His cold, black gaze shot to mine. His lips were a straight line, but somehow I could detect a smile in his eyes.

“What happens if we can’t do it?” one of the other Initiates asked, and someone clarified, “Like, if the Trainee fights back?”

His eyes shuttered, head swinging to face her. “Then you have failed,” he snapped. “The cost will be your life, presumably at the hands of your assigned Trainee.” The way he’d said the words made it sound like she were dead already.

Great. Yet another semester wherein failure meant death. You could say I really missed the whole GPA system.

“However,” he added, and my foreboding grew as he let the word hang, “there are rules. You are not to discuss this outside of class.”

It took a moment for me to get the full implication of this statement. A chill settled over me. I didn’t know what worried me more—that we weren’t allowed to tell anyone what we were doing, or that at this very moment, other students in other classes were being given equally mysterious, equally deadly, tasks.

As though hearing my question, he elaborated. “The boys also have an assignment.”

I thought of Regina and had a feeling I knew what was coming.

He gave us a patronizing smile. “A selection of Trainees have been told to catch one of you lovelies unawares. To catch you and bite you. So stand warned, queridas.”

Trainees dropping out of the sky to bite us. Well, that explained that. Regina had been on their list.

Had Yas and Josh had assignments like this last year? The Trainees and their secrets…and they were going to grow into vampires with secrets. Their whole world was shrouded with it, the secrets of men, hidden behind the iron gates of their keep.

Not if I had anything to say about it.

Not if I could infiltrate their world.

Finally, there it was, that red balloon floating into my consciousness, a thought popping into my head, impossible to ignore. I could use my training against them and simply break in. Spy on their secrets for myself.

Who killed Emma in the end, what happened to all the girls who’d disappeared…I’d get to the bottom of it all. I’d blow the roof off this island, these vampires and their secrets. And it all began with this bastard: Alcántara.

But I wasn’t stupid. I thought back to Carden’s words. Power was different from strength. Power was subtle. It was strategic. Power was planning and patience and smarts.

I could swing all those things. This was a game to be played slowly and very, very carefully.

There was another aspect of power that the average man didn’t have access to, and giving Alcántara my most brilliant smile, I exercised it. In my attentions, I hoped he’d see excitement about the prospect of assassinating one of my classmates. That he’d see enthrallment for him and all this island stood for. I wanted him to see a smile rich with promise…for him.

I spotted the slightest flicker in his eye—there and gone so quickly, I wondered if I’d imagined it. Good. I’d surprised him, and it was remarkably satisfying. Step one, accomplished.

He was droning on, about methods, means. About considerations we’d have when the time came for our first hit.

And all the while, I poured everything I had into my rapt stare. I let my emotions simmer, let them darken my eyes. I thought of my lust for Carden, my longing for him. My longing for another life. My desire to go back and change history, wishing I’d had the courage to sacrifice myself in the ring with Emma. I drew on every last bit, all the while keeping my eyes trained on Alcántara as though I were just a poor, little, old moth while he was a bright, beautiful flame.

He noticed, too. Vampires might’ve been ancient, but in their hearts, they were guys, and guys could be so easy sometimes. I pretended enthrallment, and he and his oversized ego bought it hook, line, and sinker. His eyes kept flashing to me. They’d flit away, but they’d return again, pulled to me like I was a magnetic force.

He handed out the names of our “assignments,” letting his fingers brush mine as he passed me my slip of paper. I braced myself to read the name of the boy I was supposed to kill. Toby Engel. I didn’t recognize the name.

“Remember,” Alcántara said, concluding his lecture. “This is an exercise in discretion. A lesson in secrecy and choice.”

It was about choice. And I chose to fight.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The first thing I did was find out who Toby Engel was (using, of course, a good dose of that discretion Alcántara was so fond of). My “target” wasn’t exactly Mr. Sociability, and I had to ask around a bit before I found someone who knew who he was.

Now that I did know, it was hard to notice anybody else. The guy was huge. Strapping. A great, big, freckly corn-fed boy with a whiff of the American farmland to him. Burly shoulders suggested a youth spent tossing hay bales and plowing things. I sat in the dining hall, pretending not to watch him.

God help the guy, he was dumb as a post. Even if I hadn’t eavesdropped on snippets of his conversation, I could’ve seen it in the watery blankness of his blue eyes. Seriously, there were boxes of hammers sharper than this kid.

