Stolen Nights

  I checked to see if anyone was on the pathway that ran from Seeker to the bay, then checked behind me at the parking lot. Besides the security guards’ booth, only one van was parked near Hopper. With another scan of the campus ahead of me, I darted down the side of the pathway, making sure to keep to the sides of the buildings and the darkness that still lingered.

  I knew Justin’s single room had been moved for his senior year and was now on the first floor of Quartz, facing the woods and the ocean beyond. The wind whispered through the trees, shaking their orange and gold leaves. A shiver rolled over me and I looked down the path to the beach, momentarily expecting Suleen to be standing there, waiting for me. But it was empty.

  When did Suleen think it was important to show himself? Before or after I was almost murdered by a hungering vampire? He said he would come when I most needed him. How about now?

  A car pulled past the school on Main Street, making a whooshing sound. My hair lifted from my ears as a gust of wind breezed through the campus. No. It couldn’t be. No one would be watching me now. Surely my fake ritual was keeping Odette and her coven busy.

  Run, Lenah . . .

  I didn’t want to look behind me at the alleyway of Seeker. What if one of the members of her coven was in those shadows? Someone she had sent to watch me. I told myself to walk faster. If someone was behind me, they would grab me by the shoulders. A little faster now. I took short breaths; the union was just ahead.

  Faster, Lenah. They could come at any moment.

  I skirted by the greenhouse and the science building and then looked back at the path. If a guard caught me, I would lose privileges, and I needed as much freedom as possible, given the situation with Odette.

  I ran towards Quartz dorm, ducked around the back of the building and pressed my back against the stone. In the woods, a yellow light fell in long vertical lines down the bark of the trees.

  The first-floor windows stretched along the building. They were long windows, like those in the gymnasium, and opened by turning a metal handle.

  Justin’s room. Justin’s room . . . which one? Yes. There it was. Even though all the windows were the same, his curtains were pulled back. Beyond the windows I could see various lacrosse sticks, and a foot dangled off the end of the bed.

  I knocked on the glass twice, standing to the side of the window so as not to scare him. There was movement inside and a small grunt. I knocked again.

  ‘Jesus!’ I heard footsteps. The window squeaked open. I stepped in front of it. Justin’s hair was messy from sleep. He wore no shirt, just sweatpants. Even at that time in the morning, he looked incredible.

  Absolutely incredible.

  ‘Um,’ I said, taking a step back on to the strip of grass that separated the back of the dorm from the woods. He leaned on the window frame.

  ‘Lenah? What are you doing here?’ His voice sounded gentle, happy.

  I stood in the morning sunrise and pulled the neck of my thin T-shirt to one side, exposing the long cut that ran along my collarbone.

  ‘Holy crap!’ he said. ‘Get in here.’

  I leaned into the room, grasping the ledge. When I pulled myself up, the wound throbbed and I nearly fell back on to the ground outside. Justin grabbed me and hauled me inside.

  ‘Sit, sit,’ he said, and led me to his bed. Flashes popped into my mind of our bodies tangled under the covers of his bed last year. He knelt before me for a moment. He pulled my shirt down again to examine the cut.

  ‘Ouch,’ he whispered. He met my eyes. ‘You should probably take that off and let me clean it up,’ he said.

  ‘My shirt?’

  He stood up and my gaze rested on his defined stomach. I looked all the way up his chest to his eyes, passing over the necklace he wore. I saw then, in the morning light, the pendant. It was a silver disc that fell at the base of his throat. I knew that symbol.

  ‘A knowledge rune,’ I said, and stood up. I touched the pendant with my fingertips.

  ‘Yeah, I just got it the other day,’ he replied.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘I got it in town,’ he said. ‘Supposed to help make sense of everything. When that guy with the turban did the water barrier – I just . . . I don’t know. I had to try to make sense of everything. Make sense of you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You, the ritual, Rhode. Why you’re still alive.’ He got up and walked to the back of the room. ‘Anyway, I have a first-aid kit in my lacrosse bag.’

