Never Bite A Boy On The First Date
Tamara Summers

HarperCollins Children’s Books

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

If you were dying…

If you were sixteen and dying…

If your blood was spilling out of you, calling to them, the creatures of the night, and you knew you were dying…

If you saw their pale faces and the gleam of sharp teeth in the moonlight, and you felt your blood spilling warmly over your hands, and you knew beyond any doubt that you were dying…

Wouldn’t you say yes?

Yes, turn me.

Yes, I want to live.

Yes…make me one of you.

Chapter One

THERE’S A MURDERER in my school. And this time it isn’t me, so I’m kind of ticked off.

The body was lying on the front steps of Luna High School, upside down. His blood was running all the way down the steps to the ground, like a red carpet laid out to welcome us inside. He was wearing a red-and-gold Luna Tigers football jersey and a startled expression. I guess being thrown out of a third-storey window would surprise me too. The broken windowpanes creaked ominously up above, and shattered glass sparkled in the blood around him, reflecting the morning sunlight.

We could smell the blood the minute we pulled into the parking lot. I heard Zach’s stomach growl – which, if you ask me, is a totally inappropriate reaction. And also ridiculous since he’d had, like, two gallons of blood for breakfast already.

At the bottom of the steps, a couple of policemen were speaking into their walkie-talkies and trying to fend off all the curious teenagers who were early for school. Mostly that included the swim team and kids whose parents have to get to work early. And students like me and Zach, who prefer to be indoors before the sun is too high in the sky.

Don’t worry, we’re not going to burst into flames or anything. That’s a myth. Go back and read Dracula, and you’ll see – the sun just drains his powers; it doesn’t kill him. Not that I’m saying Bram Stoker was an expert or anything, but he’s kind of right about that part. So I don’t die in a ball of fire the moment I step outside, which is a plus. But the bad news is that too much direct sunlight gives me a wicked headache, and then I have to lie in a dark room for a while to recover. It’s kind of like having a mild sun allergy. It gets worse for older vampires, who have less tolerance. We also cover ourselves in this crazy herbal sunscreen, which helps a little bit, although I think it makes me smell like basil.

Basically it sucks, since I no longer have to worry about skin cancer, so I should be able to tan as much as I want. Instead I’m stuck with the skin tone I had when I died. Not that we get a ton of sunshine in freezing Massachusetts anyway. Luckily for me, the pale look is coming back in. (It is coming back in, isn’t it?)

Right. Back to the dead guy.

There was one more thing we could spot from across the parking lot. The police wouldn’t know what they were looking at, but to vampires like us, the four big holes in his neck were a dead giveaway. (Ha ha! Hilarious pun! I know, I know, stake me now.)

Where in vampire legend does the image of two perfect little puncture wounds come from anyway? You see that everywhere, but it’s kind of physically impossible to do, and I should know – I have actually tried this experiment. Yeah, you’ve got your fangs up top, but you also have two sharp little fangs on the bottom, and the only way to really latch on and get all the blood you need is to bite with all of them, which leaves four tiny little puncture wounds – and that’s if you’re neat.

More often, as in this case, it leaves a bloody mess.

I’ve got those four little scars on my neck and my wrist – one set from Olympia (my vampire “mom”) and one from Crystal (my vampire “sister”). I hide the marks with my hair and my watch, and they kind of look like freckles now. Creepy freckles, but it could be worse.

I could be missing half my neck, like this guy.

“Gross,” Zach offered from the backseat, leaning forward to peer over my shoulder. I edged closer to the window, away from him, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Someone needs to work on her technique.”

Olympia parked the car and turned to stare at me with her big, dark, I know everything eyes.

“I didn’t do it,” I said immediately.

“Kira—” she started.

“I knew you would think it was me! That’s so unfair! I swear, I didn’t do it! Oh my God, make one mistake and suddenly every vampire attack is my fault.”

“You must admit it’s odd,” Olympia said. “Two vampire attacks in two towns in a row. Before you came along, I managed to go twenty-five years without seeing any vampire attacks in public like this.”

“OK, I agree it’s weird, but this wasn’t me,” I said. “I swear.”

It’s true, you don’t see a vampire attack every day. In fact, you hardly ever see one. All the rules about this were drummed into my head from the moment I woke up with fangs, and then re-drummed again after my little mistake last year.

“Besides, I’m not the eat-’em-and-leave-’em type, remember?” I added.

“Hey, that’s Tex Harrison,” Zach said, squinting through the windshield at the body.

“No way,” I said. We’d only been here a month, but even I knew Luna’s star quarterback. “How can you tell?”

“His football jersey,” Zach said. “Number nine? Hello?”

As if I would know that.

“See!” I said, turning to Olympia. “That proves I didn’t do it! I would never bite a Neanderthal like Tex Harrison. His blood probably tastes like beer and Cheetos.”

Olympia rolled her eyes. She does that a lot. Possibly just around me. I think she’s beginning to wonder if bringing a sixteen-year-old vampire into the gang was such a good idea. It’s still unclear whether I’m going to act sixteen for the rest of my immortal life. If you ask me, I’d say I’m already way more mature than I was a year ago, so I don’t think she has anything to worry about. I’m the one that has to worry, because it’s probably not going to be fun to be twenty-nine in a sixteen-year-old body…or fifty…or five hundred. If I have to go to high school over and over again for the rest of eternity, I will seriously decapitate myself.

Olympia always says, “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,” meaning when I manage to actually get through an entire school year without some big, dramatic death (mine, for instance) forcing us to move. On the plus side, by the third time around, US History is a total breeze…although, sadly, not any less boring.

“Is he going to wake up like us?” Zach asked. “I mean, will he be a vampire? Should we stake out his grave?”

Olympia winced at his choice of words. She’s a little sensitive about things that can kill us. Hardly anything in our house is made of wood, for instance.

“It depends,” Olympia said. “If he was bitten before he died, then yes, he’ll become a vampire.” She pointed at the river of blood dripping down the steps. “But judging from that, he was killed first and then bitten. Otherwise the vampire would have drained much more from him before tossing him out the window. My guess is that the vampire decided to have a snack after throwing him through the glass, but she—”

“Or he!” I protested.

“—was probably interrupted, since there’s still so much blood inside the corpse too.”

“This,” I said, “is a seriously sick conversation.” I haven’t entirely adjusted to the whole yum, blood, yum aspect of being a vampire. My body wants it, but my head is still like, Ew, that is BLOOD, time to faint.

“I’ll have to talk to Wilhelm about this,” Olympia said with a sigh. Wilhelm is my vampire “dad”. (He prefers the word “patriarch”. If you call him Dad, even ironically, he will flail his pale arms around and make outraged huffing noises through his moustache.) He mostly lies in his coffin, brooding and issuing proclamations about how degenerate the world is today. Apparently things have gone way downhill since, like, the Middle Ages.

