Chapter 14
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
The next week passed quickly, with no extra practices to help those of us who still needed to get their hunter marks.
We were relegated to our dorms outside class time.
Everyone was stressed at the school and on high alert for another attack.
But still I’d learned a lot in my two weeks here.
For one, the vampires were allergic to the sun, like deathly allergic, and no EpiPen was saving them from it.
It killed whatever virus kept them alive or undead or whatever you called it.
Sometimes they could use shadows to protect themselves if they saw a sunlight bomb coming but not always.
“Hey, Tyson,” a familiar female voice called over my shoulder, and I groaned.
Everyone was calling me that now. Word had spread that I’d bitten a vamp’s ear off, and now I’d never live it down.
I turned to see Daphne and brightened. “Hey.”
“Did you decide on the beach? I cleared it with Celia after, like, two full hours of begging. She’s sending a team of hunters to guard us.” She grinned.
Why did my heart hurt when I looked at her? And why was I thinking about Asher right now?
“I dunno. Harper invited me to hang with her parents.”
Daphne frowned. “No. You’re Club Orphan. You have to hang with us. I promise it’s so fun. Harper and Luna can come later in the night and sleep over if you want.”
Club Orphan? I chuckled at the term.
She was persistent, I’d give her that. The truth was I didn’t want to be around her and Asher and their little love bubble.
But I also didn’t want her thinking anything was weird between us.
I felt guilty for thinking romantically about a guy who was taken, but getting Asher out of my head was hard.
“Come on,” she pushed. “There’s going to be some blade duels. You can get practice in for your marks test.”
“Blade duels?” I perked up. I was awful with a blade and definitely needed practice.
She nodded. “Winner gets a full pack of Double Stuf Oreos. Asher usually wins, but he shares the Oreos with everyone.” She smiled.
Of course he did. Because he was sweet.
Practicing for the marks test was just what I needed.
“Okay, I’m in,” I told her.
She squealed, jumping up and down, and then rapidly downloaded on me what to bring. Hoodie, tent, sleeping bag, bathing suit. She was really bubbly and kind, and I couldn’t help but like her. This school wasn’t like the movies. Where was the mean blond girl ready to shove my face in a lunch tray?
The next day, I rode in the back of Daphne’s car with Jax, Asher’s best friend, while Asher sat shotgun. There was a caravan of five cars and about twenty of us in all. High numbers when you considered what it took to be invited to this party.
Parentless.
Not just one but two.
It was only an hour-and-a-half drive up the coast to a cute little white sandy beach. Celia’s hunter team of half a dozen flanked us as we started setting up our little campout.
Jax helped me erect the two-person tent I got at the campus store, which literally had a little of everything. It was like a tiny Walmart. The shelves only had a few items of each kind of product but a big variety of different things, which I appreciated.
My phone binged with an email, and I grabbed it.
I’d forgotten to put it on silent though I rarely got any calls.
It was a phone that worked in both Veil Haven and the mortal world, but no one other than Harper and Luna knew the number.
My old phone that Rae used to contact me on was lying in my desk drawer, dead.
I peered down to see the email was from Steven, my banker in New York. The subject line caught my eye: Sad news.
“One second.” I stepped away from Jax and opened the email.
My stomach sank.
I regret to inform you that a few days ago, Steven was murdered by vampires. He was a wonderful employee and husband and will be greatly missed from this community. In the meantime, Marcus Finley will be taking over his client list and helping you with all your needs.
My heart beat frantically in my chest.
Murdered?
It didn’t say died . It said murdered . By vampires.
Another email popped into my inbox right after it.
Subject line: Greetings, new clients.
It was from Marcus Finley, welcoming me to his brokerage and telling me to email him with any needs or concerns I had.
My mind spun with this news.
Murdered.
“You okay?” Asher’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. He had already set up his tent and was placing wood into a perfect stack for a bonfire.
I just nodded. “You know my banker in New York, the one I went to see that day?”
He dipped his head as if he knew who I was speaking about. “Steven. He handles everyone’s accounts. Even my tiny one.” He winked.
“He’s dead. Murdered by vampires. I just got the email.”
Asher frowned, pulling out his phone and scrolling. “Damn. Me too.”
“You really think it was vampires?”
He nodded. “They hate when the humans help us. Have had it out for him for years. He’s moved offices at least a dozen times since my parents died. His wife has him rune marked often to cover his scent.”
