Stolen Night by Rebecca Maizel Page A

kiss before extending his hand and leading me home.

 
CHAPTER 10
    Late-night rain had left the grass glistening. It tickled the tops of my toes as I walked the path next morning and turned the corner to Curie. Ms Tate came flying around the
corner into the courtyard.
    ‘Lenah,’ she said, stopping in front of me. ‘I’m glad I found you. We need to discuss your semester project.’ She rambled on for a moment about Justin and me and
the importance of teamwork. I took some papers from her load of files and held them for her.
    ‘Oh, thank you,’ she added, continuing her diatribe. I listened for a few moments but the wind distracted me. It was stronger than a breeze. It had intention. The air snaked through
the trees and lifted my hair from my ears as though acting of its own accord. I smoothed it down as quickly as I could. Ms Tate’s voice floated off and I turned my attention away from
her.
    The leaves above us shivered again. The water from the fountain fell away in an unnatural hush. I needed no vampire ESP to know. I would always harbour the knowledge. I could feel it in the
air.
    I was being watched.
    I searched the shadows. Any clue would do. The lift of a sly smile or eyes still as death.
    ‘OK, Lenah?’ Ms Tate said.
    ‘Right. Of course,’ I said.
    Ms Tate smiled, though I had no idea what I had just agreed to. I scanned the grounds in front of me, but without my vampire sight it was impossible to see as far as the other side of campus.
When I turned to follow her into Curie, I realized I had forgotten that behind us were the woods that circled the school. They were a perfect place for someone to hide to watch an unsuspecting
victim.
    ‘Lenah, I’ll need those papers in class today,’ Ms Tate said from the darkened entrance to Curie.
    My eyes lingered on the trees and on the morning sunlight shining through the breaks in the branches. I did not have time to search for eyes watching me.
    I walked into the building with an absolute certainty in my gut.
    I was being hunted.
    I slid into my seat next to Justin, trying to shake off the goosebumps still lingering on my skin. Justin’s hand was wrapped in gauze and momentarily I thought of his
arms around me in the listening room.
    ‘I can’t get last night out of my head,’ he said.
    He reached under the table, placed his hand on my knee and squeezed. I smiled at him. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so hard. Being with Justin. He knew how to calm me. Perhaps the girl from
last year still existed, the girl who wanted to be human, the girl who needed Justin to help her feel that way. Not like Rhode. Rhode, who was much better at following the Aeris’s decree than
I would ever be.
    ‘Guess she’s just jumping right into this,’ Justin said. ‘Yesterday pH tests, today sediment something or other. I can’t even pronounce whatever that other word
is.’
    The experiment was complicated – very complicated. Justin and I stood up to gather our assignment tools from the storage chest. I made sure to avoid catching Rhode’s eye or
even looking in his general direction. That was all I needed, to look at him and have another strange connection that I couldn’t control. I wasn’t sure what had spurred the overwhelming
smell of apples, the memories and the window into his mind.
    ‘Maybe we can have dinner tonight,’ Justin said quietly.
    ‘Oh,’ I said, hating that I wished it was Rhode asking me to dinner. In my mind was a dark room lit by candles. Rhode and I sat at a long oak table and raised goblets filled with
blood. I’d never eaten a meal with him. I wondered what he liked to eat in the modern world.
    ‘Lenah?’ Justin said. ‘Pizza?’
    ‘Sure,’ I replied, replacing my fantasy with linoleum tables and plastic cutlery. Greasy food from the union and paper napkins, just like we had had the year before, dozens of
times.
    I felt the empty space between my seat and Rhode’s. I knew very well that the candles, the ones in the darkened