“Still standing,” Dana said. “Dammit.”

“We’ll get it someday.” Raquel flattened one hand against her window, like she wanted to punch through the glass and knock the school down herself.

I thought of my mother and father, and it occurred to me that maybe they were nearby. This moment, right now, was possibly as close as I would ever be to my parents again.

I’d become so angry with them during my last days at Evernight. They had never told me that the wraiths played a role in my birth, or that they might be coming for me someday because of that. For a year I’d been literally haunted by ghosts that seemed to think they owned me, and I still didn’t know what that might mean. My parents had also refused to tell me if I had any choice other than becoming a full vampire someday. After meeting some of the vampires who truly were insane killers, I’d decided to try to find out whether it was possible for me to live out a normal life as a human being.

I still don’t know the truth. What’s going to happen to me? Not having any answers was so terrifying that I tried not to think about it, but dark uncertainty tugged at me nearly all the time now.

Yet as I looked up at the school, both my fear and my anger faded. I remembered only how loving Mom and Dad were and how close we’d been not that long ago. So many things had happened to me just in the past couple of days, and none of it seemed entirely real if I couldn’t tell my parents about it. I felt a powerful, almost overwhelming urge to leap out of the van and run toward Evernight, calling for them.

But I knew I could never go back to the ways things were before. So much had changed. I’d been forced to choose a side, and I’d chosen humanity, life—and Lucas.

Lucas caught a lock of my hair between his fingers, gently testing whether or not I needed comfort. I leaned my head against his shoulder, and for a while we rode on without anybody talking, only the music playing. Every mile marker we passed reminded me of how far we had come from the last home I’d had and the person I used to be.

We stopped to get gasoline and take bathroom breaks occasionally, but we took a longer rest only once during the drive, for lunch.

While Dana and Raquel joined the horde of people crowding into a fast-food Mexican place, Lucas and I begged off to walk to a diner down the street. Of course we wanted a few minutes alone, but even more than I needed to be with Lucas, I needed to eat—more specifically, to drink.

The first thing Lucas said when we were walking away from the crowd along the side of the road, sort of alone at last, was, “How hungry are you?”

“So hungry I can hear your heart beating.” And it seemed to me I could taste Lucas’s blood on my tongue. Probably better not to mention that. The sunlight bore down on me hard, harsh now that I’d been without blood for several days. I’d never done without for so long before.

“You think the diner—maybe the raw meat would have some blood, we could sneak back there—”

“That wouldn’t be enough. Besides, I know what to do.” I stood still, watching the swaying grass beside the highway, which lashed back and forth in the currents of passing cars. A robin pecked at the dirt, searching for worms amid the bottle caps and cigarette butts.

“Bianca?”

I could see nothing but the robin and think of nothing but its blood. Bird’s blood is thin, but it’s hot.

“Don’t watch,” I whispered. My jaw ached. My fangs slid into my mouth, sharp points scraping against my lips and tongue. Though we stood in the brilliant sunshine, everything around me seemed to go dark, as though the robin were in a spotlight, moving in slow motion.

Vampire quick, I pounced. The bird fluttered in my hands for only a moment before I bit into its flesh.

Yes, that’s it, blood! I drank the few sips of blood the robin had to offer, eyes shut in delight. When it was shriveled and dead in my hands, I let it drop as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Only then did I realize I had just done that right in front of Lucas. Shame hit me as I thought how savage I must have looked, and how disgusted Lucas must be.

But when I hesitantly raised my eyes to him, Lucas had turned away—just like I’d asked him to. He hadn’t seen. Sensing that I was done, he turned back around and smiled at me gently. When he saw the fear I felt, he shook his head.

“I love you,” he murmured. “That means I’m not just here for the pretty parts. I’m here no matter what.”

Alight with relief, I took his hand and walked with him to the diner. We were broke, and I wore clothes that didn’t fit me, and we were on the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere—but in that moment I felt more beautiful than any princess or supermodel or anything. I had Lucas, who loved me no matter what. That was all I needed.

We ate fast at the diner. Lucas was starving, and I needed regular food, too. Between mouthfuls of French fries, we tried to work out what else we might do with our precious few moments of free time.

“Can we find an Internet café, maybe? I could e-mail my parents.”

“No. N. O. First of all, there’s no way we’d find an Internet café out in the sticks. Second, you’re not e-mailing them. You can call once you know where they are, but not from a cell, or anything else that can be traced back to us. You can send a letter. But no e-mail. That’s another Black Cross order we’re not disobeying.”

Lucas claimed there was a difference between disobeying orders and breaking stupid rules, but right that second, I couldn’t see it. Whatever. I knew another way to find out what had gone down the night Evernight burned.

At first I wanted to use Lucas’s cell phone, but he pointed out that Black Cross would then be able to track the call. Luckily, once we were done eating, we found a bank of pay phones at the side of the diner. The first two I picked up had no dial tone, and the third’s cord had been cut, but the fourth worked okay. I smiled in relief as soon as I heard the dial tone. O for operator. “Collect,” I said, reading off the number I wanted from Lucas’s cell phone contacts list. “Say that it’s Bianca Olivier.”

