“Behave yourself, Princess.”

I rolled my eyes, pulling my backpack over my shoulder. It was new black canvas. I’d had a similar one almost every single school year.

Unfortunately, the last time we’d moved we had been in a hurry, and it had been left behind, along with most of my clothes. I sighed, remembering the sight of our house burning to the ground.

It was to cover our tracks, I knew. Clothes and possessions didn’t matter. Only our lives did.

Still, it sucked. I was a girl and I got attached to my stuff. I sighed, shaking it off. At least we had each other. My guardian sat in the car, giving me a look of fond exasperation.

Caleb was strict about my wardrobe. And how I wore my hair. And interacted with other students.

Or rather, how I didn’t.

It was the same at every new school. Dark colors, plain clothes, no direct eye contact. It was far too dangerous. Not just for me, either.

Caleb, like my father, preached the sanctity of human life. Drink, but don’t kill. Glamour, don’t destroy. Take but don’t harm.

My guardian stared at me, still expecting an answer. He was a worrier. The vamp loved to worry.

I pushed my dark sunglasses up the bridge of my nose and smirked.

“Don’t I always?”

He shook his head, remaining in the dark safety of the car. The windows were tinted and he wore gloves and a brimmed hat. It still didn’t completely protect him from daylight.

Caleb wasn’t like me.

The sun would burn him. Not ‘burst into flames and turn to dust’ like in the movies, but it wouldn’t be pleasant. He’d get singed, like a really bad sunburn. His body would grow weaker, taking days and copious amounts of blood to recover. If he was exposed for long enough, it would kill him.

Or, rather, undo the curse that kept him above ground.

You couldn’t technically kill the undead.

Yeah, Caleb was a Vampire. Old school. Like, really old. He’d been one of my father’s most trusted advisors. A warrior and a friend.

He was the one who had gotten me out the night they attacked, threw my father in a dungeon, and supposedly killed the young Princess in the process.

Me.

Yep. Yours truly was toast as far as the supernatural world was concerned.

At least that was the rumor.

The new leaders had slaughtered an innocent girl, just to seize power. I wasn’t supposed to think their names, let alone say them. As if that could conjure them up. Not that that stopped me. I smirked.

I wasn’t afraid of them.

I was going to win. As soon as I mastered my powers. As soon as we had enough rebels on our side.

I turned towards the school, staring up at the red brick and limestone building. It was old, at least a hundred years. It looked like a lot of other schools I’d attended. But this one was somehow prettier than the rest, in that classically institutional way.

I recited the names in my head as I walked towards the big glass doors. It was excellent motivation to keep my eyes on the prize. Maintain my cover. Train as hard as I could.

Survive.

Besides, I was never all that good at following rules. But I liked saying their names while imagining how I would kill them for what they had done. For all the suffering they had caused to so many immortal and human alike.

I’d start with their fingernails. Pull them out one by one. Or their fangs. Or both.

Then I’d move onto the main event, slaughtering them each in turn. Beheading maybe. Or starve them out, then behead them.

I smiled grimly. Yes, slow was definitely better. After all, those bastards were the reason I was in yet another small town registering as a Junior in yet another high school.

Allernon. Jezebel. Dartanian. Bezender.

Yeah, I know. Vampires had really weird names. Especially the old ones. Biblical, Shakespearean names. They sounded silly until you got used to them.

For all I knew, there were vamps somewhere called Danny and Sally, living in the suburbs and buying toilet paper late night at Costco.

But if there were a bunch of true blue American Vampires running around and watching Netflix while drinking the pizza delivery boy, I hadn’t met them.

The crazy thing was, I was their leader. Their sovereign by birth. And they might not even know I ever existed.

The four Vampires who had overthrown my father’s kingdom had made sure of that. It was forbidden to seven speak my name. My real name, which we never used in public.

Sasha Triherine Uzeliac.

Yeah, I know. It’s a mouthful.

I reached for the door just as someone else did. I yanked my hand away, fingers tingling. I didn’t like to be touched. Or at least, I wasn’t used to it.

Caleb might have saved me, but he wasn’t exactly the cuddly type.

Massive blue eyes peered down at me. I blinked, staring up at the cutest boy I’d seen in my life. He smiled and I felt myself melt.

Scratch that. He wasn’t cute. Yeah, ‘cute’ didn’t begin to cut it. The guy was freaking gorgeous. GQ, Abercrombie, grown-up Disney star gorgeous.

