Afterlife

Our kisses intensified and deepened. Lucas’s hands were still his hands, strong and familiar. He touched me the same way. I felt pleasure differently now—softer, more diffuse and yet allencompassing—but it was no less for having changed. And as I grew surer, passion building between us, it seemed as though my joy in him flowed through us both.

He rolled me onto my back, but then his expression changed. I saw his fangs, understood, and smiled. I felt the urge to bite, too—not as strongly, now that I no longer needed blood, but sex and fangs would always go together for me.

“It’s okay,” I whispered against his throat, between kisses. “You can be hungry for this. You can have this.”

“Yes,” he said roughly. His green eyes bored into me, a desperate plea.

“Do you need to drink?” I arched against him and let my head fall back, exposing my throat. Lucas breathed in, a hard gasp. “Drink from me.”

With a growl, he sank his teeth into my flesh. I felt again the real pain of having a body, and that alone was its own kind of pleasure. My hands gripped him tightly around the back, surrendering to his hunger —

—until he shoved himself away from me, shouting out in pain.

“Lucas?” I sat upright, clutching the sheet to me. “Lucas, what’s wrong?”

“It burns!”

As he stumbled from the bed, clutching at his throat, he choked and then spat. Silver wraith blood shimmered on the floor briefly before it faded. I smelled smoke and snapped on the bedside light; on the carpet I could see a couple of faint singe marks. Then I realized the sheets were scorched too—coffee-colored drops from where my blood had fallen. I put my hand to the wound at my throat, but it was already closing. The skin knitted beneath my fingertips, a ticklish sensation.

For a few seconds, we just stared at each other. The only thing I could think of to say was, “Now we know why vampires don’t drink wraiths’ blood.”

“Yeah.” Lucas winced when he spoke, and his voice was hoarse. I realized that his lips, tongue, and throat remained scorched. As a vampire, he’d heal quickly, but not instantly. Every place we touched was just a source of pain for him now.

Maybe he saw the pity in my eyes, because he turned his head. “We should sleep.” He yanked back the covers on the other hotel bed.

“Lucas—it doesn’t always have to involve blood drinking. You remember that.”

“I know.” He lay down in the other bed, heavily, as though he could no longer support his body. “We’ll—we’ll figure it out.”

Though I wanted to argue, I knew this wasn’t the time. I simply shut off the light again and slid back beneath the covers, cold and lonely in the big bed. After a couple of seconds, it felt pointless to remain solid, so I took off my bracelet and dissolved into the blue, misty void by myself.

So much for thinking death couldn’t take anything from us.

“Last chance to change your mind,” I said a few days later, as Lucas bundled up his few possessions early on the morning of the first day of school. For a moment I regretted the joke; it would be disastrous if Lucas did change his mind, because we didn’t have a Plan B.

But Lucas attempted to roll with it. “Always meant to get a diploma someday. I guess after death counts as someday, huh?” He tried to smile for me, but it didn’t go far. “Does it feel weird? Not going?”

That was the first time I realized I’d died as an eleventh-grade dropout. “Yeah, kinda.”

These days hadn’t been easy for us. We had to keep over-feeding Lucas blood, and he mostly refused to leave the room. I’d memorized the hotel maids’ schedule, so we could make sure Lucas avoided them. Lucas still thought Evernight was too much of a risk for me, and I wasn’t sure I disagreed. But what other options did we have?

The dawn light brightened the edges of the hotel window shade as Lucas shrugged on the uniform sweater—Balthazar had ordered supplies for them both online. He’d gotten a little taller and a lot more muscular since he’d been an Evernight student, so the sweater was a bit tight, but in a good way. “You look great,” I said. “Reminds me of when we met.”

“When I tried to save you from the vampires.” Lucas paused, then stepped closer to me and put his hand on my cheek. “You know the only reason I’m doing this is so I can come back to you. Be decent enough for you, know how to act. You get that, right?”

“I do.”

“And you’re going to be careful, right? You won’t take any chances at Evernight?”

“I’ll be very careful.” I took his hand in mine and kissed his palm. Then I removed my coral and silver bracelet, going half-transparent as it dropped into Lucas’s fingers. “Take this with you. I’ll get it there.”

“You don’t want it with you? Just in case? You can’t afford to lose this thing, and your brooch is already in my bag.”

“It’s not like I can take it myself,” I pointed out. “When I go incorporeal to travel, nothing physical can travel with me. Besides, it couldn’t be anywhere safer than with you.” I folded his hand around the bracelet.

He leaned forward, as though to kiss me. Now that I was incorporeal—a soft shadow of blue mist in the vague shape of my body—our lips couldn’t touch. But a little of Lucas passed through me, a faint cool tickle that made me shiver, just where our kiss would have been.

Just as I began to smile, though, there was a rap on the door: Balthazar. Time to go.

