The girl in the gym suit lifted a .nger to her lips. "Please don't say anything!" she pleaded. "If we get in trouble, your cousin does too!"

"How did you get in here? And how do you know who my cousin is?"

"Because Exo smuggled us into the alchemy lab. We were hiding in there when you came to get your homework," she explained.

"I knew Exo was up to something!" Jules said. "I just didn't think it involved, you know, girls."

Jules looked around to make sure no one else was in the hall before grabbing the girl's hand. His heart began to beat faster as he felt her smooth skin beneath his . ngers.

"Tell Bette to follow us," he whispered. "Using the elevator to get back to the grotto is too dangerous now. There's an old stairway on this .oor that leads to where you need to go. Not many students know about it, and it's rarely used anymore. It should be safe."

Cally turned and waved for Bette to hurry. Jules led them down a hallway off the main corridor to a small wooden door .tted with a bra.s.s handle. The door creaked open easily, revealing a set of tightly winding stairs that led downward into darkness.

"Thank you for helping us." Cally smiled. "I think we can take it from here."

Jules shook his head. "No, it's safer if I go with you," he said. "I can run interference if someone's down there."

As Cally and Bette stepped inside the stairway after him, the door closed behind them on its own. They followed the stairs down, pushing their way through cobwebs. After a few minutes they arrived at another narrow door.

"This opens onto a section of the grotto roughly a couple of hundred yards from the Ruthven's entrance tunnel," Jules explained. "I'll go .rst to make sure the coast is clear."

He stepped out and looked around for signs of students or faculty but saw none. He reopened the door and signaled for the girls to join him.

"Once again, thank you for your help," the girl in the gym suit said, teasing him with a smile. "It was very gallant of you."

"It was nothing, Miss . . . ?" he said, responding to her . irting tone.

"Cally."

Jules stepped forward and took Cally's hands in his, bowing slightly at the waist as his lips brushed lightly against the curve of her . ngers. "Enchante, Cally." Jules smiled.

"The pleasure is mutual, monsieur," she replied, affect-ing an exaggerated curtsy.

Delighted with their play, Jules and Cally started laughing, but when they heard Bette giggle, Cally blushed. "We better be going," she said, letting go of his hands.

"Au revoir." Jules smiled.

Jules paused to watch the girls dash back to their side of the grotto. He told himself he was only making sure they got back safely, but in reality he just wanted to admire Cally's b.u.t.t.

Chapter 15.

W.

hen Bathory Academy was originally founded, there was no such thing as a school cafeteria. But as Victor Todd's blood-banking scheme grew more and more accepted by the population, that eventually changed. Now there was a large room set aside for the students and faculty to take their meals, . lled with tables and chairs straight out of Ikea. At the back of the cafeteria was a large, triple-door blood bank refrigerator set into the wall.

As Lilith stepped to the head of the line, she had an un.o.bstructed view of the racks of stainless steel drawers stocked with plastic bags full of human blood.

The undead servant in cafeteria whites smiled in greeting and asked, "What will it be tonight, dearie?"

"I think I still have some of my private stock banked on reserve," Lilith replied.

"Indeed you do, Miss Todd." The lunch lady opened one of the doors of the refrigerator and reached inside a drawer, withdrawing a blood bag, which she then placed on a plastic cafeteria tray. On the front of the bag was a label marked with a large AB-along with the HemoGlobe corporate logo: a single drop of bright red blood superimposed over a world silhouetted in white.

Lilith took her tray and sat down at the nearest available table. Within a minute or two all her friends had joined her. After all, no matter where she sat, it was the popular table.

"Have you seen Annabelle Usher tonight?" Carmen asked as she sat down opposite Lilith, the corner of her mouth pulled into a smirk. She nodded in the direction of a short, pale girl with a round face and dark hair cut in a blunt bob, with what looked like a pair of upside-down Us drawn in place of eyebrows. "She's such an utter spod! And look at how dingy her clothes are-doesn't she have more than one skirt and blouse to wear to school?"

Lilith shook her head in disgust. "If a legacy student's family is so hard up they can't provide a dresser for their child, she has no business attending Bathory." She paused and looked around the room. "Speaking of which, where's the newbie?"

"You mean Cally?" Bianca Mortimer asked, missing the point as usual. "I haven't seen her since . ight cla.s.s.

Why? Do you want to talk to her?"

"Did I mention she had the gall to try and lay some pathetic 'why can't we all just get along' speech on me last night? I told her to kiss my a.s.s."

"Lilith's right," Carmen agreed. "We've got enough half-bloods and legacies ruining things for the rest of us here-we don't need a New Blood making things worse."

"I think you're making a mistake," Melinda said suddenly.