He gave me a funny look. Probably because I was staring at him, utterly dumbfounded.

“Hey. Are you alright?”

“Uh… yeah. Just trying to, you know, go inside.”

He laughed and held the door open for me.

“After you.”

For a split second, I was terrified that I had accidentally glamoured him. It happened all the time. I had only to make a wish, or project a thought while maintaining eye contact and any human would pretty much bend over backwards to do what I wanted.

And follow me around like a puppy dog for the rest of their lives.

I’d had to skip town because of it at least a dozen times. It was the most conspicuous thing about me. Other than the whole, unbelievably strong, fast and magically immortal drinking blood once in a while thing.

Other than that, the Vampire rules didn’t apply to me. I could go to church. I could go in the sun. I could probably drink a gallon of holy water, though I hadn’t tried it.

Ew, gross.

I made a face, imagining drinking tap water that a Priest had dipped his fingers in repeatedly while incanting Latin. Nothing against Priests. But really, you never knew if someone was diligent about washing their hands.

I reached up and touched the hard plastic frame of my dark sunglasses. I exhaled in relief as I walked through the door. There was no way he’d been influenced through these.

The kid was just being polite.

I smiled to myself. Maybe he just liked redheads. I tucked my hair behind my ears, trying to flatten it. It was the one thing I couldn’t hide. If the traitors knew anything about me, my hair would be the thing that gave me away.

It was bright pinkish red and couldn’t be dyed. One of those weird vamp things. Once you were vamp, you were stuck with your ‘do. Even though in my case, it was still growing, getting longer each year. I could trim it but it grew super-fast.

Talk about conspicuous. My head was like a beacon. It was impossible to miss me in a crowd unless I kept it covered up. Basically, I wore a lot of hats.

“You new here?”

I nodded, looking around. There were kids milling around and grabbing books from lockers. It was like every other high school I’d set foot in.

And I’d set foot in a lot. It was always the same. Everyone just going about their business, in a hurry to grow up.

Other than Mr. Wonderful here of course. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry to do anything but stare at me.

He grinned. It wasn’t the slavish, dazed smile of someone who was under my spell. It was just a guy, being friendly.

Relax Sash.

I reminded myself how to be a normal teenager. Slouch a little. Be nice, but not too nice. Blend.

Just a few more years of this and I would be free. And it wasn’t that bad. Not really. I actually liked learning, unlike most of the teenage humans I’d come into contact with.

“Yeah, why?”

“I would have noticed you.”

Swoon. Okay, so the guy was definitely a flirt. That was fine. It’s not like I was going to start hanging out with mortals, no matter how dreamy they were.

Just blow it off, Sash.

Stay hidden. Stay alive.

I adjusted my bag and pulled my hair over my face. I was going to have to yank the sunnies to go to the admin office, and that meant using my hair as a shield.

“I need to register. Nice meeting you.”

He fell in step beside me.

“Dean. Nice to meet you…”

He was dangling for my name. Unfortunately, I couldn’t freaking remember what it was this time. Whoops. I ran through the list of names I rotated through, switching it up slightly with each new town and each new school.

Julie… Justine… Celeste… Sophie…

“Sophie.”

I hoped that was the freaking name on my documents this time anyway. ‘S’ names were the easiest to use since they were the closet to my real name. I was getting sloppy. I hadn’t bothered to check the paperwork Caleb had stuffed in my bag this morning.

“That’s pretty.”

“Uh huh.”

Jeez, could the guy not take a hint? I turned away, not caring if I seemed rude. Maybe I had glamoured him. I knew it could happen from our scent alone sometimes. It was meant to calm those around us.

It helped to make sure they didn’t freak out when we started drinking them like a glass of OJ.

This guy was not calm either though. Not exactly. He was sticking to me like glue. I jumped as he grabbed my shoulder. His smile only got wider when I glared at him. He jerked his head in the opposite direction.

“The admin office is that way.”

Then he strolled off, whistling.

Whistling! Almost like he’d known what I was thinking. I scowled at his broad back for a split second. He turned and caught me staring. And then he winked.

Ugh, don’t encourage him Sash.

I hastened down the rapidly emptying hallway towards the admin office. It went relatively quickly. My documents were fake, but they were forged by an eleven-hundred -year-old Vampire.

In other words, they were flawless.

