Stolen Night (11 page)

Justin held my cheek with his hand and ran his thumb across my cheekbone. I searched his eyes. What was love anyway? Love was warmth and comfort. Love was for the living. Justin could help me
feel alive again. I knew he could. I had felt it last year.

I didn’t want to come back. I had to.
Rhode’s words reverberated in my mind.

Justin leaned forward and kissed the top of my nose.

‘Want to walk back?’ he asked. ‘Thirty minutes until Williams’s stupid curfew.’

We shut off the lights in the listening room. Justin stole one more kiss before extending his hand and leading me home.

Late-night rain had left the grass glistening. It tickled the tops of my toes as I walked the path next morning and turned the corner to Curie. Ms Tate came flying around the
corner into the courtyard.

‘Lenah,’ she said, stopping in front of me. ‘I’m glad I found you. We need to discuss your semester project.’ She rambled on for a moment about Justin and me and
the importance of teamwork. I took some papers from her load of files and held them for her.

‘Oh, thank you,’ she added, continuing her diatribe. I listened for a few moments but the wind distracted me. It was stronger than a breeze. It had intention. The air snaked through
the trees and lifted my hair from my ears as though acting of its own accord. I smoothed it down as quickly as I could. Ms Tate’s voice floated off and I turned my attention away from
her.

The leaves above us shivered again. The water from the fountain fell away in an unnatural hush. I needed no vampire ESP to know. I would always harbour the knowledge. I could feel it in the
air.

I was being watched.

I searched the shadows. Any clue would do. The lift of a sly smile or eyes still as death.

‘OK, Lenah?’ Ms Tate said.

‘Right. Of course,’ I said.

Ms Tate smiled, though I had no idea what I had just agreed to. I scanned the grounds in front of me, but without my vampire sight it was impossible to see as far as the other side of campus.
When I turned to follow her into Curie, I realized I had forgotten that behind us were the woods that circled the school. They were a perfect place for someone to hide to watch an unsuspecting
victim.

‘Lenah, I’ll need those papers in class today,’ Ms Tate said from the darkened entrance to Curie.

My eyes lingered on the trees and on the morning sunlight shining through the breaks in the branches. I did not have time to search for eyes watching me.

I walked into the building with an absolute certainty in my gut.

I was being hunted.

I slid into my seat next to Justin, trying to shake off the goosebumps still lingering on my skin. Justin’s hand was wrapped in gauze and momentarily I thought of his
arms around me in the listening room.

‘I can’t get last night out of my head,’ he said.

He reached under the table, placed his hand on my knee and squeezed. I smiled at him. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so hard. Being with Justin. He knew how to calm me. Perhaps the girl from
last year still existed, the girl who wanted to be human, the girl who needed Justin to help her feel that way. Not like Rhode. Rhode, who was much better at following the Aeris’s decree than
I would ever be.

‘Guess she’s just jumping right into this,’ Justin said. ‘Yesterday pH tests, today sediment something or other. I can’t even pronounce whatever that other word
is.’

The experiment
was
complicated – very complicated. Justin and I stood up to gather our assignment tools from the storage chest. I made sure to avoid catching Rhode’s eye or
even looking in his general direction. That was all I needed, to look at him and have another strange connection that I couldn’t control. I wasn’t sure what had spurred the overwhelming
smell of apples, the memories and the window into his mind.

‘Maybe we can have dinner tonight,’ Justin said quietly.

‘Oh,’ I said, hating that I wished it was Rhode asking me to dinner. In my mind was a dark room lit by candles. Rhode and I sat at a long oak table and raised goblets filled with
blood. I’d never eaten a meal with him. I wondered what he liked to eat in the modern world.

‘Lenah?’ Justin said. ‘Pizza?’

‘Sure,’ I replied, replacing my fantasy with linoleum tables and plastic cutlery. Greasy food from the union and paper napkins, just like we had had the year before, dozens of
times.

I felt the empty space between my seat and Rhode’s. I knew very well that the candles, the ones in the darkened dining room in Hathersage, were long burned out.

I bet Rhode hated modern-day pizza. Too messy.

