This was the most he’d ever said about the bond, and it gave me strength. “You can break a blood bond?”

“With effort,” he said through gritted teeth. “But there must be distance.”

He leaned down, and I froze. His lips were perilously close to my neck. “You’re catnip, you know.” The air tickled across my neck as he inhaled. “I was your first kiss. It’s not too late for me to be your second, too.”

I flinched back. “How’d you know you were my first kiss?”

“I know many things.” He lightly swept the back of his hand down my arm, leaving a ripple of goose bumps in its wake.

How easy it would be to let him scoop me up and carry me away. How much I wanted him to.

But I also knew I didn’t trust the bond. If we could sever it, we had to try. My reaction to Carden was too powerful, and I didn’t believe it was real. I didn’t know him, but in our short acquaintance, I’d sensed the tension between him and Alcántara. What was Carden’s history with the Directorate? Until I understood this island more, I wasn’t ready to hitch my wagon to any vampire.

“No.” I took a step back. “So is that it? If we stay away from each other, we can break the bond?” My voice came out sounding more bereft than I’d intended.

His eyes lingered on me. Finally he turned from me.

It felt like saying good-bye to a lover. Carden was my first and only kiss, so I supposed I was saying good-bye to a lover.

He spoke over his shoulder, his voice cold. “This will be difficult for you. You must steal extra doses of the blood. But for now it’s late. Curfew is soon. Get inside, Acari Drew. And watch your back.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

I was trapped. My limbs grew numb. I was helpless. Held captive.

I was sitting in an audience, pretending to appreciate some early medieval musical stylings, played with almost comical solemnity by an ensemble of effete vampires.

Master Dagursson was kicking off our semester of Medieval Musicianship with the Boringest Concert Ever. It seemed like the entire campus had gathered for the recital, and we were trying to be good students and sit silently, but the music was monotonous, to put it mildly.

“What did Beethoven have as a snack?” Josh whispered in my ear.

I didn’t answer, but that didn’t stop him from delivering his punch line, intoned to the tune of Beethoven’s Fifth. “Ba-na-na-naaaa.”

I elbowed him hard. “Shhh…”

Boring didn’t begin to cover it.

And uncomfortable.

I’d glimpsed Carden from the corner of my eye as I walked in. My pulse pounded at the sight of him, a dull throbbing along the surface of my skin. It felt like ages since I’d fed from him, and just the thought of it had me shaking like a junkie.

I didn’t need to look to know he was standing near the exit. Probably glowering at the back of my head for talking to Josh.

“You all right? You’re looking pale, D.” Josh had leaned close to say it, and the back of my neck prickled.

There. My Scottish vampire was definitely glowering at us.

Thoughts tumbled into my head. Snapshots of Carden’s mouth. The touch of his hand. His breath on my neck.

Sweat broke out on my forehead. “There’s a vampire out there who’s mad at me.”

“Ah. But I’m not mad at you.” He edged even closer, and our shoulders touched. “No need to be cranky with me.”

Little did Josh know he was in very dangerous territory. I wouldn’t be surprised if Carden was the jealous type.

The piece ended and the room swelled with applause. I took the opportunity to scoot away. “Yeah, well, I’ll be mad at you if you don’t give me some space.”

He snickered. “So what’s with these music classes, anyway?”

I tried to take my mind off my abject thirst. Music. We were listening to and discussing music. I’d actually wondered about the music thing before myself. I grabbed onto the topic. “Who knows? Though somehow Emma was spared.”

“I heard she gets to hack computers this term instead.”

“So jealous,” I said, and I was.

He shrugged. “But not your roommate. Yas said they have her in a bunch of independents.” Josh’s Australian accent made Yas sound like Yeahz.

“She’s some kind of musical prodigy.” I grew quiet. There were lots of music prodigies in the world, so why did the vampires want her so badly? I sensed she was more upset about it than she let on, but the kid was a vault, sealed tight. I couldn’t get much information out of her to begin to piece it together. At fifteen, she was younger than the rest of us, and she didn’t seem to have any extraordinary physical gifts.

Another group of musicians arranged themselves onstage—they were empty-handed, which meant we were about to be serenaded. The chatter in the room slowly died, and we settled back, shutting our mouths, too.

This was a form of torture. I rubbed my belly, which was starting to cramp. It was an empty, needful feeling…beyond mere hunger and thirst.

