Chapter 3
Lucy woke like she was surfacing from water.
The air was thick and damp when she gasped it in. But there was a breeze moving on her skin, lukewarm as breath. There was a chorus of frog song overhead. And a few feet away, the tree line sat patiently.
She was standing outside, in the field across from her dorm. In her pajamas, without shoes. And the low afternoon light she had fallen asleep to was long, long gone. The night was deep around her. So deep that the pond in the center of the field looked like a hole in the earth.
The sidewalk lights whirled as she spun around. There was no one with her in the quad that she could see—and she could see surprisingly well, despite the dark. Most of the lights in the windows were off.
And yet something about the dark felt very…full. As she stood, scrambling for her bearings, she found her eyes drawn once, then twice, to the same corner of the woods.
I don’t want to be here. It was a hilariously inadequate thought. But her whole body screamed it.
Between the low light and the surge of adrenaline, all four buildings looked the same.
She darted to the wrong dorm first. And once she correctly located Quincey’s front entrance, she realized, with a jolt, that she didn’t have her ID for the card swipe.
She knocked softly, at first. Then, when she remembered that the RA’s dorm was a ways down the hall, she pounded with both fists.
She forgot, until she saw the rumpled figure emerge, exactly who the building’s RA was. But making a better second impression wasn’t her first priority at the moment.
Lucy? Mila mouthed, her brown eyes narrowed in sleepy confusion. She padded across the hall and, with a click, pulled open the heavy outer door. “What’s wrong?” she rasped. “Are you okay?”
“Sorry.” Lucy’s own voice startled her: It was a cracked whisper even rougher than Mila’s. Her throat felt sore. “I think I was sleepwalking.”
Mila’s brow smoothed out, softening the rest of her face. She moved to the side of the door’s threshold, motioning for Lucy to come in.
“You’re certainly having a day, aren’t you?” she muttered. “Is your room unlocked, you think? Or is your roommate there to let us in?”
“I…” Lucy blinked, hard. Had Whitney come home? She was usually a light sleeper, so she didn’t think she’d missed it. Though she usually wouldn’t sleep through climbing out of bed, descending a flight of stairs, and walking outside, either. “I’m not sure.”
“I’ll get my keys and walk you up,” Mila said. “Wait here a second?”
Lucy watched Mila disappear around the corner toward her room, then slumped back against the textured cool of the concrete of the wall.
She could feel one last bead of sweat slipping down her neck—a slow, lukewarm slide. Absently, she reached up to swipe it away with two fingers.
They came away red.
And for the second time that day, she smelled it. That bright metallic tang.
It was standing there, with blood on her fingers and that smell coating the back of her throat, that the word finally swam through her consciousness.
It was such a full, immediate understanding that it must have crossed her mind, if only subconsciously, before that moment.
Maybe in the health center. Or maybe the moment she’d spotted the bruise on her neck.
“Mila?” Her voice sounded so quiet next to the blare of her thoughts. The useless cries of a door alarm for an intruder who was long gone. “I’m just gonna use the bathroom for a second.”
“Huh?” came Mila’s faint voice in reply. “Sure. Take your time.”
Lucy slipped through the nearby door and flicked on the overhead fluorescent lights. She didn’t run. It didn’t seem like there was much point anymore.
Her perpetually pink complexion was a sallow gray in the bathroom light. Her pale blond hair was a ghostly cloud from the humidity. When she swept it back from her neck, it felt damp under her fingertips.
She didn’t have to look. She could have left her hair right where it was, followed Mila back to her dorm. She could probably still pretend, if she tried hard enough, that none of this was really happening. But it would still be right there against her skin.
So she moved her hair clear. And she could see now exactly what was bleeding. Mixed among the mottled blue and purple in the center of the bruise, there were two deliberate punctures along the curve of her neck.
There was no such thing as vampires.
But if there wasn’t—then what was this?
It was a little past four a.m. when Mila let Lucy back into her dorm, but Whitney’s bed was still untouched. Lucy didn’t have long to worry, though—when she picked up her phone, she saw that Whitney had texted her earlier, while she’d been asleep.
Visiting my parents for the day. Won’t be back till late—don’t lock the deadbolt.
She pursed her lips and put her phone aside.
