I remember

Soft rose fantasies

At Evernight she’d been Craig’s girlfriend, faithful even in her imagination. Every time Balthazar had walked by her in the hallway, she’d drunk in the sight of him, then tried to go back to whatever she was thinking about before.

But at night in her dorm room, while Clementine snored in the next bunk, sometimes Skye’s fantasies had demanded their due. She’d lie there all twisted up in her sheets, trying to think of the boyfriend she knew she ought to be thinking of, but instead remembering Balthazar: framed by the stone arches of Evernight’s hallways; wearing fencing whites that outlined his muscular frame, mask tucked under one arm; ready with a gentle smile for everyone even though there was always something distant and melancholy in his eyes … something that made her want to take that melancholy away…

Skye felt a guilty flush of longing at the memory—But why guilty? she asked herself. You’re free now. And so is he.

Except for the part where he’s a vampire and everything.

With a sigh, Skye composed another line:

Us—caught between never and forever.

She decided she liked that, but before she could keep going, a man’s hand pointed into her poem and slid out the word remember. He pushed it up so that it formed the phrase remember me?

Skye looked over at him, and in the first moment, she didn’t remember him. It seemed impossible that she could have forgotten a man like this. He wasn’t especially tall or short, but everything else about him was remarkable—the perfection of his profile, his gleaming dark blond hair, the warm hue of his skin, his piercing hazel eyes that almost seemed gold. More like the idealized sculpture of a man than any real human being. The crisp white collar of his shirt looked sharp enough to cut. He couldn’t be a student at her school, because he was old enough to be one of the teachers—like Balthazar—

I’ve seen him with Balthazar.

Oh, my God.

Redgrave smiled. “Don’t worry. You haven’t hurt my feelings by failing to know my face.” His accent was odd, not exactly British, not exactly American, hints of something else, too. Hard to place. “You saw me only in the dark, and only with human eyes. My question was sincere.” He tapped his finger on the board, just beneath remember me.

“I’ll scream,” Skye whispered. It wasn’t much of a threat, but it was all she had.

“That would be very silly of you. I’m not hurting you. I’m not even threatening you. I’m just a newcomer in town with an interest in poetry.” Redgrave glanced over the board’s current offerings and sighed. “Not that much of this is recognizable as poetry. I must bring Lorenzo here if I ever wish to punish him.”

Skye wanted to run away, to bolt out of the coffeehouse as fast as she could, but surely that was what Redgrave meant for her to do. If she ran out, his vampire “tribe” would all be out there waiting for her. “What are you doing here?”

“Getting a coffee, strangely enough. And hoping to have a chat with you, now that your bodyguard isn’t on hand.” Redgrave’s smile would, on any other man, have been stunningly beautiful. On him it was menacing. “Balthazar assumes that I won’t attack you here, and he’s absolutely right. I have absolutely no intention of spending so much as one day in the county jail or whatever picayune human lockup I’d be consigned to. So if we’re going to talk, this is the place.”

“We don’t need to talk.” Even getting those words out was hard; Skye’s entire body had gone cold and clumsy, and she could hardly think anything besides the words This man tried to murder me yesterday.

“Nonsense, my dear. I see that you are not without resources. That you understand the nature of the supernatural. So I thought we might be able to speak like rational creatures, and perhaps strike a bargain.”

“A bargain?” She made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Okay, get out of town now and leave me alone, and I won’t kick you in the balls.”

Redgrave really did laugh at that. “You’ve got spirit. You see, I can work with you.”

Her voice shaky, she whispered, “You’re trying to kill me.”

“I think we can come to a better compromise than that, if you’re smart enough to see its value.” He half turned, leaning against the wall next to the poetry board. Skye now thought that, even if she hadn’t recognized him from the day before, she would have known by now that he was a vampire. Redgrave had that eerie grace and confidence familiar to her from the students at Evernight. All around them, the coffeehouse remained loud and bright; the piano music never stopped. “I don’t have to kill you to get what I want. It follows, therefore, that your best chance at staying alive is simply to give me what I want.”

Instinctively, she knew what that was. “My blood.”

He shrugged. “People donate all the time, and for what? A sticker and a cup of apple juice. I can do far better than that.”

“If I let you take any of my blood, you’ll just take it all.”

“Which would make a very entertaining evening for me, but no more than that. Whereas if you stay alive—if your body keeps creating and heating and pumping this miraculous liquid within your veins—I can enjoy your blood any time I please.”

Skye had only a foggy idea of what he was suggesting; she didn’t think she wanted to get a more precise picture. “I’m not your personal Coke machine.”