Caleb was pretty much like Tesla and Einstein rolled into one. He’d been born with a big brain. Plus, he’d had a heck of a lot longer to learn and study.

The man read books so fast and so often it was astounding. And he never got bored. He just loved learning. It was a love he’d passed on to me, though I was nowhere near as fast.

Caleb was brilliant and could do just about anything.

Anything except make a joke. The man was utterly humorless. Thank goodness for Bernard. He was a lot younger, as far as my father’s inner circle went. About four hundred years old.

Bernard was… not the sharpest tool in the shed in comparison. Not a dummy by any means, but not a scholar either. Not that it made me love him any less.

He was the affectionate one in our trio. He was sweet and loved to laugh. And he was incredibly big and strong, even for a Vampire. I adored them both equally.

Of course, he wasn’t big on hugging his future queen either. Future queen IF I even survived to my eighteenth birthday and reached my full powers. And that was a pretty big ‘if.’ I had over a year to go.

And I still had a lot to learn in my training.

“Homeroom is down this way. And here is the combination for your locker.”

I glanced at the paper for a split second before crumpling it up. Yeah, a photographic memory was one of the many unfair advantages I had over my human classmates. Never growing old being the main one, of course.

At least, I thought I wouldn’t grow old. I was aging somewhat normally for a human, but that had begun to slow down. Caleb had a theory that once I finished puberty, I’d stop changing and become like them.

Frozen in time.

The administrator opened the door and waved the teacher over. Mr. Jones was a quiet, thoughtful seeming man. He looked a bit overwhelmed and waved me to a seat without any fuss.

I tried to ignore the stares from my classmates, tugging my hair over my eyes. It was my first day and I was determined to make it here for a couple of months at least. We’d moved in over the weekend and I liked the new house.

It was… homey.

My guardians had provided for me over the years. They gave me everything I could possibly need to grow and survive. But the one thing we’d never had in all these years was a real home.

We were running too much for that.

“Class this is Sophie Wallace. Make her welcome.”

I felt every single person in the room look at me and then away. Good. I was doing my best to repel them, which worked most of the time. Sort of an anti —glamour. I could push people away as well as attract them.

Most of the time anyway.

It helped me attract as little attention as possible. The fact that I was wearing the blandest clothes ever and no makeup didn’t hurt either. Most teenage girls made at least a token attempt at being stylish. I did… not. I sighed.

I would have loved to go shopping, believe me.

Half the kids were yawning, clearly wishing they were still in bed. I sat and did my best to look bored. It wasn’t much of a stretch.

There were several announcements over the loudspeaker and then a bell rang. Everyone jumped up and left except the girl sitting next to me. She had light brown hair and glasses over her intelligent blue eyes.

“Hi.”

She smiled shyly and waited for me to grab my bag. I hid my surprise. Kids here were… friendlier than many of the ones I’d encountered.

“Hey.”

“I’m Karen. Do you need help finding your way to first period?”

I nodded. I had no clue which way next period was. Being rude was pointless and anyway, the girl seemed nice. It was too bad Caleb had forbidden me from making friends.

I wasn’t allowed human friends anyway.

He might be okay if I found a damn wood sprite to chill with. Or a vamp or two. I’d only met a handful of other supernaturals, and those were the ones Caleb had known for centuries.

“Can I see your schedule?”

I made a show of pulling it out to show to her. I’d memorized it instantly of course, but there was no way she could know that.

“Yeah, here.”

“Oh, we have two classes together! English lit and bio!”

I nodded, slipping my sunglasses back into place for the stroll through the hallways. I knew it made me conspicuous but it was worth it to keep people from falling at my feet.

Caleb said it gave me a big head.

Personally, I did not enjoy the whole mindless worship routine, but it did come in handy when we were on the run or needed to disappear from a human’s memory. I definitely didn’t need to use it on an unsuspecting high school kid.

“You have advanced Calc 2 first. Wow, that’s a senior AP class.”

I shrugged. I didn’t want to brag. Besides even the AP classes were going to be dull for me. Caleb had been feeding me all kinds of academic books for years. And since I didn’t need to sleep much, well, I read all night. Pretty much every night.

It’s not like I had anything else to do. Train. Read. Blend. Read some more.

I even lugged around piles of books when we were on the run. Hopefully that wouldn’t happen again for a while. I craved stability at this point. And I was tired. Not physically of course. But mentally, I was tapped out.

