I almost murdered a girl yesterday.
Literally.
When I opened my locker between periods, I discovered that my diary had gone missing. I knew exactly who had stolen it, but I couldn’t say anything. Lilah Samson, the most feared and envied girl at the Duchesne School, hates me. I wanted to tear out her shiny hair with my bare hands. I wanted to claw at her porcelain skin. Thinking about someone trying to read the pages spilling with all my secrets made my skin burn.
No one can know who I really am.
Too bad for her. It’s charmed shut. No human can read it. But that doesn’t make me any less angry. Ever since I started at Duchesne, Lilah has been trying to nose her way into my personal life. Why does she even care? I’m just an outsider.
Muttering her name under my breath, I slammed my locker shut. A younger girl named Constance was walking by and overheard, and she stopped in the middle of the hallway. “You should really watch out for her, Aida,” she said. “Lilah’s a piece of work.”
“Tell me about it,” I said, my veins throbbing with fury. “Does she always act like this toward new students? Or am I just a special case?”
I’m already prone to attacks of rage, and having to deal with her hazing ever since I arrived at Duchesne hasn’t made controlling them any easier. I’ve only been here a couple of months, and Lilah already knows exactly how to push my buttons.
“It’s not that Lilah stabs people in the back,” Constance said. “She just has a reputation for making people earn their place. You can’t earn her trust fast.”
“You mean she stabs them in the front,” I replied.
Lilah and her group of friends are stylish, confident, and beautiful. Rich beyond imagining, their families have ruled New York forever. They’re nothing like me, a loner from nowhere.
Standing in the hallway, I thought about leaving Duchesne, but I’ve run from so many things in my life already. I need to stand my ground, not let my anger over some girl’s immature behavior drive me to fly away. If I leave, I may never discover my destiny. I’m up for her challenge. Life isn’t easy for people like me. Not that there are many like me. . . . I might be immortal and feed on blood, but I’m not the usual vampire. I’m also a shape-shifter and a daywalker. Where I come from, they call us aswangs. Vampire witches. The sun doesn’t burn my skin. I can go about by day like any other normal sixteen-year-old girl, but once the sun dips down below the horizon, I fly around the city hunting for my prey.
My mother was also an aswang. We lived in a small village on the island of Mindanao, in the southernmost part of the Philippines, and she raised me by herself. She refused to tell me about our family, thinking that keeping our identity a secret would keep us safe. She would kill chickens and any other animal she could find for me at night and bring the flesh home, until one night the villagers caught her stealing a hog and murdered her. Burned with the white fire. The only way to kill one of us. I realized that whether the villagers discovered my identity or not, I would never be safe on the island again.
My magical blood bound me to secrecy. I had to leave Mindanao before I could be discovered. I flew away that night to Vietnam and slowly made my way to New Delhi, where I tried to settle down. But soon I realized that I was forever destined to be a wanderer, an orphan; to never know my family, my bloodline, or my true origins.
My anger at my mother for keeping our family’s past a secret burned inside as the years slowly passed. Though I stopped aging at sixteen, I felt old. I grew weary of feeding on human flesh, leaving a blood trail of friends and lovers behind. It’s lonely to be a person—a creature—like me.
That’s why I developed a code of honor. I used to feed on people, but I couldn’t help myself from killing those I loved most. It’s only one rule, the golden one: what you wish upon others, you wish upon yourself—which is a lot easier said than done. I only eat animals now, and only as much as I need to survive. I try not to let myself get angry because that’s when I most desire human flesh. You can see why I need to keep myself under control. If not for my code of honor, I actually might have murdered Lilah.
After discovering the diary was missing, I couldn’t get myself to calm down, which could have been dangerous for me—and for anyone nearby. It’s difficult to be honorable at your worst moment and to forgive those who do you wrong, to have to battle what comes naturally to you. But that’s what it takes to be a monster living among mortals.
If I was going to stick to my code, I had to remove myself from the situation, so I told a teacher that my aunt Girlie was sick and that I needed to leave school to take care of her. Everyone at Duchesne thinks my parents passed away in a tragic boating accident and that I live with my old spinster aunt. The truth is, Aunt Girlie doesn’t actually exist. I have no one, nobody.
