Free Isle of Night by Verónica Wolff

one of the few geniuses who came with an abusive father. So was I here because my father had beaten me up? My specialty was that I knew how to take a punch? It appeared that spending my formative years getting smacked around by my dad may have earned me the privilege of getting smacked around by a bunch of vampires. The thought sent cold dread twining through my belly.
    And just how many vampires were there? Ronan had mentioned the old ones , plural. Old. Well, duh . I steeled myself, thinking of the verbal flogging I’d give him next time we met. Him and that stupid Proust tattoo.
    â€œBut not all of you will ascend.” The headmaster’s voice dripped with mock regret, and I tuned back in, and fast, imagining that the girls who failed weren’t exactly put on a Carnival Cruise back home.
    â€œLook around you,” he commanded.
    I felt the crowd around me shift. And I felt eyes on me, even as I stared right back. These girls had backbone. They looked defiant, angry even. Where in the world had they found this many girls resilient enough to withstand such a place?
    The girls were tough. And the other unifying characteristic? Every last one of them was as lovely as the headmaster had said.
    But why? Why was everyone so attractive? They were selecting and making what? Secret Agent Barbies?
    Why not? I thought. If you lived for all eternity, better to be served by an army of teenage hotties.
    And I was the odd one out, yet again. Because I had a brain. The only Skipper in a sea of Barbies.
    â€œLook at your peers,” he pressed. “Only fifty of you will rise to the next level of training. Then but twenty-five the following year. You will eventually be whittled down to an elite group of five.”
    I wasn’t ready to consider what happened to the remaining, oh, several dozen other girls.
    â€œYour training will be intense. You will work hard. You will learn strength and fortitude. You will learn to toil and to do without. Through the years, you will cultivate yourselves, learning elegance, embracing lives of intellect and sophistication.
    â€œThe crème among you shall be chosen to be our representatives in the world. But it is a dangerous world, as many of you have experienced.” It seemed like his eyes lit on me, and I told myself it was my imagination. “And so your training must also be dangerous.”
    He chuckled, and I felt that warmth flood me again, despite myself. “But you are my hothouse lovelies, and if you let me, I shall teach you to gavotte as expertly as you garrote.”
    I shoved the warmth away, focusing on his words, on his gruesome little pun that likened dancing to strangling.
    But then, in the darkest recesses of my mind, I went there, just for a moment. I’d felt the urge to throttle someone before—Daddy Dearest came to mind—but never could I bring myself to actually kill someone. Right?
    â€œFor the next year, you will be known as the Acari. That is from the Greek. It means ‘ mite .’ Like . . . a tick. A parasite. And, like parasites, you shall feed off of our knowledge.”
    This time he really did look at me, like I was his student and he wanted to explain some fascinating linguistic bit just to me. I made my face like stone, even though I thought my heart might explode from my chest. Being noticed was the last thing I wanted. His lips peeled into a smile as he turned his attention back to the rest of the crowd. “Indeed, you will gain strength by feeding off our very lifeblood. You already have.”
    I gulped back bile. He meant blood. Like, real blood. As in, our little in-flight cocktail.
    â€œOur lifeblood will aid you. Fortify you.” He waved his hand impatiently. “But I touch on topics that are for others to broach. You will reside in the Acari dormitory, where you’ve each been assigned a roommate. Every floor has a Proctor. The Proctor is ahead of you in your training—she has ascended to