“Well, tell him I said I didn’t do it,” I said.

“Who else could it be?” Zach said. Very helpful. Thanks, Zach.

“It could be you,” I suggested. “Whoever said you had good impulse control?”

That was kind of a low blow, I’ll admit. He flushed angrily, which was only possible, by the way, because of that two gallons of blood breakfast I mentioned earlier.

“I was on a blood run with Bert last night,” he said icily.

“That’s true,” Olympia agreed. “They were gone for hours.”

“Where were you?” Zach asked.

Out by myself, as usual, which he totally knew. If I’d known he was out, I might have stayed home and watched TV instead. But lately I’ve been in Zach-avoidance mode, which means lots of long, solitary midnight walks until I’m sure he’s asleep. (He’s still on a more human schedule than the rest of us.) Doesn’t make for a great alibi, unfortunately.

“At the cemetery,” I said with a sigh. I know – I’m such a cliché. But it’s really peaceful at night. I like looking at the gravestones and trying to guess whether any of their inhabitants came back as vampires too. Also, moonlight makes us stronger, which is handy when you have to put up with Physics and Gym the next day. I’m sure vampires back in Transylvania in Wilhelm’s day never had to suffer like this.

“If it wasn’t one of us,” Olympia said, “that would mean there’s another vampire in this town.” Probably more than one, in fact. We mostly travel in families, just like regular, non-bloodsucking folks. It’s easier to blend in that way.

I scanned the growing crowd of students in the parking lot for anyone who looked suspicious. Or, you know, hungry.

Mostly everyone just looked sleepy. I mean, it was six o’clock in the morning. Dead body or not, that’s way too early for anyone to be awake. I felt that way as a human and I definitely feel that way as a vampire. This is when I should be going to bed and sleeping away all the daylight, but Olympia believes in acting as much like a human as possible. Trust me, I fall asleep the minute I get home from school, though. I wake up with the darkness and do my homework at three o’clock in the morning.

Most of the faces around us looked tired, like they’d been up late too.

But there was one guy…

OK, I’ll admit it. He caught my attention mostly because he was hot. I mean, sure, I’m a bloodsucking vampire, but I am also still a teenager in a new school; hence, I am always on the lookout for hotties. This one looked like he might be part Japanese, like me. But he had to be part something else too – maybe Polynesian? Hawaiian? – because his hair was dark and curly, and frankly he looked as if he ought to be surfing, or at least starring in a movie about surfing. He was leaning against a black car a few feet away from the police barricade, all casual and whatever: Oh, look, a murder…whatevs. He had one of those cute little rope necklaces around his neck and he was wearing sunglasses.

But with my vampire super-sight – all charged up from last night’s moonlit saunter – I could see his eyes through the dark lenses, and that’s how I could tell that he was staring intently at the body. It wasn’t the Whoa, dude, there’s a dead guy on our steps kind of staring everyone else was doing.

It was more like I know exactly what that is.

Chapter Two

OF COURSE, I’M not a mind reader. Though I hear that’s a nifty power, which, like mesmerising people, you can use only after a lot of practice and about a thousand years as a vampire. (Just in case that’s true, I’m careful not to think any of my more “degenerate” thoughts around Wilhelm.) So I couldn’t be sure what the hot guy’s expression meant. But I certainly wanted to know.

“Maybe I should go investigate,” I said, my hand already on the door handle.

“Wait,” Olympia said. “Let’s observe for a moment first.” I assume her high level of caution is how she’s managed to survive seven hundred years, but it drives me bats. (Ha ha ha! More vampire puns! OK, OK, I’ll stop.)

Well, I don’t know what she was observing, but I kept my “observational” eyes on Mr Hot. Could he be a vampire? He seemed a lot more tan than me, but maybe he was just born with darker skin.

The problem is that vampires don’t look particularly unusual most of the time. I think my canine teeth are maybe a teeny bit longer, but they only get really long and pointy and obvious right before I bite someone. Zach’s normal smile, for instance, is toothy and obnoxious, but not in a Look out! he’s going to bite! kind of way. It’s more like Look out, he’s going to hit on you, and then you’ll discover that he never flosses! And if you ask me, dental hygiene should rank pretty high on a vampire’s to-do list. Sure, we can’t get cavities, but Zach proves that bad breath can be eternal.

Other than his meaty breath, I don’t think there are any clues about Zach that would make someone think he’s a vampire. He looks like any other doofy seventeen-year-old jock, all muscles and shiny, sandy-blond hair and stupid jokes about body parts. None of that dark, pale, brooding vampire stuff that you read about. He’s tall, but that’s where the resemblance to Dracula ends.

My new best friend Vivi thinks Zach is dreamy, which I find faintly horrifying. (Despite the fact that I once felt the same – which is even more horrifying.) But I can’t convince her of how wrong she is, because she thinks I’m just like, “Ew, that’s my brother,” when of course the truth is that he’s not my brother at all. And I am definitely an expert on his long-term dateability potential.

Zach has no problem with the blood-drinking part of being a vampire, by the way. He mixes it into his morning health shakes with raw eggs and protein powder and all kinds of other unmentionable goop that he says will make him more buff. No one’s had the heart to tell him that vampires pretty much stay the same shape they were in when they died. Crystal will never lose that last five pounds; Bert will always look like a teeny-weeny accountant, despite being in reality stronger than any of the men in town. That growth spurt I was sort of hoping for in my senior year is never going to happen – but on the other hand, I can eat as much ice cream and as many cheeseburgers as I want, which I’ll admit almost makes up for the fact that I still have to drink blood to survive.

Anyway, if I can’t even tell by looking at Zach that he’s a vampire, I don’t see how I’m supposed to spot a vampire who’s a total stranger. I can’t exactly walk down the halls of my high school peering at everybody’s teeth.

Even with super-sight, I couldn’t see anything special about my hot guy’s canines, although he did smile helpfully – and very cutely, I might add – at a couple of people who went past him. But once his friends had passed by, he went back to staring at the body in that intense, thoughtful, totally hot way.

“That one,” Olympia said suddenly. But she wasn’t pointing at my guy. She was pointing at a tall, thin, pale guy in a hooded sweatshirt who was slouching up the sidewalk towards the school. I couldn’t figure out why she found him suspicious. He hadn’t even noticed the body yet. His blue eyes were focused on the ground.

I squinted at him. OK, sure. He was kind of cute too. In a brooding-poet kind of way. Or – I glanced at Olympia – in a vampire way. Surely not all pale, brooding guys were secretly vampires though. Right? I mean, before I died, I’d known a couple of those quiet, soulful guys in my old school – the ones who never leave the house or cut their hair or speak in class. And they weren’t vampires. At least, not that I knew of. But Olympia’s vampire radar was probably better than mine.

