Beyond, in the distance, the harbour sparkled in the morning sun.

  ‘I’m skipping this,’ Vicken said flatly.

  ‘You can’t,’ I replied. ‘They take attendance.’

  ‘Attendance?’

  ‘Roll call,’ I clarified.

  ‘I should never have let Rhode convince me to go to this sodding school.’

  I stopped. A spark of surprise flickered in my chest. At the mere mention of his name, I immediately imagined scenarios about Rhode. Rhode in Hathersage walking through the empty halls, Rhode watching me from afar, protecting me. Was he wondering if I was all right?

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘Rhode convinced you to go to Wickham?’

  ‘Not convinced exactly, but you do realize I haven’t been in school since there were horses and buggies?’

  ‘When did you speak with Rhode?’

  ‘Before he left,’ he replied, though I didn’t exactly believe him. I stopped short and looked straight ahead. Standing together by the entrance to Hopper were Claudia and Tracy, Justin’s brother Roy and some lacrosse players I did not know. And there, standing by his brother, was Justin.

  ‘What is it?’ Vicken said, alarm colouring his tone. Perhaps he was a bit more ready to grab for his dagger than usual. ‘Oh . . .’ he grumbled, when he saw who I was looking at. Justin embraced Claudia with a big hug. When he pulled away, she wiped her eyes and I saw that she was crying. This unit had existed before my arrival at this school, before I’d darkened their doorstep. Now they stood together, shoulders slumped, looking smaller to me somehow. Not in numbers, but in their energy.

  ‘I liked her perfume, the pink one with the twisted bottle,’ Vicken said suddenly. He had closed his eyes for a moment in concentration. His wild hair framed his face in mane-like waves. ‘She’ll miss that smell,’ he said, though the words he was saying were not his own.

  ‘What?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘Your friend Tracy. She wishes Kate were here. Because . . .’ He hesitated. ‘Because she listens better than Claudia.’

  I watched the group a moment. Tracy was looking at Claudia, though she wasn’t speaking.

  ‘And your other blonde friend, she . . .’ He hesitated again. ‘She wants her friend to go shopping with, to walk with, she misses her presence. But I don’t get it. It’s been over two months since she died. Why haven’t they calmed down by now?’

  I understood mortal grieving, even if Vicken couldn’t.

  I would miss Kate plopping down in a seat next to us, offering us gum first thing. I would even miss her digging endlessly into my love life, asking inappropriate questions. We weren’t close, I knew that, but, still, her death left a ghost in my mind.

  ‘Two months is nothing,’ I said, thinking of Tony. His death, unlike Kate’s, left a hole in my heart that I was sure would never heal. ‘The sorrow of death can linger for years.’

  Death had been so easy to understand when we were vampires. But, as a human, the death of a loved one was a point in history always to be referenced. A fixed point in your life that you constantly measured yourself against as you grew older – a baseline.

  The pin in the heart.

  ‘Well, let’s just go get attended and get to class,’ Vicken said.

  ‘Attended?’ I said, tearing my eyes away from Justin and his friends.

  ‘You know – roll.’

  Vicken dug a piece of paper out of his pocket while I snuck another look at the group I once considered my friends.

  ‘I have world literature first,’ Vicken said, squinting at his schedule.

  Justin walked towards us purposefully and I prepared myself with a shake of my hair over my shoulders. You deserve this. Take it, accept it. You deserve what he is about to say to you. He picked up speed. In fact, his feet carried him faster and faster in our direction. Vicken looked up from his scrap of paper only at the last moment.

  When Justin’s body slammed into him, Vicken was blasted into the air and hit the ground flat on his back. Justin knelt over Vicken and with devastating force punched him in the face. I reacted out of instinct. I kicked Justin directly on his hip, which disarmed him and he fell away from Vicken. A rather large crowd had formed already as I bent down to pull at Vicken’s arm, helping him up. He stumbled on his feet and wiped his right eye. Blood blossomed in the skin below it. It was already swelling.

  ‘Give me a mirror!’ Vicken demanded.

  ‘Odd time to be vain,’ I replied.

  ‘I want to see this!’ he said incredulously. He shook his head as though it was preposterous that I wouldn’t know this was an important moment.

  He turned towards Justin. ‘Nice shot, mate.’

  Ms Tate, our science teacher, ran out of Hopper Building. Her eyes were wild and she pointed at Justin. She had obviously seen what happened.

  ‘You!’ she cried. Justin shook out his hand; his fingers must have been hurting. ‘Come with me,’ she said.

  ‘And you,’ she said to Vicken, ‘go to the infirmary.’ She pointed at a junior, Andrea, and ordered her to go with Vicken.

  Justin stepped dangerously close to Vicken and me. He could easily have thrown another punch. I’d never seen him so calm . . . or so angry.

