ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (252 page)

“I saw another walker just after that. At least, I thought it was one.”

“What?” She dropped her fork. “And didn’t tell anyone because…?”

“Because no one would believe me about the first one. So I figured they wouldn’t believe me about the second, either, so I’d wait until something happened before I said anything. And nothing had happened since then.”

“Until now,” she said.

Christian appeared with his lunch tray and sat down. The atmosphere was awkward immediately, and I glanced at him but he didn’t look at me. We hadn’t spoken much since our argument, and I wasn’t sure where we stood.

“Adi thinks it’s another walker attack,” Beth said to Christian. His eyes shot up to me, an emotion flickering across his face that I couldn’t place before it was gone again.

“Beth!’ I cried out, but she shrugged.

“What? It’s not like he doesn’t know what’s going on around here. Besides, the last one happened, didn’t it?”

“Why do you think that?” he asked me. I straightened my shoulders. I was upset with Beth for making me talk to him when I hadn’t felt like it. Somewhere deep down inside I was also happy he was talking to me again. Conflicting emotions. Sometimes I really annoyed myself.

“I thought I saw one a while ago. It was probably nothing,” I said hastily.

Christian narrowed his eyes at me, but said nothing.

“Has anyone heard more about Graham?” Beth asked, breaking the tension and changing the topic. I was relieved, and shook my head.

“No, he’s still in ICU. They’re waiting until Kirilov gets back from Russia.”

“Imagine the odds, that Kirilov is in Russia just as this happens,” Beth said.

“They might have planned it that way, to make him an easier target,” Christian said.

“Or they might have done it to get him back in the country.” Beth gaped at me, but Christian looked at almost hostile the way he glared at me.

“What?” I said defensively. “I’m just saying if he’s in Russia he’d be pretty hard to take out, so they might have wanted to get him back. I can’t see why Graham would be a target. Except for sharing Boris’s genes he’s not anyone special.”

“You’re getting picky with your reasons for attacks,” Christian said. “If they’re not good enough, it doesn’t matter, is that it?”

“Don’t be a prick,” I warned. “It’s not what I’m saying and you know it. We all love Graham as much as any other student in this school. His accident was horrible and I’m terrified he might still die. I’m just speculating motive.”

Christian was leaning over the table, his eyes blazing fire.

“Come on guys, don’t fight,” Beth pleaded, and only then did I realized I was leaning in too, fangs bared.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, getting up with my tray. Beth smiled apologetically at Christian, but followed my when I left. The moment we dumped our trays in the disposal bin, Christian got up and marched out of the cafeteria.

“I thought you guys liked each other,” Beth said, watching him leave.

“Yeah, well. I thought he would have some sort of respect for my feelings.”

She shook her head.

“I have to admit, though. He’s damn hot when he’s angry.” A shiver traveled through me, and Beth giggled.

“You’re so weird,” she said.

Principal Cole called me into his office late afternoon, which really meant early morning. On our nocturnal schedule, lunch was at midnight. Most of the students had already left to wait for dawn at home and sleep away the scorching day.

“I hear that you think this might be another walker attack,” he said when I was sitting. Before the first attack had happened on Boris Kirilov, almost six months ago, I’d seen the walker before the accident had happened. I’d told Principal Cole, but he hadn’t believed me until Boris had nearly died.

“What? Who told you?”

“That’s not important,” he said, waving his hand. I clenched my fists. Christian, no doubt. I could wring his neck! I eyed the plants in the corner of the office. Cole had brought in a designer to create a sort of indoor habitat for him. I guess he felt trapped in this boring office all night. It looked terrible with ferns and other plants I didn’t know, and oversized pebbles underneath them, covering the soil.

“What is important is your safety.” I snapped back to his conversation. “You were right about the first attack.”

Was Cole going to believe me?

“I’m going to send you home,” he said. His words popped the bit of hope that had crept in.

“What?” I said again, my voice thinner this time.

“I’m going to send you home. It’s not safe for you here. Graham almost died, and you’re practically part of the Kirilov family. I don’t want another student fighting for their life.”

“But you can’t do that!”

My whole life was here. I had to be in the action, even if that action was just talking about the motives, or something. I was already dreading spending summer holidays at home. I couldn’t sit and rot in my room for even longer than that.

“I can do that, and I will. This is about your life, Adelaide. These attacks aren’t games. It’s about people’s lives. You may be a pain in the ass, but your life is just as important to us.”

“Gee thanks,” I said sarcastically.

“I’m sending you home until we can figure this out. I’ll have someone deliver you your class notes and homework. I don’t want you falling behind in your last years.”

House arrest and studying? Great.

“Please don’t do this,” I said, aware that I sounded like I was begging. “I can help figure out what’s going on. I saw another creature on the wall a while ago, with red eyes. A walker, I was sure. A lynx. You could start looking in other places, stop questioning vampires—“

“Adelaide,” Principal Cole said, sighing. “This isn’t a negotiation. Your help in warning us was greatly appreciated. But you’re a student. What can you do?”

I only inflicted the bite on the Walker’s neck that ended up getting him captured, nothing too serious. Undercover hero stuff. What would Cole know?

“I can’t sit in my room day and night. I’ll die.”

“You’re being a bit melodramatic. I’d rather you pine away in your room for a while than having a javelin through your chest or something of the sort.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but Cole waved his hand in a dismissal. It was final. There was nothing I could say.

My bags were packed under the supervision of the floor matron, and I was escorted downstairs like a criminal. Before I climbed into the black car the house keeper at the Kirilov Estate had sent for me, the matron put her hands on my shoulders.

