What was up with my friend? Brave Emma, who’d helped me survive a night in the wilderness, eating roadkill and killing the evil demon Draug? But then I watched as her gaze rested on Yasuo for a moment before skittering away again.
Maybe what was up with my friend was that she had a reason to keep a low profile. Maybe she was suddenly open to advice because of a certain Japanese American Trainee with baby fangs. I vowed to grill her the next chance I got.
My shoulders slumped; I was feeling just a little bit more alone than before. “I’ll be careful. See you back at the dorm.”
The moment Emma left, I leaned in close, using my no-nonsense voice. “Now will you tell me?”
Ronan and Amanda were the picture of ignorance.
“Please,” I pressed. “I can practically see your thoughts churning. What aren’t you telling me?”
Amanda sat back in her chair. “All right. Seeing as you won’t let it go.” She sucked in a deep breath, a look of patient wisdom on her face as if she was about to relay the story of the birds and the bees. “You see, some girls form…bonds. With certain vampires. These girls tend to get jealous. Protective.”
She’d tossed it off as though it were no big deal, but I knew she was implying something that was a Very Big Deal. Were they saying that Initiates had affairs with vampires? “You make it sound like girls…go there.”
“Oh, they go there,” she said with a naughtily cocked eyebrow. “I’ve not bonded myself, so I don’t know what it’s like. But I think their bitchiness is one-part chemical—you know, some exchange that happens with the blood—and then I think one part is just plain-old jealous girl drama.”
I looked to Ronan for a rebuttal, but his face was a blank mask. This was no news to him.
A million questions popped into my mind—most along the lines of Can vampires…? How do they…? Do their bodies—you know?—and I asked the least embarrassing one. “Did Masha have something with Alcántara? Does she still?”
Ronan looked to Amanda, then shrugged. “We don’t know.”
“And I’d not ask,” added Amanda. “They’d bite your head off.”
Holy crap. I shuddered. “The vampires?”
“The girls, dolly. The girls would have your head.”
“See, not all the Initiates are like Amanda here,” Ronan said playfully, patting her hand.
Not all Initiates had illicit affairs with Tracers, he meant? Was anybody here to learn, or was I the only naive loser celibate nerd? “Jeez, this is just like high school.”
“Wipe that look from your face, Drew.” Amanda was looking at me sternly.
“It was only a matter of time before you found out,” Ronan said. “But still, this shouldn’t have come from us, here.”
I schooled my features. “Yeah, yeah, I’m cool.” Though not that cool, apparently.
“Now finish your lunch,” Ronan told me, “and we’ll go for a swim like usual.”
Discovering that he and Amanda had a little something-something going on made me feel vulnerable. I needed to learn how to conceal these pangs until I could figure out how to tamp them down permanently. For now, the last thing I wanted was to put on my wet suit and flounder around at his command. “With all this on my mind, do you think we could skip swimming today? You know—so I can recover and all?”
Ronan was back to normal, dunking fries in his curry sauce and chowing down as though he discussed vampire affairs every day, which I guess he did. “What do you think?”
With a sigh, I tossed back my little shooter of blood. A shiver rippled across my skin, the feeling like rain soaking parched land. “I think no.”
“There’s a good Acari,” said Amanda.
“I’ll swim,” I said with a frown, “but I don’t think I need the lessons anymore.” My protest was weak, and mostly out of habit.
He pushed his tray away and met my eye. “Do it for me.” His voice was gravelly and firm. I reminded myself that Amanda was right there and that his irresistible accent was her territory.
But his gaze didn’t waver, and at the command in those deep green eyes, I felt myself waffling. Maybe swimming wasn’t such a bad idea. I squinted hard at him, not trusting the notion. “You’re not doing your trick, are you?”
His brows furrowed. “My trick?”
“You know, the persuasion thing. I hate swimming, but you told me to do it, and now, all of a sudden, I’m thinking it might not be that bad.”
He laughed, and I think it startled us both. “That’s you just wanting to swim.” Lowering his voice, he added, “I’ve explained it before—you I need to touch for my ‘trick’ to work.”
He was able to persuade people to do his bidding using his voice alone. Everyone, that is, except for me. Apparently a high IQ was good for something. It made my brain like Teflon.