Olympia rolled down her window and pointed at one of the policemen, putting a finger over her lips. I was going to say, “Um, I don’t think they can hear us from here,” when I realised that now we could hear them…so if anyone out there was a vampire, they’d probably be able to hear us too. I kept quiet.

The policeman spotted Poet Guy, hurried over to him and grabbed his elbow.

Poet Guy blinked, finally looking up. “Dad?” His voice was soft, like if moss could talk. He stared around at the crowded parking lot and spotted the body. His expression barely shifted. “Oh. I see.”

“Go home, Rowan,” his dad said in a low voice.

Rowan shrugged. “Why? It doesn’t bother me.”

“It should,” his dad snapped. “I don’t want you near this kind of thing. Go home.”

Rowan’s eyes narrowed. “Is this because…Do you think I did this?”

“Shut up,” the policeman growled, glancing around. He steered Rowan forcefully in a circle and shoved him along the sidewalk until the body was out of sight.

“All right, all right,” Rowan said, jerking free. “Not like I care.”

“See you at home, son,” the policeman said. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, looking nervous as he watched Rowan slink away.

I used to like policemen until they totally failed to save my life. Now every time I see one handing out a parking ticket, I’m like, Really? You don’t have a dying girl to save somewhere? This seems like a better use of your time? OK, then.

Olympia rolled up the window again and started the car. It was pretty clear that school was going to be cancelled for the day.

“Well spotted,” Zach said. “I guess that guy’s totally a vampire.”

“Perhaps,” Olympia said. “Perhaps not. You should keep an eye on him, Kira.”

“Me?” I said. “Why me? Can’t I keep my eye on—” I was going to say “that guy instead,” but when I turned to point, I realised that my smiley Mr Hot had vanished. Sigh.

“You’re on thin ice, Kira,” Olympia said. “I suggest you follow the rules as closely as you can until we figure out what happened here.”

“I know what happened here,” I said. “Some vampire killed Tex Harrison. To be more specific, some vampire who isn’t me. A not-me vampire who has nothing to do with me.”

“Kira!” Olympia said sharply.

“All right, all right,” I grumbled, sitting back in my seat and folding my arms mutinously.

Well, fine. It could be worse; at least Rowan was cute in his own way. And after all, I do have two eyes. Nobody said I couldn’t also watch Mr Hot.

Wilhelm had already seen the news on TV by the time we got home. For all that he hates the last thirteen centuries so much, he sure doesn’t seem to have a problem with modern technology, most especially TVs. And microwaves to heat your coffee-laced blood. And lights that you can clap on and clap off from the comfort of your own coffin.

“KIRA NOVEMBER!” he hollered from the den as soon as he heard the front door open.

“I DIDN’T DO IT!” I bellowed back.

“YOU GET IN HERE RIGHT NOW!” he shouted. Yeah, in case you were wondering, it turns out that dads are pretty much the same whether they’re fifty or fourteen hundred years old.

Olympia put a firm hand on my shoulder before I could dart upstairs. “Let’s discuss this,” she said meaningfully. Ugh. I suppose I should be grateful that I get to be in on these “discussions”. My real mom used to just ground me, without an explanation or anything, which kind of sucked. But man, Olympia and Wilhelm can talk forever about my misbehaviour and all the punishments in store for me. I mean, they literally have all the time in the world. I think most teenagers should count themselves lucky that their parents aren’t immortal like mine.

“But I swear I didn’t do it,” I said, trying to fidget away. No luck; Olympia’s grip has seven hundred years of vampire strength in it. “What happened to ‘innocent until proven guilty’?”

“Doesn’t apply to repeat offenders,” Zach smirked.

“Shut up, Zach,” I said. “Shouldn’t Zach have to join us for this? I mean, I don’t see why he isn’t as suspicious as I am.”

“Hello? Alibi?” Zach said, tossing his head annoyingly so his hair resettled in that shiny, perfect way it always does.

“Don’t you worry about Zach,” Olympia said. She steered me towards the den and Zach gave me a smug salute as he sauntered up the stairs. “Zach is not your problem, Kira.”

But she’s wrong about that. Zach is most definitely my problem, and with my luck, he always will be.

Because I’m the one who made him a vampire.

Chapter Three

IMET ZACH ON the first day at my first new school. My previous school, not Luna. It was my first day as a vampire high school student. That was a year ago. Obviously we’d had to move away from my hometown in Michigan; I couldn’t exactly keep flitting around Ann Arbor after I’d supposedly died in a car accident. So Olympia relocated us all down South – apparently vampires are used to moving a lot, so no one in the family complained – and signed me up to redo junior year at a new school.

I’d never moved before. I’d lived my whole life in Ann Arbor and always known the same people. Plus I’d never had to deal with hiding a part of my identity before. But I tried to be like, OK, so we’re in Georgia. I can do this. I’m not just the new girl. I’m a vampire. I don’t have to be afraid of mean girls and gossip any more. I could snap their necks in half – er, not that I will or anything – but it’s nice to know that I can. Plus I’m going to live forever. I might as well start acting like it.

That was the pep talk running through my head for the thousandth time when I finally found my locker that morning, which took a while because there was a guy leaning on it and blocking the number. He grinned down at me. He smelled like testosterone and basketballs.

“Move,” I said.

“Ooo, feisty and gorgeous,” he said, not moving. “Just how I like ’em.”

“Ooo, beefy and stupid,” I said. “Add sweaty and we’ll have a trifecta.”

“I’ll have a trifecta with you any time,” he said, leering. I rolled my eyes. The equally thick-headed guy he was waiting for snickered and closed his locker, which was two over from mine.

“Good one,” the thick-headed guy said. “Let’s go.”

“You go on,” Zach said. “I think I’m about to get lucky.”

“Yeah, you are,” I said. His eyebrows waggled. “Lucky that I don’t want to get kicked out, so I’m not going to kill you today.”

“Oooooo,” Zach said, which maybe should have tipped me off that we’d hit the outer limits of his witty repartee. But just then the bell rang and the hall started to empty, which distracted me.

“Move. Now.” I gave him my best steely-eyed vampire glare.

“Or what?” he said, crossing his arms as the last couple of kids hurried into their classrooms.

“I’m glad you asked,” I said. In my head I was like, You know what, I’m a freaking vampire. I have super-strength, hardly anything can kill me, and if I get in trouble we’ll just move again. Why hold back?

So I threw him into a janitor’s closet and locked him in while I went to Chemistry.

He was sitting on an overturned bucket when I got back, listening to his iPod. He grinned like a pirate when I opened the door and slipped inside.