  I was touched by the gesture and let the topic drop. Justin had purposefully sought out an object that would connect him to my dark, unearthly world. I was sure then that I had made the right choice in coming to him that morning. He was doing his best to understand me.

  He rummaged in the corner of the room and I looked out through the window to the woods. In between the darkness of the trees, I could see myself as a vampire. Sauntering from the back of the woods towards the dormitory in an enormous red gown, my hair long and flowing over my shoulders. My fangs dripping with blood.

  ‘Lenah,’ Justin said, kneeling before me again. When I looked back at the woods, the ghost from my past was gone and the woods empty. ‘Your shirt,’ Justin said.

  ‘Oh!’ I said, and lifted it from my body, exposing my bra. Justin leaned forward so he was kneeling before me and dabbed something on a white cloth along the line of my collarbone. I winced at the stinging feeling. Justin blew on the skin and dabbed at the cut. He lifted his face to mine.

  ‘Should I stop?’ he asked.

  ‘No. It just burns a bit,’ I whispered.

  We hovered there for a moment. Then Justin lifted himself higher on his knees. His lips came closer and closer until they were on mine and our lips traced each other’s movements. My heartbeat sped up and I wanted him to keep kissing me. So I could pretend that I was never that beast in the woods. He started to crawl on to the bed and I lay down. Just as his body pressure was on top of mine, he pulled away suddenly. I brought my fingers to my lips in surprise and swallowed.

  The passion humming between us evaporated.

  ‘Your cut,’ he said. ‘It still looks bad. Let me try something else.’

  He dug in the bag. I came down to the floor so we sat opposite one another. He opened a different bottle and a most familiar smell overwhelmed me. I placed my hand on Justin’s wrist and he lowered it for me to look at the bottle.

  ‘My mom makes it,’ he said.

  ‘This . . .’ I said, taking the bottle from him and sniffing it, ‘is lavender and aloe. A medieval combination.’

  ‘Well, it should work,’ he said, dabbing at my skin again. I could see the rust-like particles of my blood on the tiny cloth. He dropped it into a bin. ‘We would get hurt all the time as kids. Mom made this up. I brought it with me to school for lacrosse injuries.’

  Next Justin lifted two fingers covered in a gooey ointment and rubbed them along the cut.

  ‘Anti-bacterial. This way you won’t get an infection.’

  After a few more minutes, he had covered various parts of the wound in gauze held on with tape.

  ‘I won’t ask how you got that cut,’ he said, pulling me back up on to the bed and joining me there.

  ‘You already know,’ I whispered. ‘You saw her murder Kate on the beach. I couldn’t tell you in the union, but she killed Ms Tate too – not long after she spoke with me outside Curie.’

  The tears rushed to my eyes and I blinked them away. My voice cracked as I said, ‘She’s probably seen you with me, which makes you a target, and I—’

  ‘I’m not afraid of her,’ he declared, and looked me straight in the eye. ‘I’m not. I’ve seen what a vampire can do.’

  ‘I just had to see you. I knew you would understand,’ I said, as I blinked away the threat of more tears. He pulled me to him and I rested my cheek against his chest.

  A large crack of thunder exploded outside and we both jumped. He hurried to close the window.

  ‘What does she want? Has she been watchin
g you this whole time? I should stay close to you in case she comes around again . . .’

  Justin kept talking but I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. I meant to tell him all about the strange feeling I’d had talking to Ms Tate, but I must have been so tired. I lost myself in his warmth as he lay beside me. He held me close, and when I just barely opened my eyes sometime later, my nose was nuzzled into his chest. His breathing was slow, steady. I listened to him breathe in and breathe out until I was moments from sleep again. Then I dreamed . . .

  A field of lavender, and the smell is so wonderful, calming and cool. I hold the black fabric of a gown in my hands. The image changes. This is not the lavender field. I am somewhere else. A masculine hand with a bruised thumb grips a ceramic sink. It grips it harder, the forearm shaking. What happened to the field?

  The hands shake and reach up, and in the reflection of the familiar bathroom mirror the hands cradle a face – Rhode’s face.

  ‘Do you love her?’ Rhode asks the sink.