“Lucky girl.” Amanda gave me a playful scowl, and I felt suddenly annoyed with the both of them. I didn’t want to contemplate how his persuasion might work in a relationship. Ick.
He pressed the issue. “Why? Did you want me to persuade you?” He reached a hand out as if he might give it a try, and I flinched away. He was being reckless, and I didn’t understand.
Rubbing my hand where he’d almost touched me, I brought the conversation back on track. “You can’t mean I actually want to go swimming.”
Though I supposed it did make a sort of sense. Swimming gave me the alone time with Ronan that I’d begun to crave. Not even knowing he had a thing with Amanda could staunch that.
It’d snuck up on me, but Ronan was one of the few people on this island I trusted. That he was letting me glimpse these stolen moments with Amanda only solidified it—he may not have liked me in that way, but it seemed at least he trusted me.
“Is it so surprising you might actually fancy a swim?”
“Not so much surprising as miraculous.”
Amanda reached over and patted his shoulder. “He’s just a good teacher.”
Ugh. This time I almost said it out loud. Glimpsing their stolen moments was one thing; having my face rubbed in it was quite another.
Her words and that cloying expression echoed in my mind until, later that afternoon, I spat them back at him. “Good teachers don’t lure students to their untimely death.”
Ronan was rowing us beyond the breakers in nothing more than a little dory. It was going to be my first deep-water swim lesson. My knuckles were white as I gripped the lip of the boat. Its paint was old and peeling, and I used my thumbnail to scrape brown flakes into the water, contemplating when and how I might go about vomiting over the side.
“Comfort in deep water is crucial for every swimmer.” Every pull of the oars tightened his already-snug sweater around his biceps.
I forced myself to look away from his flexing muscles. Unfortunately, that left me staring into black water. I estimated there was one-foot visibility, max. “Isn’t deep-water training for more advanced swimmers?”
“You’re thinking of breath-holding exercises.”
Panic pulled my skin into goose bumps that even the thick neoprene of my wet suit couldn’t prevent. “You’re going to make me hold my breath, too?”
“You’re an advanced swimmer, so you are ready for both.”
I opened my mouth to protest but clacked my teeth shut again as a thought hit me. The island was receding in the distance. If I had skills like Ronan claimed I did, why couldn’t I just escape? As in, skip out even before Alcántara and I went on our mission?
It silenced me. The only sound was the slap-slap of his oars in the water as my mind raced. How big was the island? I’d seen the middle of it during my midnight punishment, but why had we never been to the other side? What was there? Somewhere there’d be larger boats to be found—was that where they were docked?
I craned my neck, studying the jagged coast. There were gray rocky beaches, towering cliffs, misshapen chimney stacks carved of million-year-old granite. But what was on the far side?
“Why don’t we ever go the other side of the island to swim?”
“It’s just cliffs over there.”
“Well, don’t I need to learn how to cliff dive or something?”
My mentioning cliff diving would understandably put him on his guard. Pinning his eyes on me, he warned, “You’ll want to stay away from the far side of the island.”
We’d gotten far enough away that I could begin to trace the curve of coastline with my eyes. It seemed to be just more rocks and cliffs, disappearing into gray mist in the distance. But what if I stole a boat? Would there be someplace to row to? And why was he warning me away from the other side?
He dipped his oars in the water, dragging the boat to a stop. “I think this is far enough,” he said, implying so much more.
I squinted harder, and my heart kicked up a notch. Small white dots had wavered into view. Was I imagining it? Houses? “Do people live here?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
I shot him an exasperated look. “Seriously, Ronan, it’s me you’re talking to. You can trust me.” I gave an exaggerated look around. “Nobody can hear us. Now please, do people live here? I thought I saw houses.”
His answer, when it came, was careful. “There are some people on this island, aye.”
“You’re shitting me.”
He glowered at my language.
“Sorry, sorry. It’s just…” I peered into the distance, seeing them clearly now. Tiny cottages dotted the coast, like a little fishing settlement visible in that spot just before the island curved out of sight. “Who would live here?”
“People who were born here.”
“People have babies here?” I remembered the day, so long ago now, when an old man with questionable dental hygiene had picked us up at the airstrip. Did he have grandkids running around? Did that mean there were things like schools and gas stations and grocery stores?