“I knew you’d come back,” he said.

“You’d have looked pretty silly if I didn’t,” I said.

“You needed another piece of this pie, didn’t you?” Zach pointed to himself with an oh, yeah expression.

“You’re much cuter when you don’t talk,” I said, and kissed him in the dark.

I didn’t really mean to encourage his alpha-male obnoxiousness. I mainly wanted to shut him up. And also I wanted to see what would happen. I’d never dated a guy like this. My one and only boyfriend back when I was alive was the sweet, sensitive type who took, like, three years just to ask me out.

Plus, when dealing with a guy like Zach, it was nice to have super-strength. Like, for instance, when I found his hands instantaneously roaming to my butt.

“OW!” he yelped as I flung him into a shelf of toilet paper.

“I make the rules,” I said. “Got it? You touch only what I want you to touch.”

“Can I have a list?” he said, recovering quickly. “With descriptive details, please?”

“Seriously, shut up,” I said. I pushed him into the wall, twisted his hands behind his back and held them there while I kissed him again. His kisses were very enthusiastic. And he didn’t try to free himself, so I figured he’d be easy to train.

He was really warm, and he tasted kind of salty and sweet at the same time. Before I knew what I was doing, my mouth went to his neck. I licked his skin lightly and he shuddered. I could feel my canine teeth sliding out. The blood in his veins pulsed under my tongue.

I realised I wasn’t in lust at all. I was hungry.

“You,” Zach whispered in my ear, “are the hottest, most psycho girl I’ve ever met.”

His voice stopped me just before my teeth grazed his skin. What was I doing?

I dropped his hands and jumped away from him as if he had holy water running through his veins. Olympia had warned me that it would be hard once I was around mortals all day long, especially attractive, young mortals. But it didn’t even occur to me that kissing could lead so quickly to wanting to bite someone. Especially someone whom I did not by any means want to turn into a vampire.

That was one of the rules Olympia had lectured me about over and over again: “You bite it, you bought it.” We were responsible for anyone we turned into a vampire. That’s how we survive. If we let new vampires wander loose with no idea of the rules, they’d be staked in no time and the rest of the world would soon catch on that we exist.

It is possible to bite someone and leave them alive, but it’s dangerous and hard to do – Olympia says once you start to drink, it’s almost impossible to stop yourself before your prey is dead. And even if you do stop, the victim probably will have figured out what you are, and that’s not great for us either.

I was lucky that Zach couldn’t see my teeth in the darkness of the closet. I covered my face and tried to force them back down to normal. Don’t think about feeding. Don’t think about feeding.

“Wait,” Zach said, groping for me with his hands outstretched. “Don’t stop. What happened?”

“I lost interest,” I said, stepping out of his reach. My fingers were trembling, but I kept my voice level. “Too bad for you. Now stay away from my locker.” And I got out of there as quickly as I could.

I probably should have guessed that this wouldn’t shut down Zach. If anything, it made him even more interested. I started finding him at my locker every morning when I got there, usually with chocolate. My guess is, he read in some men’s magazine that girls like chocolate, because he really stuck with that theory.

I ignored him for the first week. He loved it when I shoved him out of my way; he went on and on about how freakishly strong I was “for such a tiny thing” until it started making me nervous. I was sure Olympia didn’t want to hear gossip about the new freakishly strong teenager while she was buying up all the raw meat in the supermarket.

So at first I started talking to Zach just to distract him. I told him if he really wanted to bring me something before class, he should try hot chocolate and a croissant. That fit his theory just fine, so the next morning, there was my order, exactly as I’d requested. Like I said – the early signs pointed to “easily trainable”.

“Hmm,” I said, letting the hot chocolate scald away the taste of blood on my tongue.

“So you’ll go out with me this weekend, right?” Zach asked. “I figured we could start with dinner at Los Espejos.” He pronounced it “ezz-PAY-joe’s”, but I still recognised it as the Spanish word for mirrors. Olympia and Wilhelm had scouted out all the more dangerous places in town and this Spanish restaurant was at the top of the list. It was lovely and expensive, but the walls and the ceiling were completely covered in mirrors. Too risky, no matter how besotted my date might be. Our little “family” tried to avoid even walking past it.

“Meh,” I said with a shrug. “I’d rather have a hamburger at Big Burgers and Bowling.”

He clutched his heart. “You are my dream girl.”

So that’s how it started. And I’ll admit it: I kind of fell for him. Dating Zach fit the new take-no-prisoners attitude I was trying to develop. I figured if I could be a badass vampire, I wouldn’t miss my old life so much. It was nice having someone to distract me from wishing I could call my mom or kiss Jasper one last time.

Plus it was sort of exciting to have someone be that into me. He couldn’t keep his hands off me, no matter how many times I threw him into a wall or nearly broke his fingers. I admired his persistence.

On the other hand, it got harder and harder not to bite him. You have to understand, the blood we drink every day to stay alive comes out of a jar in the refrigerator. It is the very definition of gross. Vampires are designed to drink from living (or very recently dead) people; that’s what we’re hungry for. Olympia was trying to teach me to exercise self-control, but I wasn’t learning nearly fast enough to keep up with my relationship with Zach.

After three months, I started thinking about the future. By that point, I thought Zach was pretty hot. I figured it was almost definitely true love forever. And wouldn’t it suck (ha ha!) if I stayed sixteen and he got older and older? Wouldn’t it make more sense to turn him into a vampire while he was still my own age? Then we could really be together forever. Awesome, right?

But I still don’t think I would have done anything on my own. I would have waited at least another three months to be sure that I liked him that much. I mean, I’m not totally crazy.

Unfortunately it was only a month later when Zach spotted my teeth sliding out during one of our make-out sessions – this time in a closet that was apparently not dim enough.

“Whoa,” he said, stepping back. “What’s wrong with your teeth?”

“Uh – nothing,” I said, covering my mouth with one hand. I turned away from him, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me around.

“That is so weird,” he said, which was a much calmer reaction than I would have had. He reached out and touched one of my teeth with his index finger. A drop of blood immediately appeared on his skin, and I panicked. Was that enough to turn him into a vampire? That wouldn’t be fair! I hadn’t intentionally bitten him!

At the same time, I couldn’t stop myself from licking it off. He took his hand back and we stared at each other for a minute.

“OK, yes,” I said. “I’m a vampire.”

Zach let out a bark of laughter. “That’s impossible,” he said.

I let my teeth slide all the way out and held back my hair so he could see the marks on my neck. “It’s not impossible; it’s just lame. Here, check for a pulse, you’ll see.” I grabbed his hand and wrapped his fingers around my wrist.