We all were.

“Come on, slowpoke.”

Karen hurried down the hall, not waiting for me to catch up. Good. I didn’t need to be coddled. I allowed myself a small smile.

I liked this chick already.

* * *

I glanced over my shoulder and frowned. I turned back to the front of the classroom, biting my lip in worry.

Yep. He was still staring. Mr. Blue Eyes was in my first class.

Fantastic.

I sighed heavily, feeling his eyes on my back. The next time I looked back though, he was talking to the guy sitting next to him under his breath.

Good. Weird, but good. If I had glamoured him accidentally he would be focused on me almost exclusively. So he wasn’t glamoured.

He was just… I risked a peek back. Yeah. He was looking at me again. He caught my eye and smiled. I exhaled through my teeth, packing up my books. Not surprisingly, pre —calc was going to be a waste of time for me.

Just like the rest of the classes. I imagined college would be a little more interesting, but maybe not by much.

I sighed. I needed to attend class to appear normal. At least literature and history were somewhat interesting, if only because it was subjective. I liked hearing the different opinions people had on what the great writers and figures in human history had been thinking.

Mostly because it made me laugh. The way people thought was so limiting. Not every author had some higher purpose to teach future generations. A lot of the meaning for them was in the act of writing and sharing their thoughts. They had cherished the act of examining the beauty in the smallness of human life, not trying to make Nand, sweeping statements about the meaning of life. And since Caleb had known some of those great writers in person, I knew a wee bit more than I should about them.

I went to my locker and put my books away, already bored to tears. Suck it up, buttercup. A random teenage runaway was much more conspicuous than a shy girl attending classes.

In truth, I was far from shy. And I sucked at keeping my mouth shut. But I had to. Our lives depended on it.

After all, a high school in rural North Carolina was the last place the New Leaders would be looking for me. Yes, that’s what the traitors called themselves. And as ridiculous as it sounded, the name had stuck.

I snickered to myself every time I thought about it. It sounded like a 90s boy band. I could almost imagine them, four ancient Vampires in shiny black leather, singing and dancing in unison while teenage girls screamed.

I couldn’t wait to tell them that. Just before I tore their heads off and saved my father. I’d even come up with fake song titles and bad lyrics for them.

I’m a cheesy Vampire, baby

Let me suck you up

I might be cold, but I’m hot for you

Boop bop beep oooo

Yeah, I could go on forever. I was very easily entertained. It was a good thing too, considering all I did in my spare time was train.

“Hey. Are you a Senior?”

I shook my head. The bell had barely rung and Mr. Blue Eyes was there, standing at my side. He was almost as sneaky as a freaking vamp!

“No, I’m a Junior.”

“Wow, you must be really smart.”

I raised my eyebrows, forgetting to hide my eyes.

“I guess.”

I was freaking smart dammit. But being an honor student was just part of my cover. Maybe I should tone it down a bit… get a B or something.

But that would make Caleb lose his damn mind. I almost smiled, imagining him trying to ground me. Princesses do not get B’s.

“Wow, your eyes…”

I flinched. I did not want him staring into my eyes. Ugh. I realized I must have forgotten my color contacts. They muted the unusual color and seemed to help with the accidental hypnotism as well.

“What about them?”

My voice sounded a little sharp, but I couldn’t help it. My eyes were the one visibly weird thing about me. They were not in the normal range of human eye colors and I was self —conscious about them.

I hated them, to be honest. I said they were like rat eyes, though Caleb told me they looked like Liz Taylor’s. He said that they were beautiful.

He even made me watch some old movies to prove it.

“They are sort of purple. No, they’re violet.”

I shrugged and grabbed my stuff. This kid was making me nervous now. He’d stared directly into my bare eyes and what — not even a hint of mindless adoration?

I must be losing my touch.

“Yeah, I guess it’s a genetic mutation or something. It’s worse under fluorescent lights.”

He smiled and I felt the tension go out of my body. I’d expected a comment about rodents or fake contacts. If only he knew how unusual my eyes really were…

“They’re nice.”

I watched him walk away, staring after his broad back and long legs. Nice? My eyes were nice?

That was… the most ordinary compliment I’d ever gotten.

“Miss Wallace?”

I realized I was standing in the middle of the empty classroom. I shook myself and hurried to my next class.

Yeah, being back in high school was a boatload of freaking fun.