“Mr. More? I was wondering? Whenever you read old stuff like this, people’s spelling is weird, and they use an f when they mean an s? And I don’t get why that is? Did they actually say it differently back then?”
Balthazar could only stare at her, nonplussed, for a long second. Then he managed to say, “They didn’t pronounce it differently. The spelling was just—a convention of the time. Which I admit doesn’t make much sense, but there are things we do today that are just as strange.” He took a deep breath. “Moving on!”
The rest of her school days were never as much fun, at least not until study hall. She finally got her transfer out of anatomy, because the risk of suffering the janitor’s heart attack the same way she had the suicide victim’s hanging was just too much to think about. The school filled her free hour by letting her work as an aide to Mr. Bollinger, who was super nice but didn’t have a whole lot for her to do.
Sometimes Skye felt herself falling into a rut—going only the places she knew were safe—but with vampires after her, a routine seemed like a good thing. She’d deal with the impact her psychic visions would have on her life more when this crisis had passed.
Her routine involved capping off each day with study hall, normally the most boring hour in school. Now study hall was the good part. That was when she got to text Balthazar some more.
She braved Craig’s basketball games when Balthazar had to supervise, though she never, ever cut under the bleachers. Usually she went with Madison and her group of friends, which meant they could sometimes sit near Balthazar and even talk and joke with him in the stands. Though Skye was careful never to speak to him directly when there were so many people around to see, sometimes it was nice just being close to him. Nicer to see how his gaze followed her while she joked around with Madison, Keith, Khadijah, and the rest of the gang.
Best of all, though, was when they were alone together.
“You’re really good with Peppermint,” Skye said, watching Balthazar riding beside her. While she was on Eb, he sat astride the mare from her stables, who was fairly old and fairly cranky. As a result, she wasn’t ridden often—which meant she’d gotten a little fat. However, Balthazar handled her smoothly.
“I’ve always done best with mares. Not sure why.” Balthazar patted the reddish shoulder of his horse; Peppermint responded with a whicker. “She’s a steady girl.”
“With you, she is.” Maybe the old horse had never needed anything but kindness and patience. “The only other rider she was ever as good with was Dakota. He was gentle with her, like you.”
For a moment she thought of Dakota as he had been one short year ago—riding ahead of her on Christmas break, coaxing stubborn Peppermint swiftly uphill, while she and Eb followed behind. The forest seemed to ring with their lost laughter.
“You don’t speak about Dakota often,” Balthazar said. His voice was even, inviting her to talk if she wanted to, but clearly not pushing the matter.
Skye knew she wanted to talk about Dakota, but it didn’t feel like the right time. Then again, it never seemed to feel like the right time. Maybe she should take the chance. “He was—the brave one. The free one.”
“You seem pretty brave to me.”
“You didn’t know Dakota.” She realized then that Balthazar and Dakota would have liked each other. They weren’t alike, exactly, but they would have gotten along. It was one more cruelty to her brother’s early death—one more friendship and experience he’d been denied. Skye stared down at the reins in her hands. “He wasn’t a rebel—Mom and Dad were never around enough to rebel against—but he did his own thing. Made up his mind about everything. I wanted to be as fearless as he was someday. But I always knew our parents needed me more. So I kept doing the safe thing, the right thing, for them.”
“You sell yourself short,” Balthazar said. His tone was so tender that Skye didn’t dare look at him. “But your brother sounds like an amazing guy.”
“He was.” And then Skye banished the memory as quickly as it had come. “Let’s ride.”
They were on the high ridge about thirty minutes’ ride from her house. After that first terrible attack, it had taken her awhile to go out on Eb again; even with Balthazar by her side, it seemed too scary. Mrs. Lefler rode Eb often enough to make sure he had adequate exercise, so it wasn’t a necessity. But ultimately, she missed it too much. Letting Redgrave take that part of her life from her was too cruel.
Besides, the woods had their own stark beauty in winter—and Balthazar had proved to be an enthusiastic rider.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said as they looked down on the valley, with the bare-branched trees silvered with frost. “I love cars. I bought my first one in 1912. But I miss horses, sometimes.”
She appreciated his willingness to change the subject. “Did you ride a lot when you were—well, when you were alive?”
“Sometimes. Usually we used him to pull the wagon, though.” Balthazar stared out at the horizon and the small bit of town visible from here, no more than a few houses and one church steeple. “But I had a horse purely for riding by the eighteenth century. Bucephalus. He looked like a wreck—bony no matter how much you fed him—but that horse could run.”
“Why did you call him something crazy like Bucephalus?”
“That was the name of Alexander the Great’s horse,” he said, as if that were a logical reason. “Which was kind of a joke, based on how scruffy he looked, but how did you come up with Eb’s name? It’s unusual.”