I knew he wouldn’t find a heartbeat on me, but we were close enough to each other that I could hear his own heart speeding up as he held my wrist and stared at me some more.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I don’t bite. Ha ha.” I took my hand back, prying off his fingers. I was about to walk out of there and straight home to tell Olympia we needed to move again, when he finally spoke, in a wobbly, I just saw a pterodactyl kind of voice.

“What if I wanted you to?” he asked.

“Wanted me to what?”

“Bite me,” he said. He took my wrists again and pulled me closer, shaking back his hair to expose his neck. “Do it. I want to be like you. I want to be a vampire too.”

“Yikes, dude,” I said, trying not to look at his neck. “Care to think about that for half a minute? It’s kind of like proposing to me, only even more eternal.” I thought that would scare him off, but it didn’t. Which maybe should have been a warning sign, but at the time I found it endearing. So sue me. I was in love…or at least I thought I was.

“Exactly,” Zach said. “I love you. I’ll always love you. I want to be with you forever.”

I didn’t say yes. Not even with his neck right there waiting for me. Some little corner of my brain was going, Wait! Think! This is not a normal reaction! Run away! Unfortunately that little voice wasn’t yelling loud enough, although it tried its best for the next few weeks, during which Zach pleaded with me every day to turn him into a vampire. Even in my love-blind state, I started to find it pretty annoying. I kept thinking, Can we please have one date that doesn’t end with you shoving your neck in my face and pledging your undying love? Can’t we just eat pizza and maybe talk about our homework now and then?

Then one day he called me and told me to come over right away. I told him it would have to wait because I was dying my hair. He told me he was dying.

I said, “You too? What colour?”

And he said, “No, seriously dying. I mean dying.”

“Literally?” I said. “Could you wait until my hair is dry?”

He said he didn’t think so, because there was an awful lot of blood already and he was feeling kind of woozy.

That’s when I realised he was serious.

Thank goodness for vampire super-speed. I got to his house in about nine seconds flat. Zach was slumped against his bathtub, looking pale, as blood from a long cut on one of his arms pooled around his jeans and bare chest. There was a glass next to him half-filled with blood and a piece of paper with bloody fingerprints all over it. It was weird and gross, and yet my whole body started freaking out with hunger at the smell of all that blood.

“What on Earth were you doing?” I asked, standing in the doorway. I didn’t want to get too close to that smell.

“I love you,” he said in this whispery, trying-to-be-heroic voice.

“Answer the question,” I snapped.

“Well, I…I was going to write you a note in my blood to show you how much I love you…and then there was so much blood I thought I’d save it for you to drink.” He waved his hand at the glass. “But then it kind of…kept coming and…I think I did something wrong.”

“I’ll say you did something wrong,” I said. “You freaking nearly killed yourself, you idiot. Couldn’t you prick your finger like a normal person, instead of slicing up your whole arm and bleeding to death?”

“I didn’t mean to,” he said, sounding irritated and a little less whispery. “And don’t call me an idiot.”

The scent of all the fresh blood was making me dizzy. “We should wrap you up,” I said, “and get you to a hospital.” I grabbed a towel and knelt next to the tub.

“It’s too late for that,” he said, back to his dying voice. He practically pressed the back of his hand to his forehead. “Don’t you see, this is perfect. We’re meant to be together. It’s a sign.”

“Yeah, a sign that you’re a moron,” I muttered, trying not to breathe in the scent of the blood as I wrapped the towel around his arm.

“I’m dying, Kira,” he said earnestly. “You have to change me…to save me.”

“I should have left you in that closet on the first day,” I snapped. His blood soaked through the white cloth instantly, spreading like red fireworks.

Zach lifted his wrist towards my face and the towel fell off with a splat. “Drink,” he said. “It’s all right. I want you to. Then we can be together…forever.”

There was nothing else I could do. The smell of all that blood was too much for my willpower. I was sure I’d never get him to the hospital in time. He was going to die and it would be my fault.

I sank my fangs into the bloody gouges on his arm.

Yeah, it was amazing. It was the last amazing moment I had with Zach. I don’t want to describe it, because remembering it now makes me feel all creepy, but it was mind-blowing. I can see how some vampires become addicted to drinking from the living. Olympia had warned me about that too.

After Zach was fully dead, I left his body there and went home to tell Olympia what had happened. She laughed and laughed and laughed until she literally fell out of her coffin. Which, incidentally, was not quite the reaction I was expecting.

“Well, we’re in love,” I said, offended. “I’m sure it’ll turn out fine. Like Bert and Crystal.”

“Oh dear,” Olympia said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Now perhaps you’ll see why listening to seven hundred years of experience is a good idea.”

Yeah. About a month later, in a rental car somewhere in the middle of Kansas, while we were moving around every night to hide our trail, Zach tried to get to second base with me and I threw him out of the sun roof. We had to drive half a mile back to find him. He sulked all the way to Montana.

That was the end of that relationship.

Chapter Four

TRAGICALLY, I AM now stuck with Zach until he decides to go off and start his own vampire family somewhere, which requires a level of maturity I’m fairly sure he won’t be able to muster any time in the next five hundred years.

On the plus side, our cover story in this new town was that we were supposed to be brother and sister, so he couldn’t hit on me in public any more. That didn’t stop him from trying sometimes when we were at home – hence the long midnight walks to avoid him. He kept staring soulfully into my eyes and saying things like, “You want to be with me, Kira,” or “We are meant for each other,” which would maybe have more impact if his idea of “soulful” didn’t involve enormous, googly eyeballs. The good news is, I’m still a lot stronger than him, as apparently that is a skill I am extra-blessed with. Zach? Not so much. Olympia asked me to stop throwing him out windows though. They’re expensive to replace and the noise might disturb the neighbours.

That whole saga is why they immediately blamed me for this new vampire attack. As if I hadn’t learned my lesson! I was pretty sure I’d never date again, just in case I accidentally landed another obsessive lunatic. If you asked me, I was the vampire least likely to bite another high school football player.

But Wilhelm was convinced that after biting Zach, I’d become addicted.

“I knew this would happen!” he huffed, wagging his finger in the air. “I knew it was foolish to turn a child of this horrifying century! She’s a degenerate menace! We should lock her in a coffin and feed her through a tube until she is old enough to be trusted!”

I glanced at Olympia. “You guys don’t really do that, do you?”

“Not unless it’s necessary,” Olympia said, which didn’t reassure me very much.

We were in the den, which is Wilhelm’s favourite room after the basement, where he sleeps. Olympia deliberately chose a house with very few windows – they’re hard to find, but cheap, because nobody else wants them. The den had only one small window. Like all the others in the house, it was covered with dark blinds and heavy velvet curtains.

