Two guys who seemed to be Ronan’s peers joined him on the stage. They whisked away the body and swabbed the blood from the platform in a matter of moments.

Like that, Mimi was gone.

All eyes went back to the headmaster, none of us brave enough to utter a sound. He gave us a paternal smile, and it made my skin crawl. “Where was I before our little . . . object lesson?”

Paternal indeed. Just how old was Claude Fournier?

He scanned the crowd, lingering on some girls longer than others. “Such lovelies this year,” he exclaimed. “And I see I have your attention now. You are a very special group, you know. Very privileged. You, among all others, have been chosen. You, among all others, have the chance to join us.”

I chafed my hands along my arms. Is he going to make us vampires?

“No, no, sweets.” He chuckled, and at first I panicked, thinking he’d read my mind. But then I saw the wide-eyed terror writ clear on the other girls’ faces and realized that everyone had jumped to the same conclusion.

“You will not be vampires,” he assured us. “Never that. To be Vampire is a man’s destiny. But we cannot survive without you, my fair ones. You see, only you have the opportunity to be a part of an elite group. A group that ensures the survival of the coven. This group is known as the Watchers. And to be Watcher is a woman’s fortune.”

He said that last bit as though it was the greatest honor girls like us could ever attain. My thoughts turned grim. It was once considered an honor to be a sacrificial lamb, too.

“Despite our powers, those of a vampiric nature cannot travel everywhere. We cannot be everything. And so we create Watchers. To represent. To defend. And sometimes to kill. The Watcher is the agent of our will. She is an extension of our power.”

I dredged every girls’ face in that crowd from my memory. I wondered what kind of gifts they had that’d been spectacular enough to catch a vampire’s eye.

Why had I been chosen? I was quite smart, yes, but so were lots of other people in the world. Though Ronan had mentioned I was one of the few geniuses who came with an abusive father. So was I here because my father had beaten me up? My specialty was that I knew how to take a punch? It appeared that spending my formative years getting smacked around by my dad may have earned me the privilege of getting smacked around by a bunch of vampires. The thought sent cold dread twining through my belly.

And just how many vampires were there? Ronan had mentioned the old ones, plural. Old. Well, duh. I steeled myself, thinking of the verbal flogging I’d give him next time we met. Him and that stupid Proust tattoo.

“But not all of you will ascend.” The headmaster’s voice dripped with mock regret, and I tuned back in, and fast, imagining that the girls who failed weren’t exactly put on a Carnival Cruise back home.

“Look around you,” he commanded.

I felt the crowd around me shift. And I felt eyes on me, even as I stared right back. These girls had backbone. They looked defiant, angry even. Where in the world had they found this many girls resilient enough to withstand such a place?

The girls were tough. And the other unifying characteristic? Every last one of them was as lovely as the headmaster had said.

But why? Why was everyone so attractive? They were selecting and making what? Secret Agent Barbies?

Why not? I thought. If you lived for all eternity, better to be served by an army of teenage hotties.

And I was the odd one out, yet again. Because I had a brain. The only Skipper in a sea of Barbies.

“Look at your peers,” he pressed. “Only fifty of you will rise to the next level of training. Then but twenty-five the following year. You will eventually be whittled down to an elite group of five.”

I wasn’t ready to consider what happened to the remaining, oh, several dozen other girls.

“Your training will be intense. You will work hard. You will learn strength and fortitude. You will learn to toil and to do without. Through the years, you will cultivate yourselves, learning elegance, embracing lives of intellect and sophistication.

“The crème among you shall be chosen to be our representatives in the world. But it is a dangerous world, as many of you have experienced.” It seemed like his eyes lit on me, and I told myself it was my imagination. “And so your training must also be dangerous.”

He chuckled, and I felt that warmth flood me again, despite myself. “But you are my hothouse lovelies, and if you let me, I shall teach you to gavotte as expertly as you garrote.”

I shoved the warmth away, focusing on his words, on his gruesome little pun that likened dancing to strangling.

But then, in the darkest recesses of my mind, I went there, just for a moment. I’d felt the urge to throttle someone before—Daddy Dearest came to mind—but never could I bring myself to actually kill someone. Right?

“For the next year, you will be known as the Acari. That is from the Greek. It means ‘mite.’ Like . . . a tick. A parasite. And, like parasites, you shall feed off of our knowledge.”

