“Well . . .” I hedged.
“He forgot, didn’t he?”
“Something like that.” I actually sensed it was something like that and more, but in my short time on the isle, Amanda and Judge had both shown me moments of kindness, and I wouldn’t speculate about things that weren’t my business.
“Sorry, Nerd Bird. You’ll get your moment. Wouldn’t want to look too much like teacher’s pet in the first semester, anyhow.” Yasuo’s smile made the nickname affectionate, not an insult. He gave my shoulder a squeeze, and we strolled on toward the cafeteria in an easy, companionable way. “How’d a blondie like you get so dweeby, anyway?”
“Me? How about you? What’s your deal, Yas? I mean, you seem pretty nice. How’d you end up here?”
“You mean, how’d a nice guy like me end up in a coven of ancient, bloodthirsty vampires like this?”
I chuckled. “Precisely like that.”
“Let’s see. Here are the headlines: Mother Kidnaps Infant Son, Flees Yakuza Lover for America.”
I halted, stunned. It was the last thing I’d expected to hear. “Jeez. The Yakuza? That’s like the Japanese mafia, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah, that’s them. And the concept of son can be kind of a big deal. My biological father flipped when my mom left.”
“What happened?”
“We hid. I grew up. He eventually found us.” He forced a half hearted laugh. “I blame the Internet.”
There was obviously much more to the story. My voice was subdued as I pressed for more details. “And?”
Shutting his eyes, he took a shuddering inhale. “He killed my mother. And then I killed him.”
In that instant, I saw the great darkness that flowed beneath Yasuo’s smiling demeanor. He cleared his voice, and with it, the shadows cleared from his brow. “Next thing I knew, I was in a town car headed to an L.A. airstrip.”
“The vampires?”
“Yeah, a Tracer named Gunnar found me.” He shrugged. “I was curious. I had nothing left. It was either stay and face my uncle and his minions, or this.” We’d reached the dining hall and he gestured toward it. “This seemed the lesser of two evils, believe me.”
“Oh, crap,” I whispered. Ronan, standing on the stairs ahead of us.
“What is it?” Yas asked, immediately on guard.
I studied Ronan. We were supposed to meet at the pool later, but there he stood, holding a big box, looking very stern. “Ask not for whom the bell tolls. . . .”
“Uhh . . . what?”
“It tolls for me.”
“Are you, like, speaking in tongues or something?”
“No.” I sighed. “Nothing. Go on in, Yas. I’ll see you in there.”
I approached Ronan, alarms shrieking in the back of my mind. I looked skeptically at the parcel in his hands. “What’s that?”
“It’s for you.” He handed it to me. It was heavy and awkward, and my muscles flexed when I took it from him. “It’s your wet suit.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I hunkered down in my seat, slamming the door to the old Range Rover harder than necessary.
Eating lunch had been impossible.
Fitness class unending.
Today’s slew of Lilac barbs particularly excruciating.
All day, two images replayed on an obsessive loop in my mind: the canvas-wrapped body of the girl who’d died in the pool, and the thick black wet suit that hung in my locker like a skinned marine mammal. Did the wet suit mean I was going to have to go underwater? Hold my breath till bloody foam came out of my mouth? Was I to face something that would claw me enough to bring bits of gore floating to the water’s surface?
“Why can’t we do like normal people and swim in the pool?” I asked Ronan for the umpteenth time. “I like the shallow end. Our lessons have been going great.” Amazing how the threat of a nighttime swim in the frigid North Sea could make a pool seem infinitely less detestable.
I stared out the car window. Though the March sun set later than when we’d arrived in January, come late afternoon it always faded and the sky dimmed to a dull gray. “It’ll be dark soon. Isn’t it dangerous? Shouldn’t we do this during broad daylight?”
“It won’t be pitch-dark for hours yet.” Ignoring my tone, Ronan buckled his seat belt with that calm detachment he’d perfected and put the car in drive. “And even if it were dark, it’s a good exercise. You won’t face ideal conditions in the real world. Best not get used to them now.”
“Doesn’t this send me from, like, zero to sixty? What happened to the noodle and my little blue kickboard?”
Abruptly, he pulled the car to the side of the gravel road. “The fighting will begin soon, Annelise. And then these girls will be your competitors in more than just the classroom. Do you truly want them to see you thrashing about in the shallow end?”