On the table next to Wilhelm’s Barcalounger was the only light in the room: a tiny lamp with a pale red shade. Olympia had convinced Wilhelm to give up his dripping Gothic candles after he set the last Barcalounger on fire. This new chair was covered in a prickly red-and-black plaid. The colours matched the dark red Oriental rug and the sleek, black metal coffee table, but stylistically the room was a bit of a mishmash.

Not that I’ll ever tell my vampire parents this, but they’re not exactly the world’s greatest interior decorators. It’s like they’ve latched on to a couple of trendy things from each century and haven’t noticed that the world has moved on.

This is unfortunately true of their clothes too. We’re not going to even discuss the tragedy of a medieval vampire in a pale blue leisure suit. I make Olympia run her outfits by me every morning before I let her drive me to school.

“She is running wild!” Wilhelm bellowed now, talking about me again. “She will bring the vampire hunters right to us!”

“This isn’t the Dark Ages, Pops,” I said. I love the way Wilhelm’s hair stands on end when I call him that. “There aren’t mobs of ignorant villagers outside with pitchforks and torches. Nobody even believes you guys exist. Us guys, I mean.”

“That is precisely the kind of thinking that will get us all staked!” he shouted. “These new vampires think they can bite anyone they like! They don’t remember how the hunters watch for any signs of us! Careless, reckless, selfish—”

“But I didn’t do it!” I yelled over the end of his sentence. “Call me what you like, but I DIDN’T BITE HIM!”

Wilhelm glared at me with beady, bloodshot eyes. He wasn’t bitten until fairly late in life, so he’s kind of grizzled and grey for a vampire. Plus he’s had the same moustache since the 800s – long and droopy and fluffy. Apparently it keeps going in and out of fashion, so he sees no need to shave it. Personally I think it’s really distracting to talk to someone who looks like he has giant fuzzy caterpillars crawling out of his nose.

“It might be true,” Olympia interjected. “We can’t be sure she did it.”

“We can’t be sure she didn’t,” Wilhelm snarled. “We should move again, and quickly, before they come to hunt us down.”

“Oh, no,” I said, remembering the long weeks of car travel and switching cities and identities. It was bad enough after my death; after Zach’s it was even worse, because he was there pestering me the whole time and there was no way to get away from him. I was kind of hoping we’d stay here in Massachusetts for a while. “Please don’t make me start junior year all over again.”

“I hardly think relocating is the worst of your problems,” Olympia pointed out.

“There could totally be other vampires here,” I said. “We saw this way suspicious guy at the school, didn’t we, Olympia? And it’s a pretty big town, right? There could be vampires all over the place!”

“Most vampires are not as foolish as you are,” Wilhelm growled.

“Let me find the vampire who killed Tex,” I said. “If I can figure out who did it, will you believe me? Can we stay?”

Olympia and Wilhelm looked at each other for a long moment. Sometimes I think they’re actually talking to each other when this happens, which is fully creepy. Nobody wants parents with telepathy.

Finally Wilhelm snorted, which made his moustache flounce up and down. “I am not happy about this,” he said. “I want that to be clear.”

“All right, we’ll let you try,” Olympia said to me. “But if you haven’t figured it out in one week, we’re moving again.”

“And then there will be consequences,” Wilhelm warned. I didn’t need telepathy to know he had locked coffins and feeding tubes floating through his head.

“Be careful,” Olympia said. “Not all vampires are as civilised as we are.”

Really? Less civilised than medieval Romanians? I bet.

Finally I escaped upstairs to my room. Zach and I are the only ones who use the upstairs; we don’t quite hate the sun as much as the others do, and it occasionally manages to sneak in through the blinds on the top floor. Our deal is that I get the rooms to the left of the staircase and he gets the rooms to the right. He’s not supposed to come over to my side, although you can imagine how well he obeys that rule.

Bert and Crystal have a room on the first floor. They’ve both been vampires for less than a hundred years, so they still do some human things like sleep in a bed, although their mattress is rock hard. I guess one day they’ll switch over to coffins, like Olympia and Wilhelm, who sleep behind a hidden door in the basement in parallel caskets of ancient stone. Allegedly one day I’ll want to sleep in a coffin too, but I am highly dubious about that theory. I like my bed to be as fluffy as possible, with about seventeen pillows and a down comforter. Wilhelm thinks this is a sign of my “moral decrepitude” and “debilitating laziness”. I think it’s a sign of I just like sleeping, dude.

In fact, when I got upstairs, that’s exactly what happened – pretty much right away. I mean, I tried to start my investigation. I got as far as Googling Tex Harrison and finding out that he kept a blog on his My Space page. But it turned out to be all about sports and how awesome the Luna Tigers are and what an awesome quarterback he is and blah blah Patriots and Red Sox, plus a detailed rundown of his daily workout regimen and everything he’s ever eaten. Ever. Can you really blame me for falling asleep?

When I woke up, I was lying across my bed in a mountain of pillows. My vampire instincts told me that it was dark outside. I rolled over and saw Zach standing in my doorway. Really “lurking” is the most appropriate description.

“Go away,” I said, throwing a pillow at him.

“You forgot to lock your door again,” he said.

“You forgot to not be an ass again,” I said. “Stay on your side of the house.”

“I hear you’re going to solve Tex’s murder,” he said with a smirk. “Looks like it’s going well so far.”

“Um, hello? All the best detectives do their work in the dark,” I said.

“I can think of better things to do in the dark,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.

That was my cue to leave.

“Have some blood before you go out!” Olympia called from the kitchen as I stomped past.

“No thanks!” I called back, grabbing my keys. I slammed the door behind me and started running. I never used to like running, but it turns out it’s a lot more fun when you’re nearly as fast as a car. And it doesn’t make me tired any more, at least as long as the moon is out. Plus it’s a lot safer to run unnaturally fast at night – not so many people out on the street.

I made it to the high school in about ten minutes. It looked all gloomy and shadowy in the moonlight, the brick and concrete merging into silvery edges. Most of the glass had been swept up, but I could see a few tiny shards they’d missed, still shimmering on the steps. I guess the police had been busy, because even the crime scene tape was gone. They probably really wanted school to get back to normal the next day.

They’d done a pretty good job of cleaning up; only the smell of blood still lingered, a whisper of what had happened here, and I’m guessing that only a vampire nose would pick that up. Even the broken window above was covered with a black tarp, one corner flapping a little in the wind.

There’s another cemetery right beside the high school – not the one I usually go to. This one is smaller and older, with tiny, crooked gravestones. With that on one side and the football field on the other, the school has a lot of open space around it. Only a couple of houses have a view of the front steps, and that’s across the parking lot. I was guessing nobody could have seen anything, especially that late at night, without vampire sight. It was only eleven o’clock now and already all the houses were dark. Unhelpful day-dwellers.

