Free Stolen Night by Rebecca Maizel Page A

old habits die hard. Wasn’t that the expression?
    The feeling passed and I bent forward to grab my backpack. I was mortal. Not a vampire. Not like Odette. I started after Tracy and Claudia to the front door of the auditorium.
    Turn around , a voice in my mind whispered . Perhaps it was intuition, or the vampire queen deep inside me. Turn around, Lenah. Look behind you .
    Slowly I turned, and I froze. Standing at the top of the stairwell at the back of the auditorium was . . . Rhode.
    A deep gash, scabbed and blackened ran horizontally across the top of his head. Running down the top of his beautiful lips was another scab, so dark in colour I wasn’t entirely sure
whether there was fresh blood oozing out of it. His right eye and right cheek were puckered and swollen.
    My jaw dropped.
    ‘Come on, Lenah,’ Claudia called from the auditorium door.
    But I couldn’t look away. A couple of seconds passed, then Rhode did the honours for me, walking down the back stairwell and out of sight.
    ‘Rhode!’ I called, running for the back door.
    ‘Lenah!’ Claudia called after me, but I ignored her and sprinted out into the quad after Rhode.
    ‘Rhode!’ This time I screamed it. He spun around; sunglasses hid his eyes. I could see my horrified expression reflected in the shiny glass.
    That close to him, I was able to really see the damage. A purple bruise ran over the thick ridge of his nose. The black tinge on his skin made him look ill. Beneath the ridge of his
forehead was a deep cut, which probably needed stitches but it was much too late for that. The skin had scabbed and puckered and would most likely scar. His lips, his beautiful lips, were split
down the middle and brown with scabs.
    I lifted a hand to touch his forehead, but he backed away from me. Pain ripped down the middle of my chest and I lowered my hand. In the reflection in Rhode’s sunglasses, I could see my
downturned mouth and the squint of my eyes from the sun.
    ‘What happened to you?’ I asked.
    ‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘I told the headmistress I was in a car accident.’
    His right eye was so purple I couldn’t help but lift my fingers to touch the mutilated skin. He stepped back again.
    ‘What happened isn’t really any of your concern,’ he said. ‘I have to go to class.’
    He walked past me towards the science building where, if I was lucky, we were headed to the same room.

 
CHAPTER 8
    A line of students snaked out of the classroom and down the hall. Geology was a popular course for the senior year – there were three sections full of seniors and a few
select juniors. I rose up on my toes to try to see Rhode at the front of the line, but all I could make out was the short crop of his black hair. My heart fluttered as I remembered how his hair
used to fall past his shoulders like black silk. Oh, how I had loved his top hat and the angle of his fangs. Back then, fangs were a part of our physical being. The thought of the sharp point of
Odette’s fangs made me press my fingertips to my neck as though to protect it.
    ‘Ah, good, Lenah,’ Ms Tate said.
    I dropped my hand. Oh . Apparently I had made it to the science-room doorway.
    Rhode sat in the front row, chin down, writing something in a notebook. Ms Tate looked over her roster, pointed a pen at Rhode and said, ‘Rhode Lewin, you stay there. You’ll sit with
. . . Justin Enos.’ Ms Tate was planning the seating charts for the year. ‘He’ll be able to get you up to speed.’ She was mostly talking to herself.
    Very, very bad idea.
    Ms Tate handed Rhode a sheet of paper. ‘I heard about your car accident. How are you feeling?’
    ‘Better, thanks.’ He placed his pen down and with trembling fingers picked up the sheet. His hands, both of them, were wrapped in thick gauze: one around the wrist and one over the
knuckles. I froze when he looked up. Beneath those purple and black bruises were the blue eyes I’d known and loved for half a millennium. My stomach knotted and I