"Thanks, but I'm good," I tell him, already inching away. "I'll be back in a little while."

Instead of returning, I circulate around the party for the next hour, feeling a bit like a character from The Great Gatsby. Champagne's flowing from a big fountain out back, people are getting drunker and wilder, and the dance floor heaves with more frat boys every few minutes. I would have thought that a bunch of partygoers in togas would look sort of dorky, but because Peregrine and Chloe only invited the hottest people, the backyard is filled with Adonis look-alikes. I'm scanning the party for a glimpse of Caleb when I spot Arelia and Blake disappearing upstairs together. So much for his interest in me.

By one in the morning, I'm ready to go. I find Peregrine to thank her for the party and ask where my clothes are, but she's too busy making out with a tall, muscular guy with a tattoo of a tiger on his arm to say anything other than, "Just wear the toga home, for goodness' sake, Eveny."

Arelia, Margaux, and Chloe are in the corner of the ballroom whispering to one another, so I say a quick good-bye to them before heading out the front door.

Blake is sitting on the step and jumps up as I walk by. "Hey, Eveny, where are you off to?"

"Heading home," I say without stopping.

He hurries to catch up with me. "I'll walk you. You never know what might be lurking out there this time of night."

"I'll be fine," I tell him. I can't resist adding, "Maybe Arelia could use an escort back to her place, though."

He looks surprised. "She was just showing me around the house. Nothing happened." He grasps my forearm as he adds earnestly, "You're the girl I've been thinking about all night."

"Eveny?" comes a voice from the darkness behind me. I turn to see Caleb striding out of the house. Somehow, the toga looks better on him than it does on anyone else at the party. "What are you doing?"

I open my mouth to answer, but Blake beats me to it. "Hey, man, I was just about to walk her home."

"I'll do it," Caleb says instantly. He walks right past Blake and offers his arm to me. "C'mon."

"Look, man, I was talking to her-" Blake begins, but Caleb cuts him off.

"She's my girlfriend," he says, which makes my cheeks immediately heat up. "And I'm taking her home."

He turns and begins striding down the driveway, pulling me with him, before Blake can respond.

"Hey," I say, my heart fluttering madly as soon as the sounds of the party have faded behind us and we're alone. "Where'd you come from? I haven't seen you all night."

"I was around."

"You called me your girlfriend," I say after a minute. I'm thankful for the darkness, because he can't see me blushing.

"Oh," he says. "I didn't mean it, obviously."

I shake my head. "Yes, because that would be horrible."

"Sorry," he says. "That came out wrong."

I blink a few times. "Well, if I'm so repulsive to you, why did you drag me away from the perfectly nice, cute guy who was hitting on me?"

He stops walking and looks at me in surprise. "You were interested in that guy? I thought I was saving you from him."

"I didn't ask you to save me," I snap.

"And you're not repulsive," he says after a pause. "At all."

"Gee thanks," I say. "I can't think of the last time someone said something so flattering to me."

"Eveny-" he begins, but he stops as I pull my arm away from his.

"I can take it from here," I say, already quickening my pace toward my own front porch, which is visible on the hill up ahead. "Good night."

"But-" he begins to protest.

"I said good night," I say stiffly. I double my pace and continue ahead without looking back.

That night, the dream about the parlor returns, and it's even more vivid than last week. I hear screaming and crying as the blood pours out, and I see someone creeping from the room, hugging the shadows. I can't make out his face or any of his features in the darkness, so I follow him as he walks through the front door.

But the moment I leave the house, it begins to crumble. I run into the yard, but I lose the man in the darkness as I turn in horror. My beautiful mansion, the one my ancestors built, disintegrates, its bricks and stones crashing to the ground with a mighty roar. "No!" I cry.

But the tide of blood from the parlor is rising around me now, hot and sticky. I try to run from it, but as I get to the edge of the cemetery, it drags me down and pulls me under.

18.

On Monday morning, I wake up to a missed call from Meredith. When I play back her message, I grit my teeth as I listen to her chirp, "I hope you're not still mad at me. What Trevor and I have is special, and I know you'll be a good enough friend to understand." What irks me about her behavior has little to do with the feelings I once had for Trevor. With the distance of a few weeks and a thousand miles, and with destiny and power swirling around me in ways I never could have imagined, Trevor feels irrelevant.

What bothers me more is how easily Meredith has rejected the idea that my feelings could be hurt. The reality is, she simply doesn't care.

I'm still grumbling to myself as I head out the front door, and I almost trip over Caleb, who's inexplicably sitting on my doorstep. He hastily stands and brushes his hands off. "Sorry, I didn't know if your aunt was up yet, and I didn't want to wake anyone."

"What are you doing here?" I ask. Even though I have bigger things to worry about, his instant dismissal of me on the walk home from Peregrine's still stings.

"I wanted to explain what I meant on Saturday night."

"Oh, I think it was pretty clear," I tell him. I lock the door behind me and start walking down the driveway. "Let me recap: You could never imagine dating me, even though you don't find me entirely repulsive. That about the gist of it?"

He falls into step beside me, even though his Jeep is still parked in my driveway. "You don't understand."

"Don't I?"

"Eveny-" He attempts to interject, but I'm on a roll.

"I know I'm an outcast here. I know I don't really belong with the Dolls. But if you're not interested in me, why do you keep lurking around being all sexy and intriguing?"

He stops walking. "You think I'm sexy and intriguing?"

I groan. He's missing the point.