Justin grabbed a box of slides. When he reached up I saw the leather necklace again. I rose up on my tiptoes to try to get a better look at the silver pendant.

‘Andrea’s not speaking to me,’ he said with the slightest of smiles.

‘Sorry about that,’ I replied, and we moved back to the desk.

Justin handed me a dropper and some iodine. With a wink he commented, ‘I’m not.’

I attempted to nap later that afternoon, only to be awoken by sirens screaming on to campus. I threw off my covers and ran to the window, looking down at the scene below.
Security guards directed students to the sides of the pathways. Across the quad teachers were corralling students into the union and away from Hopper.

The sound of another police siren travelled in a wave, swelling loudly as the car curved along the pathway and stopped in front of Hopper. I tried not to think about Tony’s death in that
very building. I caught sight of Vicken and Rhode standing just to the side of the building. Rhode’s blue eyes locked on mine.

With a casual nod of his head he requested I come down. In a heartbeat, I followed his orders. As if I could ever say no.

‘What happened?’ I asked. There were hundreds of students on the green. People inside the union stood against the circular windows pressing their hands against the
glass.

‘I need to get into the art studio,’ a student said to a police officer. She held a portfolio under her arm. ‘My portrait is due tomorrow.’

‘Hopper Building is going to be off limits for a couple of hours,’ the officer said, moving out of the way for a security guard.

‘Did someone else die?’ a student asked.

‘Just go back to your dorm, please,’ the officer ordered.

‘Someone else totally died!’ the student cried. People were already taking out their cell phones.

A third police car pulled on up. Its siren was off, but the blue lights swirled around and around. Vicken pulled on my shirtsleeve and we walked down the side of Hopper, away from the fray.

‘One of the gymnasium windows at the back is open,’ Vicken said with a nod. The back of the building met the bottom of the large hill that led up to the archery plateau.

‘Let’s go,’ Rhode said.

‘Casual,’ Vicken said, always thinking like the soldier he had once been. ‘Slow.’

One by one, we walked around to the back of Hopper. Once we stood together at the gym windows, I said, ‘Odette. It’s got to be. She warned us in the herb shop. She said she’d
be back. And I sensed her this morning.’

‘You sensed her?’ Rhode asked.

‘I felt someone watching me. I can only assume it was Odette.’

‘Well, there’s just one way to tell for sure,’ Rhode said. ‘We need evidence. Clues.’

‘Clues,’ I parroted. I ran my hand along the windowsill. The pane was horizontal and at least three feet tall, but narrow. I could easily fit through, but Vicken and Rhode would have
to wait for me to open a door to let them in. I reached the handle on the inside, opened the window wider and slid into the gymnasium.

I landed on the floor in the darkened room. I took a few steps and then looked back through the window.

‘Go,’ Rhode whispered.

‘She shouldn’t go alone,’ Vicken said.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I replied, and tiptoed towards the double doors. I pushed them ever so slightly, just enough to peer both ways down the hallway. Once I turned the corner of the
first floor, I would be in the administrative section of Hopper building. The headmaster’s office was there along with the admissions. I hurried quietly, finally turning the corner. Voices
echoed from the offices.

As a vampire, it is of the utmost importance to remain confident. As the years go by, you gain more and more confidence. It was hard to find that confidence now as a mere human. I hunched over,
careful to tiptoe in my heavy boots. I crept towards the voices at the end of the hall. My body wasn’t as agile as it had once been, now my organs were filled with blood that
moved.
I
kept tiptoeing forward and stopped near the office door.

‘She’s dead. We’re absolutely sure?’ Ms Williams’s questioning voice echoed out of the room.

‘I’m afraid so. Been dead for at least a half-hour,’ a voice replied.

‘What do I tell the students?’ Ms Williams asked weakly.

‘Our team is going to have to do a thorough investigation, ma’am. It would be best if you arranged to have Ms Tate’s classes covered and temporarily moved these offices to
another building.’

My hand fell away from the wall. I hadn’t realized that I had been clenching my fist.

Ms Tate? My science teacher!

