Yasuo and I gaped at each other, wide-eyed.
“The first locks date from ancient Egypt four thousand years ago. They utilized a wooden pin tumbler that’s the basis of technology still in use today.”
Judge walked the room, placing a random assortment of items on each student’s desk. I spied paper clips, forks, flat bits of metal, scissors, and a variety of locks. Padlocks, dead bolts, doorknobs—you name it.
“You were each given a set of tools in your kit.”
“Did you get tools?” I asked Yasuo in a whisper.
“A tool kit works in the best of circumstances,” the teacher continued. “But, unfortunately, the circumstances are not always best. Are they?”
Yasuo waited for Judge to reach the far end of the classroom before he whispered back, “Yeah, in a little leather roll.”
“Oh. Duh.” I smirked. “I’d thought that was, like, a nail kit or something.”
We shared a quiet laugh, then felt Judge’s eyes on us. I tensed, but the teacher only gave us a smile. Like he, too, felt expansive about all this first- day-of-school lock stuff.
Sitting there whispering with Yasuo, smiling with this teacher who, so far, seemed completely and utterly benign—it all felt so normal. I’d never felt normal. I kind of liked it. I was sure it wouldn’t last.
“You have a torsion wrench in your kit.” Judge made his way to me, where he set a knife, an empty soda can, and a padlock on my desk. “But, the fact is, you can shim most locks with any bit of metal.”
I stared at the assortment on my desk in disbelief. It couldn’t be that easy. He walked away, and I immediately turned to Yasuo. “A Coke can? Seriously?”
“Well, look around.” He nodded to the back of the room.
A few students sat kicked-back and bored, spinning their padlock hinges or idly drumming with strips of metal. They’d been able to pick their locks the moment they’d received them. Crazy.
“I should’ve figured,” I muttered. “Don’t tell me. Are you a lock expert, too?”
Yasuo just waggled his eyebrows suggestively. Looking away, I bit my lips not to laugh. In-class bonding was one thing. But making the teacher’s blacklist on the very first day was another matter entirely.
Judge came back to the front of the class. He leaned his hip against his desk, arms crossed casually in front of him. “Before today’s class is over, you’ll be able to pick your lock using only the materials in front of you. And that’s a promise.”
Forget swimming. I was going to pick a lock with a soda can and a steak knife? The prospect made me giddy.
I set to slicing open my empty can, actively not thinking about why this was a skill I’d ever need to cultivate. Now, if I could only see past the monsters hiding in the dark, beyond the mean girls, the whip-wielding Initiates, and all that blood, I could really get into this place.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I stood on the steps of the gym. I could do this. It wasn’t even two o’clock on my first day, and already I knew how to shim a padlock, unlock a doorknob without a key, and crack the code on Master combination locks.
I’d even made a friend. After class, Yasuo and I walked to the dining hall and ate lunch together. And the food wasn’t that bad—some sort of creamy fish soup that’d looked disgusting but was actually pretty tasty. Granted, Yasuo didn’t make me feel all wiggly and agitated like Ronan did, but at least I could trust he wasn’t using superhuman powers of persuasion to put thoughts in my head.
After the shock of so many positive events, I figured I could swing gym class.
What did they mean by fitness, anyway? I pictured something like an episode of The Biggest Loser. Hopping around, doing asinine things with body bands and medicine balls, while people yelled at me about my core.
I jogged up the gym stairs before I could think twice. I sensed these vampires had exquisite taste they’d refined through the centuries, and had envisioned a glossy, high-tech health club. I was sorely mistaken. I entered, and it was how I imagined an old-time boxing gymnasium might look. In Russia.
Damp heat and the smell of stale sweat greeted me. Blue mats were stacked in a tower in the corner, faded ropes hung from the ceiling, and a set of gray high bars loomed ominously along the wall. And, of course, in the very center, was a sparring mat.
I rubbed my forehead, letting my messenger bag slide from my shoulder to hit the floor. “Damn.”
“Be careful, Annelise.” I knew that voice. It sent every cell in my body standing to instant attention. “The vampires aren’t overly fond of profanities.”
Crap, damn, dammit to hell. What was he doing here?
“Ronan.” I turned to face him, feeling ill. Seeing me swim was one thing, but he wasn’t really going to witness me floundering around in gym shorts, too, was he?
“It’s Tracer Ronan now.”