I frowned. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something about this felt off.
“My money is still there. All eight hundred dollars,” he bragged.
I smiled. “Good idea to check.”
I opened the banking app and logged in to check mine. I was happy to see that the seven million I’d asked Steven to donate to Angel House had been done and also that Rae’s Parisian apartment for four hundred thousand had been paid for at my request.
I hoped she was happy living in Paris and thought it was best she didn’t know my new number or email.
But when I was about to click out of the app, I saw that just yesterday, the twenty-thousand-dollar wire to Emilie had gone through. I frowned.
That was supposed to be canceled.
Maybe Steven forgot… But no, he’d said in his office that it was done.
Hmm.
It took me a minute to figure out in the app, but I was able to cancel the monthly wires going to Emilie so there would be no more mistakes.
“Okay, time for beach games!” Daphne cheered, bouncing up and down like she’d just had a Red Bull.
“Is she always this peppy?” I asked Asher with a smile.
His face drew downward, and he seemed to seriously consider my question. “No. She’s not.”
Ouch. I hadn’t meant to strike a nerve there.
He stepped up and walked over to his girlfriend. She took his hand and twirled around him, laughing, but his body language was rigid.
Was I imagining it? Or was he…not that into her? Not in the way she was into him.
I recalled last week right before the vampires had shown up, he’d been trying to tell me something.
Something about her mental health, and now my heart pinched, thinking that this version I saw of her might just be fleeting.
Sometimes people were really good at wearing masks when they needed to. I knew that was true for myself.
I mean, who didn’t have mental health issues from time to time? I knew that I’d battled some dark days right after I’d found out all that weird stuff surrounding my birth story.
I watched as Daphne set up some horseshoe toss games and the way Asher looked at her. You could see the adoration in his gaze. She was kicking sand at him and trying to goad him into playing against her. Finally with a grin, he took the challenge. But they seemed more like best friends than lovers.
What did I know? I’d never had a serious boyfriend. I had dated a few guys in high school for a grand total of four weeks, and it fizzled out. Relationships were work, and I was too young to put all my time into a guy who barely noticed me while he played video games.
But I was older now, and I found myself wondering what a relationship at this age would be like.
What going out on a date would be like and having someone to talk about classes with and…
I dunno, feel adored by. The way that Daphne probably felt now as Asher threw a giant marshmallow at her head from behind.
They laughed playfully, and my heart ached for that kind of love.
I was so entranced by my thoughts I barely noticed Jax sit next to me.
“Hola, chica.” He nodded to me.
“Hey.” I smiled.
He was tracing the hunter marks on his forearm with his finger.
“Do they hurt?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Sometimes they tingle though. Like they’re waking up.”
Creepy.
“What do they mean?”
“Strategy,” he said, pointing to one. “Intellect.” He pointed to another. “Strength and defense.” He finished pointing to all four.
I nodded. “Sounds badass.”
He shrugged. “I’m a sentinel. It’s okay. Not everyone can be a slayer or an arcanist.”
I grinned. “Everyone wants to be a slayer, huh?”
“Hell yeah. I want to be the one to kill those cabrones.”
I didn’t know what cabrones meant in Spanish, but I knew it wasn’t a good word.
I knew that Harper hadn’t exactly been thrilled with her hunter runes either. And Luna seemed excited but also in shock to be an arcanist.
“So how long have you known Asher?” I asked. I didn’t know much about Jax, just that he and Asher were best friends and usually together. He seemed sweet, always stopping to chat if he saw me in the halls and ask how I was settling in.
“Since kindergarten. I hated him because he stole my Lego bricks,” Jax said with a smile, and I grinned.
“Guess you got over that.”
“Eventually.” He chuckled, but then his face became serious. “We were all in the middle of vampire history class when news spread about the attack. One by one, they came to the classrooms to pull us out and tell us our parents were gone.”
Chills raced up my arms. His parents died in the same attack as Asher?
“I’m so sorry,” I told him.
He nodded. “Daphne freaked out when they told her. She just ran. She ran outside and into the woods like she just wanted to get away from it all.”
My heart fissured at his words. Poor thing.
“It was chaos on campus, and there wasn’t enough staff to look for her, so Asher and I went. We weren’t even really friends with her before that. She was kind of a snob.” He chuckled at that.