But he couldn’t smell the deer’s blood within its body, and he should’ve been able to by now.

He came to a stop a few feet short of the deer, its still form all but invisible in the midnight blackness. It lay on the snow, its neck twisted at an unnatural angle. There was no heartbeat to be heard.

Despite his natural predator’s disappointment at losing prey, Balthazar knelt by the dead deer to investigate. Its throat had been ripped open, probably hours ago; only the severe cold had kept decomposition slow enough that he hadn’t yet been able to smell it. Every single drop of its blood had been drained.

As his hand ran over the deer’s coat, he felt the bite marks: dozens of them. It had been devoured—by vampires, several of them. And the blood had been drunk through the bites. Ripping open the throat had been unnecessary. Just something the killer enjoyed. Something he’d done many times before.

Balthazar’s hands clenched into fists as he thought of the vampire who had led this pack, whose signature he saw written before him in torn flesh: Redgrave.

He’s here.

Chapter Three

AS USUAL, SKYE AWOKE TO THE SOUND OF HER phone’s alarm chiming at her. Not at all as usual, just rolling over to swat the phone into silence made her whole body ache. At first her groggy mind only supplied, I’m really sore.

Then she remembered why, and she bolted upright in bed, clutching her white sheets to her chest.

Skye breathed in deeply in an effort to steady herself against the rush of adrenaline that flooded into her, the memory of the vampire’s attack almost as unnerving as the attack itself. Could that really have happened? And was it possible that Balthazar More had showed up to rescue her? That seemed more like one of her old study-hall daydreams than reality.

But the scrapes along her arms and soreness of her muscles didn’t lie.

She looked down at her phone to see that she had two new text threads. One was from her best friend from Evernight, Clementine Nichols, whom she’d messaged about the craziness last night. Her reply:

OMG r u serious? More vampires? In Darby Glen? R they everywhere? BE CAREFUL. Balty rescue sounds hot don’t drool on him.

Just like Clem to somehow combine dire warnings about staying safe and a joke about Skye’s old crush on Balthazar.

She didn’t recognize the phone number that had sent the other message, but her eyes widened as she read it:

Skye, I did some investigating last night. The vampire presence in your town may be more dangerous than I previously thought. Don’t panic—there’s no reason they should be after you. But be cautious. I’ll be staying around a while looking into this. Stay safe, and good luck on the first day of school.

Some interesting facts there:

That was Balthazar’s number. (Add to contacts—clicked.)

Balthazar was the kind of guy who used totally correct spelling and punctuation even when he was texting, which was sort of bizarrely hot. She was in serious trouble if commas could get her going.

Not only had she not imagined the vampire attack, but she also apparently had to look out for a whole infestation in town or something like that. Not good.

Balthazar was going to be sticking around, for reasons scary enough that she shouldn’t have felt a small thrill at the idea.

Last and most depressing of all: She had to go to school.

She started to rise, grabbing for the old clothes she kept nearby for her morning muck out of the stables—only to recall that she hadn’t put them out. Their neighbor Mrs. Lefler mucked the stables now, in exchange for ample riding time on Eb. They’d set up that arrangement last fall, when she made the heartbreaking choice to leave Eb at home instead of bringing him to the Evernight stables; at the time, she’d thought Mom and Dad might take some comfort from riding him.

Well, that hadn’t worked at all, and now that one simple task—which, though gross and tiring, had anchored her world most mornings of her life since age twelve—was gone. And it was a really bad sign of how much fun you weren’t having when you actually missed shoveling horse poo.

Skye groaned and covered her head with her pillow. Better to face a vampire attack than Darby Glen High.

She’d thought the first day back at Darby Glen would be bad. It turned out she’d been too optimistic.

Someone she’d barely known (Kristin? Kirsten?) back in middle school hardly glanced at Skye as she said, “Looks like someone got kicked out of her snob school. Back down with the little people? Must suck.”

“My school … burned down,” Skye said, figuring that was as close as she could get to “it was destroyed in a ghost apocalypse” without sounding like a crazy person. But then she realized, too late, that correcting that assumption made the rest seem true—like she looked down on Darby Glen High and the kids who went there. Did everyone else think that? Probably.

Every hallway was hung with composite portraits of different graduating classes, and she happened to glance up just as she went by Dakota’s senior year. There he was in his tux, grinning and unaware. He’d been the same age then that she was now. For the first time she realized that, eventually, she’d be older than Dakota had been when he died.

(I’m catching up! she used to joke with him on her birthdays, when she was briefly three years younger than him instead of four. See, I’m getting closer! It wasn’t funny anymore.)

Skye quickly looked away, pushing Dakota to the back of her mind.

Then she had a bottom locker with a cranky lock. Just great. After struggling with it for what seemed like five straight minutes, she wrenched it open, piled in all her books except for her first two subjects, and stood up to see Craig Weathers.