Standing there, withstanding my rant, Ronan suddenly seemed tired. “I tried to warn you. In my way.” He saw my furious look and amended, “As much as I could.”
“Because you told me it was serious, all the while using your hypnotic googly eyes?” I brushed by him as he opened the car door for me. I kicked the snow from my boots before I got in. I had to admit, they were cool boots. “Hmph.”
I clambered in. It truly was a beast of a vehicle—ghastly wasn’t an understatement. It had seating for eleven, and I crawled straight back to the far rear corner.
Ronan followed, sitting beside me. Despite my anger, the tug of his weight on the seat gave me a momentary jolt. Until I saw one of Ronan’s peers take the driver’s seat and his hot strawberry blonde charge claim shotgun.
“You had no place else to go,” he reminded me in a hushed voice.
“I had a place to go until they said I couldn’t start college. Wait. . . .” I inched away so I could face him full on. “Did you set up that whole swim-test thing at the registrar’s office?”
He shrugged.
Busted. The bastard. “You did, didn’t you? How’d you even know I couldn’t swim?”
“I know many things.”
“What, you’ve got, like, a Goth mind probe in addition to powers of persuasion?”
He gave me a blank look, and I barreled ahead, sensing I’d hit a nerve. “That’s right, don’t think I couldn’t tell. You used some sort of weird hypnotism or touch, or something, to convince me to come.”
“Believe me, you’re not that easy.” His tone implied I was all-around difficult.
“So that’s how”—I looked to the open car door, lowering my voice—“that’s how you Tracers do it? You have persuasive powers?”
“In varying degrees.” Ronan glanced at his colleague in the driver’s seat. The guy was immersed in a chat with Strawberry Blonde, oblivious to the conversation in the back-back. “Most girls respond when I use my eyes alone. You’re more difficult.”
“Don’t tell me. That’s why you kept touching me?” My heart fell, seeing the answer on his face. The way he’d taken my hand, all those touches to my arm, my shoulder—the purpose had been to enthrall me, to convince me to get in his car, onto his plane.
I scowled. I’d known guys like him weren’t interested in girls like me, and yet stupid me had gone there in my mind for just a moment. “You tricked me.”
He went on the defensive. “You’d hit rock bottom, Annelise.”
“And this is better? In what universe is avoiding a drunk father and subsisting on waitressing tips more rock bottom than this?” I slumped against the door, the window cool on my forehead. “Silly me. Being totally alone on an island of bloodthirsty monsters is a real step up.”
“Believe me, you only arrive here if it’s your last stop.”
“Harsh.” I stared blindly out the window, wondering if he was right. Had I sunk that low? All I knew was that I wasn’t ready to give up yet. I had to find a way out. “I’m not that pathetic.”
Movement caught my eye. Lilac was approaching. She already had a mini posse following her. A bunch of mindless electrons buzzing around her radioactive core.
But then I realized. If this was my last chance, it was their last chance, too. Lilac and her ilk were just as desperate as me. And that meant Lilac had secrets. She and I had something in common; I just couldn’t imagine what.
She climbed in—gracefully, I might add—and glowered at me. Gaze shifting to Ronan, she held up her parka. “Could you toss this in the back for me?” Her tone was saccharine sweet.
At his nod, she whipped it right at my face. The metal nub at the end of the hood string snapped me in the eyes.
“Oops!” Smiling, she gave an innocent shrug.
That was it. I would find a way out of this place. When he’d talked me onto the plane, I’d thought I’d be in for some cool schooling, but this was brainwashed-cult crap, and I was not down with it.
It was only a matter of time before I annoyed someone as badly as Mimi had, and I refused to have my guts spilled in front of an audience of Barbies. My last stop would not be on some vampire’s dinner plate.
Once everyone settled, I leaned close to Ronan’s ear. “How do I get out?”
“Shush,” he hissed. “You can’t get out.”
As the other girls loaded in, I considered my situation. I was more helpless and alone than I’d ever been in Florida, only now I was surrounded by things that wanted to eat me. The driver put the truck in gear and drove. I felt as desolate as the bleak, gray world outside my window.
I called my mom’s picture to mind, taking strength from the memory of her yellow hair, that bright yellow pantsuit. It seemed that, yet again, I’d be forced to make my own way, in a world bled dry of color.
Ronan was wrong—I would get out. I’d survived the most difficult and loveless of childhoods, and I’d survive this, too. I leaned close again, and felt him bristle. “So Watchers aren’t allowed to leave the island? Ever?”