I tried not to panic. Because how was I supposed to kill him?

It wasn’t his obvious strength that put me off. Brute strength didn’t scare me—I was bright; I could outwit him blindfolded and on no sleep. It was that he struck me as a total innocent. He was like a character in a Steinbeck novel, a Lennie, some dumb and tragic brute whose greatest crime might’ve been accidentally petting someone’s puppy to death.

This was Alcántara testing me. He wanted to challenge what little was left of my moral compass. He’d know I couldn’t kill a Lennie.

A distinctly male body slid into the chair next to mine. My skin prickled, on instant alert. This body smelled of fresh air and salt water, his dinner tray held by hands I’d recognize anywhere.

Ronan. I didn’t need to look to know it was him. He kicked back, munching on an apple.

I stiffened. He was acting casual. He never acted casual. “What are you doing?”

He took a big bite and made me wait while he chewed. “Sitting down.”

“I can see that. I mean”—I flicked a glance right and left—“why?” There were Acari and Trainees all around. There were a couple Tracers, plus some Proctors and a handful of Watchers. Shouldn’t he be socializing with one of them instead? He only came to me when there was bad news, stuff involving wetsuits and trials in deep water.

“I’m here to eat a meal. You were alone. So I sat down.” He hooked his thumb along the edge of his tray, tugging it toward him like he might grab it and go. “Would you rather I left?”

“No. Of course not.” That was Ronan—putting a fine point on the matter. He had a way of defusing me, making my drama seem silly. I felt a burst of vulnerability…. How I missed a rowdy table full of friends. “It’s good to see you.” And it was.

“Are you well? You look…”

The statement hung, so I finished it for him. “I look like I lost my best friend?”

“Aye,” he said, instantly understanding. “So you do, and so you have.”

Again with Ronan and his not-beating-around-the-bush thing. I felt his eyes heavy on me, searching for something. I ripped my dinner roll in half, trying to play it cool. “So,” I asked stiffly, “are you here to drill me on what we learned in that wilderness workshop of yours?” I was in his Tuesday/Thursday elective, and he’d promised a semester of learning to live off the land, build fires, those sorts of things.

Emma things.

I had to sip water to wash down my bread.

“It’s called a Primitive Skills Intensive,” he said, but his voice had been taut. Too taut.

I let my gaze rise, finally daring to meet his, uncertain what I’d find. Would there be amusement? A scold? But what I saw instead surprised me. There was unmistakable tenderness in those forest-green eyes.

Scorn, discipline, mockery…those I could deal with. But tenderness? I was so not equipped to deal with tenderness right now. I had a plan. That plan didn’t involve friends or kindness or vulnerability of any sort. I had to stay focused. Resistance and revenge.

I turned my full attention to my dinner, using my fork to push around a pile of cold, limp green beans, desperately racking my brain to come up with some random topic to chat about.

Emma wasn’t the only thing bothering me. My eyes wandered back to Toby Engel. He sat at a table full of Trainees but was in his own world, busily shoveling food down his gullet like he might win a prize for it.

What was his story? Did he have a family who loved him? A mom who’d baked pies and cooked him breakfasts of eggs and bacon and biscuits and a dad who greeted every dawn from the back of an old tractor? Had they posted Missing signs? Was Toby’s face at some post office, pinned up with thumbtacks, or on utility poles, shining from beneath layers of clear packing tape?

Then I realized the person to ask was sitting right next to me. Ronan would know Toby’s story—hell, Ronan might even have been the Tracer who’d brought him in. “Is that Toby?” I asked, hoping against hope he’d divulge that the kid was actually a closet serial killer.

Ronan followed my line of sight, then looked back at me. I could see the cogs turning. Did he wonder why I was asking about some random new Trainee? Or maybe he already knew. Maybe Alcántara’s “secret project” was actually part of the general curriculum.

Finally, he nodded. “Yes.” The sudden stoicism in that single word said he understood a little something about my assignment.

I frowned, studying Toby, watching in awe as he polished off a dinner roll in two bites.

Alcántara wanted me to kill that boy poetically.

Poetic—what did that even mean? Like, was I supposed to go ironic with it? Maybe find some farm tool and get him good? Farm Boy Trainee Slain! Rototiller-Wielding Initiate Reaped What He Sowed.

I bit the inside of my cheek. Anything to keep myself from losing it. “He looks out of place.”