After a moment, he hurries to catch up with me. "Eveny, I'm not trying to jerk you around."

I snort. "Yeah, well, your social skills could use a little work."

"I know." He hesitates. "The thing is, I do like you. A lot."

This time, I'm the one who stops walking. "What?"

"I like you, Eveny."

A whole fleet of butterflies invades my stomach. I try to keep my face neutral. "Well, you have a funny way of showing it."

"The thing is, I'm trying my best to stop having these feelings for you."

The words hit me hard, and I start walking again so that he can't see my face. "Gee, sorry to be such an inconvenience."

He grabs my arm and spins me around. "Would you stop being sarcastic and listen to me?" He takes a deep breath and blurts out, "I'm not allowed to be in love with you. I'm not allowed to date you. I'm not allowed to be feeling this way at all."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm your protector, Eveny," he says. "For as long as Carrefour has existed, my family has protected your family."

"My protector?"

"It was all established in the town's founding ceremony," he explains. He looks miserable. "There's one protector for each queen. We're specially charmed and trained to guard you, and there are rules that go along with it, just like there are rules dictating everything else in this damned town."

I realize what he means. "And one of the rules is that you can't have feelings for the person you're protecting."

He nods. "As long as you're inside Carrefour's walls, I'm supposed to be able to sense when you're in danger. But the more I feel for you, the fuzzier the protectorate link gets. Like, I don't know, the way Wi-Fi slows down when there are too many people using it."

I choke out a laugh, despite everything. "You're comparing your feelings for me to a slow internet connection?"

"Maybe not the best analogy ever." He half smiles, but the expression quickly disappears as he adds, "Look, I'm sorry. But if I keep letting myself feel this way, I'm putting you in danger. And I can't do that."

I take a deep breath, trying to absorb what he's saying. "But what if I'm willing to risk not being protected?"

"Why would you do that?" he asks, his voice catching.

"Because I like you too," I say, "and I'm getting sick of some ancestral pact running my life."

There's sadness etched across his face as he says, "I can't run from who I am any more than you can. I'll just have to figure out a way to stop having these feelings." He pauses and says, "I just thought I owed you an explanation."

Without another word, he walks back up the hill and gets into his Jeep. I stay glued to the spot as he guns the engine and comes down my driveway to where I'm standing. "Get in," he says as he pulls up alongside me.

"I'm okay walking," I say, trying not to think of the first time I climbed into his car, when electricity crackled between us and anything felt possible. It feels like an eternity has passed since then.

"Eveny, you know I have to keep an eye on you. It'll be a lot easier if you're in my passenger seat."

"Fine," I say after a minute, climbing into his car and slamming the door behind me.

We ride the rest of the way to school in silence, and when he drops me off in the parking lot, he says that he has to go.

"Go where?" I ask, surprised.

"Training," he says, his jaw stiff, "with Patrick and Oscar, Peregrine's and Chloe's protectors."

"Oh," I manage. "What do you do exactly?"

"It's part intensive workout, part martial arts, part reflex training and speed. But the biggest thing is reviewing years' worth of intel our fathers, their fathers, and their fathers' fathers have gathered on Main de Lumiere. It's about knowing exactly how they might hurt you and staying one step ahead."

"So you're training to be a killing machine?"

I expect him to laugh, but instead, his mouth straightens into a thin line. "We're trained to kill, but that's always the last resort."

"I was joking."

He looks sad. "I know. So I'll see you later, okay?"

"Wait," I add. "All this protector stuff. Why tell me now?"

He hesitates for a moment before saying, "All these years, I figured I'd hate you, which would make protecting you easy because there wouldn't be any feelings involved. But then I saw you for the first time, and I felt exactly the opposite. I still do." He drives off without another word and my Stone of Carrefour, which is hidden under my standard-issue oxford shirt, heats up against my chest.

I'm floating down the hall in a fog of my own making a few minutes later when I hear Mona Silvestre from my French class saying to a guy near her locker, "Holy crap, did you hear what happened to that guy from LSU?"

"I heard he was murdered right outside the gate to Carrefour!" the guy replies.

I hurry to my own locker, where more people are gossiping around me as I grab my books. "Dude, some frat guy was stabbed to death," a soccer player named Phil Demetroux is saying. "I heard it was so gruesome that the police chief barfed all over the crime scene."

By the time I make it to first period English, I've managed to piece together the full story through snippets of hallway gossip, and I'm chilled to the bone.

Apparently, sometime on Saturday night, one of the LSU guys on Peregrine's guest list was stabbed to death just outside the city walls. But since his car wasn't found, police speculate that someone stopped him on the road, perhaps pretending to be injured, and killed him to steal his car.

"What the hell?" I hiss at Peregrine as soon as she takes her seat beside me in class. "You said nothing bad would happen if we opened the gates for a few hours!"

She looks at me defiantly. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Someone is dead!"

"Quiet down, okay?" I'm surprised to see Peregrine looking tearful. "I didn't mean for it to turn out this way. I swear, Eveny, I don't know what could have happened!"

Chloe slides into her seat then, looking equally disturbed.

"Eveny's pissed at us," Peregrine mumbles.

"We didn't know this would happen," Chloe says miserably.

"Well, this should really help us keep Carrefour off Main de Lumiere's radar," I mutter. "Nice work."

Chloe and Peregrine spend the remainder of class staring straight ahead. When the bell rings, they pick up their things and dash out without another word. My Stone of Carrefour continues to hum against my chest.