“Your pulse is racing,” Lucas murmured. He studied my face intently, and I felt nervous again—but in a much better way. “Okay, if you weren’t running from an attacker, why were you running like that? Because that didn’t look like a morning jog to me.”

I would’ve lied if I could have thought of any plausible excuse, but I couldn’t. “I got up early to—well, to try and run away.”

“Your parents treat you bad? Hurt you?”

“No! Nothing like that.” I felt so offended, but I realized that of course that was what Lucas would have to assume. Why else would a totally sane person be running through the woods before the sun was completely up like she was escaping with her life? We’d only just met, so maybe he still counted me as totally sane. I decided not to mention the nightmare flashbacks, because that would probably tip the balance toward crazy. “But I don’t want to go to school here. I liked our hometown, and, besides, Evernight Academy is—it’s so—”

“Spooky as hell.”

“Yeah.”

“Where were you going to go? Do you have a job lined up, something like that?”

My cheeks were flushed, and not just from the exertion of the run. “Um, no. I wasn’t really running away. Just making a statement. Sort of. I thought if I did this, my parents would finally get how much I don’t want to be here, and maybe we could leave.”

Lucas blinked for a second, then started to grin. His smile changed all the weird pent-up energy inside me, transforming it from fear into curiosity, even excitement. “Like me with my slingshot.”

“What?”

“Back when I was five, I thought my mom was being mean to me, so I decided to run away. Carried my slingshot with me because I was a big strong man, you see. Could take care of myself. I believe I also took a flashlight and a package of Oreos.”

Despite my embarrassment, I couldn’t help smiling. “I think you packed better than I did.”

“I swaggered out of the house where we were staying and took myself all the way to…the far corner of the backyard. There I made my stand. Stayed out there all day, until it started to rain. I hadn’t thought about taking an umbrella.”

“The best laid plans.” I sighed.

“I know. It’s tragic. I came back in, all wet and my stomach aching from eating about twenty Oreos, and my mom—who is a smart lady even if she drives me nuts—well, she acted like nothing had happened.” Lucas shrugged. “Which is what your parents are going to do, too. You know that, right?”

“I do now.” My throat tightened with disappointment. I’d known the truth all along, really. I’d simply had to do something, more to act out my own frustration than to send a message to my parents.

Then Lucas asked a question that astonished me: “Do you want out of here for real?”

“Like—run away? Really run away?”

Lucas nodded, and he looked serious.

He wasn’t, though; he couldn’t be. No doubt he had asked me that to snap me back to reality. I admitted, “No, I don’t. I’ll go back. Get ready for school like a good girl.”

There was that grin again. “Nobody said anything about being a good girl.”

The way he said that made me feel warm and soft inside. “It’s just—Evernight Academy—I don’t think I’ll ever belong there.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that. Might be a good thing, not belonging there.” He looked at me, serious and intent, like he thought he had another idea about where I might belong. Either this guy really liked me, or I was inventing things in my head because I wanted him to like me. I was much too inexperienced to guess which.

Hurriedly, I pushed myself to my feet. As Lucas stood also, I asked, “So what were you doing? When you saw me?”

“Like I said, I thought you were in trouble. There are some rough characters up in these parts. Not everybody has self-control.” He brushed a few pine needles from his sweater. “I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. My instincts got the best of me. Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay, honestly. I realize you were trying to help. I meant, before you saw me. Orientation doesn’t start for another few hours. It’s really early. They told students to arrive around ten A.M.”

“I’ve never been very good at playing by the rules.”

That was interesting. “So—you’re a morning person, getting a jump on the day?”

“Hardly. I haven’t gone to bed yet.” He had a fantastic grin, and I’d already noticed that he knew how to use it. I didn’t mind. “Anyway, my mom couldn’t bring me herself. She’s away, on business, I guess you’d say. I caught the red-eye train in and thought I’d walk up here first. Get the lay of the land. Rescue any damsels in distress.”

When I remembered how fast Lucas had been running after me, and realized that he’d been doing that in an attempt to save my life, the memory changed. The fear was gone, and now it made me smile. “Why did you come to Evernight? I’m stuck here because of my parents, but you could probably have gone someplace else. Someplace better. So, like, anywhere else.”

Lucas honestly didn’t seem to know how to answer. He pushed branches back as we kept walking through the forest, keeping any of them from scraping my face. Nobody had ever cleared a path for me before. “It’s a long story.”

“I’m not in a hurry to go back. Besides, we’ve got a few hours to kill before orientation.”

He lowered his head, but kept his eyes fixed on me. There was something undeniably sexy about that move, though I wasn’t sure he meant it that way. His eyes were almost exactly the same color as the ivy that grew on the towers at Evernight. “It’s also kind of a secret.”

“I can keep a secret. I mean, you’re going to keep this whole incident secret for me, right? With the running and the freaking out—”

“I’ll never tell.” After a couple more seconds of consideration, Lucas finally confessed, “An ancestor of mine tried to go to school here almost a hundred and fifty years ago. He washed out, I guess you’d say.” Lucas laughed, and it felt like the sunlight had broken through the trees. “So it’s up to me to ‘restore the family honor.’”

“That’s not fair. You shouldn’t have to make all your decisions based on what he did or didn’t do.”

“Not all my decisions. They let me pick out my own socks.” I smiled as he tugged up his pants leg to reveal a sliver of argyle sock above his heavy black boot.

“How did your great-grand-whatever wash out?”

Lucas shook his head ruefully. “He got into a duel during his first week.”

“A duel? Like, somebody insulted his honor?” I tried to remember what I’d learned about duels from romance novels and movies. All I knew was that Lucas’s history was definitely a lot more interesting than mine. “Or was it over a girl?”

“He would’ve had to move fast, to meet a girl in the first few days of school.” Lucas paused, as if he were just realizing that it was the first day of school and he’d already met me. I felt this tug, like something was almost physically pulling me to lean toward him—but then Lucas turned his head and glared at the towers of Evernight, just visible through the pine branches. It was as though the building itself had offended him. “Could’ve been anything. Back then, they’d duel at the drop of a hat. Family legend has it that the other guy started it, not that it matters. What does matter is that he survived but not without breaking one of the stained glass windows in the great hall.”