  This is a Wickham bathroom; I recognize the blue-checked tiled floor.

  ‘You don’t need her,’ Rhode says, looking up at his reflection and quickly tearing his eyes away. In this connection I can feel his distaste as though I am experiencing it myself. I can feel the misery and hate ripping through the centre of his stomach. It is not hate for me. It is hate . . . for himself.

  Rhode lifts his right hand. He has taken off the bandage and long scabs are visible across the knuckles.

  ‘You don’t need her,’ he says again, this time stressing the word need. ‘You can do what they ask.’ He surveys his reflection. With a downward cast of his eyes he says softly, ‘No, you cannot. What they ask of you is too much.’

  Like a bolt, he punches the mirror, cracking it into a kaleidoscope of lines. Fresh blood speckles the reflection. His blue eyes are spattered with crimson blots. Rhode repeats, ‘I can’t, I can’t,’ again and again and again.

  I shot up in bed, my chest heaving. The spot next to me was empty. Across the room was a closet filled with lacrosse helmets, men’s shirts and a football. That’s right. I was in Justin’s bed. On his night table, a note read: Practise, even in the rain!

  I threw off the covers, pulled on my T-shirt and slipped on my shoes. When I reached down to do them up, the bandage from Justin’s handiwork the night before pulled on my skin. I touched it out of instinct. I hesitated before the window and watched the rain pelt the grass and the woods beyond. These dreams of Rhode were becoming so realistic. This one even had the Wickham bathroom tiles! I unhooked the window clasps, and just as my fingers curled over the slick edge the reality hit me as a punch to my gut. I took a step back because I knew. Maybe it was because we were, as the Aeris said, soulmates, but I knew.

  My dream wasn’t a dream at all. It was reality. It was a Wickham dorm bathroom and Rhode was standing before the sink. So it wasn’t just memories but his present-day thoughts I was accessing too. I ran a hand through my hair and stared at the tiny raindrops smacking the windowsill. So we were soulmates that could no longer be together but I was privy to Rhode’s thoughts? This was unnecessarily cruel. There was nothing I could do about it either. This was what the Aeris decreed. No matter how connected we were, our lives had to remain separate. Unnecessarily cruel echoed in my mind again. I stepped on to the window ledge and out into the storm.

  The rain picked up as the day went on. A few hours later, I sat alone at one of the long dining tables in the union where I was making yet another list.

  Memories from the past.

  Rhode’s present-day thoughts.

  Why am I receiving them, and more frequently with every day that passes?

  Outside, the rain lashed against the glass roof and massive windows. In front of me, a piece of iced lemon cake sat untouched on a plate. I crossed out another theory about Rhode and our connection when there was a scratch of ceramic against lino, and a drenched umbrella leaned against the table. I placed the book down gently and raised an eyebrow as Vicken took a bite of my cake and pushed a newspaper cutting across the table. It was from the British newspaper The Times.

  HATHERSAGE, DERBYSHIRE MASSIVE FIRE DEVASTATES HISTORIC MANSION

  There it was: a photo of my glorious home. The great lawn was crawling with dozens of men and women. A moving company was carrying out a large bureau I recognized as being from my bedroom. The first-floor windows were blackened, blown out. Jagged remnants of glass pointed up from the window frames. A couple of curtains hung out of the windows as though trying to escape.

  Vicken took another bite of the cake.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ I asked, resting my fingertips on the thin paper.

  ‘I told you I was going to do some nosing around. I’ve been getting The Times for the last few weeks. And by the way, despite my moaning and groaning about this school, I’ve been in the library.’ He turned the piece of paper back towards himself.

  ‘On August thirty-first,’ he read, ‘a devastating fire engulfed the historic Hathersage mansion which dates back to the early seventeenth century. Thousands of items of extreme rarity have been recovered from the house. No bodies have been found, and it’s believed the house, reputed by locals to be haunted, was empty when the fire occurred. The fire consumed the entire first floor and destroyed a tapestry that once belonged to Elizabeth I.’

