Isle of Night by Verónica Wolff

the wool sweater over my head. It caught on my chin, tore over my ears. “It’s time for your cooldown.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

    â€œO utside?” I asked, suppressing a shiver. The Initiates had led me to the ground-floor foyer, where I stood, stripped led me to the ground-floor foyer, where I stood, stripped to my underwear. I’d hurt my ribs in the fall, and my trembling intensified the pain.
    Along the hallway, a few doors were cracked open, and I spied wary eyes witnessing my torture from the safety of the dorm rooms. Even though we’d all been issued the same ugly, regulation beige bra and granny panties, the shame of it burned my cheeks.
    It was the only thing that burned, though. My teeth had begun to chatter and I was already nostalgic for all that heat. The front door was open, and I contemplated the black and gray swirl of starlit snow outside. Why had I found the Hot Party uncomfortable? The concept was unthinkable now.
    â€œWhat’s the punishment?” I huddled into myself, chafing my arms in vain. “Parading around half naked, or is it the pneumonia I’m contracting?”
    â€œNeither.” Someone shoved me, and I lurched forward, catching myself before I fell. “It’s the running.”
    â€œAnd you just earned yourself an extra lap, smart-ass.” I thought I recognized the redhead’s voice.
    The ache in my ribs turned to nausea. Running. That explained the white Nikes they’d let me put on, dug out from the bottom of my pack.
    â€œ Four laps around the quad,” Masha said. “Take every corner.”
    I nodded, wriggling my toes in the running shoes. The soles were soaked and squeaky from the showers, but despite it, I was pathetically grateful. I wouldn’t put it past these girls to make me run barefoot in the snow.
    â€œEvery corner— no matter how dark ,” another Initiate ordered. I felt another push.
    Masha leaned close, purring in my ear. “We’re watching.”
    A survival instinct clicked to life in the recesses of my brain. I bounded forward, springing out the door, determined not to feel the final shove I knew would come.
    The night air seared my lungs. I told myself it couldn’t be that cold—the snowfall had actually brought the temperature up to what I estimated was mid-forties. If I just kept moving and got this over with, the weather wouldn’t kill me.
    Those girls, they could kill me. This wouldn’t.
    But I wasn’t athletic. I’d never run a mile in my life, and I raced too quickly down the path. I wasn’t even halfway to my first corner and already my throat ached with each breath. A cramp seized the side of my belly, a claw with icy talons.
    I forced myself to slow my pace, but the cold made my gait awkward, and my legs thudded along like frozen stumps. I was chilled to the core, my flesh puckered into tight goose bumps.
    As I pumped my legs, my arms, I became aware of strange things—the cold slab of flesh that was my butt, the way the skin of my legs felt so cold, it burned.
    I approached the first curve and made sure to stick to the far outer edge, even though a giant, gnarled hedge reached over the path like it might curl down and swallow me. The Initiates had scared me with thoughts of bogeymen hiding in the dark.
    Not bogeymen. Vampires, I corrected myself. It was vampires who hid in the night, waiting to grab me. I was still getting used to the thought.
    But the Initiates had made a mistake by inadvertently warning me. I’d been straining to see amid the eerie silhouettes of branches, expecting a monster, and so wasn’t surprised when I saw him.
    At first I thought it was a statue. Standing still as death, with a lifeless gray complexion to match. Ambient moonlight shimmered on his face, making it gleam.
    He might have been carved from stone but for the glow of his eyes. They weren’t red, like in the movies. Just a shimmering, steely glint. A predator