She would have welcomed the clacking of Whitney’s keyboard.
Or the light of the laptop, or even just the sound of someone else’s breathing.
In the dark and the quiet of the dorm, even lying there awake felt indistinguishable from sleep.
And sleep didn’t exactly feel safe at the moment.
So she curled sideways onto the bed and watched the door. It wasn’t until the dorm walls were washed with early-morning light that she allowed herself the luxury of shutting her eyes.
She jerked awake a few hours later with a gasp. No one was there to shush her for it.
She hadn’t meant to doze off, but she had to admit that it had done her good. Her head was less tight, her body less heavy. The overcast light still made her eyes water, but it wasn’t quite as painful to look at anymore. It was more like trying to read very small text: a strain, but a doable one.
Lucy draped an arm over her eyes. She could barricade her door, pull the covers over her head, and wait for Whitney or for Monday morning, whichever came first. It would be the easiest thing to do.
Maybe even the most logical. But for the first time since the party, she had a clear head.
She wasn’t sure she could afford to waste that.
As it turned out, Natalie wasn’t about to waste any time, either. By the time Lucy picked up her phone to text her, Natalie had already texted her twice.
Found someone who talked to Kitchen Guy at the party! We’re meeting at the Falls Quad Café at 2:30.
And then after that, time-stamped a few minutes later:
Do you want to be there? Totally understand if it’s too much, I can handle it myself if you need me to.
Lucy ran a thumb across her phone. If she made it through the next few days, she owed Natalie about five times over.
I want to be there.
Thank you so much for doing this.
Natalie replied quickly.
You’ve got it, babe
See you in a bit.
Lucy got dressed, forced herself through some plain instant grits, and took the shuttle ride to Falls Quad.
The courtyard was a very different place in the sleepy daylight. Even well into the afternoon, the quad was quiet: This time, when Lucy crossed the grass, no curtains fluttered to watch her. She moved quickly anyway.
The Falls Quad Café was markedly nicer than the mostly underground quick-service food court on the other side of campus—and while natural light wasn’t Lucy’s best friend at the moment, the café’s bright airiness was a bit of a comfort.
The lunch rush had passed, and most of the seats were empty.
The café was liveliest by the door, where it looked like there was a small club fair going on.
Lucy summoned a weak smile and politely demurred as several of them tried to pass her flyers.
A few of them had a surprisingly long reach. “Support independent campus radio?” asked the girl at the end of the table, extending her flyer into Lucy’s path.
Lucy stumbled a little as she made eye contact with the speaker, a beautiful girl with thin, delicate braids down to her waist. PALLAS RADIO, read her placard, FOR THE NOCTURNAL AMONG US.
Even now, Lucy was not in the business of saying no to pretty girls. “Sure,” she said. “Though I’m not feeling very nocturnal lately.”
The girl offered a closed-lipped smile as Lucy took the flyer. “Check us out anyway,” she said. “If you fall asleep, we won’t be offended.”
Lucy tucked the flyer into her purse and shuffled into line: For the first time since the party, she felt genuinely hungry, and something in the kitchen smelled amazing.
There were sandwich and salad fixings, chicken fingers and greasy french fries, some kind of quiche.
But whatever she smelled was deep and rich and meaty, with a hint of sweetness.
Almost like Jillian’s multi-hour, labor-of-love Guinness stew, if you drizzled a bit of honey across the top.
She stepped past the brownies, peered under the heat lamps—and there was no oven tray resting on the slats. The smell wasn’t something being served. It was something wafting from the kitchen in the back.
Lucy peered through, and she caught the eye of one of the staff members working over something on the cutting board. He noticed her, winked. “This’ll look a lot prettier by dinner,” he said.
She glanced down, then, to the shape in his gloved hands. A slab of steak, glistening, marbled red, and raw. There was a light, watery sheen of blood against the butcher paper.
And her stomach roiled once again. Not with nausea, or disgust.
With hunger.
Her heart pattered unevenly as she stepped out of line and made her way towards a table by the back. She could eat later. Or maybe never again.
She sank into a chair and rubbed at her temples as she watched the door for Natalie. Though as hard as she massaged the side of her head, she couldn’t quite dislodge the impossible word that was once again surfacing in her mind.