This time he really did look at me, like I was his student and he wanted to explain some fascinating linguistic bit just to me. I made my face like stone, even though I thought my heart might explode from my chest. Being noticed was the last thing I wanted. His lips peeled into a smile as he turned his attention back to the rest of the crowd. “Indeed, you will gain strength by feeding off our very lifeblood. You already have.”

I gulped back bile. He meant blood. Like, real blood. As in, our little in-flight cocktail.

“Our lifeblood will aid you. Fortify you.” He waved his hand impatiently. “But I touch on topics that are for others to broach. You will reside in the Acari dormitory, where you’ve each been assigned a roommate. Every floor has a Proctor. The Proctor is ahead of you in your training—she has ascended to what we call Initiate. Your Proctors and teachers will inform you of any details I’ve withheld.”

He narrowed his eyes. I couldn’t tell where he was looking, and the effect was that he looked at all of us simultaneously. “And remember. You will show your dormitory Proctors and all Initiates respect. Never forget, you are merely Acari.”

The snow drifted down, and it cast its own shroud of silence over the crowd.

The headmaster’s voice pierced the calm with one final proclamation. “Stand warned, lovelies. Initiates are encouraged to teach you cruelty. And you should thank them for it. For to understand cruelty is to know strength.”

And then Headmaster Claude Fournier simply disappeared.

CHAPTER NINE

The crowd was dispersing, splitting into smaller groups and piling into a fleet of monstrous SUVs. I gave a last backward glance to the fortress on the hill. What was that place? Was it where all the vampires lived? Did it house stuff like dungeons and underground catacombs and imperiled virgins?

Either way, I was relieved it wasn’t going to be my new dorm. The thing looked haunted. And those standing stones had given me the creeps, too. Archaeologists may not have known what megalithic stones had been used for, but it sure seemed to me that I’d just seen my first human sacrifice.

I should’ve listened to my doubts and not joined him on that damned plane, but Ronan had made me feel safe, with those stupid green eyes and that stupid husky voice.

I caught up with him. “Don’t tell me you’re a vampire, too.”

I felt that heavy, green-eyed gaze on me. “Do I look like a vampire?”

“How the hell should I know?” Bracing myself, I forced my eyes to him. “I don’t understand why I’m here. Why would you bring people to this place? I knew I should’ve trusted my instincts, but no. All you had to do was look at me, and—” I froze, understanding coming like the flash of a bulb in my head. I glared accusingly. “You used some sort of vampire mojo to get me on that airplane.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but snapped it shut.

Aha. I was onto something. But before I could press him, he grabbed my arm, leading us toward a super-oversized version of a Ford Excursion. It reminded me of those ghastly stretch Hummers that kids rented for dances.

I stopped in my tracks. By this time I was panicked and scared and freaked and angry, feeling capable of either sarcasm or hysteria. I chose the former. “Wow, now that’s a real date getter. It’s like vampire prom night.”

“Annelise.” Ronan stopped walking. “You must never mistake human for Vampire, nor should you even joke about it.”

“In the same way you’re not supposed to joke in line for airport security?” I felt his exasperation and stared him down. “Well, how should I know, Ronan? I’d never seen a vampire before today, so I’m not exactly an expert. So, what, did you fail your vamp final exam? Is that why you’re not one . . . ov zee undead?”

I’d used my best Hollywood Dracula voice, but Ronan did not seem amused.

Leaning close, he gave my arm a little shake. “I told you, no jokes. I’m what’s called a Tracer. We find, track, and retrieve girls like you.” He’d said that last bit as though it left a foul taste in his mouth. I tried to pull my arm away, but he held firm. “I am not, nor have I ever wished to be, Vampire.” He gave me a squeeze before letting go. “Heed me, Annelise. There is no failing where vampires are concerned. Only dying.”

His tone of voice chilled me. I rubbed my arm, still throbbing where he’d gripped me, and wondered about the Tracer thing. How elaborate did this whole scene get? “What did you get me into?”

“What did I get you into?”

“Yes.” I was sure he’d used some sort of persuasive powers to get me on that plane. But still, I hadn’t been entirely helpless; I’d known Ronan wasn’t exactly swooping me away for a hot weekend getaway. But neither had I thought I was going to be a candidate for evisceration. “You’d said special school, but I didn’t realize I might be the one up for dissection. And what’s with all the hotties? Training in elegance and sophistication? What is this—some sort of geisha camp?”