The chatter at the table fell abruptly quiet as the other girls turned to stare at Lilith, who was glaring at Melinda like an angry eagle. When she . nally spoke, her voice was surprisingly calm.

"What was that?"

"I just think maybe you shouldn't be in such a hurry to make an enemy out of her, that's all," Melinda replied cautiously. "She's not some mousy little spod. You've seen what she can do."

"Are you saying I should be scared of her?" Lilith asked, her eyes narrowing into slits.

"No, of course not, Lili," Melinda replied with a nervous laugh.

"I'm not surprised you're taking up for that s.l.u.t, Melly," Lilith said, venom dripping from every word. "Everyone knows how cozy you are with the Maledetto twins. I guess you want to add the newbie to your collection of lonely girls."

"What are you trying to get at, Lilith?" Melinda growled.

"Oh, come off it, Melly!" Lilith sneered. "Of all the girls at this table, you're the only one who's never had a boyfriend. I wonder why, hmmm? You're too taken by the newbie to see the truth. There's something wrong about her, seriously wrong. I knew it from the .rst moment I saw her! Looking at her sets my fangs on edge."

"You're just jealous," Melinda shot back.

"Jealous?" Lilith barked a humorless laugh. "What's there to be jealous of? She's a weak-blooded loser who can't even shapeshift!"

"She put down the Van Helsing who killed Tanith single-handed," Melinda replied. "That's more than any of us have ever done-including you. I wouldn't call her a weak-blooded loser."

The other girls seated at the table took a collective breath in antic.i.p.ation of the explosion they knew was sure to follow. Instead Lilith pushed back her chair and, without saying another word, got up from the table and stalked out.

Carmen turned and glowered at Melinda. "Have you gone psycho, talking to her like that?" she snapped. "And for what? To get in the pants of some New Blood s.k.a.n.k?"

"You really don't get it, do you?" Melinda asked, shaking her head in disbelief at her friend's utter cluelessness. "If you'll excuse me, I think I'll go and .nish having lunch with one of my friends." With that Melinda picked up her tray and moved over to join Bella Maledetto, who was sitting by herself, looking lost and confused without her sister.

Lilith sat on an outcropping .fty feet above the . oor of the grotto, her arms wrapped about her legs, her chin resting on her knees as she stared blankly into the darkness that surrounded her. She had to get away from the others, and this was the one place she knew no one would ever think to look for her.

Up to this point in her life, her physical beauty, her father's wealth, and her family's status had provided her with plenty of friends. Indeed, until now she had never had to work at making friends, much less keeping them.

"Friends." That was a laugh. Melinda, Carmen, and the others were like the tiny .sh that swim along-side great whites, nibbling at the crumbs that fall from their jaws. Still, it was important to have the right kind of friends if she wanted to remain popular. It wouldn't do to have her pilot .sh swimming after another shark.

How would she know she was beautiful, popular, and desirable if she didn't have a circle of fawning friends eager to pay attention to her and tell her how special she was? Without their adulation, admiration, fear, and respect, how could she be sure she even existed at all?

In less than a week, she had lost two friends, all because of Cally Monture. Tanith was dead because of the New Blood's s...o...b..ating, and now Melinda was openly siding with the wh.o.r.e, defying her in front of the others. She should have b.i.t.c.h-slapped the little traitor until her ears rang. But what good would it have done? The real threat was Cally, not Melinda.

The very thought of the New Blood made Lilith's guts writhe like snakes on a bon.re. It aggravated her that the others didn't sense the wrongness in Cally. Although Carmen and a couple of the others were quick to rag on the newbie, Lilith knew it was out of a desire to get on her good side, not because they recognized Cally for what she was: a threat. A threat to her, in particular.

There was the sound of voices from the grotto . oor below, distracting Lilith from her thoughts. She looked down and saw three .gures standing on the Ruthven side of the cavern. One was a male dressed in a Ruthven's uniform while the other two were female, one in a Bathory Academy uniform, the other in a gym suit.

As Lilith watched, the male stepped forward, bowed, and kissed the hands of the girl in the gym suit. With a surge of alarm, Lilith recognized the boy as Jules and the girls as none other than Cally Monture and Bette Maledetto.

How dare she speak to him! Jules was hers! Hers and no one else's!

Anger as hot as fresh-poured steel shot through her entire body, spreading like a .ood of foul, black, bubbling tar. As she watched the New Blood s.l.u.t curtsy before her beloved, it was all Lilith could do to keep from swooping down and clawing the . lthy little wh.o.r.e's eyes out of her head. Her whole body vibrated with suppressed fury, like a bowstring pulled to its limit, as Cally and Bette ran back across the grotto like a pair of mice sprinting through an open meadow. It would be so easy to shapeshift into her winged form and drive her talons deep into the New Blood's back. As satisfying as the sound of Cally's spine snapping would be, Lilith knew it would pale in comparison to the glory of her screams as she slowly tore the . esh from her body with nothing but tooth and claw.

