Anyway, high school wouldn’t last forever. Sometimes it seemed like it would, but watching her first high school crumble into destruction had made it clear to Skye just how temporary all that stuff was. Five and a half months: She could do it.

If she could just not be attacked by any more vampires.

When the bell rang for third period, she checked her schedule to remind herself what came next: human anatomy/sex ed with Ms. Loos. Skye thought sourly that she’d already educated herself about sex, for all the good it did her, but whatever. Then she walked in to see that Craig and Britnee were both in this class, too.

Fantastic. She’d have to listen to sex ed lectures while watching the only guy she’d ever had sex with flirt with the girl he was ha**ng s*x with now.

But only after class began did Skye realize the worst of it.

“We’re moving into more sensitive subjects now,” Ms. Loos said. She was sort of attractive, at least for a teacher, with her blond hair and her leopard-print skirt, and she perched on the edge of her desk like she didn’t know it would make the guys stare at her legs. “I’ve had most of you all year, and I know you’re mature students. So I’m calling on all of you to be on your best behavior.”

The janitor walks in, his face gray, his eyes unfocused. Something’s horribly wrong, but he doesn’t realize it yet. He only thinks he’s tired—tired of cleaning up after stupid kids, tired of pushing around that broom, tired down to his bones.

Stop it, Skye told herself. It’s not real; you know it’s not real!

But his death already surrounded her.

Pain lashes through him, snaking out from his chest down his leg, along his arm. He opens his mouth to scream, but his lungs won’t take in air. Suffocation hurts. The blood vessels in his eyes are starting to burst.

“You, in the back?” Ms. Loos stared at Skye, who realized the entire class was staring right along with her. She’d clutched the top of her desk as if it were a life preserver in a stormy sea, and the janitor’s dying agonies still washed over her. She could see him, crumpling to his knees behind Ms. Loos, there and yet not there. “Is there a problem?”

Skye swallowed hard, attempting to keep her attention on the here and now. “No, ma’am.”

Ms. Loos folded her arms, the hint of a smile around her dark-lined lips. “If you find the subject of sex distressing, come and talk with me later, mmm-kay?” A few people in the class giggled, and Skye turned red. She couldn’t help feeling like Ms. Loos was more interested in making a joke at her expense than offering help. Fabulous.

She also couldn’t help noticing that Craig was now staring at the floor. Did he think he’d ruined her for ha**ng s*x with anybody else?

And did any of that matter while this man was dying, right there in the classroom?

Skye closed her eyes tightly, then opened them again. The janitor had vanished. His death hadn’t lasted that long.

But she was going to have to relive it every single time she came into this room, which was going to be every single morning.

Five and a half months suddenly seemed longer than it ever had before.

As Ms. Loos kept talking, Skye let her mind wander far away from school, all the way back home to her stable. She imagined the way Balthazar had looked in the lantern light, how he had been there to protect her when she needed him most. Then her imagination traveled even further back, to Evernight in the days when she thought it was more or less normal, and Balthazar was her favorite eye candy as he walked down the hall. In the days when she had this other, better life, and she was just another teenage girl.

The days she’d never see again.

When the school day was finally done, Skye decided to skip the bus home and walk. It was cold as hell—enough that her throat stung anytime she breathed through her mouth—but she didn’t care. Riding home on the bus would just make the school day seem longer. What she wanted now was to be alone.

However, it crossed her mind that being alone was maybe the opposite of being careful in a town that might be infested with vampires. So instead of taking the quick way home—which led down a winding country road—she decided to go the long way on Garrett Boulevard. Traffic would be busy, and there would be the occasional cyclists and joggers around. She’d just be alone in spirit, but that was enough. She’d get home in plenty of time to spend a long, enjoyable evening with her head under a blanket, screaming in pent-up frustration and anxiety from one of the worst twenty-four-hour periods in her life.

But the Garrett Boulevard path was longer than she’d counted on, and her cheeks and nose were frozen numb long before her home was in sight.

Why didn’t I buy that car last summer? Skye thought as she trudged along the side of the road, hands jammed in the pockets of her long down coat. Her reasons had seemed good at the time—she could afford only a junker, she couldn’t have taken it to Evernight, and her parents had hinted that they’d buy her a nicer car as a graduation present. At that moment, though, with the temperature hovering around ten degrees, Skye would’ve given a lot for some old junker car with a working heater.

Maybe I ought to have asked Balthazar for a ride home. But could vampires get driver’s licenses?

Just as she was beginning to get lost in a stupid but delicious daydream of Balthazar sweeping up to her high school on Eb, wearing a long black cloak or something similarly Darcyesque and romantic, extending his hand to her in front of Craig, Britnee, and everybody, Skye glimpsed her first jogger—a diehard who was out despite the chill. She raised her hand in a wave—and then stopped.