Silence followed. “Did she hang up?” I said.

“There’s a pause with collect calls.” Lucas stood next to me, leaning against the plastic hood of the pay phone. “They don’t want you to yell your message at the other person before they’ve accepted the charges.”

The phone line clicked, and I heard a sleepy voice say, “Bianca?”

“Vic!” I bounced up and down on my heels, and Lucas and I shared a huge smile. “Vic, you’re okay!”

“Yeah, yeah. Whoa, wait a second—I’m still kinda waking up here.” I could imagine Vic clutching his cell phone to his face, with bad bed-head, in the middle of an extremely messy bedroom, surrounded by his posters. Probably he had crazy sheets, plaid or polka-dotted. He yawned, then, more alertly, asked, “Am I dreaming again?”

“No dream. It’s me. You weren’t injured in the fire?”

“No. Nobody got hurt very badly, which was, like, crazy good luck. Lost my pith helmet, though.” Vic obviously considered this a grave tragedy. “What about you? Are you okay? After they put out the fire, we were going nuts trying to find you. A couple people said they saw you on the grounds, so we knew you got out of the school, but we couldn’t figure where you ran off to.”

“I’m fine. I’m with Lucas.”

“Lucas?” No wonder Vic sounded astonished. As far as he knew, Lucas and I had broken up months ago. We’d had to keep our relationship a secret since then. “This is getting totally surreal. If this is just a dream, I’m gonna be so mad.”

“You’re not dreaming,” Lucas called. His hearing was sharp enough to listen in on the call, even though he was standing a foot from the receiver. “Pull it together, man. What are you doing asleep at eleven A.M.?”

“As you should recall, I am the proverbial night owl. Sleeping until noon is not only my right but my responsibility,” Vic said. “Besides, as the old song goes, school’s out for summer, school’s out forever.”

I gasped. “Forever? Does that mean Evernight Academy was destroyed?”

“Destroyed, no. Mrs. Bethany swears they’ll open for business in the fall, though I don’t see how. I mean, that place was torched.”

The harder questions came next. I gripped the receiver tightly, willing my voice not to shake. “Were my parents hurt? Did you see them?”

“They’re okay. I told you—everybody got out all right. Your mom and dad didn’t get caught in the fire. In fact, they were helping us look for you.” Vic paused. “They were pretty freaked out, Bianca.”

That was as close as Vic got to a guilt trip. I couldn’t really feel the impact, though; I was too elated to know that my parents had survived the Black Cross attack.

“Do you know where they are?” I didn’t think they would go far from Evernight Academy. My parents would stay close to the grounds—mostly because they would be hoping I’d return. I knew I couldn’t, but I hated the thought of them waiting for me there.

“They were sticking around the school last I saw,” Vic said. So much for calling them—my parents tried hard to adapt to modern life, but they hadn’t quite gotten as far as having cell phones.

“What about Balthazar?”

Lucas frowned. He had some problems with Balthazar, first because Balthazar was a vampire, and second because he and I had some history. It was over between us—it hardly even got started, honestly—but that didn’t mean I wasn’t still worried about him.

“Balty’s A-OK,” Vic replied. “He was totally upset after the fire, though. I think it must’ve been because you were missing. The guy was crushed.”

“It wasn’t because of me,” I said quietly. My mood darkened as the weight of everything I’d lost settled over me, and I slumped against the pay phone, suddenly tired.

“Okay, okay. Backing off.”

What Vic didn’t and couldn’t know was that Balthazar’s misery was due to his sister, Charity, who had arranged the Black Cross attack. Charity was the most important person in the world to Balthazar, and, weirdly, I thought he was just as important to her. That wouldn’t stop her from trying to hurt him, or anyone who got close to him, including me.

Vic, who was becoming more alert by the minute, said, “What about Raquel? She was the only other one we couldn’t find. Is she with you, maybe?”

“She is, actually. She’s fine. Doing great.”

“Excellent! That means we all got out okay. Total miracle.”

“Where did Ranulf end up?” I asked.

“He’s crashed out in our guest room right now. You want me to grab him?”

“That’s okay. I’m just glad he’s all right.” Lucas and I shared surprised smiles. If Vic knew he’d invited a vampire to come stay in his house, he probably wouldn’t be sleeping so late—if at all. Fortunately Ranulf was too mild to cause anyone harm. “Listen, we have to go. I’ll be in touch, though.”

“Oh, man, I cannot deal with people being cryptic first thing in the morning.” Vic sighed, then said, very quietly, “Call your parents. Just—you need to, all right?”

A lump rose in my throat. “Good-bye, Vic.”

After I hung up, Lucas took my hand. “Like I said, there are ways for you to get in touch if you want to.”

I’d been so frightened for Mom and Dad that I hadn’t stopped to consider how frightened they must’ve been for me.

I must have looked stricken, because Lucas gave me a quick hug. “We’ll get through to them soon. You can write them or something. See, it’s going to be okay.”

“I know. It’s just hard.”