Stargazer

“Will you just hand me the lug wrench already? We’re not going to get finished any faster if you keep complaining.”

“Snappish.” Courtney’s full lips curved upward into a sneaky sort of smile. “What’s the matter, Bianca? Are you, oh, I don’t know—having some relationship trouble?”

“Things between me and Balthazar are as good as they’ve always been.” Technically that was true. As I knelt on the cold pavement, my wool gloves getting stained with grease, I tried to pay attention to the task at hand.

“I think you think you’re telling me the truth,” Courtney said. “I think you don’t even know where Balthazar’s going without you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Maybe possibly right around New Year’s Eve, I happened to see Balthazar in Amherst. Without you.”

“What were you doing in Amherst?”

“I happen to be familiar with the town, okay? I go there sometimes.

So does Balthazar, but apparently to see someone besides his girlfriend.

I’d be suspicious if I were you.”

He would have been there looking in vain for Charity. My face fell, and Courtney smirked. She couldn’t have guessed why I was actually upset, but it didn’t matter. Now that she had identified a weakness, she was sure to exploit it. Quickly, I said, “Balthazar goes all kinds of places. It doesn’t mean anything to me. We’re not attached at the hip.”

“Too bad. Getting attached at the h*ps is sort of the point.” Courtney winked as she thrust the lug wrench toward me. I snatched it and hoped she’d be satisfied with teasing me about the supposed infidelity of my supposed boyfriend. Balthazar and I both needed our masquerade, and we couldn’t afford anyone watching us too closely.

I made up my mind that this trip would be different for me and Lucas, but I hadn’t realized how different it would be.

“I don’t know where exactly we’ll meet up with him,” I said as Balthazar steered the driver’s ed sedan past a small white sign advertising the township of Albion. “He said we’d know it when we saw it, whatever that means.”

“Don’t worry. Lucas is right. Trust me, there aren’t many places he could go.”

Soon I realized what he meant. Albion was even tinier than the small town I’d grown up in: only a handful of streets clustered together, marked with a single stoplight in the center. The houses looked old, and except for a grocery, a gas station, and the post office, there didn’t seem to be anything like a store around. “Pretty slow, huh?”

“It was nicer a hundred fifty years ago, when we stayed here.” We meant Balthazar and Charity. I watched his face carefully, but he betrayed no emotion.

Balthazar parked the car on a street close to Albion’s one stoplight. A fine snow had fallen earlier that day, and our boots crunched as we walked toward the town center. Hungrily I searched in the darkness for some glimpse of Lucas. I badly needed to see him again, to hold him close, and talk for a long time so that we could reconnect. The intimacy between us suffered while we were apart, and that was what I wanted to rebuild.

Just as we stepped to the corner, I heard, “There you are.” I turned around, beaming. “Lucas?”

Lucas jogged toward us, in a heavy parka and knitted hat that made him almost unrecognizable. He opened his arms for me, and I ran right into them. His nose was cold against my cheek. “Hey, angel,” he murmured.

“You always see me first. You sneak up behind me every time.”

“And you love it.”

“Mmm-hmm, I do.” I kissed him on the cheek, then on the mouth.

“But someday I’m going to surprise you.”

“Good luck trying.” Lucas hugged me even more tightly. Despite the layers of clothes between us, the embrace was enough to make me warm inside.

“I have a secret to tell you.” My anticipation made my heart leap; I so hoped he’d be happy about this news. “I know why Mrs. Bethany invited human students to Evernight.”

“Really? Why?”

I told Lucas about the deduction Balthazar and I had made about Mrs. Bethany’s attempt to track ghosts, expecting him to share my satisfaction. Instead, his smile slowly dimmed. Confused, I said, “Come on, Lucas. This is huge. This is what you’ve been trying to find out for almost two years! Can’t you use this to show up Eduardo? Or do you think I’m wrong?”

“No, I’d bet cash money you’re right. When I applied to Evernight Academy, we used old Professor Ravenwood’s address in Providence, and she always did talk about the ghost in the basement. She was getting pretty senile before she died, though, so I didn’t put much stock in it.

Guess I owe her an apology at her graveside.”

“Then this is it. You can go back to Black Cross and tell them what we’ve learned. You’ll complete your mission. That’ll get Eduardo off your back, right?”

Lucas sighed. “I wish. The thing is, Eduardo’s not going to like it.

Some Black Cross cells deal with ghosts pretty regularly, but we almost never do. So another group of hunters would probably take over the investigation.”

“But you still got the answer, and now you know no humans are at risk.”

“You don’t know Eduardo. The guy doesn’t care how well-defended the school is, or how it’s the one place vampires never attack humans.