Lilith looked at her hands and saw they were shak-ing so badly they seemed in danger of falling off her wrists. Doing her best to control her trembling . ngers, she reached inside the pocket of her blazer and removed her tortoisesh.e.l.l compact.

All she needed was some rea.s.surance, that was all. Just a little something to help her regain control so she could go back to her cla.s.smates and smile and pre-tend that everything was just .ne while she plotted out how to get Cally alone so she could kill her.

She popped open the lid, expecting to be rewarded as before by the sight of her lovely face shining back at her in all its glory. Instead what greeted her was a monster with blood-red eyes and slavering fangs.

Shocked by the sight of her hate-.lled face, Lilith threw the offending mirror away. The compact tumbled end over end before .nally smashing to pieces on the stones below.

The mirror was destroyed, but the .end inside it was still very much alive.

Chapter 16.

T.

he rest of the night Cally was riding high on the adrenaline buzz that came from breaking the rules and getting away with it. As she sat through her remaining cla.s.ses, she decided that being sent to Bathory Academy wasn't so bad after all.

Granted, the majority of the school's faculty and student body couldn't be counted on to spit on her if she was on .re, but now she could see that not all of them were stuck-up sn.o.bs like Carmen and Lilith. Tonight she had made friends with Bette and Exo, and she knew Jules was ready for more. She had to admit that the instructors at Bathory were far better than their counterparts at Varney Hall. Her scrivening instructor, Madame Geraint, was genuinely encouraging and, despite her gruff exterior, Coach Knorrig seemed to be truly interested in helping her realize her potential.

Although she knew she was attending the school under false pretenses, if she was going to survive in the vampires' world, she would need to learn everything she possibly could about Old Blood society, powers, and abilities, just as she'd learned about humanity from her grandmother and about New Bloods at Varney Hall.

She was still feeling optimistic as she left Madame Boucher's history cla.s.s. School was over for the night, and as she walked to her locker, Cally wondered if she would run into Peter again on her way home. She hoped so, because she really wanted to tell him about everything that had happened at school today.

With Peter she had found someone who understood where she was coming from and didn't judge her for it. Not wanting to leave seeing him to chance, she used the number he'd given her and called him. They quickly arranged to meet in the cemetery after school. Cally's good mood changed, however, as she reached her locker and saw a folded piece of parchment wedged into one of the ventilation slits.

The note, written in the formal chthonic script of the Old Bloods, read: Someone saw us. She's going to tell the headmistress if we don't give her money. Meet me in the grotto after school, Bette.

As Cally stepped out of the elevator into the corridor that led to the grotto, she realized that the gaslights had been extinguished. The darkness was deeper than any she had ever experienced before. It was like she had stepped out of the elevator car and into the deepest ocean trench.

She stood there for a few moments, allowing her eyes to adjust to the complete absence of light. The darkness began to resolve itself into various shades of gray, and she resumed walking down the hall toward the grotto. At the entrance, she heard a .uttering sound from the eastern end of the cave.

"h.e.l.lo?" she whispered into the pitch blackness. "I got the note."

In answer, she heard a .apping sound. Cally looked up, trying to locate the source of the noise, but all she saw were the hand-carved stalact.i.tes that hung from the roof like an inverted forest.

"Where are you?"

"Over here," a voice whispered from the darkness.

As she moved in the direction of the voice, she felt something crunch under her shoes. She looked down and saw that she had stepped on fragments of silvered gla.s.s.

Crouching down to pick up a piece of the shattered mirror, she felt a swoosh of wings so close behind her head it raised the hairs on her neck. Cally jumped up and spun around on her heels, her heart racing in her chest, but there was no sign of whatever had just . own past.

"Who's there?" she shouted into the blackness. "Answer me!"

Cruel laughter seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. Cally cursed herself for being fool enough to lower her guard. Even though the school was supposed to be a vendetta-free zone, she still should have known better than to walk right into an ambush.

There was a sudden loud explosion of . apping wings and a furry body with the face of a demon hurtled down from its hiding place, slamming into Cally with the force of a car and knocking her onto her back.

As Cally rolled onto her side, the air shimmered about the batlike creature, and suddenly Lilith was standing over her.

"He's mine! All mine and no one else's, you stupid b.i.t.c.h! Now and forever!" Lilith shrieked, grabbing Cally by the top of her head.