Free Blood Run by Christine Dougherty Page A

mouth as he concentrated over his task, and Promise put a hand over her grin. Almost as though he sensed her amusement, he looked up. “What?” he said, and his face was so earnest, so open and trusting, that her stomach filled all at once with dizzy, tender butterflies.
    She shook her head, letting her hand drop, letting him see a more genuine smile. She checked her watch: four eighteen. “I have to go. You won’t be able to tell me your story.”
    He stilled, looking at her. “Do you want to stay here for the night? I could find another cot.”
    She did, she did want to…but she also didn’t . It was confusing. She had a flash of her mom, sitting at the end of the bed in her room at home, asking her if there was anything she wanted to know about sex. At the time, at thirteen, she’d been horribly embarrassed but… Yes , she thought now, I want to know everything . She was filled with an ache both nostalgic for her mom and something else, something yearning and almost lost. A need to be near another person.
    No, not just another person, this person: Peter.
    She shook her head. “No, I can’t.” She glanced down the hall at the last few people scurrying to their rooms. Most of the classroom doors were shut. After a year of absolute curfew, the regulator in her head was saying ‘move, move, get to safety’. She grabbed his hand. “Come to mine. There’s room for you and Snow.”
    He studied her for a long moment, and she was overcome with a wave of embarrassed regret. She pulled her hand away. “Or not, whichever. You’ll be perfectly comfortable here, I’m sure.” She backed out of the room and checked her watch again without seeing it. “I’ll come by in the morning, okay? Or not. Or you can come find me. Either way.”
    His eyes had not left hers, and now a small smile played across his lips. He grabbed Snow’s bridle and pulled her toward the door. “Should we bring her blankets, too?”
    Promise blushed and shook her head. “No. Ash can share.”
    They hurried down the hall, Snow’s hooves clunking hollowly. Promise was aware of two things above all: the looming curfew–now six minutes away–and Peter jogging along beside her. There was something exciting about their exertions, something in the sense of urgency and their breath coming a bit quicker. But there was something innocently exuberant about it, too…the feeling of them as kids running together in exhilaration. She wanted to grab his hand. She wanted to laugh.
    They passed the door of 502, only three doors now from 508–the classroom Promise shared with Lea. Deidre stood at 502, watching as they hurried by, and she caught Promise’s eye. Deidre cocked an eyebrow.
    “Little slumber party in 508?” Deidre said.
    “Shut up, Dee,” Promise said, without breaking stride. But she felt her face grow hot again, nevertheless. The social conventions post-vampire were radically different than pre-, but some things had not changed. For instance, people talked: people always talked. In a way, the community was tighter knit now than before if only due to space constraints, but after an initial period of ‘we’re all in this together,’ the cliques had begun to group together again like cancer cells programmed to form a tumor. It was almost as though people of a certain mindset were magnetized and unable to ever really break free from each other.
    For the remaining school-aged residents of Wereburg who had survived the plague, the polarization seemed to be taking place along fairly standard lines: popular and unpopular.
    Deidre Morris, although at twenty-two not technically of school age, was still firmly in that mindset. She’d been very popular, if not well-liked, and after everything had settled down at the high school, she’d begun a campaign of gathering the popular kids back into a group. It never occurred to her to wonder why she wanted things that way; she never questioned her motivations. The fact was that the insecurity of being