The fish soup became a queasy slosh in my belly. I’d thought maybe Ronan and I were becoming less formal with each other, not more. He’d asked Amanda to look out for me. He’d seemed sincere when he’d insisted I trust him. Being friends didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility. He seemed to care. Kind of.
His attentions had probably just been about seeing the girl he picked succeed. Maybe Tracers got extra brownie points if the Acari they’d recruited were the ones to excel. The thought made me sadder than I had a right to be.
He read the direction of my thoughts. “I’m your teacher now. We must respect protocol.”
I looked at the girls gathering along the bleachers. Some had already changed into the navy gym shorts and T-shirts we’d been issued in our kit bags.
Was I missing something? Would I get to skip gym class for our private study? “Wait. Are you here to take me to swim class?”
“Our private study is later. I’m also your fitness teacher.” He walked to the bleachers, leaving me there feeling like I might gag.
Then I thought: gym class, swimming . . . Would I get to see him in running shorts? Or maybe even in one of those teensy Speedos? The prospect cheered me a bit.
Scooping up my bag, I followed him, eyeing the other girls warily. I spotted Lilac and the scrappy heart-faced girl, plus some other familiar faces, including one of the French girls and someone from my dorm floor.
It struck me that there were a few predictable types on this isle. There were the Lilacs of the world, whose lifetime gym memberships had carved muscle from calves that somehow remained perennially smooth, toned, and tanned. With their perky ponytails, they looked like they might burst into a cheer routine at any moment.
There were also what I liked to call the juvies. They were fidgety and restless, like they were ready to bolt at the slightest provocation. Who knew what’d made them such hard bodies. Running from the cops, maybe.
And then there were the girls with something to prove. They had carved biceps and probably enjoyed things like extreme triathlons and raw-egg smoothies, and dreamt of the day they could fight an upstart like me. In a cage.
The girls hailing neither from the U.S. nor the U.K. were a bit harder to pin down, though there were only a handful in that category. There were those two French girls. I’d also seen a few leggy, white-haired creatures, with frost blue eyes to match the ice that surely coursed through their veins. I’d nicknamed them the Valkyries, though there was no way I’d risk getting close enough to eavesdrop on whatever language they might be speaking.
There were a couple of oddballs, too, like Heart Face. That was the group I belonged in. No surprise there. I plopped onto the bottom bleacher with a sigh.
Ronan stood frozen, arms crossed at his chest, waiting for everyone to quiet down. I tried not to groan. It was no joke; he really was going to be my teacher.
“For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Tracer Ronan.”
Damn the little shiver I got at the sound of that husky, Scottish-sounding accent.
I wondered which type Ronan might be. Despite his good looks, he didn’t strike me as the sort with a lifetime gym membership and a fondness for racket sports and wheatgrass shooters. Nor did he seem like an ex-con or a barbell-wielding gym rat. Might he be an oddball, too? There was that hot tattoo to consider—not every guy had Proustian ink on his arm.
He was explaining the rules, and I tuned back in, nervous about what I might’ve missed. “You’ll keep a locker here,” he was saying. “I expect you to be geared up and ready to go at the start of each class.”
Some girl to my right already had her navy gym shirt tucked neatly into her navy gym shorts. Her brown hair was pulled into a bouncy ponytail, and she compulsively smoothed it, looking quite pleased with herself. If there were such a thing as a Step Aerobics Olympics, she looked primed and ready.
“Today’s class will be a simple fitness assessment,” Ronan said. “We need to see what kind of shape you’re in. We’ll be gauging things like strength, endurance, balance, and flexibility.”
I slumped. Generally, whatever thoughts I gave to my body pertained only to its role as a vehicle for my head. In other words, I was so screwed.
Those frayed mats, the bars and ropes—they all mocked me. I remembered the whole miserable drill from high school. How many sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups? I sucked at every single one of the ups.
“We’ll start today with a fifty-yard dash.”
The prospect made me surly. Hadn’t I proved my jogging ability already? And if they were grooming us to become sophisticated vampire attachés, what good would climbing a rope do, anyway? I knew for a fact that rope climbing held no practical applications.
Ronan dismissed us to the lockers to get changed.
The only thing I hated more than gym class was changing for gym class. I frowned, refusing to meet anyone’s eye. Locker rooms horrified me. Mortified me. Where else could a girl suffer the torments of her peers while also braving an encyclopedia of fungal infections?
I’d once learned the hard way that sneaking into a bathroom stall to dress was a magnet for harassment. So I resorted to my usual survival drill. Pick a corner locker, face the wall, change as fast as I could.