The Festival of the Moon (Girls Wearing Black: Book Two) by Spencer Baum Page B

the mission. To remind herself of her priorities, Nicky walked to the back of the foyer and looked out the window.
    Sullivan Hall was a round building with an open courtyard in its center. That courtyard housed a cemetery, an actual cemetery on a high school campus, with long, tightly-packed rows of identical headstones. Buried in that cemetery were the remains of every girl who had entered Coronation and lost, each gravesite marked with her name and the year of her death.
    She was here to put an end to this. For every tombstone in the courtyard, there was a matching immortal somewhere in America. A winner and a loser. The loser died, and the winner went on an epic killing spree, feasting on innocent people for centuries. Frankie was important, but the mission was important too. The mission was designed to save thousands upon thousands of people like Frankie, people who died in the prime of life because some immortal wanted a snack.
    Nicky went to the second floor, making her way to room 205 for senior math with Mr. Matteo. As was her routine now, she headed to the back of the room where she could act appropriately aloof and superior. Half-way to the back row, she froze in place, a familiar face catching her completely off guard.
    “Ryan? Since when are you in this class?” she said.
    Ryan smiled. “Since this morning,” he said. “I’ve been doing some tinkering with my schedule.”
    Nicky took the seat next to him. “How come?” she asked.
    “I’ll tell you later,” he said, turning his attention to Mr. Matteo, who was beginning his lecture.
    Mr. Matteo led the class in a brief review of the homework he had assigned over the weekend (homework almost no one had completed), then he assigned problems from the textbook and invited the class to work in pairs. Before anyone else could claim her, Nicky turned her desk toward Ryan’s.
    “I take it you want to work with me?” he said.
    “Shut up and turn your desk,” Nicky said.
    Ryan smirked as he turned toward Nicky. “You can relax and do whatever you need to,” he said. “I imagine you’ve got lunch plans to figure out or something. I’ll take care of the assignment.”
    “I’ll be doing my own work, thank you very much,” Nicky said.
    “Come on, Nicky. Girls wearing black don’t sit around and do math problems.”
    “This one does,” Nicky said. “In fact, this one bets you five dollars she can finish the assignment before you.”
    “Oh really?” Ryan’s voice was playful now. “Alright, a race it is. But I think we should raise the stakes a little bit. Five dollars is hardly a worthy bet in this town.”
    “You wanna make it a hundred?”
    “I want to make it lunch today, right after this class gets out. Loser buys.”
    Nicky was unable to conceal her surprise at this offer.
    “You’re thinking about Kim,” said Ryan. “Don’t.”
    “I can’t help it,” said Nicky, keeping her voice low. “I thought she--”
    “The arrangement is that she gets my money, nothing more,” Ryan said. “After you and I got off the phone last night, I went out and had a little talk with Kim and made a few things clear. She can have my money at the Date Auction, but I don’t have to be her whipping post until then.”
    “How did she respond to that?” Nicky asked.
    “She didn’t like it, but she’ll deal. Kim isn’t going to do anything stupid. There’s too much on the line, especially now that you’re in the picture.”
    “Now that I’m in the picture,” Nicky said quietly, almost whispered.
    “Before you showed up, the reality was Kim was headed for immortality whether I liked it or not, and I had to do what she said if I didn’t want…”
    He trailed off.
    “If you didn’t want her to hurt you,” Nicky finished.
    Ryan nodded. “But you’ve changed the equation. Now it’s a contest. Now she really needs my family’s money.”
    “Now you have a little bit of power,” Nicky said.
    “Just a little. Enough to go to lunch with