Her phone dinged one more time, signaling a final text from Clem: Use protection.
As Skye silenced the phone, hoping desperately that she wasn’t blushing, Balthazar said, “Why did you want to be alone?”
“Huh?” She had to backtrack past her overheated thoughts about Balthazar to remember what they were actually talking about. “Oh, this afternoon. My first day back at school just—it wasn’t good. Although now that I compare it to getting repeatedly attacked by vampires, it doesn’t seem so awful.”
“Why was school so rough?” He frowned, looking genuinely concerned, like bad times at Darby Glen High could possibly compare to the situation they now found themselves in.
Then again, she was going to have to go back tomorrow, wasn’t she? Unless she was dead by then. Skye sighed. “Someone died in my anatomy classroom.”
“What?”
“Not today! Long ago, I mean. But I can still see it.” The horror had been buried under the sheer panic of the afternoon, but now it welled up again, cold and bright. “I’m going to have to watch this guy die of a heart attack every single day.”
“Can you transfer out of that class?”
“Maybe. I’ll have to check.” Evernight Academy hadn’t allowed transfers; she had no idea what the rules were here.
“The effect could stop over time, or lose power, maybe.”
“Maybe,” Skye said doubtfully. “I’ve been avoiding every … death place I’ve found, so I haven’t tested that. It feels like it’s always going to happen. You’re right, though. I don’t know. I guess anatomy class is where I’ll find out.”
“We might still figure out a way for you to manage your—psychic gift.”
“That would help,” she admitted. “But it’s not the worst part about school. The rest sucks, too. I mean, I fell out of touch with most people back here while I was at Evernight. Now they all think I’m some kind of stuck-up snob who doesn’t want to have anything to do with Darby Glen.”
“They’ll see past that,” Balthazar said gently. “And there must be some people from before that you were glad to see.”
A lump formed in Skye’s throat as she thought about the only person from before who had really counted. “Well, I saw my ex-boyfriend, Craig. With his new girlfriend. So you can imagine how much fun that was.”
“Ouch.” Balthazar made such an exaggerated face of pain that she had to laugh despite herself. “This is the guy who dumped you right before the Autumn Ball last year, right?”
“How did you know about that?” She hadn’t thought Balthazar More paid much attention to her at Evernight Academy, much less that he was keeping tabs on her love life.
“Lucas told us. He was nervous about asking you to the ball just as a friend. Sounds like this Craig guy has rotten timing.”
Remaining her constant boyfriend for two and a half years, then dumping her for someone else only a couple months after they’d had sex for the first and only time—and not even half a year after her brother’s death: Yeah, that counted as rotten timing. “To say the least.”
“Forget him,” Balthazar said simply. “I know—easy to say, hard to do. But any guy who doesn’t appreciate you isn’t worth keeping.”
Which sounded like maybe Balthazar appreciated her. No—she was reading too much into it, surely. Balthazar glanced away, no longer meeting her eyes. Skye didn’t know whether to feel awkward or elated; she knew only that it was impossible to look away from Balthazar, his handsome profile outlined against the dark, frost-rimmed glass of the window—
Wait. The frost was—growing. Lacing over the entire window—on the inside of the window, too, turning everything white, blinding out the night.
The sudden chill in the air made Skye’s skin prickle, and she wrapped her arms more tightly around herself as the cold became almost painful. Her lamp flickered, the electricity failing, but the light didn’t die out. Instead it changed into an eerie blue-green color that seemed to shimmer, almost as if they were underwater.
She remembered one of Dakota’s last photos from Australia, a scene from an underwater cave, and she wondered if this was what he’d seen before he died. Terror and sorrow seized her at the same time, paralyzing her.
At least, until the ceiling started to move.
“Oh, my God.” Skye backed toward Balthazar; she didn’t know what was happening, but knew she wanted him close. “What’s going on?”
“We just got a lot safer.”
Startled, she looked up at him. Balthazar’s face was alight, like he’d just been given the most marvelous gift in the world.
The rippling on the ceiling broke free, came forward, took shape. First it was a swirling, glittering shape, like a cyclone of snowflakes, but then it acquired the form of a young woman with flowing red hair and wide, gentle eyes—but not just any woman. Balthazar said her name first: “Bianca.”
“I like your room,” Bianca said. “It reminds me a little of the one I had back in my hometown.”
Skye, still not sure she was able to speak, nodded. Bianca seemed to understand her shyness; at any rate, she didn’t press Skye for more, just turned back to Balthazar, who hadn’t stopped grinning at her. He said, “I’m glad you could make it. I didn’t really have a plan B.”
“You usually come up with something,” she said, folding herself up on the window seat beside Balthazar. Bianca seemed more at ease in her pajamas than Skye was in hers—and more comfortable with Balthazar, too.