Combat. Just the thought of it made me ill. Of all the things to be forced to compete in, they chose combat? And what did that mean, anyway? We’d dress up in armor and spar? What would the rules be? What constituted winning? Would girls get hurt? Would girls die?

But of course they’d die. Girls were dying in training; getting offed in the heat of competition would be a given.

“You’re looking shifty, Charity.” Lilac slammed the door to our room and slung her bag on her bed. “Panties in a twist over the upcoming fight? What a shame you suck at anything to do with gym class.”

She flopped on her bed, and for a moment we just stared at each other. It was such a mockery of regular dorm life, like two roomies in for the night, ready to gab. Then she pulled out her lighter, and I heard a clicking sound. Flick, flick, flick—over and over.

And she called me a freak. “Why don’t you do us a favor and set yourself on fire?”

She fingered the neck of her tunic. I’d almost forgotten her scar, but her tugging revealed more of that raw, rippling skin than I’d ever seen. She already had caught on fire once in her life.

It chilled me to consider what might’ve happened. More chilling, though, was the fact that, despite having once suffered third-degree burns, she was still drawn to all things flammable.

She snapped the lid to the Zippo shut. Pinching it between two fingers, she wriggled it before me. “Rumor has it they’ll let us fight with the weapon they gave us. Sort of like our specialty.”

It made my flesh crawl to consider why Lilac might want to enter a sparring ring armed only with her lighter. I let my eyes travel back to the ridge of disfigured skin on her neck. “So, how’d you get your specialty, Lilac?”

“My mother brought this girl home once,” she said in a musing voice. She traced the edge of her scar, and the movement was dreamy, almost sensual. “Just some foster trash, but Mummy decided she was her little ragamuffin. Decided she was my new sister. But she wasn’t.”

“Umm, okay. You didn’t like your foster sister—there’s no surprise.” Was that why Lilac had borne me such instant and irrational hatred? “So is this a wealth thing? Is that why you hate me so much?”

“Oh, it’s so much more than that. You’re a dead ringer,” she said, and her choice of words gave me a shiver. She scowled at my hair. “Little Sunny, with her sweet blond hair.”

“The kid’s name was Sunny?” I knew a flash of sympathy for this anonymous child. I had enough baggage around the whole blond thing, I couldn’t imagine having to bear the name Sunny in addition.

Lilac grinned. It was the first time she’d ever smiled at me, and it made the hairs on my arms stand on end. “Sunny, Sunny. She fooled everyone. But not me. Everyone always asked why I couldn’t be more like her.” Her grin turned into a sneer. “Poor girl, but so pretty and so bright.”

“So that’s it? You had a foster sister who looked a lot like me, poor but smart, and it didn’t vibe with your rich-and-stupid routine? Or did you just hate that your mummy liked this Sunny better than you?”

Repeating the name made something click. I’d heard it before in Lilac’s psycho sleep chatter. Foreboding made my skin crawl. “Wait. Is this Sunny, as in Burn, sunny, burn?”

Lilac narrowed her eyes, but the smile didn’t leave her face. “Poor Sunny. The house burned down with her in it.”

Blood turned to ice in my veins. Lilac was always calling me a freak, but as far as I was concerned, she was the only mutant in this dorm room. She must have incinerated her foster sister. And now she dreamt of incinerating me.

I doubted I’d ever sleep again.

I forced my voice to remain calm. “So, you gonna burn me while I sleep, Lilac?”

“No,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I’m going to burn you in front of everyone.” And then she leaned over to unlace her boots.

“Over my dead body,” I said.

“Oh, it will be. And, apparently, I can even win a prize for it.”

The Directorate Award. “Careful, Lilac. People might think you’re overconfident.”

“You know I’m stronger than you are,” she said. “How many of those pretty little stars did they give you? Four? I saw you in class today. In your lame hands, they’ll be about as deadly as Christmas ornaments.”

I bristled. She could diss my hair but not my weapon. “You know nothing about my shuriken, von Slutling.”

Her laugh trilled through the room. “Listen to you, freak. Shur-i-ken . . . sure-ya-can . . . sure-you-can’t.”

Little did she know, her posturing only firmed my resolve. “Don’t you have homework or something? You can burn down the dorm, sleep with every last Trainee, and spin-class your way to Watcher status for all I care, but it won’t do any good if you fail out of German.”

I’d hit a nerve.

She curled her upper lip in a flat-eyed snarl. Flowing hair plus that signature blank viciousness, and von Slutling looked like a lunatic Playboy Bunny. “What do you know?”