  ‘Her mother actually, Anne Boleyn. I had it restored and preserved several times,’ I said. The sinking feeling in my chest was something else. The paper said the house had been empty. That house wasn’t empty. It was filled with my history, my past, and it had almost burned to the ground.

  Vicken kept reading. ‘Local historians have uncovered rare daggers, unusual herbs and strange amulets. Some believe the items are occult in nature. Many of the objects on the upper floors were spared, such as a four-poster bed from the 1800s, as well as anonymous portraiture also dating from the 19th century.

  ‘Expert David Gilford of the Occult Group of London,’ Vicken continued, ‘was most impressed by the weapons room, which contained ninja stars, countless daggers and some of the rarest longswords he had ever seen. One had a handle made of human bone. Gilford also commented on some of the oddities found there. He was particularly struck by the apothecary equipment and by various strange devices that looked as if they were for torture.’

  ‘They were,’ I agreed.

  Vicken continued, ‘The house appears to have been in the same family since Elizabethan times. Strenuous efforts are being made to contact the current owners, whose identities have not been revealed. The recovered items will be catalogued under the management of the British Museum which is coordinating the salvage operation together with English Heritage.’

  Vicken lit up, his whole face brightened and he smiled.

  ‘Did you hear that? The British Museum!’

  The date on the newspaper cutting was 31 August.

  Today was 5 September.

  Wait – 31 August? Rhode hadn’t been seen back at Wickham until 3 September, which meant he could have been at Hathersage when the fire occurred.

  I swiped my books into a bag, stuffed the cutting into my pocket and stood up.

  ‘Where is he?’ I demanded.

  Vicken didn’t respond.

  ‘Where?’ I screamed and slapped tabletop with my palm. Other students studying and eating their lunches looked over with wide eyes.

  ‘He’s in his dorm,’ Vicken said with a sigh.

  I tossed my bag of books into Vicken’s lap and glanced at the rain pelting the windows. With an angry curl of my lip, I asked, ‘Whose side are you on?’ I swept out of the union and into the rain.

  Rhode wasn’t in his room. After banging on his door, I stepped back outside Quartz and within minutes my T-shirt was soaked from the rain and my jeans were sticking to my thighs. I intended to walk to my dorm when I saw Rhode, clad in all black, cut across the pathway some distance away from me. He kept his face down and held a large duffel bag over his shoulder. This was
odd. I stepped off the path, attempting to conceal myself behind a statue of the school founder, Thomas Wickham, as Rhode disappeared behind the greenhouse. Where was he going? Hadn’t we agreed that it wasn’t safe to travel alone?

  I ran down the path and stopped at a large oak tree next to the greenhouse. By the time I reached the end of the building, he had entered the woods that circled the school. I caught sight of a fresh bandage wrapped around his fingers. The white gauze stood out brightly against his black shirt and jeans. Back in our history, he had taught me how to follow someone without being seen, predator and prey.

  Perhaps he was sneaking out for a good reason. Perhaps he was going somewhere that would clue me in to where he had been the year before. He wasn’t going to tell me, no matter how many times I asked – that was clear. Either way, he was deliberately sneaking out of school without Vicken and me – and I wanted to know why.

  I wiped the rain out of my eyes and hesitated at a nagging thought: he knows he shouldn’t be going anywhere by himself. But he’s going anyway. As the cut on my collarbone proved, Odette wasn’t afraid of the daylight. Granted, the morning hours were more dangerous than the afternoon, but she had shown herself well able to withstand the sun’s rays.

  I took a step, watching him weave in and out of the trees, and rested a hand against the glass of the warm greenhouse. Rhode was making his way towards the stone wall that circled the perimeter of the school. If he jumped over, I’d have no idea where he went unless I kept up and followed him.

  Go, Lenah. Go!

  So I did. I made sure to keep my distance as I followed. Once, he glanced back to the campus. I jumped behind the cover of a stand of three maple trees and pressed my back against the hard bark. I was being careless, following too close. Just a few seconds. I could wait a few seconds. I bounced on my toes. What if he was outside the wall already? I peeked around the trees just as Rhode disappeared over the wall, on to Main Street.