I padded across the grass that edged the parking lot, staying close to the shadows just in case. Long trails of purple-grey clouds slid across the moon. A small piece of glass crunched under my sneaker as I climbed the steps. Tex must have landed with a lot of force; I could smell blood spatters on the front door. And blood was the only thing I could smell. The scent of the attacker was completely masked by the overwhelming scent of Tex’s blood.

The door was, of course, locked, which made me wonder how Tex and his killer had gotten inside in the middle of the night in the first place. Not that it’s hard for a vampire to get into places like this. We have to be invited into private homes, but everything else is wide open to us. For instance, I could have just pulled the door off, but I thought that might be a little suspicious. Probably not an approach Olympia would have approved of.

Instead I climbed the big oak tree that grows beside the school’s front steps. Climbing trees is another thing that’s more fun with vampire strength and speed. I was level with the top floor in about twenty seconds. I wriggled along the length of a branch until I could reach the flapping corner of the tarp. There was just enough space for me to squeeze underneath and flip through the open window. The broken panes of glass were gone. Only a gaping round hole was left in the wall of the school.

My shoes hit the tile floor with a tiny squeak. I was in a long hallway lined with metallic-green junior class lockers. Moonlight slanted through the windows in the classrooms on either side and the matching round window at the far end of the hall, facing the back of the school. Another hallway bisected this one in the middle, making a kind of plus sign. Or a cross, if you want to be all woooooo mystical about it. As it turns out, crosses don’t bother me. They freak Wilhelm out really badly though, so I think maybe you had to believe in them when you were alive to be bothered by them once you’re a vampire. I would test this theory by throwing a Star of David at Bert, but that would be mean.

Holy water does irritate my skin, and garlic makes me sneeze for about an hour. Neither of them can kill me though – so much for those theories. I’m afraid it’s a stake through the heart, an axe through the neck or a whole lot of fire, and that’s it. Not stuff I have to worry about much in my everyday life. Unlife. Whatever.

I circled the spot in the hallway in front of the open window, although I had no idea what I was looking for. Clues? Graffiti scrawled on the wall: “I killed Tex Harrison here”? The floor looked as scuffed and ordinary as it did every day. I crouched and ran my hand across the cold, speckled tiles.

My fingers brushed against something that rolled. I caught it and picked it up.

A small red bead.

Hmmmmm.

Of course, anyone could have dropped that here any time. Hundreds of kids went through this hall every day. My own locker was right around the corner, in the bisecting hallway.

Still, I slipped the bead into my pocket.

Although I knew it wouldn’t do any good, I inhaled, trying to see if any of the scents here were stronger than the others. As I expected, there was too much of a jumble to pick anything out.

Except…No, I was wrong. There was one unusually sharp scent. It’s hard to describe how vampire noses distinguish what they smell, but if it helps, this one smelled a little like mist and moonlight and jazz and tuxedos and antique books. (I know, I bet that was really helpful.)

As I separated it out from the rest of the muddle, I realised that it was surprisingly strong and getting stronger.

Or…closer.

I whirled around.

I wasn’t alone.

Chapter Five

IF I’D HAD a heartbeat, it would have skidded to a stop.

He was standing in the doorway of a classroom, his hands clasped behind his back. The moonlight dappled the floor behind him, hiding his face in shadow. All I could see was his long, lean outline.

I was pretty sure he was staring at me.

A long moment passed. He didn’t move. I didn’t move. Oh, I thought about moving. I thought about leaping right out that broken window. I figured the fall wouldn’t hurt me too badly and then I could run all the way home.

But he had probably seen my face already, so it would be a bad idea to do anything vampire-y right now – like, say, survive a three-storey fall.

Anyway, I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to. I was way too freaking scared. He just stood there. He had this eerie stillness about him that I’d never seen before. I couldn’t even hear him breathing or fidgeting or anything. The hallway was completely silent. Just me and a sinister figure in the dark.

Kira, you’re a vampire, I told myself. He should be scared of you. What’s he going to do to you? Is it worse than being locked in a coffin and fed through a feeding tube for a hundred years?

But the other half of my brain was merrily reminding me that criminals often return to the scene of the crime, while gory pictures of Tex’s bleeding corpse flashed across my mental movie screen. Tex, who had been killed by a vampire.

My mind started racing again. Do vampires kill other vampires? How would he do it? IS HE HIDING A STAKE BEHIND HIS BACK?

When he finally did move, I nearly leaped out of my skin. All he did was take a tiny step forward, but it startled me enough that I jumped backwards, crashed into the lockers behind me, slipped on the floor and fell over.

So much for the preternatural grace of vampires. I’d love to know when that’s finally going to kick in.

And then, all at once, he was right beside me.

“I’m sorry,” he said, kneeling next to me as I sat up. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Really?” I said. “You’re just naturally that terrifying?”

Now that he was out in the hall, I could see his face, but that didn’t help because I’d never seen him before. He looked like he was my age, with coffee-coloured skin and close-cropped, curly black hair and a dancer’s body, which I mention only because his shirt was open and I could see his abs above his jeans, and these were definitely abs worth mentioning.

I found myself thinking, Man, I hope he’s a vampire! Not that I knew anything about vampire-vampire dating, but it had to be less complicated than dating a human, right? Unless, of course, he’s the killer vampire. Hot or not, I don’t date murderers.

“You startled me,” he said, with a hint of a smile. His voice matched his scent, sort of moody and layered, like he would have fit in perfectly as a saxophone player in an underground 1920s jazz club.

“Uh, no,” I said. “You startled me.”

“I did,” he said. “I apologise.” The unspoken question hung in the air between us. What the hell are you doing here? I would have asked, but I was trying to come up with a good answer myself. Plus I was a little distracted by how perfectly shaped his eyes were. If Michelangelo and Rembrandt and the top casting directors in Hollywood all got together to design the perfect face, they’d probably start with this guy’s eyes. It was kind of impossible not to gaze dreamily into them.

“I’m Daniel,” he said.

“I’m Kira,” I said, although in my daze I nearly slipped and told him my real name, from back when I was a human. “Do you go to school here?”

And then he took my hands in his and helped me to my feet.

Wait, let me go over that one more time.

His long, elegant hands slid over mine, gripped my fingers gently, and lifted me up in such a smooth motion that I was standing before I’d even had time to recover from the softness and strength of his hands.

Which is why I nearly missed his answer – but seriously, right then his hands seemed a lot more important than anything he could possibly say.

“I’m new. Tomorrow’s my first day,” he said, and he let go of my hands. Which was disappointing, but it sure seemed like he’d held them a moment longer than necessary…hadn’t he?

