Aurora Sky: Vampire Hunter (10 page)

Mom rubbed my back. “My poor girl. You need to get better.
This needs to stop.”

I lifted my head. “Don’t you get it? This is who I am now.
You signed the contract. It can never be undone.”

“You don’t have to act this way. We can go back to the way
things were. You’re just not trying hard enough.” She looked at me with
pleading eyes.

I sighed. “Get some rest, Mom. I’ll try not to bother you
with any more of my demonic dreams.”

As predicted, my mother didn’t ask for details about the
aforementioned dreams. She kissed my forehead and shuffled into the empty bed
that awaited her. I lay back and stared at the ceiling. I shut my eyes, but he was
there looking at me again. He would always be looking at me. No matter what
he’d been, I’d killed him. I was a murderer.

 8

The throbbing inside my skull woke me the following
morning. I dragged myself downstairs and found my mom not looking so hot
herself. She wore a light blue robe and fuzzy slippers. Her face was puffy when
she looked up from her paper. She eyed the red scarf around my neck warily.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“I have a headache.”

“I saw the empty bottle of champagne in your room.”

“Had to celebrate somehow.” I shrugged. “Which reminds me,
Happy New Year.”

Mom’s lip quivered. Tears gathered in her eyes.

“Look, sorry about the scene last night. Obviously I was
under the influence. Tell Dad I was drunk and that it won’t happen again.”

Mom blinked several times and nodded. “You shouldn’t have
had the entire bottle.”

“I learned my lesson.”

The lesson was to lie through my teeth so my mom wouldn’t
worry so much.

While I had been off getting my neck chewed open, Denise
spent the holiday with her family at Alyeska Resort—skiing by day, hot tubing
by night.

She and Erin sipped out of paper espresso cups in front of
the lockers the first day of school.

Second semester. The end was near. Literally.

I threw back my shoulders before joining the girls. “Hi,
guys! How was your holiday?”

They exchanged looks at my cheerful tone. Mom had advised me
to be more peppy. Like if I acted that way, I’d feel that way. Fat chance.

“Fine,” Denise said. “How was yours?”

“Wild!” My mouth expanded on the word.

 “That’s nice,” Denise said, turning back to Erin. “So
anyway, like I was saying, Alan Baxter called me yesterday to invite me to the
winter ball.”

Once upon a time, in a world without vampires, Denise would
have tracked me down to share that news.

“When’s winter ball?” I asked.

“At the end of the week.”

“What did you tell him?” Erin asked.

“I told him yes.”

“Who do I want to go to winter ball with?” I pondered aloud.

This was enough to pull Denise’s attention away from Erin.
“Aurora, you’ve been acting like a complete freak lately. Who’s going to want
to go take you to winter ball?”

I never realized how little I cared for Denise until now.

I straightened to my full height and took a step toward her.
“You mean I haven’t quite been myself since I nearly DIED?”

She glared at me, keeping her ground even though I was
practically in her face.

“Um, I should get going to class,” Erin said.

Denise shot me a nasty look before turning to Erin. “I’ll
come with you.”

Good
. Denise should be friends with someone whose
mission in life was something other than killing vampires.

I could make new friends, too. Maybe even ones who were
aware of ‘demonic beings’, as Melcher called them. I thought about the hickey
I’d seen on the black-haired girl’s neck. Only I no longer believed it was a
hickey.

It was just a hunch, but there was only one way to find out.

I made my way to the girl’s bathroom in C Hall and, sure
enough, I noticed three familiar forms: the juniors with their varying shades
of highlights. I followed them inside the girls’ bathroom.

They were all short, like they’d formed a club—the Three
Mouseketeers.

I set my backpack on the counter in front of the mirror and
made a show of digging through my bag. A toilet flushed behind me. There was a
spray of water at my side. The warning bell rang, and several girls rushed out.
The Mouseketeers kept their places at the mirror, applying liner and rouging
their lips. At least they didn’t chatter.

