Hourglass

“No, we didn’t.” When Raquel shot me a skeptical look, I added, “One time we got really close. But we were interrupted. You remember the whole thing with the ghosts, in the A/V room?”

“Yeah. Wow, that turned out to be a major save, didn’t it? I mean, sex with a vampire—ewww.” Raquel kept scanning the crowds in front of us, always on the lookout; she was better at this than I was. “If we didn’t know better, you could almost think the ghosts were trying to help you out there.”

I remembered the blue-green chill of the air that night, when the wraiths had attempted to kill me and claim me for their own. “We definitely know better, though.”

We stepped out of the main rush of people into a slightly less busy corridor. Long lines of tired commuters wandered up and down, either focused on making their trains or slightly dreamy as they listened to their iPods. Everything looked pretty ordinary to me.

“It’s weird that you couldn’t tell,” Raquel said.

“What do you mean?”

“That Balthazar was a vampire. I mean—you never noticed he didn’t have a heartbeat? Or that his body was cooler than ours?”

Caught off guard, I grasped for a reply. “Well—I never—I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you usually watch out for. Most girls don’t have to ask themselves, ‘Gosh, I wonder if the guy I’m dating is alive.’ Right?”

“I guess.” Raquel didn’t seem convinced, but then something else caught her attention. She pointed. “Hey, check out the parka.”

I knew what she meant. Vampires, who often felt cold in surroundings where humans were warm, occasionally wore winter clothing in the middle of summer. That was a clue Black Cross had told us to watch for. (My parents had always simply made sure to wear layers.) Sure enough, a guy in front of us was wearing a heavy white parka as he sauntered through the station, in the opposite direction from the usual flow of traffic at this time of day.

“Could just be a weirdo,” Raquel said.

“Probably. This is New York, after all.”

But I knew better. I couldn’t say how I knew—maybe because of that vampire sense Balthazar had told me I’d develop in time, the sense that another was near. I knew this guy, with his white parka and his long, reddish-brown dreadlocks, was a vampire like me.

My heart sank. Ever since I’d been with Black Cross, I’d dreaded a moment like this. This was about to turn into a vampire hunt—and I had to find a way to save this guy, or else I’d become a murderer.

The most logical thing to do was talk Raquel out of her suspicions, but it was already too late. Raquel’s gaze remained fixed on him, her eyes bright and avid. “Look how pale he is. And he’s just got—I can’t describe it, but when I try to picture him at Evernight Academy, I know he’d fit right in.”

“You can’t be sure,” I said.

“Yes, I can.” Raquel peered past me, quickening her steps to stay on the vampire’s trail. “We’ve finally got one.”

Oh, crap.

Raquel’s voice was tense with anticipation. “Think we can grab Dana and Milos?”

If more experienced hunters joined us, I’d have a lot more trouble protecting this guy. “Right now I think we can handle it.”

We followed the dreadlocked vampire down the white corridor that led out of Grand Central. Although it was still daytime, the rainy weather kept the sun at bay. Neither Raquel nor I had an umbrella, so we stuck close to the edge of the buildings to keep from getting soaked. Luckily, the vampire seemed to have the same idea.

Raquel pointed. “He’s turning the corner.”

“I see him.”

We followed the vampire a few blocks north. This area was congested and busy even by New York standards; tourists in goofy T-shirts held newspapers or shopping bags over their heads as they ran, and cabs honked angrily in the streets, their wipers beating staccato thumps against the downpour. Mostly I saw office buildings, hotels, and stores. This meant the vampire might duck in any place at any second.

What am I going to do? I thought. Pretending to lose him in the crowd was no use. Raquel’s sharp eyes never left him.

The dreadlocked vampire turned onto a crosstown street and went into a building whose doorway was tucked almost surreptitiously between two huge storefronts.

Raquel pulled out her cell phone. “I’m calling Dana.”

“No, don’t do that.”

“Bianca, are you nuts? That’s a vampire! This is probably a vampire lair! We need backup.”

“We don’t know what else is going on in there.” The reasoning was weak, but I didn’t know anything else to say. As she started punching in Dana’s number, I hurried a few steps in front of her to inspect the door. I could see bells with names next to them in the vestibule.

Then the glass door swung open, and another resident—a human woman, scary-thin and only a few years older than me, stepped out and gave me a slightly vacant smile as she held the door open for me. She must have assumed I lived there, and her welcome apparently put the doorman off guard, because he just kept reading a magazine. Quickly, I stepped inside and let the door shut behind me.

Raquel appeared on the other side of the glass door. “What are you doing?”

“I’m checking things out, okay? You stay out here to call for help if we need to.”

“Seriously, you need to wait.”

Ignoring Raquel, I hurried to the elevator. Golden circles outlined the elevator’s progression upward. Okay, I could work with that. Once I saw where it stopped, I could go to that floor and maybe use my sensitive vampire hearing to find where the vampire had gone.