  ‘That . . .’ Justin said so quietly that only Vicken and I could hear. ‘That,’ he repeated, ‘was for Tony.’ He turned to follow Ms Tate but kept his eyes locked on Vicken.

  My gut clenched and I waited for Vicken to react. A muscle in his jaw quivered but that was it. Ms Tate pointed again, this time towards Hopper. ‘Justin!’ she yelled. ‘Go!’

  Justin’s eyes drifted over to me. They were cold and
distant now, so angry, so disappointed in me. He broke our gaze when he turned around and followed Ms Tate. I watched him go with an ache in my heart. This was different from how I ached for Rhode. I wanted my old Justin back. The one smiling at me, teasing me, the one helping me to understand the human world.

  Andrea stood at Vicken’s side, ready to cross the meadow with him to the infirmary. She glanced back at Tracy and Claudia, as if to ask, ‘Who is this guy?’

  Vicken leaned towards Andrea. Tell me honestly, is it more purple? Or red?’ he asked her. ‘Actually, do you have a mirror, love?’

  Claudia and Tracy walked directly towards me. They wore gorgeous sundresses; Claudia’s was a canary yellow. I wished for a split second I could shine like them – like they always did. But when Claudia got closer I realized how truly sad she was. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying.

  ‘Wow,’ Claudia said. ‘A fight over you already.’ She smiled and it warmed the grief that had settled on her face.

  ‘That wasn’t over me,’ I replied.

  ‘Sure it was,’ said Tracy seriously. ‘Who was that?’ she asked, with a nod in Vicken’s direction.

  ‘My . . . cousin,’ I stuttered. ‘Vicken.’

  ‘Cute,’ said Claudia, and it was a relief to see a glimpse of her old self.

  ‘We should go in,’ Tracy said. ‘It’s time for morning assembly.’

  As I followed them, I glanced around, searching for Rhode on the virtually empty campus. It was pointless, I knew. He wasn’t coming. He was taking our promise to the Aeris seriously – and I knew I should be doing the same.

  Inside the hall in Hopper, a general murmur echoed through the auditorium. Students congregated together, chatting about their summers. I stepped into the doorway, then stopped. So many people. A hundred – maybe more. What I had learned with regard to human behaviour would be tested at that moment. I stepped into the spacious auditorium and a hush rolled over the crowd. The younger students didn’t know any better, so they just stared. My classmates who had seen the events of the previous year stopped their conversations and turned towards me.

  Tracy and Claudia had made it to the third row, their regular spot, although now Kate’s seat was empty.

  My hands curled nervously into fists. Why did Justin have to pummel my only ally?

  Rhode . . . I said to myself, but it came out as a groan.

  I passed by some silent juniors that I recognized from the year before. My confidence, it seemed, had disappeared along with my fangs.

  I hated the human desire to gossip. Once I was past them, they started up again.

  That’s Lenah. She dumped Justin Enos. Idiot, right?

  Those were Kate Pierson’s best friends.

  Lenah was Tony Sasaki’s best friend.

  Yeah, she is the stupidest person alive to dump Justin.

  ‘Sit with us,’ Claudia called, and moved her backpack off the extra chair. I tucked my hair behind my ear and headed gratefully towards the two girls I hoped would still be my friends. These girls that had been on the earth a piddling sixteen years. But they had been kind to me when I needed them and were still being kind. I sat down and listened to Claudia talk about her summer at sailing camp.

  ‘What about you, Lenah?’ Tracy asked. ‘Did you go home to England?’

  I was about to explain I had spent my summer at school when Ms Williams, the over-controlling headmistress of Wickham, tapped the microphone.

  ‘. . . the second you even think about signing out. You must be in twos at least,’ Ms Williams dictated. ‘Off campus? Twos, or lose the privilege.’

  I always admired your greatness, Odette had hissed.

  And your evil . . .

  ‘Security is more important than ever. We have lost a good third of our student enrolment because of the accidental deaths of both Tony Sasaki and Kate Pierson,’ she said with a frown. ‘So it is our responsibility to reassure the Wickham Boarding School community that we remain vigilant and committed to your safety.’

  Tracy looked down and wiped her eyes but I kept staring forward, pretending not to notice. Claudia reached for Tracy’s hand.

  ‘Kate Pierson,’ Ms Williams continued, ‘died off campus. So, while we’ll miss her, please do not misconstrue the facts. These incidents are not specifically related, nor are they directed specifically at students. We will, however, maintain our new safety precautions.’

  Mortals will lie about anything to protect themselves.

  I sighed, tuning out her voice. I turned my onyx ring round and round so the silver band rubbed over my skin. Without Rhode, Vicken and I had no chance of fighting more than one vampire or maybe two. We needed Rhode. His years of experience could really help us now. And as much as I thought I knew about him there was clearly so much I didn’t know. So much he could do. So much he had kept from me.