A lot more than you, I wanted to say, but I kept my mouth shut. I talked big, but I honestly didn’t want to get torched in my sleep.

She snagged her German workbook from her bag and swung her legs onto her bed, and we proceeded to ignore each other.

Reaching onto my desk, I snagged Sun Tzu’s Art of War and was immersing myself in wisdom that seemed just-almost useful, when I heard it. A quiet shlish sound.

I glanced over, but Lilac was slumped, looking sound asleep over her grammar homework. My eyes went to the tiny fold of paper that someone had slid under the door.

Was it for me? I sat up straight, on alert. Or was it for Lilac? I wasn’t sure which would be more of a coup.

I waited, but Lilac didn’t move. Miraculously, she slept on, breathing evenly onto the pages of her workbook. I decided to make my move before a stiff neck woke her up, and I tiptoed out of bed.

Grabbing the paper, I shuffled back to my bed, ready at any moment for von Slutling’s eyes to fly open in an accusing stare. But they didn’t.

As it turned out, the note was for me. It was scrawled in furtive, barely legible script that looked like a boy’s handwriting.

Drew,

Something’s happened. They said I might not live

until morning.

Meet me by the gates, near the stones, tonight at mid-

night.

Please. I need you.

—Yas

I stared. His words chilled me to my bones.

I might not live until morning.

What did that mean? Was he dying? Was he going to be in a fight? Had there already been one? I had no idea what the situation could possibly be. The Trainees kept their business pretty top secret. We girls had no clue what happened behind their locked gates.

Yasuo needed me. But tonight? After curfew? All the way across campus, past those creepier-than-creepy standing stones, all the way to the gates of the boys’ dorm? I dared not think how many rules that little scenario broke.

I glanced at the note, and four words popped out at me: Please. I need you.

Ultimately, that was what convinced me. I had a friend and he needed me. Me. Nobody had ever needed me before.

Come midnight, I was going to break pretty much every rule available to me. I was venturing to the forbidden heart of Vampire central.

To the standing stones and the castle on the hill.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I lay in bed, waiting for time to pass. Apparently, this was to go down in the Drew Annals as the longest night ever.

I didn’t know what was going on. Yasuo basically said they might not let him live. But they who? Vampires? Trainees? I didn’t know what good I could do—I just knew he’d asked for my help, and I needed to be there for him.

I’d only been to the stones once, but Emma and I had seen the castle in the distance on the night of our epic walk. I thought I could retrace our steps. I considered getting her, or at least telling her where I was going, then immediately thought better of it. Yasuo was already in trouble, and if I got caught, I would be, too. Best to keep Emma way out of it.

And what if I got caught? Before, it’d just been an iPod and a photograph, and look at what’d happened. Then there was Mimi—all she’d done was talk back to a vampire, and Headmaster Fournier had turned her into a puddle of carnage. And now I was considering breaking pretty much every rule in the book.

They wouldn’t look kindly on it. Leaving after curfew? Straying from the path, going near the boys’ dorm, to the standing stones? I was toast if anyone caught me.

I was toast if Lilac caught me.

Her breathing was steady and deep, but was she really asleep? If I went, I’d be giving her the perfect opportunity to get rid of me once and for all.

But Yas needed me. Tonight. There’d been no doubt in his message.

I slid on my boots. The weather had gotten warmer, so I pulled on my lightweight fleece jacket instead of my parka. I needed to be able to fight or to run, if necessary.

The last thing I did was grab my shuriken, wadding up the whole bundle and shoving it into my jacket pocket. I really needed to figure out a better way to carry them, like a ninja-star holster or something.

The lights were out across campus, but the moon was bright and a great shaft of white light shot across the quad. It was empty, desolate. I wondered what monsters might be lying in wait.

What was I doing? What happened to Acari who broke the rules so flagrantly? I was certain they must suffer a fate worse than death.

But Yasuo was in trouble. He wanted my help. Out of all the people he could’ve asked, he’d chosen me. Shivering, I zipped my jacket to my throat and snuck from the dorm.

I stayed on the path all the way across the quad till I reached the science building. It was empty, and its blackened windows reminded me of the Draug’s dark eye sockets. I had the eerie feeling the building watched me, that those windows might’ve blinked to life at any moment, glowing red, to witness my fall from grace.

This was it. The end of the road. My heartbeat thundered in my ears. I was entering the unknown, the forbidden.