I left the school still in a rage. I waited until night fell, shifted into my bird form, and flew around the city, trying to get my pulse under control. There are six flocks of sheep just outside the city. I dropped by for a newborn’s liver. It’s cruel to rip one out, but better little lambs than Duchesne’s most popular girls.
Perspective, you know?
Standing on the front porch of the mansion, I open the door to the Duchesne School. I’m feeling better now that I’ve had a night to cool down, but I have to arm myself for the day with a mantra. I take a deep breath. Don’t let those girls get to you. Don’t give in.
When I first arrived, I thought life in New York City was going to be perfect. I’ve traveled all over the world—New Delhi, Tokyo, Milan, London, Cairo, Manila—searching for a place I would truly belong, but none of them ever felt right. Last year, I was living in a shabby little room near Oxford University that I adored, but I was getting restless again. I was preparing to leave for Morocco the next week when I overheard two professors speaking to each other about a theory that an American colleague from New York had presented at a conference.
They said that the American’s paper featured recently discovered documents revealing that a coven of supernatural creatures—who were rumored to drink human blood—had settled in New York before the Revolutionary War. Afraid of tarnished reputations, and wanting to avoid persecution, they’d kept their ancestry completely secret for hundreds of years.
The professors dismissed the discovery as a tall tale made up by Protestants to keep their parishioners in line, but their conversation had sparked something inside me. My intuition told me that I needed to change my plans—that there was a hint of truth behind that tale. Early America was a place where those who felt they had been persecuted for their religious beliefs had gone to seek freedom. It wouldn’t be a stretch to think that maybe some people like me had ended up there for similar reasons. Maybe I could find some of them. New York, the mysterious city of dreamers and misfits, was calling me.
I had been a nomad for a long time, but my heart began to yearn for America. The same way it had told me to leave behind the Philippines, the place of my birth, in order to find my true home. But here I was, and I’d had no luck finding anyone like me yet. I have to accept that I may never find anyone like me. And that’s why I need to keep my code of honor and work on making actual human friends. They might be the only chance I’ll ever have to feel like I belong.
I walk toward the marble staircase that leads up to the humanities classrooms. The Duchesne School once belonged to Captain Armstrong Flood, an oil magnate, whose widow bequeathed their home to Mademoiselle Duchesne to open up the school. While some modern concessions have been made for the students, including rows of metal lockers lining the hallways, the original furnishings of the mansion are still here, which makes entering the building seem like stepping back into a slice of history. Honor, however, is in short supply at Duchesne, despite the fact so many students can trace their bloodlines all the way back to the founding of America. They are a closed circle; no one gets in.
A few paintings hang along the staircase wall. Three girls gossip beneath the life-size portrait of the Flood heiresses, their lips sparkling with gloss and sarcasm. Gemma Browne, the school’s resident exposé-a-la-Instagram-photog, whispers something to Marnie Wilder, a senior girl who can’t leave her house without wearing a pair of sky-high stilettos. They’re both standing next to none other than Lilah, who, judging from the poorly veiled glare on her icy porcelain face, still hates me. Just my luck.
“You’re back.” Gemma snaps a pic. “For my Insta.”
“Do you have to?” I grumble.
Gemma’s eyes widen long enough for me to know I’m under her skin. She ignores my comment anyway. “We sort of thought you might have transferred after . . .” She trails off, realizing she’s about to stick her foot right into her mouth. She has to at least keep up the pretense of having manners. “We’re glad you’re back.”
“Yeah. We’re glad,” Marnie adds. “Where were you? Bobby Livingston was looking for you. He had your diary. He said he found it in the art room.”
I’m not dumb. I know already that they stole it. Once she discovered that the diary wouldn’t open, Lilah must have discarded it for someone else to find and return. What’s she after? Maybe she senses I have a double life, but there’s no way she could suspect anything close to the truth. Before I knew what I really was, I didn’t even think the superstitions of the villagers in my town were true. Lilah probably thinks I’m lying about my parents being dead and wants to figure out what I’m hiding so she can blackmail me.
“Thanks. I’ll find him. You know I’d never think of leaving,” I say. “My aunt is sick. I had to go home to take care of her.”
Gemma nods unconvincingly. If she knew how much I love gorging on raw liver, she would probably puke all over her Chanel purse. What a sight that would be.
