Author: Melissa de la Cruz
Category: Vampires
Go to read content：https://readnovelfree.com/p/33874_15
Jack smiled a wry smile. "That's not possible. That would be like hating myself. And I'm not a masochist."
She shrugged her shoulders in slow motion, turning away and biting her lip.
He pulled her in for a hug, pressing his body against hers. They were the same height - their eyes at the same level. It was like looking into a mirror. "Be good," he said.
"Who are you and what have you done with my brother?" she cracked. But it was nice to be hugged, and she squeezed him back tightly. Now, that was more like it.
"I'm scared, Jack," she whispered. They'd been there, that night, with Aggie. Aggie shouldn't be dead. Aggie couldn't be dead. It just couldn't be true. It was impossible. In every sense of the word. But they'd seen Aggie's body at the morgue, that cold gray morning. She and Jack had been the ones to identify the body. Mimi's cell number was the first entry in Aggie's phone. They'd held her lifeless hands. They'd seen her face, the frozen scream. Much worse, they'd seen the marks on her neck. Unthinkable! Ridiculous, even. It simply didn't add up. It was as if the world had been turned upside down. It was against everything they'd been told. She couldn't even begin to make it comprehensible.
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"It's a joke, right?"
"No joke." Jack shook his head.
"She's not just cycling early?" Mimi asked, hoping against hope that they'd found some reasonable explanation for all this. There had to be one. Things like this simply didn't happen. Not to them.
"No. They've done the tests. Worse. The blood - it's gone."
Mimi felt a chill up her spine. It was as if something had skittered across her grave. "What do you mean it's gone?" she gasped.
"She was drained."
"You mean ..."
"Full consumption." Jack nodded.
Mimi recoiled from his embrace. "You're joking. You have to be. It's just not possible." That word again. That word that popped up all weekend, Saturday morning, when the call came: repeated by their parents, the Elders, the Wardens, everybody. What happened to Aggie just wasn't possible. That much they all agreed on. Mimi walked toward an open window, stepped into the sunlight, and gloried in the way it tickled her skin. Nothing could hurt them.
"They've called a conclave. The letters went out today."
"Already? But they haven't even begun to change yet," Mimi protested. "Isn't that against the rules?"
"Emergency situation. Everyone has to be warned. Even the premature."
Mimi sighed. "I suppose." She'd rather liked being one of the youngest. She didn't like knowing her novel status would soon be supplanted by a new batch.
"I'm going to class. Where are you going?" he asked, tucking his shirt into his pants, a futile move since when he reached for his leather satchel, the motion pulled his shirttails out again.
"To Barneys," she replied, putting on her sunglasses. "I have nothing to wear to the funeral."
CHAPTER 6
Schuyler's second-period class was ethics, a multi-year class open to sophomores and juniors completing their diversity studies requirements. Their teacher, Mr. Orion, a curly-haired Brown graduate with a droopy mustache, small, wire-rimmed glasses, a long Cyrano nose, and a penchant for wearing oversized baggy sweaters that hung off his scarecrow-like frame, sat in the middle of the room, leading the discussion.
She found a seat near the window, pulling up her chair to the circle around Mr. Orion. There were only ten people, the standard class size. Schuyler couldn't help but notice that Jack Force wasn't in his usual seat. She'd never said a word to him all semester, and she wondered if he would even remember saying hello to her on Friday night.
"Did anyone here know Aggie well?" Mr. Orion asked, even though it was an irrelevant question. Duchesne was the kind of place that, years after graduation, if you bumped into an alum at an airport, or walking around Centre Pompidou, or downtown at Max Fish, you would immediately buy them a drink and ask about their family, because even if you had never exchanged a word while at the school, you knew almost everything about them, down to the intimate details.
"Anyone?" Mr. Orion asked again.
Bliss Llewellyn cautiously raised her hand. "I did," she said timidly.
"Do you want to share some memories of her?"
Bliss put her hand down, her face red. Memories of Aggie? What did she really know about her? She knew that she liked clothes, and shopping, and her tiny little lapdog, Snow White. It was a Chihuahua, like Bliss's, and Aggie had liked to dress her up in silly little outfits. The dog even had a mink sweater that matched Aggie's. That was as much as Bliss could recall. Who ever really knows anybody? And anyway, Aggie was really Mimi's friend.
Bliss thought back on that fateful night. She'd ended up talking to Dylan for what seemed like ages in that back alley. When they'd smoked every last cigarette they had between the two of them, he'd finally gone back to The Bank, and she'd reluctantly returned to Block 122 and Mimi's demands. Aggie wasn't at the table when she got back, and Bliss hadn't seen her for the rest of the evening.
From the Force twins, Bliss knew the basics - they'd found Aggie in "the Land of Nod" - the back room where the club hid druggies who'd passed out - a dirty little secret that Block 122 had successfully kept out of the tabloids, with hefty bribes to cops and gossip columnists alike. Most of the time patrons who passed out woke up hours later just a little worse for wear, with a great anecdote to tell their friends - "And I woke up in this closet, man! What a long strange trip, right?" and were sent home (mostly) intact.