“Oh,” I said. “Tomorrow. Wow.” Yeah. There were many things about this situation that were short-circuiting my ability to form sentences.

“Yes,” he said. “Not quite the welcome I was expecting.” He made a small gesture towards the window, which reminded us both that we were standing in the midst of a murder scene in the middle of the night. We stared at each other again for a long moment.

I broke first. “Oh,” I said, like it had just occurred to me, “you must think it’s so weird that I’m here, don’t you?” Implied: Because I think it’s pretty weird that you’re here. I laughed nervously. “OK, this is going to sound crazy, but I…needed a book from my locker.”

He cocked one elegant eyebrow at me. “A book?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Shakespeare. Macbeth. Very gloomy. Lots of mu—” Don’t say murder! “ – umbling. Mumbling about…witches…and stuff. Have you read it?” Oh, that was suave. Clever and romantic, all in one fell swoop.

“A long time ago,” he said with a half smile.

“Well, we have a test tomorrow and I have to finish reading it, so I thought I’d get it now.” I trailed off lamely, wondering how much he had seen of me climbing through the window and searching the floor.

“Oh,” he said. “Of course. I’d have thought they’d cancel any tests scheduled for tomorrow, but it’s always wise to be prepared.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s me! Prepared.” For tests, yes. For strange, hot boys in moonlit hallways, not so much.

There was another pause. Two could play this little game. I lifted an eyebrow at him.

He laughed softly. “All right. I have a confession to make.”

Score! Murder solved! Well, that was much easier than I’d expected. Wilhelm and Olympia would be so proud. Assuming I made it out of here alive. Well, you know, “alive”.

“I heard about the murder,” Daniel said, gesturing again, “and I’m afraid I was curious. I thought I should know more about my new school. I like figuring things out myself…I guess you could say I’m an amateur detective.” He rubbed his head, looking convincingly sheepish. “Do you think I’m terribly strange now?”

Yes, but don’t worry, the “terribly hot” part makes up for it. I couldn’t figure out whether he was lying. It sounded about as believable as my story – which is to say, not very.

“No,” I lied. “I bet lots of other students would have done it if they could have figured out how to get in. Um…how did you get in?”

“Through the boys’ locker room,” Daniel said, pointing down. “The lock was already broken, so I just walked in.”

HMMMMMMMM.

Possibility one: Daniel was lying, and he’d broken the lock himself to get in, which he could easily do if he were a vampire.

Possibility two: some other vampire, possibly of the murderous variety, had broken the lock earlier this evening to come up here and revisit the crime scene, as I hear criminals do all the time.

Possibility three: that’s how Tex got in last night – as did the vampire who killed him.

“Isn’t that how you got in?” Daniel said innocently. “Um, yeah,” I said. “Of course. Lucky break for me.”

He glanced at my hands. “So…where’s the book?”

“I was just going to get it,” I said, trying to look all casual. He followed me down the hall and around the corner to my locker. I laughed awkwardly. “I guess I wanted to look at the crime scene too.”

“A fellow investigator,” he said with that hint of a smile again.

I rummaged through my messy locker until I found Macbeth. The clang of the door closing echoed way too loudly along the empty hall. Daniel and I both went really quiet for a moment, as if he was also listening to be sure we were alone in the school.

“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered. He led the way to the nearest stairwell and we padded softly down to the bottom floor. I noticed that he didn’t seem hesitant about where to go – he led the way straight through the last door, turned left and headed right for the locker room. Either he had a good sense of direction or he knew this school better than he was letting on.

I’d never been in a boys’ locker room before, not even when I was dating Zach, king of high school athletics back in Georgia. To put it politely, the smell was much…stronger…than in the girls’ locker room. Daniel chivalrously held the door open for me, so I had a chance to glance around when we first went in. I spotted a row of mirrors over the sinks, off in an alcove. Wouldn’t it be useful if I could spot Daniel in one of those – or not spot him, as the case may be – if, say, it turned out he had no reflection? But getting any closer would run the risk that he’d notice my lack of reflection too.

I watched him as he wove through the benches. Was he avoiding the mirrors like I was? If he was, he was pretty casual about it. We made it to the door that led on to the football field and I checked out the broken lock. It looked like a super-strength job – as if someone had just grabbed the door and pulled, snapping the lock mechanism in half.

Outside, the clouds were clearing up, and rays of moonlight sliced across the football field in front of us. Daniel paused in an oval of silver light and looked down at me.

“It was nice to meet you, Kira,” he said.

“Yeah, you too. Welcome to the school,” I added wryly. “It’s usually not quite this exciting. Um – I mean awful. Well, OK, it’s usually awful, but in a different, really boring way. Um, but I’m sure you’ll love it.” OK, stop talking now.

“I’m looking forward to it a lot more now that I’ve met you,” he said. A slow smile spread across his face. It was a sexy smile, a candles-and-black-lace smile – the polar opposite of Zach’s dopey let’s do it in a closet leer.

“See you tomorrow then,” I said, smiling back.

He touched his forehead in a little salute and started to walk away across the football field.

“Daniel,” I called after he’d gone a couple of paces. He turned and looked at me, walking backward. “Did you find anything upstairs? I mean – about the murder?”

He smiled the same smile again, but for some reason, this time it sent chills down my spine.

“Oh,” he said. “I have some theories.”

Then the moon went behind another cloud, and when it emerged again, Daniel was gone.

Chapter Six

ISPENT THE REST of the night trying to make lists of clues to help me solve the mystery. To give you an idea of how well that went, here’s what my “Daniel” list looked like:

DANIEL

 Hot

 Likes hanging out at murder scenes at night

 Really hot

 Says he wants to be a detective

 Great abs

 Starting school right after the murder – suspicious?

 Extremely, totally, remarkably hot

And here’s another list:

SMILEY GUY

 Looked at the crime scene v. suspiciously

 Also very hot

 Where have these hot boys been hiding?

 Too smiley to be a vampire?

 Really cute smile

 Find out name…investigate further…critically important: great abs or not?

 Like, seriously cute smile

So it wasn’t exactly Nancy Drew-calibre work. Perhaps you can tell that I’d been stuck with Zach for the last six months of moving and hiding and not meeting hot new guys, so I was having some side-effects. I don’t normally obsess over abs that much. At least I don’t think I do. Then again, my experience with hot-guy abs is fairly limited so far. Presumably in, like, a century or so, I’ll be all blasé: Oh yeah, abs, whatever – been there, done that.

I checked Tex’s blog again to see what the last entry said. Scrolling back, I saw that he usually posted twice a day – once in the morning to record his breakfast and morning workout, and once in the evening to talk about what else he’d eaten, how totally kickass he was and what sports he’d watched that day. He’d posted the last entry on the morning of the day he died.

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