Lilah rolls her eyes. “Your aunt seems to get sick a lot,” she says. “Didn’t you use that excuse a couple weeks ago when she didn’t come to back-to-school night?”
“She’s old,” I said. “Like you care about my aunt.”
“If you really have an aunt,” Lilah says with a raised eyebrow.
I hate her. I wish I could pop her eyeballs out of her head and lick the blood in those sclera vessels clean. I’m about to give up the conversation and head upstairs for class when Mrs. Stratemeyer, one of the teachers, opens the front door.
“Aida.” She says my name like I’m in trouble as she shakes the water off her umbrella. She’s a stout woman with a strict demeanor. “Is your aunt feeling better?”
“Yes. Much better,” I reply. “She’s a fighter.”
“That’s nice to hear.” Mrs. Stratemeyer takes a step up the stairs. “I’d love to meet her sometime. You should bring her to the next open house.”
I nod. I’m not naturally a quiet person, but providing as little information as possible is the best way to keep a low profile. I’m beginning to doubt the feeling in my blood that I needed to come to New York City to stop running and settle down. This doesn’t feel like home. Maybe I used the conversation I overheard at the library as an excuse, as a way to justify getting even farther away from the Philippines, the source of my anguish. Was I just running away from my grief over my mother’s death and my anger at her for keeping secrets about our origins?
Mrs. Stratemeyer disappears up the stairs.
I breathe a sigh of relief, but Marnie is back in my face again. “Where were you, actually?” She’s so close I can almost taste the blood being filtered through her kidneys.
“You’re so mysterious,” Gemma adds with enough sarcasm to make my veins throb.
Marnie pulls her purse up onto her shoulder and shifts her weight onto her left stiletto. “Everyone makes up stories about you,” she says.
“What stories?” I ask.
“Just that you’re probably one of . . .” Marnie trails off.
“You’re obviously supersmart,” Lilah says, picking up her cue to take over the conversation. “That’s why you got into this school, but you don’t really fit in. You disappear all the time. Where do you go, Aida? Are you hiding a secret life from us?”
“I’m a private person,” I say. I’m almost not listening as I look at her leather miniskirt, the coffee spot on her suede ankle boots, and the mother-of-pearl buttons on her gauzy blouse that she actually buttoned all the way up to the collar for once.
“I just want to be one of the girls,” I add.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” she says, her superwhite teeth flashing between burgundy lips. “Why don’t you come out to the club tonight? We can get to know each other better. Maybe you won’t seem so mysterious then.”
Gemma and Marnie cringe. They definitely don’t want me to hang out with them. Why’s Lilah asking me to go out with her? Just to snoop on me? Is she trying to humiliate me? Anger surges through my blood. Why is she so interested in my life? I can sense something about her, but I can’t figure out her motivation. It has to be something more than simply wanting to get dirt on me. These girls have no idea who I really am.
Or what I can do.
They should want to pet me like a kitty instead of cattle-prodding me with their snark. They wouldn’t sass me if they knew I could deplete their blood supply. There’s surprisingly little in the human body, even if you think there are rivers of the stuff flowing inside you. I can feel blood boiling inside of me, I need to burst, to fly, to take, to squeeze, to charm.
I have to get this under control. My heart pounds in my chest. I fantasize about ripping something apart. But I can’t. I have a code to follow. I can’t alienate myself again. Whatever my fate might be, I have to stay and figure out the course of my destiny this time. I can feel in my blood that this is my last chance to find my place.
“Yeah, I’ll go,” I say. “Where should I meet you?”
I love the night. I sometimes hover above clubs and wandering teens. I usually fly in the shadows like a great horned owl, spreading my wings, breathing the mist, tasting the scents. My senses are at their best right after a feeding. The blood kicks in and I can feel the city bustling with a kaleidoscopic variety of humanity.
I’m meeting Lilah at a nightclub called The Bank, on Houston Street, where the East Village turns into the Lower East Side, so I have to walk tonight. As I approach the decrepit stone building, I watch the clubbers prowl the streets in their slinky clothes and dark makeup like night crawlers. The desperate. The strange. The weird. So many types of blood coursing through the youth of this city. Now here I am darting through the streets after a feeding, a bloodletting, and I’m furious all over again, and alone.