* * *

After they’d begun the long drive from Philadelphia, I prepared for my own journey. Maxie had told me that wraiths remained bonded to certain places and things that had been meaningful to us during our lifetimes. We could always travel to them, no matter how far away we might be. I wasn’t sure what every single one of those places was yet, though I had ideas: the old maple tree in Arrowwood where I’d liked to play as a child, the theater where Lucas and I had gone on our first date, and perhaps the wine cellar where we’d lived our final weeks. Those were just theories, though.

The only place I knew I could travel was the first place I’d gone, by accident: Evernight Academy, specifically the gargoyle that had perched outside my bedroom.

I drifted into foggy darkness, and at first the sensation was deliciously like sleep, so tempting. But my mind remained focused on the gargoyle. I’d spent so much time looking at his gap-fanged grin that I could picture him perfectly: stony claws, hunched back, pointy wings. Briefly I imagined the way the stone had felt beneath my hands, cold and hard—

Then I could feel it.

The world clarified around me. I perched atop the gargoyle, which would’ve been massively uncomfortable if I’d been alive but was fine now that I could float when I wanted. Curlicues of frost streaked across the windows, heralding the presence of a wraith.

Would my parents see it? They had the first time I’d accidentally come here. Instead of realizing it was me, though, they’d freaked out, believing the frost came from yet another of the ghosts that had invaded Evernight.

Not invaded, I reminded myself. Drawn here, because of the students. Brought here specifically by Mrs. Bethany. I had to remain on my guard.

I heard nothing from the apartment. Probably my parents were downstairs, helping Mrs. Bethany welcome the students. Looking downward, I could see that the first few people had already begun to arrive. Mostly humans at this point, too noisy and too happy—but every once in a while silent, dark-clad figures would sweep through the crowd as though they belonged here more than anyone else. They did belong here more; they were the vampires.

Quickly I shimmered along the side of the building, invisible except for the trails of frost I left behind. At first I just wanted to get a better view, but then I realized: Something felt odd about the school.

Well, big surprise. Evernight Academy was pretty much made of odd. This was different, though, something I had never sensed before—as if, in places, the school was pushing back at me, trying to keep me out. Probably it was something only the wraiths could feel. In those places, I felt as though I was being watched right through the walls. Curious, I whisked along the side of the building, leaving trails of frost on the windows in my wake. Although there were places I could get into the school, there were places that I couldn’t. And one place—the area at the very top of the south tower, right above my parents’ apartment—felt shut off to me completely, in a way that gave me cold shivers.

So don’t go there, I told myself. It’s not like you’ve ever had a single reason to go up there before. As long as you can get in anywhere in the building, you can get to Lucas. Nothing else matters.

However, the knowledge of that strange forbidding energy made me uneasy. I darted downward again, the better to get away from it, and to watch the arrivals, which was what I needed to be paying attention to anyway.

As I focused again on the group, I saw my first familiar face and felt a warm glow of happiness that could’ve been a smile. Patrice!

Patrice Deveraux, my roommate during my first year at Evernight, stepped out of a lean gray Lexus. Her tailored version of the school uniform made her look sophisticated and trim, even in a kilt and sweater, and her hair now bounced with its natural curl, a thick dark halo that suited her. She’d skipped last year to have fun in Scandinavia with her new guy, but one or the other of them must have broken it off—probably Patrice, who seemed to think of men primarily as fashion accessories.

Despite her obsessions with appearances and luxury, Patrice had a fundamental grit that made me like her. Sort of to my surprise, she’d tried to reach out to me during the summer after I’d run away, proving that she wasn’t as thoughtless as she could sometimes seem. It made me happy to remember that not every vampire at Evernight Academy was sinister and forbidding. Besides, this was the first time I’d seen her since I’d died. I wished I could have said hello, but of course that was impossible.

Just before Patrice stepped inside, she paused at the door and looked upward, directly at where I was hovering. Could she see me? I realized quickly that she couldn’t, but the coincidence was striking. Patrice hesitated a second longer before readjusting her sunglasses and going inside.

A few more familiar faces began to appear, both vampire and human, mostly people I hadn’t known too well but had shared classes with and spoken to from time to time. A couple of teachers, too—both Mr. Yee and Professor Iwerebon mingled among the newcomers, saying hello to parents. I looked for my mother and father, half in dread, half in hope, but they didn’t make an appearance. Among the human students, I didn’t see any old friends but recognized a few faces—like Clementine Nichols, whose ticket to Evernight had been her family’s haunted car, and Skye Tierney, Raquel’s sophomore-year lab partner. Raquel had said Skye was “good people, basically.” Coming from Raquel, who hated most people on principle until they gave her a reason to feel otherwise, that was high praise.

And yet I never tried to have a real conversation with her, or with a lot of these people. How could I never ask Clementine what it was like to have a haunted car? I should’ve reached out to people more often. I’d never been incredibly outgoing, but death made me feel lonelier, somehow.

The Woodsons’ car finally showed up, and Vic and Ranulf both emerged. Each of them wore the regulation uniform, but Vic had on a Phillies cap, as usual—and to my delight, Ranulf wore one as well.