“Be careful, dear,” she said. “Of all the people I’ve had in my residence in the past forty years, you’ve been the most trouble.” I pulled a face. “And I love you the most.”

She patted my cheek and turned to walk away. Her compliment left me strangely emotional.

The drive was short and we made it to the Kirilov Estate well before dawn. I left Morris, the butler, to haul my bags up the grand staircase.

My room was as I’d left it, but cleaner. The perks of being in a rich home was that I didn’t have to clean up around here the way they expected me to at the school residence. I collapsed on my bed and sighed.

I rolled over and found some magazines. Morris brought me chocolate as a welcome-home surprise, and I stuffed my face while I read about stupid teenage problems like boys and acne. We didn’t get vampire magazines, so we had to face human problems in our literature. Nothing intense like saving a vampire race from the menace of the shifters, or something like that.

I thought about Christian. I didn’t understand him. If he weren’t a vampire, I would have sworn he had some personal vendetta against the aristocracy or the council. I couldn’t place it. He was so bitter. About what? I couldn’t see how a vampire, bred to be loyal, could be so against the attempts to save the vampires.

It hurt me that he hadn’t been talking to me. It hurt me that I wouldn’t see him now, or be able to fix it. I really liked him. We may not have had a long relationship, only a few months, but I felt like in a way he understood me. And they ways in which he didn’t he overlooked as the differences between two people. Not as flaws.

He really was a great guy. When he wasn’t treasonous.

The shutters glided slowly but silently into place to block out the sunlight for the day. I tried to watch a DVD, but dozed off. It was somewhere late afternoon, human time, when I woke. The sun was weak. Vampires could sense these things, and dusk would be here soon.

I rolled over, and something cool touched my cheek. I lifted my head, and focused on the big, round object.

It was a smooth rock, about the size of my both my hands cupped together. It looked like it had been in water for a long time. The rock was naturally smooth.

When I looked at it more closely, I realized it was a rock taken from the landscaping arrangement Cole had in his office. He’d gotten a landscaper in at some point to make his office interesting, something a bit more outdoorsy. The landscaper had brought in plants and smooth river rocks to create an indoor garden. It was ridiculous.

The knowledge shot through me with a shock. What was a rock from Cole’s office doing in my bedroom?

I turned it over, and a note was carved out of it in neat letters.

If you come back to the Academy, you’re dead

A threat. My body went cold, and I dropped the rock on the bed like it was hot. I rubbed my hands on my pajama pants, trying to get whatever had made me feels so contaminated off me.

Someone had been in the principal’s office to get this rock. That meant that someone had been in the school. Someone dangerous. Also, someone had been in this house to deliver it to me. And this person had come in when the shutters were down. Through the guards and the metal surrounding the house.

An icy finger slipped down my back, over my spine, and I shivered. All my friends were at the Academy. The students and the teachers, annoying as they were, were a second family to me. Graham, my foster brother, and Boris were in trouble. Now Beth was too, and the rest of them.

And most importantly, me.

Because I’d stopped whoever had been attacking them? Because I’d been right about the next attack? Or because I was right about the motive.

Either way, there was only one thing I could do now.

I was going back to the Academy.

3

As soon as the sun was below the horizon, I walked out of the main gates.

“Madam?” Morris asked.

“I’m going out. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“Master Kirilov has asked you stay on the property,” he said.

Did he? Was it really his idea that I was locked up in my room?

“When did he contact you, Morris?” I asked.

“He didn’t, my lady. He sent a note.”

A note. Right. Somehow I doubted it had come from Boris. If he was in Russia he would communicate telephonically. Not with a note.

“I’ll be in the garden,” I said. The old butler nodded slowly, and turned away.

I walked between the tall trees that stood scattered across the lawn. The garden was beautiful. I wondered what it looked like in the day. Sometimes I thought vampires missed most of the beautiful things in life because we only saw it in shades of inky black and silver. The night painted everything in a different light.

When I was at the farthest end of the house, I looked back. The lights from the windows reached into the night, casting dim shadows around me. I listened intently, but I couldn’t hear anything. I closed my eyes, and dematerialized.

I took form again outside the Academy gates. I hadn’t dematerialized in a long time, living on campus where everything was laced with metal to stop students from dematerializing and playing hooky. I felt a little lightheaded, like bubbles were surging through my veins.

“Why are you outside, miss?” a guard asked me.

“I just needed some air,” I lied. The guard narrowed at me. He was a new one, and didn’t know I usually stayed on campus. I’d gotten lucky.

“Get back inside, and don’t come out until after school hours. It’s not safe.”

I nodded and rushed through the gates.

As soon as I was inside, I slipped into the darkness of the big wall that surrounded the school. Some of the guards may not have recognized me, but the other students would, and I wasn’t supposed to be there.

I snuck towards the school building, and crept around the back. I peeked into a window or two, but all seemed normal.

My stomach sank to my shoes. I had come here expecting some sort of action. It looked now that I really just wasn’t needed. I crept further along the wall, and ended up beneath Principal Cole’s window. It was open to let the night air in, no doubt for his precious plants. His voice traveled through the open window.

“I heard he’s arrived about an hour ago,” he said. A pause, and then, “yes… yes he’s with Graham now. Thank goodness he managed to get back on time… Russia’s weather has always been a problem. I’ll do that, thank you.” He’d been on the phone.

He was with Graham? There was only one person it could be. Boris Kirilov was back in town. I had to get to him. If there was anyone whose life was in danger, it was Boris’s.