I shake my head as I walk toward the entrance of the club, knowing Lilah and her friends are probably in there talking about me. I try to convince myself that the night won’t be so bad. Maybe I can actually become friends with those girls. If things go poorly tonight, I can at least feed Lilah some lies about my past and throw her off my trail.
But then I look down.
There’s a streak of blood on my clothes. I curse myself because I’m always so careful. So clean in my kills. Even as I gorge, I do so delicately. But this little sow, she struggled. She had a furious life in her, and I struck an artery that shot into my mouth with the rage of survival. That’s what I love about life, about real blood-borne life, that every once in a while the fury, even from a pig, is strikingly surprising. I must not have been able to swallow fast enough.
Folding my arms in front of the bloodstain on my blouse, I walk toward the entrance. Two guys slam out of the front door onto the sidewalk and start punching each other. When the bouncer moves toward them to break up the fight, I take my chance and slip inside the club unnoticed. Trance music pulses as couples dance all around me.
As I rush through the dance floor toward the women’s bathroom to wash the fresh blood off my shirt, I spot Lilah sitting at a table in the corner of the club. She’s, strangely, not with Marnie or Gemma. Some seniors from Duchesne that I don’t know well surround the table. I don’t remember seeing Lilah hang out with them at school, but she seems pretty close to them now. They’re leaning over the table, their heads close, talking to each other. Why did she invite these people? Who are they? Is she setting me up for something terrible?
Whatever her plans are for me, I have to get this stain out of my shirt. I finally reach the bathroom and open the door. I look around, hoping I won’t have to explain myself. The coast is clear so I dart in and start washing the blood out of my blouse.
The rust-colored water is swirling down the drain when the door opens. It’s Lilah. I think about hiding in the bathroom stall, but she’s already standing next to me, and I realize there’s no way I can avoid her. “Aida,” she says. “Is that blood?”
“I cut myself,” I say lamely.
“You cut your stomach? On the way to the club?” She raises a perfectly groomed eyebrow. It’s a terrible lie, and she knows it. “Something’s wrong with you.”
“Clearly,” I say, scrubbing the stain. “You don’t need to point it out.”
“It’s so obvious,” Lilah says, goading me. “I read your diary. It confirmed what I suspected the moment you walked in the door at Duchesne. You’ve been lying about who you are ever since you moved to New York. Haven’t you?”
She must be bluffing. How could she have read my diary? No human could have possibly have broken the spell. I rear up, startled, and my eyes redden. I hate that her words have control over me, but I can’t stop myself. I feel my fangs and claws taking shape as I lunge at her.
“I’d hurt you,” I growl. “But I have a code of honor.”
As I put my lips up to her neck to scare her, Lilah throws me off with a swipe of her arm. Me. An aswang with superhuman strength. She flings me aside like a rag.
I stumble into the edge of the sink.
“A code?” Lilah laughs. Her laughter sounds like a shriek, only not one of fear. “You think you’re the only one with a code?” Is she mocking me?
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
Lilah walks toward me, her eyes flashing. “Pitiful creature.”
I step farther away. “Stay there,” I say. “You don’t want me to get angry.”
“I suppose not,” Lilah says, looking at me in the mirror. “I’ve been watching you, wondering about you. And now I know the truth.”
“What’s that?” I grab my side, groaning in pain.
“That you’re just like me,” she says, revealing sharp fangs behind her burgundy lips, her eyes red and pink. “As soon as you arrived at Duchesne, I knew. You’re one of us. A Blue Blood.”
Staring at Lilah in disbelief, I take a moment to consider what she has just revealed. I had been searching for so long, following every rumor, reading every obscure document I could find about them, not that there were many to find. Just whispers here and there. But if she is telling the truth, then I had found the Blue Bloods, the once loyal army of angels who betrayed Lucifer during his epic war with God. Was she telling the truth? But how else could she have opened my diary? Or thrown me against the sink?
She is smiling, and in that smile, I recognize myself.
This is the moment I’ve been waiting for my entire life. This is my destiny. This is why my heart was leading me to New York. I had been lost to the bloodline all these years, but now I am home. There were stories that they’d been killed off by the Croatan long ago. But no, they are still here. The famed Blue Bloods of Manhattan.
Lilah notes the blood still on my shirt. “Use cold water, otherwise it’ll stain,” she says. “You have so much to learn. Welcome to the coven.”