  No, I thought and threw my hair back over my shoulders. Don’t go down that road – the pity road, where you dwell on Rhode. He’s gone. He’s gone, and all you can do is get on with your life.

  But he was alive. Where was he?

  Once assembly broke for the day, the chatter immediately started up again. Most people were discussing the new sign-out policy and pointing at the security guards that stood at the auditorium entrance.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ Claudia cried, grabbing me into an embrace. I inhaled fresh soap and a spicy perfume. I couldn’t help looking over Claudia’s shoulder at Tracy, who watched us with the remnant of a tear in her eye. Claudia pulled away and her eyes too were wet. ‘Especially with the whole Kate thing, you know? Now promise us – you’re not going anywhere, right? No running off like last year?’

  ‘No,’ I said to Claudia, who had now taken both of my hands into hers. ‘I’m staying.’ Her hands were warm and tight around mine. If I’d still been a vampire, we would have been in perfect proximity for me to snap her forward and bite her neck.

  I glanced at her wrists. To investigate her veins. It was so shocking that I would still feel the urge to do this, a silent horror overtook me. Immediately I pulled my hands from hers. Must get away from her, I thought.

  It seemed that old habits die hard. Wasn’t that the expression?

  The feeling passed and I bent forward to grab my backpack. I was mortal. Not a vampire. Not like Odette. I started after Tracy and Claudia to the front door of the auditorium.

  Turn around, a voice in my mind whispered. Perhaps it was intuition, or the vampire queen deep inside me. Turn around, Lenah. Look behind you.

  Slowly I turned, and I froze. Standing at the top of the stairwell at the back of the auditorium was . . . Rhode.

  A deep gash, scabbed and blackened ran horizontally across the top of his head. Running down the top of his beautiful lips was another scab, so dark in colour I wasn’t entirely sure whether there was fresh blood oozing out of it. His right eye and right cheek were puckered and swollen.

  My jaw dropped.

  ‘Come on, Lenah,’ Claudia called from the auditorium door.

  But I couldn’t look away. A couple of seconds passed, then Rhode did the honours for me, walking down the back stairwell and out of sight.

  ‘Rhode!’ I called, running for the back door.

  ‘Lenah!’ Claudia called after me, but I ignored her and sprinted out into the quad after Rhode.

  ‘Rhode!’ This time I screamed it. He spun around; sunglasses hid his eyes. I could see my horrified expression reflected in the shiny glass.

  That close to him, I was able to really see the damage. A purple bruise ran over the thick ridge of his nose. The black tinge on his skin made him look ill. Beneath the ridge of his forehead was a deep cut, which probably needed stitches but it was much too late for that. The skin had scabbed and puckered and would most likely scar. His lips, his beautiful lips, were split down the middle and brown with scabs.

  I lifted a hand to touch his forehead, but he backed away from me. Pain ripped down the middle of my chest and I lowered my hand. In the reflection in
Rhode’s sunglasses, I could see my downturned mouth and the squint of my eyes from the sun.

  ‘What happened to you?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘I told the headmistress I was in a car accident.’

  His right eye was so purple I couldn’t help but lift my fingers to touch the mutilated skin. He stepped back again.

  ‘What happened isn’t really any of your concern,’ he said. ‘I have to go to class.’

  He walked past me towards the science building where, if I was lucky, we were headed to the same room.

  CHAPTER 8

  A line of students snaked out of the classroom and down the hall. Geology was a popular course for the senior year – there were three sections full of seniors and a few select juniors. I rose up on my toes to try to see Rhode at the front of the line, but all I could make out was the short crop of his black hair. My heart fluttered as I remembered how his hair used to fall past his shoulders like black silk. Oh, how I had loved his top hat and the angle of his fangs. Back then, fangs were a part of our physical being. The thought of the sharp point of Odette’s fangs made me press my fingertips to my neck as though to protect it.

  ‘Ah, good, Lenah,’ Ms Tate said.

  I dropped my hand. Oh. Apparently I had made it to the science-room doorway.

  Rhode sat in the front row, chin down, writing something in a notebook. Ms Tate looked over her roster, pointed a pen at Rhode and said, ‘Rhode Lewin, you stay there. You’ll sit with . . . Justin Enos.’ Ms Tate was planning the seating charts for the year. ‘He’ll be able to get you up to speed.’ She was mostly talking to herself.

  Very, very bad idea.

  Ms Tate handed Rhode a sheet of paper. ‘I heard about your car accident. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Better, thanks.’ He placed his pen down and with trembling fingers picked up the sheet. His hands, both of them, were wrapped in thick gauze: one around the wrist and one over the knuckles. I froze when he looked up. Beneath those purple and black bruises were the blue eyes I’d known and loved for half a millennium. My stomach knotted and I took a shallow breath. We did not break our stare and his gaze lingering on mine was enough to make my head spin. Much to my confusion he sighed, closed his eyes and broke the spell.