When the final bell rang and it was just the four of us in
the ladies’ room, I unwrapped my scarf, folded it, set it on the counter in a
corner clear of water drops, and turned my exposed neck to the mirror,
reflecting the fading wound. I dug around in my pack again.

The hooded girl looked over and nodded at my neck. “What is
that?”

I pulled out a tube of pink lipstick, puckering my lips
after I applied pale pink shimmer. “What does it look like?”

The girl with the red streaks in her hair laughed. “It looks
like you and your boyfriend had a heavy make-out session.”

“Oh, please,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “Like I need a
boyfriend. What I’ve got is so much better.”

“And what’s that?”

“None of your biz.”

All three girls turned toward me and folded their arms.

“Wait a minute,” Red said. She lowered her arms. “Are you
the girl who was in a coma?”

“Yep.” My lips puckered as I formed the word.

The two other Mouseketeers lowered their arms. They looked
me up and down. “I heard they had to reattach your body parts.”

“Nope, just replace my organs.”

“Wicked.”

Red took a step toward me. For someone so short, she did a
good job of giving me the once-over. “So are you looking to party?”

I tossed my lipstick inside my pack and picked up my scarf.
“I’m not
looking
to party. I party.”

“I’m Whitney,” Red said. “This is Noel and Hope.”

“Noel,” I repeated, looking at the girl in the hoodie.
“Don’t tell me your parents wanted to give you an ‘Alaskan’ name, too?”

“I was born on Christmas.”

“Then I guess you’re in the right place.”

Whitney lifted her chin as I threw my scarf over my
shoulder. “Where’d you get it?”

“The mall.”

She smiled slightly and waited.

“Crashed a party across town during the holiday.”

“It wasn’t one of Marcus’s, was it?” Noel asked. “Marcus
throws the best parties.”

Crap.
I hadn’t thought this through enough.

I rolled one of the red fringes at the end of my scarf
between my fingers as I reached for an answer. “I didn’t get a name. I didn’t
really care, if you know what I mean.”

“Sure,” Whitney said, though her expression said otherwise.

“Want to hang with us in the library?” Noel asked.

I hesitated. This badass group hung out at the library?

As though reading my thoughts, Whitney laughed. “Hall
monitors don’t bother us in the library. They think our teachers sent us there
to study.”

“Oh, clever.”

The four of us started out the door.

“I like your scarf,” Hope said.

“Thanks, I’m ironic like that.”

The juniors, it turned out, had some tricks to teach me. The
library, for instance, was a sanctuary from the humdrum boredom of the
classroom, and no one bothered us there. Believe it or not, the lounge inside
the front office was another safe haven where a student could sit undisturbed,
and if the secretary happened to get off her lethargic ass, you just said you
were there to see your counselor or waiting for a parent to pick you up for a
doctor’s appointment. During third period, the music room was unoccupied, and
we could mess around by creating our own out-of-tune masterpieces or let
Whitney play real music.

“Are you guys going to winter ball?” I asked as Noel made
her way down her keyboard, pressing each key from left to right.

“We don’t go to school dances,” Hope said.

No, of course not.

Fane Donado didn’t go to school dances, either.

His loss, ’cause I’d made up my mind to attend winter ball even
if I had to go stag. If he bothered to show up I might have asked him to dance.

On the walk home he’d proved he had a sensitive side. And if
Fane could dance half as well as he played badminton it could be fun.

But I’d never seen Fane at a school dance.

Not once.

Not ever.

At least we had gym together. I couldn’t wait to say ‘hi’
now that we were on speaking terms.

I changed into my gym clothes quickly with the other girls
in the locker room, pulling stray strands of hair out of my scarf into a
ponytail.

Inside the gymnasium, Mr. Mooney rolled out a cart filled
with basketballs. The eager beavers were already dribbling balls down the
court, warming up.

I paced the floor, keeping my eyes peeled for Fane. Seconds
before the warning bell rang, he pushed through the double doors, Valerie by
his side. I tried to catch his eye, but Fane ignored me completely. It was as
though I had dreamed the entire encounter of him walking me home in the snow.