“Of course,” he said, his voice tight with tension, “Watchers are allowed to leave.”
“Then how do I become a Watcher?”
He cleared his throat to speak in a hoarse whisper, and I had to strain to hear him over the chatting and posturing of the girls. “First, you stay alive. And then you must prove yourself better than all the others.”
We pulled onto a rough, cobbled drive, and the truck jostled Ronan’s body into mine. I inhaled sharply. I trusted this guy about as far as I could throw him. I would not be affected by the warm press of his thigh on mine. I would focus.
I’d focus and excel and stay alive. Long enough to escape.
“You’re here.” Ronan nodded to a forbidding structure that made me nostalgic for the fortress we’d just left. It was a rambling old mansion of pale reddish stone. Each window was a narrow Gothic archway rising to a fine point. A colonnade of lanky towers, chimneys, columns, and turrets gave the impression of a spindly, ethereal thing, reaching skyward.
“That’s my dorm?” As I got out, my eyes went to the clusters of bad girls spilling from the other SUVs, cursing their fates. “It’s like Hogwarts in Gangland.”
“This is the edge of the quad.” Ronan pointed to the tops of some other buildings just beyond the dorm. “There’s the Acari dorm, Initiate housing, academic buildings, and a chapel.”
“Chapel?” I was dying to walk alongside the building for a better view, but something told me that’d be frowned upon. “You’re shitting me.”
He rolled his eyes. “Annelise, your language leaves something to be desired. And, no, I’m not exaggerating. There is a chapel, though it hasn’t seen a priest in my lifetime.”
A tall black girl emerged from the building. Spotting Ronan, she approached us, a warm smile on her face.
“Here comes one of the Proctors now.” He pointed her out, but he needn’t have.
She’d stood out the moment she glided from the dorm. Dramatically so. She was gorgeous—what else?—but in a fierce, self-possessed way. Though she looked only about nineteen or twenty, something about her seemed much older. She wore a sort of catsuit in an austere navy color, instead of the gray Acari tunic. I knew without asking that I was looking at the uniform of an Initiate.
“Amanda.” The warmth in Ronan’s voice made me do a double take. A spurt of irrational jealousy made my belly lurch, and I swallowed it down.
“Ronan,” she replied with humor in her voice. She turned her attention to me, studying me with a speculative tilt to her head. “This one of yours, then?” She spoke in a thick Cockney accent.
I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Dreadlocks twined to her shoulders, but not in a Rasta way. It was more at tastefully bohemian, like a latter-day Lauryn Hill.
“Aye, one of mine,” Ronan said. “There are just two this time. I . . . lost one. During the Induction.”
“Let me guess. This would be Annelise. Though you prefer Drew, don’t you?”
I could only nod lamely, totally awed. Above and beyond her clothes and her hair, there was something in Amanda’s bearing that set her apart. Like she’d been tested and proven worthy. I saw it in her stature, in the steel of her dark eyes, and in the taut lines of her body visible beneath her clothing.
Lilac appeared from nowhere, shouldering past me. “Hope you survive the night, Charity.”
Her pack knocked me and I stumbled. I heard her trilling laugh, feeling my cheeks burn deep crimson.
Amanda chuckled, a rich, throaty sound. “Don’t mind her, dolly. There’s a slag like that in every batch.”
A laugh escaped me, like an awkward, relieved puff of air. Was this Proctor someone I could trust? I forced myself to remember I could trust no one. Least of all one of the Initiates the headmaster warned us about.
But Ronan seemed to like her. And, not too long ago, she’d have been just like me—a clueless girl in one of those SUVs. I remained on guard, but let myself be cautiously optimistic.
We watched Lilac prowl around the other girls like a lioness hunting for fresh meat.
“Who’s she?” Amanda asked.
“Lilac.” I rolled my eyes to show how ridiculous I’d thought that name sounded.
“Von Straubing?” The Proctor’s face was suddenly veiled. Even though this woman was a veritable stranger, I knew enough about body language to tell something was up.
“What?” I demanded. I could tell she was wary of telling me something. “What is it?”
“Sorry, dolly. I’m afraid Lilac’s your roommate.”
CHAPTER TEN
Cracking the door, I braced myself. It wasn’t every day a girl got to bunk with her archenemy. If I hadn’t already decided to get the hell out at the first opportunity, the privilege of rooming with Lilac for the next year would’ve been enough to drive me to swim to the mainland. And that from a girl who didn’t know how.