As the men took their places, I distracted myself with an internal debate over which was worse: surfing with Ronan in the bitter-cold sea, as I had that morning, or sitting here, trapped and uneasy, listening to this god-awful music.

At least now I was sitting down. This morning on my borrowed surfboard, I’d paddled and paddled, and still hadn’t been able to get past the break. I’d panicked, feeling how I’d grown weaker. I’d tried to take my mind off it by eyeing Ronan, looking hot in his wet suit, but not even that had been enough to distract me. My arms ached so badly afterward, I’d barely been able to shampoo my hair.

I needed Carden’s blood. I was growing weaker and clumsier without it. The refrigerated shooters just weren’t enough.

A shrill trilling startled me from my thoughts. A particularly pale vampire was currently rocking his woodwind.

Josh chuckled, and I was grateful to have him there, always a willing cutup. “Who knew the recorder was such an instrument of passion?”

“That’s not a recorder,” I said, though I really should’ve shut up. If I were smart, I’d act as grave as those vampire musicians, but anything to get my mind off my hunger. The accompanying harpsichord was a surprisingly loud instrument—it was amazing what it drowned out. “I think we’re enjoying the magic of the pan flute.”

Josh snorted, then turned it into a cough.

But a starchy-looking Watcher in the row in front of us had heard. She peered behind her to see who had the gall, and I stared straight ahead using my best serious face. Thankfully, we sat far enough toward the back to escape anyone else’s notice.

They’d begun a chanting number, and I cringed as a vampire singer hit a particularly shrill note.

Josh’s shoulders shuddered with silent laughter. He leaned toward me to whisper from the corner of his mouth, “You think that mate’s a castrato? Like with the—” He made a little snipping motion with his fingers.

Unexpected laughter bubbled in my chest, dying to burst free in a fit of the giggles. My intense thirst was making me slaphappy, but I was going to get both of us in trouble if I couldn’t pull it together. I hissed at him, “Shut up.”

He slouched back in his seat with his legs kicked out and arms tucked at his chest. If someone were to glance at him, he’d just appear to be really laid-back, but the pose put his head closer to mine, enabling more whispering.

We clapped at the end of the number and he muttered, “This is killing me. Do you think they know any classics? ‘Free Bird,’ maybe? Can’t you just hear it chanted?” He made a low humming sound, not unlike the chanting men. “Hohhhhhh…”

An Acari in front of us turned and glared, and I gave her a prim smile. Placing a discreet hand in front of my mouth, I muttered, “I’d settle for anything tonal. What kind of mission will they send us on that we need to be familiar with Gregorian chant?”

Thinking about it, I supposed the possibilities were endless. Especially considering that our enemy vampires were once monks who lived on another island in an abandoned monastery.

As I whispered to Josh, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Carden. Why was he even there? He didn’t strike me as a big music fan, nor was he the monastic type—particularly as unholy-goddamned-sexy could be counted among his qualifications.

What did this preoccupation with him mean? Was it permanent? Did I feel him out there, looming nearby, because he was focused on me, or was it that I was obsessed with him? Not to mention the fact that he was so hot in a roguish, careless sort of way. But again, was that purely the bond talking?

Regardless, I leaned away from Josh—I didn’t want to get him in trouble. I’d already been his downfall once before, when he’d intervened and stopped Masha and her cronies from hazing me. Her cronies…including Trinity.

He’d had hell to pay for it, too. I still didn’t know who’d beaten him up. All I knew was that he’d put a stop to their torture and had shown up the next day with a battered face. He still had a scar cutting through his left eyebrow—a little jog where the hair hadn’t grown back.

Did that mean that he also had a motive to see Guidon Trinity dead? Did he even have the ability to drain a body like that? His vampire Trainee baby fangs weren’t all the way grown in yet.

I thought I knew him, but couldn’t say for sure. He’d been friendly with my nemesis, Lilac, and although it was probably just because Josh was friendly with everyone, that fact stuck in my craw and prevented me from really trusting him.

I felt myself beginning to nod off and I stretched my legs, squeezing life back into my butt cheeks. “Is this going to last the full three hours?” Class went till six p.m., and I wouldn’t put it past Dagursson to regale us with zithers and lutes for the full period. It was a grim thought.

Josh shushed me, canting his head to listen. When I cut my eyes to glare at him, I realized he hadn’t shut me up because he was listening to the music. A low murmur was traveling through the room, and he was straining to hear.