Fighting. Girls had died already, and yet Ronan was telling me the challenges hadn’t even begun yet? I tried to work some moisture back into my dry mouth. “Um, I’d rather they see my wet suit and think I’m a badass. . . .”
“That’s the way.” He popped back into gear, turning onto a road I hadn’t seen before. We bounced over a rocky trail rough and rutted enough to knock me back against the headrest.
Despite the madly jouncing SUV, Ronan elaborated in his typically cool Ronan fashion. “It’s impossible to re-create natural conditions in a pool. Variables like temperature, wind velocity, currents, riptides . . . Visibility issues like murk, flora, black water—”
“Okay, stop.” I put up my hand. “You’re freaking me out. Let’s just start by mastering my float; then we can work our way up to murk. Which, by the way, I don’t believe is a word.”
I think he actually smiled. Too bad I was too panicked to savor it. It seemed we really were driving to a cove, with me really wearing a wet suit. There was no stopping any of it.
He hit a huge pothole, and I grabbed the looped leather handhold on the door. “How come I have to do this as a special study? Am I the only person who can’t swim?”
“No, you aren’t the only one who can’t swim.”
I waited for him to elaborate. Which, of course, he did not. “Well, why don’t these other mysterious nonswimmers have to wear wet suits and go to Crispy Cove, too?”
“It’s Crispin’s Cove, and the other Tracers tutor as they see fit.”
The wet suit was riding up my backside in the most unpleasant way, but there was no chance I’d be working out any wedgies in front of Ronan. I did have some pride.
Putting it on had been a humiliating and demoralizing chore. It was heavy, it was daunting, and it had the most maddening up-the-back zipper, which had taken me ten minutes to master. At first I’d fantasized about asking Ronan—perhaps in my best sultry-starlet purr—if he’d zip me, but reality had found me hopping and grunting with one arm behind my back instead.
I plucked at the thighs, using the bounce of the tires to scooch back in my seat in an effort to free myself from my impromptu neoprene G-string. No luck, and it made me churlish. “Well, why doesn’t Lilac have to swim in subzero water?”
“Your wet suit will keep you warm. And Lilac has her own special study.”
I sat upright, my mood brightening at once. “What’s Lilac’s weakness?”
Ronan turned onto a road even bumpier than the last. “Everyone is assigned a special study. None of them is your business.”
This was. If I was ever going to best von Slutling, I had to find her Achilles’ heel. I remembered the elementary German workbook I’d spied on her desk. “It’s some language thing, isn’t it?”
Ronan stared ahead, refusing to answer.
“Hmph.” There went that conversation.
I stared out the window into the growing dusk, surlier than when we’d set out. I was trapped on this island, trapped in a too-tight wet suit, about to be trapped in freezing, black water. It put me in a complaining mood. “It’s so dark here.”
“Enjoy it. You won’t realize you miss the darkness until it’s gone.”
“I doubt that.” I chafed my arms. We were in the middle of nowhere, and the prospect of vampires running amok in the steely half-light turned my skin to gooseflesh.
“We’re close to the pole. Just as there are months of mostly darkness, there will come a time of near-constant twilight. They call it the Dimming.”
The word sent a shiver across my skin, even as a lightbulb went on in my head. We were near the Arctic Circle. Summer would be here before I knew it. Come June, there would be a sun that never set in a sky that was rarely bright. “The land of the midnight sun,” I muttered. “And that’s why vampires like it?”
“Aye, that’s why. It enables vampires to move about, imagining the sun on their skin, but without risk of discomfort.” His voice was laden with some heavy emotion that told me he spoke of more than just the loss of suntans and his daily dose of vitamin D. “So appreciate the darkness now, Annelise, because you’ll miss it come the Dimming.”
“Fine. I’ll start missing it tomorrow. How about that?” My heart rate spiked as a gently lapping cove came into view. The gunmetal sky was darkening rapidly now, pressing down on water the color of night. He pulled to a stop beside a jagged boulder, casting the car into cold shadow. I clung tight to my buckled seat belt. “But for now, it’s too dark for my taste.”
“Annelise.” He turned to face me. Dramatic shadows accentuated his stubble, the cleft in his chin, the shock of hair on his brow, like he’d become a charcoal drawing. “There is no putting this off. You must learn. And you must open your mind to the night. It, too, has lessons to teach. There’s a Chinese proverb. ‘Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.’ ”
“Thanks, Obi-Wan. I’ll remember that as I drown.”