‘I don’t understand,’ Ms Williams said, and her voice cracked. There was a moment of silence and then the sound of someone blowing their nose. Footsteps collected near the door
and Ms Williams spoke again, her voice nasal and closer now. ‘Why leave that note with the body? What does it mean?’

‘It’s like a riddle,’ said a voice I did not recognize. ‘It’ll be taken with the rest of the evidence.’

‘What evidence? You said there were no fingerprints.’

‘It looks as if she was murdered just like the other two. Puncture wounds. Depletion of blood. We’ll need to photograph the body and have our forensic team investigate.’

‘You make it sound like a gothic horror movie, officer.’

‘We get these from time to time. Some psycho who has watched
Dracula
one too many times.’

The footsteps echoed again
. Oh no.
They were going to come out of the office. I looked across the hall. A door. I ran, opened the door and jumped inside a tiny janitorial closet. I sank
to the floor, pressing my back against the cement wall and drawing my knees to my chest. I held my breath, my heart thudding in my ears.

‘Ms Williams, we’re going to need you to keep this area off limits. We’ll mark it off with police tape and have it manned overnight.’

‘And she really drove herself on to campus? Bleeding?’ Ms Williams pressed.

‘There’s blood all over the car but we don’t know the specifics yet, ma’am.’

I had to see the body to be sure. I hoped they wouldn’t take it away just yet.

The voices trailed off as the group of people walked down the hall and out of the building. I kept my arm tucked close to me, to avoid a precariously positioned broom and bucket. I cracked open
the door, just barely, and peered back into the hallway. One officer had been left on guard inside the office, I presumed, to guard the body. I would have to sneak into the room through the
connecting door from a neighbouring office.

The officer stood, legs slightly apart, hands held behind his back. I just needed him to look away for a few moments. Be distracted by something,
anything
. I waited. As the moments ticked
by, I knew Rhode and Vicken would become impatient and come looking for me.

Oh just look away, you idiot.

A girl screamed from outside and the officer spun to look out of the window. Perfect! Her scream trailed away into laughter just as I crawled out of the janitor’s closet. I had to leave
the door open behind me. I scrambled across the hallway and into the office next door. I stood up, waited a moment and pressed my back against the connecting door. I tried to breathe quietly, and
waited to see if the officer heard me. Unlike Odette, I
would
leave fingerprints so, again, I kept my hands close to my sides. I knew how to be quiet. If I applied pressure to the whole foot
instead of the ball of my foot, I would make less noise. I had to go in. I had to see if it was Odette who’d killed Ms Tate.

I took off my boot and removed my sock. I used it to twist the doorknob as quietly as I could. I placed my boot back on and, on my hands and knees, crawled into the room. The officer stood in
the office, but near the hallway.

I would never fear the dead. Never. It was Ms Tate’s heels I saw first. She was on the floor, on her side.
She had driven back to campus and died here, in this office.

A vampire’s bite mark will ooze for hours, even after a person is dead. As I knelt beside the body, I could sense it was cold without needing to touch it. Body heat emanates from a live
body. This body was still, hard. And there they were, two puncture wounds in her neck, still thickly oozing, following the depletion of the vampire’s bite. The last of Ms Tate’s blood.
It would stop soon. The thicker the blood, the longer it had been oozing from the victim.

Her eyes were closed; someone must have closed them. There, on the floor next to the body, was a small piece of white paper. The note Ms Williams had mentioned.

In curly old-fashioned handwriting, it read:

I gulped away a scream. At the bottom of the note was one more line.

*

‘It sounds like a little poem!’ Vicken said. ‘How lovely. You know – if you enjoy threatening poems about murder and death.’

‘She’s doing it on purpose,’ Rhode said.

‘Of course she is. It’s exactly what I would have done. It’s sick.’

‘One by one, she’ll take out anyone that she knows is close to you, Lenah,’ Rhode said. ‘She must have been watching for days now,’ he explained.

I paced back and forth at the gymnasium window.

‘The second line of the poem is threatening more deaths. Prolonged torture. She’ll never quit,’ Rhode said.